Fitting Group Account Coordinator Molly Schaefer blogs about branding & books.

Before I became a Brand Spanker here at Fitting Group, I was a graduate student studying literature at Carnegie Mellon University. People who know this often ask me how I ended up at a branding agency and if I’m able to apply my degree to my job. There are lots of answers to these questions – my education has made me an effective communicator and a strong writer and researcher, important skills in my field. And, while marketing and literature are very different, if you’re in tune with both, it’s easy to find instances where they overlap. Here are a few of my favorite examples:

• The billboard in The Great Gatsby. When F. Scott Fitzgerald saw the jacket art (above) for his novel (it was completed before the book was), he loved it so much that he wrote it in – creating the billboard that displays the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The billboard’s effect on the characters – it judges them, reflects their desires and values, and sees everything they do – shows that Fitzgerald knew and appreciated the impact of advertising.
• The poetic (and promotional) writings of Charles Dickens. When Dickens was 12 years old, he worked 10-hour days at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse in London, pasting labels on bottles of shoe polish for six shillings a week. Years before he began selling his short stories and novels, this was his first experience selling to consumers, and he didn’t overlook the importance of marketing his goods. Here’s an example of a promotional poem Dickens wrote during this time:
• James Joyce’s Ulysses. Leopold Bloom, the central character in Joyce’s famous work, is an advertising canvasser. The stream-of-consciousness style that helped make this novel groundbreaking is therefore chock full of Bloom’s every thought about advertising and advertised goods. Like Dickens, Joyce wrote advertisements early in his career – he owned a theater and often wrote the ads for it – and the importance he placed on marketing to consumers came through in his novel.

A more modern example that I’m looking forward to following is Twitterature, a website launching in the Fall of 09 that will retell classics in 140 characters or less.

Truly great literature is recognizable and beautifully written – two very big advantages if you can translate them into an ad campaign. Check out how Shakespeare lends Vick’s VapoRub a hand in this advertisement:

Marketing and advertising are affected by thousands of influences from history and from everyday life, including literature. I’ve been able to use my interest in all things literary to enhance the work I do for our clients, and Challenger Brands can do the same. The brands that Andrea talked about in her last blog post, small companies that lack a marketing focus, can use what they know to enhance their brand – especially since often what they know best is their customer.

Inspiration for building brands and creating marketing campaigns can be found in unexpected places. If you want to combine what you’re passionate about with your branding efforts, I recommend doing what I just did – channel your inner grad student and see what you find. Your passion and your brand may have more in common than you think.

Apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way. The folks at TwitterTooHard.com understand what I’m saying. Take a good look, because this is exactly how a lot of companies come across when they attempt to engage in social media – self-absorbed, dettached from reality and the worst, uninteresting.

This is still marketing, people. You can’t forget to engage your audience. You’ve got to keep them interested, and this may sting a little, but they do have interests outside of your company. No one enjoys listening to a person talk endlessly about themselves or their work. Same goes for a company.

Of course no one follows a construction equipment manufacturer’s tweets to hear them wax poetic about 16th century Shakespearean sonnets, but feel free to mix it up a bit. Maybe you make bulldozers, but your audience would probably enjoy finding out about a new type of hardhat that’s making construction workers safer. It may not sell any bulldozers, but it will add value to your Twitter feed, or blog, or whatever. And when you release that new model of bulldozer – with the hydraulics and 24″ spinners – they’ll be paying more attention.