Keep your tongue: Embracing the blarney comms style of Irish writers

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.