Much of my love for literature and poetry comes from my paternal grandmother, who lived with us for about 15 years. She had a degenerative eye disease named Retinitis Pigmentosa. By age 40 she was completely blind. Despite losing her sight at a young age, she had a phenomenal memory for books, songs, and poems. She could recite entire lines and verses to suit almost any situation. It would take me many years to sort through whether they were classic poetry or dirty limericks. Sometimes both. One such poem she was fond of reciting was “when a hundred years have come and gone, and a hundred more to back it, who will be around to say t ’was I that wore the tattered jacket?”. Who wrote that line? Good question. My grandmother thought it was Robert Burns or possibly Nicholas Brady. ChatGPT claims it comes from “The Tattered Jacket” by Robert Service, although I’ve searched his archive and can’t find it. There is an Anglican hymn with a similar theme but none of the same lyrics. Regardless of who wrote it, the poem certainly is powerful.
What does the line mean? There are a few theories. One theory is the details of some events get lost in the passage of time. Who was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? That was a long time ago but an easy answer – Aretha Franklin! Ah, but who was the second? For this music trivia nerd, the answer is almost as easy – there were three (Florence Ballard, Diana Ross, and Mary Wilson of the Supremes). Although the first to accomplish a feat is almost always remembered, there are dozens of others who have also done it. So the tattered jacket could have been worn by anyone.
A second theory looks at the grand scheme of things. Does it really matter who did what and to whom? Maybe to a writer of murder mysteries. The butler doesn’t always do it.
The third theory involves attribution. Successful marketers can track (almost) every penny spent to a specific activity that either generates pipeline or publicity. That website retargeting campaign that brought in a $5 million per year client, or that random conversation at a trade show that sparked a discussion that a year later was a closed deal, or that blog post that an influencer listened to and called you to learn more. We all have a few of those in our portfolio. You can point to a particular element in the mix as the one igniting moment. Even with a sales cycle that can take years (and multi-million, multi-year deals often take a year or more to close), you can track an activity to it.
Yes, even after 100 years, you can still point to that campaign as the one that made the day.