i dont care about someones bio
"i did this and that" yada yada
i care about...
* a personās work output (do you walk the talk?)
* what other people say about him (social proof #1)
* how often they quote or mention him (social proof #2)
so when i saw the name 'dave trott' pop up
in one of my email newsletters
i wasnt particularly excited
but i was excited about the words he wrote
"dont tell youre a comedian"
"make me laugh"
and the source that quoted him
DESIGNERDOCK
a dinosaur recruitment agency for the creative industry in germany
and they got that quote from a piece he wrote recently [1]
WHO SUCKED THE FUN OUT OF ADVERTISING?
so i went through my emails
searched for "dave trott"
and found 13 emails that mention his name
the people who mentioned him?
harry dry
the guy i sold copywritingexamples.com to
jon buchan
he got drunk, wrote absurd cold emails to senior brand executives at redbull, pepsi, symantec, hewlett-packard, cisco etc. and was hired
ben settle
everyone knows 'pen ben'
bob hoffman
ad industry veteran, probably older than dave trott, yet still alive (thank god)
these are four well-known names in the ad industry
and now i know a 5th one: dave trott
sure, you can blame me for not having known him before
fair enough
but now i do
and blogtrottrd him
.
.
his 2025 words resonated with me
because they mirror his 2016 words [2]
in a nutshell he said:
* creative strategy is sacrifice - you can only pick one and prioritize one
* do NOT say everything you want to say
* say the one thing you want people to remember tomorrow?
* simplify beyond what is comfortable, simplify until you are embarrassed at how simple it is
* dont tell me that youre funny, make me laugh
* associate the message with something easier to remember - a mnemonic
in german we call a mnemonic an "EselsbrĆ¼cke"
which literally means "donkey bridge"
a bridge that makes a stubborn donkey cross the stream that he is afraid of
and hereās my bridge-as-a-story so you can remember it
donkeys are afraid of water
they stubbornly refuse to wade through even the smallest streams
even if they could easily do so physically
hence the term "stubborn donkey"
but a donkey cannot see how deep the stream is due to the reflective surface of the water
so we build small bridges (fords), called "donkey bridges," to cross the stream
.
.
a donkey also wont cross every bridge
because he only steps on ground that he thinks is completely safe
which makes a "donkey bridge" a symbol of safety
are you feeling safe now?
oh, one last thing before you go...
i once had a date with a horse
turns out horses dont like dates too much
they are too sweet for them
so i got hands on horse
and did it the milky way
(dates are so much better with milk)
oh, one other thing before you go...
(because i really want to tell you this other punchline)
i once had a date with a horse
turns out date-on-horse is too sweet
so i got hands on horse
and found the milky way
(sticky fingers are okay in a three-way)
Ā”Ćndale, arriba!
naii "gets the hand-job done every single time" io
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