The words that now shape a period in time 100 years ago carry a degree of complexity beyond the poignancy we see in them now. They are in many respects the musical score to World War One’s memorial requiem – it’s legacy. The poems of Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke haunt our present, as much as they symbolise an era in our past, and somehow carry a meaning that is still relevant now.
It is the vivid nature of the construction of these poems that allows us to step into the trenches of the Western Front and understand, at a very distant level, what life was like. Whilst the world continues to war today, in spheres touching many in the iGaming community, it has had me thinking of the posts and articles I’ve read about the Israel/Hamas conflict, the footage I’ve seen of the civil war in Ukraine and social media I’ve consumed from both, often vastly prejudiced in some form. I have been considering whether such coverage could stand the test of time and shape what history will teach our grandchildren about present day conflict, in the same way that the descriptive, vivid trenches poetry has done so. Beyond that, it has had me deep in thought about what the “right” balance is between recording fact in my day to day work as an affiliate marketer and a journalist, and adding artistic license to it for something more important than art’s sake.
When we examine the importance of anti-wartime poetry today, it was of course rare, for propaganda reasons, to see column inches dedicated to the atrocities of war from 1914 to 1918, and so writers like Owen and Sassoon didn’t really become standout poets until the early 1960s when their work featured in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and became part and parcel of GCSE exam fodder in British schools. Popular contemporary wartime poetry tended to immerse itself in more light-hearted, but nonetheless fervent jingoism, rather than shake its fist at it a-la Wilfred Own. It was the far more positive, less vivid poems and prose that took centre stage to guide a population’s initial support of war, rather than its distaste, much as you may have seen in the words within social media postings from industry colleagues in Israel.
As the internet treads increasingly larger footprints in to the written media landscape, its impact on the way content is constructed, and for what purpose, is felt. Whether it be restricting it to 147 characters or replacing skilfully descriptive, adjective rich paragraphs with keyword optimised text, the role of a journalist, or a leading copywriter has changed. Whether this is for better or for worse is down to the individual consumer and the circumstance. For example, the sales process – that is the journey we put in front of an online casino customer, for example – is shortening, as are the communiqué we utilise to retain customers. It is what the customer has come to expect – and we’re happy to go along with it – it’s less effort, therefore theoretically, less cost. A cracking quick win. With this change though, comes less room to advocate, responsibly, the merit behind the act of gambling, something which ought to be a long-term message of anyone whose livelihood depends on iGaming’s success.
In this respect, can the positive reviews we see on affiliate websites, the jackpot winner stories we see covered every week in press releases and the upsides to gambling we communicate in written marketing survive the test of time when we come to argue the positives online gambling brought “back in the day” upon our hopefully joyous retirements in several decades time? Or, using a highly inappropriate, but topical comparison with poetry’s legacy on World War One, will it be the negative voices that come to dominate nostalgic conversations we have with our grandchildren? More specifically, are the positive steps our happy pond of copywriting marketers are currently dipping in to the murky moral rivers of online gambling public opinion sufficient to stem a long term tide of the negative conscience?
My principle line of work – affiliate marketing – celebrates a big anniversary this year. It is remarkably 20 years since William Tobin began using technology to drive customers to his PC Flowers & Gifts store in the United States. With the growth of affiliate marketing and the ever increasing importance of optimising content for SEO purposes, the art of writing positively online has become more a science.
Conversely less scientific, and quite often considerably more artistic, are the insights offered up by the anti-online gambling lobby – the Siegfried Sassoons of this age, if you will, who unlike the famed poet, have their voices unbridled by censorship in every market they choose to offer up a creative opinion. In the UK, just pick up a copy of the Daily Mail on any given day of the week. In the USA, I give you Sheldon Adelson and his diatribe, which is not only vivid enough to stand the test of time if left suitably unchallenged, but is supported by significant financially-weighted lobbying. Adelson has claimed that online gambling offers terrorist groups – name dropping a potential Al Qaeda poker network – the opportunity to launder enough money to fund several 9/11 style attacks in a matter of days. Throwing in the targeting of children and the vulnerable, risk of identity theft and of increased organised crime and you get some seriously “newsworthy” content that has featured heavily on prominent news sources that won’t be going away any time soon, such as Forbes.com, the LA Times, the aforementioned Daily Mail. A quick Google search will even point anyone keen on finding out more about ol’ Sheldon’s endeavours to a highly reputable online gambling tablog where you’ll also find this article.
Whilst I’m not calling on fellow writers out there to drum up farcical fantasies to rival those of Adelson, there exists a real danger that the creatively minded voices driving against our industry have the capability to leave a bitter legacy, if not bring about an earlier than expected demise, for online gambling if they continue to lead the column inches in mainstream media. Those of us embedded within and supporting online gambling – from journalists covering developments and affiliates reviewing poker rooms and casinos must, at some stage, move from or add to the quick win, customer acquisition focused copywriting determined by Google’s SEO policy to produce prose that will stand the test of time – or risk there being no more quick wins to, well, win. At the other end of the spectrum, lobbyists pushing for positive legislation to further open markets for the here and now must use the words they pen and read, and indeed the money they spend, to stronger use to aid and abet long term public opinion to secure a long term future, and legacy for online gambling.
The thought of Sheldon Adelson’s hot air interviews carrying as much fervour in online gambling’s epitaph as Owen’s infamous “Gas! Gas! Quick boys…” opening verse of Dulce et Decorum Est have had to World War One’s quite frankly appalls me.
