Pretty much everyone knows the story of Kubla Khan. It starts out,
“In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately Pleasure-Dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”
Some know it from the intro to Citizen Kane, others were forces to read Coleridge in college. Regardless, it’s one of the most famous poems of the last few hundred years. It’s right up there with the old man from Nantucket.
What’s fascinating (to me) is that the poem was marketed and promoted brilliantly. In perhaps one of the earliest gimmick campaigns, Samuel Taylor Coleridge claims that the poem came to him in a dream — or perhaps an opium daze. When he awoke, he started writing as fast as he could, but a knock at the door disturbed him and he was distracted for an hour by the visitor. Upon sitting back down to finish the work, he could only recall a few lines from his former dream and vision. Thus what remains, 210+ years later, is an unfinished masterpiece.
The story of the composition is nearly as famous as the poem itself. For years, Coleridge was asked if he was ever going to finish Kubla Khan, but rarely was a solid answer given. He also published other fragments of poems, but none quite so famous.
As marketers, we often find ourselves in the position of building the story around the product. We create the optimal world in which our client/product lives, and we make you feel compelled to join us there. Samuel Taylor Coleridge did just that with Kubla Khan. We all want have a vision … in a dream … and awaken with brilliance. But as mortals, we must fight that knock at the door — that distraction from inspiration — and persevere to illumination.
Or perhaps we just need to find a good marketing guy …
