In the day we sweat it out on the streets
Of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through the mansions of glory
In suicide machines
Two of my favourite musicians are frauds. They freely admit it.
And you can learn to be a better communicator from both of them.
Bruce Springsteen’s early music heavily features cars and the open road. Despite this Springsteen didn't learn to drive until his mid 20s.
And when he finally did when he was such a poor driver his friends refused to travel with him.
At the peak of his mainstream popularity his music focussed on factory and blue-collar workers struggling to get by. Springsteen, aka The Boss, has never worked a day in a factory.
Meanwhile a decade earlier Brian Wilson had written hit after hit of sun-drenched songs about the thrill of surfing for The Beach Boys when only one of the five Beach Boys could actually surf.
Brian Wilson and Bruce Springsteen wrote iconic songs about things they didn’t know about because they were able to put themselves in the shoes of their audience. They were able to understand how those listening to their music, teenagers in the 1960s and 1970s, were thinking.
But most of all they knew what they were feeling.
Whether Wilson writing Surfin’ Safari in 1962 or Springsteen’s breakthrough album of 1975, what the people listening to their music wanted was an escape. One was a sunny beach full of attractive people in California. And the other was an open road with an opportunity to speed away towards the horizon and your dreams.
I have often worked with people who look at themselves first when communicating instead of looking to other people. They want to share every detail of their product or service.
Repeat the corporate jargon. Broadcast instead of seek to connect.
Good communication is always centred, focussed and dialled into the other person.
Never you.
Great communicators also have the self-awareness to know how they are making other people feel.
They use stories like Brian Wilson and Bruce Springsteen to be memorable.
Their language and examples connects but it also influences and inspires.
Next time you are planning a piece of communication, whether a single moment or a substantial campaign, imagine being a seventeen year old and hearing Born to Run for the first time.
Aim to have the same influence on the people that matter to you as Bruce Springsteen did when he wrote a song about the hope, the future and the open road.
Someday girl, I don’t know when,
we’re gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go
and we’ll walk in the sun
But till then tramps like us
baby we were born to run