For marketers, it is easy to rest in abstractions. One thing I have learned through the discipline of writing is how rarely I can assess the quality of my ideas (or lack thereof) until I write them down. But that’s not right: good writing comes from good sentences.” He suggests that “inexperienced writers sometimes imagine that good writing comes from good ideas. As a creative writing professor, Cody’s goal is to fix the broken assumptions of the inexperienced writer. Walker started his own contest a number of years ago with a group of his students at the University of Washington. The idea first came to me when I read a post on the New Yorker blog by Cody Walker, a University of Michigan creative writing professor and New Yorker caption contest winner. You and Your Teamĭon’t let poorly-crafted communications hold you back. When done well, the exercise drives a lively class discussion on language and meaning, and generates a wealth of implications for future marketing professionals. I then take those four back to the class to have the students choose their favorite. When all the entries are in, I send them to a team of friends who work in comedy full- or part-time, asking them to pick the top four. But I’d like to think unfamiliarity is par for the course, as even fewer of them expect a weekly humor competition to be a graded portion of their capstone marketing class.Įach Monday of the semester, I send that week’s New Yorker caption contest to my students, who have until Friday at 5 PM to come up with their own submission. Many have not even heard of the magazine, let alone its famous caption contest. While a good number of my students chuckle to themselves, few if any are regular readers of the New Yorker. The caption states, “Nobody ever asks ‘ How’s Waldo?’” It’s sharp. It is an image of a familiar red-and-white-shirted man with matching cap and wooden cane. On the first day of my undergraduate marketing strategy course, I show my students one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons.
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