Let me tell you about the time I watched a room full of marketing dickweasels discover that fear sells better than sex.
It involves summer camp murder and a metric fuckton of coffee because I got stuck travelling down to London and we stopped at Wolverhampton for an hour. Good old fashioned British transport lol.
Anyways.
So there I am, right? (Once we got to where this talk was)
Slouched in my chair like a half melted action figure, watching these “content strategists” circle jerk their way through another presentation about “engaging storytelling frameworks” and “authentic audience connection.”
The kind of shit that HR would smash into your face if you were stuck in a cubicle gargling on the balls of corporate whatever.
Because the universe has a sick sense of humour after I mainlined 3 espressos…
I had this moment of clarity.
“how do you grab someone by the eyeballs and make their brain beg for more?”
The answer was 200%…watch Friday the 13th.
The original. Not the remakes. Not the sequels. The 1980 masterpiece of murderous simplicity.
Here’s why…
The Hook: Two teenagers decide to play hide the salami. They die. That’s it. That’s the hook. No backstory about camp history. No character development. Just hormones and homicide.
(Your LinkedIn post about “disrupting the paradigm” is looking pretty flaccid now, isn’t it?)
The Questions:
Every good story is a meat grinder for your brain. It keeps churning out questions faster than answers. Who’s killing these kids? Why? What’s wrong with this place? Will anyone survive? What happened to the parents?
The Momentum:
Ever see a car accident? You’re trapped in this beautiful death spiral of “oh shit, oh shit, OH SHIT.”
And here’s the thing that’ll really bake your noodle…
The movie doesn’t give a single solitary fuck about your expectations. It’s not trying to be your friend. It’s not trying to teach you valuable life lessons about summer camp safety.
It just wants to drag you into the woods and murder your attention span.
There’s no elaborate setup, no justification for existing, no apologies for the violence. Just pure, uncut story mainlined into your eyeholes.
You know what modern content creators do?
They write fucking manifestos explaining why you should care. They craft “value propositions” and “content hierarchies” and other terms that make me want to gargle bleach.
But Mr. Voorhees? He just shows up and starts solving problems with sharp objects.
(There’s a marketing lesson in there somewhere, but I’m too caffeinated to find it)
This movie was made for what amounts to pocket lint and promises. They had about twelve dollars and a dream. But they understood something fundamental about human nature
So when you sit down and write again;
Don’t explain.
Don’t apologise.
Don’t waste time setting up your story’s LinkedIn profile.
Just grab your audience by the throat and don’t let go until they’re either dead or subscribed to your newsletter.
(Metaphorically. Please don’t actually strangle your audience. That’s what lawyers call “evidence.”)
And for fuck’s sake, stay away from summer camps. Nothing good ever happens at summer camps.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go write some horror stories about content marketing. Because after sitting through those meetings, I’ve got plenty of material.
(The real monster was ROI metrics all along, duh)
Stephen Walker