Keep your tongue: Embracing the blarney comms style of Irish writers
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a proper tipple of Irish inspiration.
While writing skills have always been the foundation to effective communications, red tape and approval processes can reduce even the most creative copy to sanitized, B2B jargon.
It’s hard to embrace your brand voice without inspiration.
On this St. Paddy’s Day, we are reminded that Emerald Isle is flush with songwriters, poets, and rascals alike whose creations can inspire even the most banjaxed communications strategy.
Consider the protagonist of the traditional Irish tune “Whiskey In the Jar,” a highwayman who details how his lover’s betrayal led him to a life of crime—a case study in reframing the narrative to cast your subject as a sympathetic character. Or the narrator of another Irish classic, “St. Brendan’s Fair Isle,” who recounts a mythological epic journey on the back of a whale that doubles as a meditation on the power of personal perspective.
Ragan alumnus Robby Brumberg also suggests a smattering of Irish authors, from James Joyce to Edna O’Brien, whose erudite dialogue can inspire communicators to find their pot ‘o gold.
“ If ‘Ulysses’ and its 730 pages’ worth of ‘The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea,’ aren’t your cup of Barry’s tea, there are multitudes of other wonderful Irish writers to enjoy,” he writes.
Brumberg includes several other examples of Irish inspiration for communicators here—George Bernard Shaw to The Pogues,
Embrace the style of the Emerald Isle in the spirit of a storied Irish phrase: “He who keeps his tongue, keeps his friends.”
Which Irish writers give you regular inspiration, Ragan readers? Let us know in the comments below.
Nice article, Justin. While not an Irishman himself, Trinity by Leon Uris is my favorite book.