To Be Interesting Is To Improvise On The Beloved.

I think that Dale Carnegie was the first to advise, “To be interesting, be interested.” But in context, it becomes clear that he was actually talking about being liked, not being interesting. “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is full of salespeople learning that showing interest in what your potential client is interested in is a more fruitful way to get a foot in the door than talking about your product. So, in addition to being about liking rather than interest, it’s also more appropriate advice for early 20th-century travelling salespeople on cold calls than early 21st-century marketers.

It's not that being liked is unimportant. It’s just not the same thing as being interesting. They’re not mutually exclusive, just different, and if you confuse the two, you’ll end up doing only the first step in being interesting which is understanding what your audience is interested in. The next step is turning that information into an ongoing series of things that they will find worth thinking about, surprising variations on common themes that form a brand pattern that is recognizable as a whole yet full of novelty at every point. (Which is why it has to be a dynamic pattern and not a single, fixed, clearly delineated idea.)

Another way to look at it is that being interesting means *improvising* on audience interests, not simply feeding them back like a mirror. So many clients insist on showing the ‘target audience’ in their ads. They know who they are. Your discovery of them is not especially interesting to them. My wife loves salsa dancing, but she long ago grew tired of the many salsa-themed gifts she’s received over the years. So much marketing sounds like, “Hey salsa lovers! We’ve noticed you love salsa! How about a salsa print tote bag RIGHT NOW?”

To improvise, on the other hand, is to take what you know and turn it into something new yet valid. Successful improvisation on audience interest generates the same response as a perfect holiday gift: “But…how could you have known when even I didn’t know until now?” Improvisation is such a perfect gift because it requires both creativity and deep care. The latter is too often underappreciated by those who find ‘interesting’ too cerebral an idea to be motivating.

Before the behemoth of ‘Barbie’, there was the loveliness of ‘Lady Bird’, Greta Gerwig’s autobiographical directorial debut that tells the story of a teenage girl struggling against the stodgy surroundings of Catholic school and her home town, partly by writing about it. But an observant nun notes that maybe Lady Bird is not as cynical as she thinks:

Sister Sarah Joan: You clearly love Sacramento.
Christine 'Lady Bird' McPherson: I do?
SJ: You write about Sacramento so affectionately and with such care.
LB: I was just describing it.
SJ: Well, it comes across as love.
LB: Sure, I guess I pay attention.
SJ: Don't you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?

To be interesting is to improvise on the beloved.