This article was first published in Beloved by Clients, and you can read it here.
It’s so obvious to any digital marketer, it’s almost a truism: the catchier your words are, the more they will stick in people’s minds. It’s hard to find a tautology more direct than that: “if something sticks in people’s minds, it will stick in their minds”; all but George Orwell (who reminds us that The Party teaches us that 2+2=5 and I will plead the fifth on whether I agree with The Party or not) will admit that this is definitionally true. And it’s marketing #101: Brands will pay almost anything to stick in people’s minds. It’s so self-evident, it’s embarrassing to even write it down on paper, err, MacBook now.
This is why it’s hard for me to think of a song that is intrinsically better at marketing than the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These. Who that’s younger than my parents and older than teenagers doesn’t know the entirety of the song’s lyrics by heart:
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
Hold your head up, keep your head up, movin’ on
Hold your head up, movin’ on, keep your head up, movin’ on
And which of them can merely read these lyrics without instantly humming or perhaps singing it in their head?
The catchiness manifests itself not just in the tune and catchiness of it, but also in the fact that there are very few lyrics and they are all very simple words. That reminds us of a second, and not quite as basic but almost lesson: you need to take your complex, genius ideas, and your SAT words and just simplify simplify simplify until the little kid can just hum it internalize it, “I travel the world and the seven seas” much more easily than something as trite, generic and forgettable as “a noble spirit embiggens the smallest man” or as pretentious as “immanentize the eschaton.”
Despite being the embodiment of this basic marketing principle… This isn’t the most powerful part of the song for marketing nor client relationship (nor boss relationship) reasons, nor is it the reason why I’m diving into it today. But wait, there’s more!
The real subtly and power comes from these nuggets:
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
It’s hard for me to come up with a better articulation of one of the most basic principles of managing clients and bosses and, errr, perhaps–just perhaps–all humans and reptiles.
Everybody is, indeed, looking for something: and you have no way of knowing what it is they are actually looking for. In fact, often, far too often, they themselves don’t even know. And this is one of the core challenges of dealing with clients and bosses: they often don’t know what they want. They may think they want X, but they themselves haven’t realized they actually want Y. Or maybe they have realized it but just can’t say it out loud for emotional reasons, or perhaps for legal reasons or because of that blood-brother oath they made to their best friend when they were 16 and still adhering to it. They are your boss or client for a reason, after all. And part of your challenge, as the client to your patron (to use the Roman word for it!) is to get to the bottom of what they really want. Perhaps even acknowledging it to them only with the plausibly deniable wink.
It’s wildly under-rated advice, in dealing with clients, bosses, and other creatures of nature, that what they’re looking for may be wildly different than what you even imagine that they may be looking for. Maybe you think they want to save money, but perhaps they really want to be famous? Perhaps you think they want to make money but really they themselves are trying to change the world in a subtle but particular way. Maybe they’re trying to leave a legacy, or perhaps to exact revenge, or perhaps they themselves are just floating in a confused mess of anomie.
And that’s why the song doesn’t stop at “Everybody is looking for something” but continues with the lines, we can repeat ad infinitum, and we’ll sing now again:
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
Let’s look at these four cases, two by two. Perhaps your client is trying to use you–to take advantage of you. To work you like a slave for almost no money. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps (to quote another song!). But perhaps it’s actually the precise opposite: maybe they actually want to be used by you. How so? Oh, in endless ways. Maybe they have this emotional need to be a teacher or mentor, as Barry Cohen (the protagonist of Gary Shteyngart’s Lake Success) is obsessed with finding. No, I’m not quoting that book because it’s named after the small town immediately next to the small town I grew up in. Or maybe they’re looking to be used by you because they lack self-esteem and inherited the money they’re using to pay you. Do you really know where the money your client has to pay you came from? More than that: do you really want to know? (Hint: more often than not, it’s much better to not know. Plausible deniability, again.)
But it gets more extreme: perhaps they want to abuse you. Yes, Virginia, there are people out there who are looking to take advantage of others. Sometimes on purpose, and sometimes because they are so egotistical and narcissistic themselves that they don’t realize that’s what drives them–but that explanation doesn’t change the conclusion. Some of them do want to abuse you and be abused by you, simultaneously. If you haven’t been around people who abuse others to gain their own power, perhaps out of maliciousness, or perhaps for other reasons, like just being trapped inside a circle of rituals of escalating mutual abuse where you reach a level where that’s the only option you have. And if you think abuse-driven rituals don’t exist then, Virginia, maybe Santa Clause exists and maybe you just haven’t been an intimate confidant of those who run the world. I’m just sayin’, yo. (Let me go put on a copy of Eyes Wide Shut to watch now!)
Let’s step back for a moment. That last paragraph, as fun as it was to invent–and “invent” is the right word because it was creative speculation that clearly doesn’t have any connection to any reality, right?!–is an extreme example of the core point the song reminds us of: everybody is looking for something. And you, my humble reader, just weren’t blessed with the ability to read their minds or magically know their backstories, so you just can’t know. And that realization needs to underlie every interaction with every client or every boss. Indeed, the opening lines of the song even hint at the end: “who am I to disagree?” is almost as direct a statement as we can say above a whisper of the humility we need when faced with all the unknown unknowns in front of us. And yes, great literature is just like life: the opening scene hints at the grand finale.
This is precisely the song itself ends on the perfect notes (metaphorical and literal):
Hold your head up, keep your head up, movin’ on
Hold your head up, movin’ on, keep your head up, movin’ on
In other words: it’s dark in there, it can get really dark. And the trick to succeeding? Keep your head up, and keep on moving forward. The hard part, in fact, in managing clients or bosses, often isn’t the work itself; it’s the holding your heading up and keeping on moving forward, despite all the shit being thrown at you. It’s staying enthusiastic and also knowing what dark corners to stay away from. So, young reader, follow Annie Lennox’s timeless wisdom: hold your head up! And keep your head up, indeed.