Marrianne McMullen: Persuasive

In Persuasive, Marrianne McMullen provides a fresh model for planning effective communications campaigns. Read on for a Q&A with the author to learn about the process of writing the book, what some of the most important takeaways are, and more.

You have had a very extensive and interesting career; how did you decide which experiences to include in the book and which to omit?

The first criteria was that the experience had to be useful to others. While I was writing I kept a file called “the cutting room floor.” Looking back at that file now, it’s clear that those paragraphs and anecdotes were relevant for me, but didn’t really offer anything to anyone else. There’s one standard for sharing a story over drinks with friends or at a family dinner. But there’s a whole other threshold for sharing with people you don’t know. It has to be worth their while.

Second, it had to be interesting. I’ve had a lot of crisis communication experiences, but the one that involved Neil Young was more entertaining. Similarly, like most of us, I’ve had several times when I changed course in my career. But the story of interviewing dissidents behind the iron curtain, when I was afraid I’d end up in a Russian jail, made for the better story about a career change. That was more interesting than, say, getting fed up with a difficult boss (though you will find a few of those in these pages!).

What brought you to your decision to write this book that you describe as both a professional memoir and personal story? What was that process like?

Edibles were involved (laughs). It was before the pandemic and we were sitting around one weekend evening in the living room of our south side Chicago home. It was my husband, Jeff Epton, my adult godson, Michael McElveen, and me. Michael has a gift for asking incisive questions. He asked me what I thought I should be doing now, professionally, at this point in my career. I said: “I want to leave it all on the field.” I didn’t mean that in the typical sports sense of expending everything I had in a single effort. I meant that I wanted to be sure to share what I learned as broadly as possible, not just with the people I managed.

The obvious way to do that was to start writing, but it was probably a year before I started doing so. The pandemic came along and eliminated a lot of distractions. I started writing and researching routinely in the early morning hours, between 5 and 8 a.m., and on weekends. (I still work full time.) The research process was cumbersome, since the first half of my career was pre-digital. But it was critical to confirm what I remembered through news coverage, my own journals, and through checking with other people involved.

The process also led to me discovering the end of other people’s stories. When I searched for key characters, particularly from events that happened decades ago, I ended up reading a lot of obituaries. I would look for people on Facebook, Linked In, Twitter. If I didn’t find them there, I would search the obits. I found myself assuming that if someone wasn’t on social media they were probably dead, which is pretty weird.

How has your career in communications impacted your writing style and the way you communicate to your readers?

My writing style is most influenced by my journalism training. Four years at West Virginia University followed by years of writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and websites all reinforced the lessons of plain, clear language. Each word has to have a job. Adjectives and adverbs must be used judiciously, no matter how lovely they are. Details have to complete a picture, not just add flourish.

With each chapter, I worked to craft story arcs that would carry the reader along with minimal distractions. Even though they are my stories, I didn’t want to be a distraction either. I tried to keep the personal information about me at just what was needed to create a coherent narrative while staying focused on what could be useful to the reader.

Why do these stories matter?

Communicating for the common good requires legions—generations even—of committed practitioners. Common good communications can be reporting on brutal conditions in workplaces or exposing corrupt elected officials. It can be giving working people the information they need to vote in their own self-interest, or all people accurate information about health care. It can be letting parents know that their children’s schools can be better. It can be how you provide supervision to a staff team in a way that motivates and lifts everyone up.

But it’s even bigger than those examples. Journalism plays a critical role in a democracy, and anything that bolsters democracy is worthy of our attention these days. Many chapters of this book remind us how media—even small, community-based outlets--can hold public figures and institutions accountable.

The stories in Persuasive also clarify that communication is broader than journalism. It’s literally hundreds of thousands of people who maintain their own communication channels, in addition to tens of thousands of professionals who are paid to convey information. The workforce for journalism has gotten smaller, but the communication workforce has grown, with more people able to access channels that reach sizeable audiences. I hope the key tool that I introduce in this book, the Persuasion Matrix, can help all communicators use those channels more effectively.

Modestly, I hope Persuasive provides practical tips for communicators. More ambitiously, I hope these stories are a compelling read. But most of all, I hope they inspire the reader to use their skills to work hard toward worthy ends.