“I’m not singing that line. I’ll sing anything, but I’m not singing that line.”
“You have to. That’s the line I saved for you. That’s the one that’s going to make them hurt the most.”
Here’s a potentially offputting and offensive Christmas eve story:
Some 37 years ago, on November 25 1984, dozens of British and Irish pop stars gathered at 10 Basing Street in London.
The event was Band Aid:
An attempt to record a hit song in just one day and get it to the top of the charts before Christmas. All proceeds were to help relieve the crisis in Ethiopia, where drought had put 7 million people at risk of a slow and miserable death.
Against all odds, Band Aid turned out to be a success.
The song, “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” became the fastest- and biggest-selling single in UK history. It raised some some $25 million outright. It also spawned later efforts like Live Aid and USA for Africa, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars more.
In spite of all this, “Do They Know It’s Christmas” has had many critics over the years.
People hate the song for different reasons, but one strain can be summed up by the disgust at the line that fell to Bono of U2 to sing.
Bono initially refused to sing the line.
But Bob Geldof, the organizer of Band Aid and a personal friend of Bono’s, was too persuasive and won out in the end.
And so at the end of the first verse of “Do They Know It’s Christmas”… after contrasting the world of British plenty to the world of dread and fear in Ethopia, Bono belts out:
“Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you”
Was this necessary? Would the song have worked as well without it?
We won’t ever know. But going by how much controversy, attention, and outrage this one line has caused over the years… it’s possible it tipped the scales of guilt and shame needed to stir action.
So that’s the rather harsh and out-of-season message I have for you tonight.
You might feel reluctant to offend, to say something that people might find provocative, shocking, or tasteless. You might put it off and say, “It’s not the right moment now. I’ll do it after the holidays… in the New Year… once corona passes… when the Cleveland Indians win the World Series.”
Sooner or later though, this attitude means you will miss an opportunity to make a real difference.
So Merry Christmas. And let me sum up my message with a few words by the original Grinch of direct marketing, Dan Kennedy:
“There is never any need to be or behave like a prick in order to be successful, but you must be okay with some, possibly many, people thinking of you as an insufferable prick.”
And on that note, I’d like to advertise my email newsletter. It’s been praised by many people in the direct response industry… and it’s been ignored by others. If you’d like to check it out, you can sign up here.