Whisper
The Snowman was created in 1982. That's three years before Jason was born.
Oh, I should explain. I'm Jason. That's my real name.
Nice to meet you.
Anyway, along came Christina a few years later, and after that, Christmas meant lots of family traditions, wrapped in a familiar if odd feeling: the world would both speed up and slow down at the very same time.
The world moves faster around the holidays. The world moves slower around the holidays. Which is it? Yes.
During those rushed moments of relaxation, young Jason and Christina could often be found sitting on the floor of the living room a bit too close to a big, boxy TV, watching the movie The Snowman. The film is a beautiful animated wonder, like colored pencil sketches come to life. (There's also a horror film of the same name, which is not what I'm describing, though Jason made his fair share of snowmen which could have auditioned for that movie.)
Unlike most media made for kids (again, talking about the kids version here), The Snowman is quiet. So quiet, a grand total of zero words are spoken by the characters. The only dialogue is delivered by a narrator at the very beginning, right before the movie transitions from real world footage to colorful, calm animation. Those words are shared by British author Raymond Briggs, who wrote the original book The Snowman—a book containing no words.
I love lots of moments in the movie: the boy waking up wide-eyed to freshly fallen snow (my exact reaction even today); the snowman coming to life; the fluffy white giant cramming different fruits onto his face as potential noses, then nuzzling the boy with the pineapple leaves; the scene where they leap into the sky and fly over the ocean, past a whale breaching and cruise ship of people partying. I remember one man in a jester hat and rosy cheeks, clearly inebriated, who gawks at the flying snowman and child, then looks down to examine the label of the champagne bottle in his hand. What's in this?
I love all those moments, but there's just something about those first few lines from Briggs that always resonated the most. After hitting play on the VCR (oh hello, my age, there you are), I'd hear the crunch of his boots on a frozen field as he trudged past the camera, back turned to the lens. Then his quiet but powerful British voice would put me in a trance, like the delicate tingles people feel from ASMR.
I remember that opening moment most of all thanks to one single snapshot: the light dancing through the trees. It's saved in my brain as a JPG. Jason's Personal Gems.
That light dancing through the trees is the same light I see just outside my window now, as I write this for you on a cold Boston morning. I just got back from walking my daughter to school. I know it's impossible, but I swear the sun was in my eyes both directions. That's just how I picture the light this time of year, and it's what I see when I pull up that old reliable JPG.
As Briggs walks past the camera (crunch, crunch, crunch), the cold air hits the microphone (FOOON), and you see dark, barren trees up ahead, just like the woods behind my childhood home. Jason and Christina would scoot forward towards the TV, thin PJs wrapped in thick robes, and Briggs would begin:
"I remember that winter because it brought the heaviest snow that I've ever seen. Snow had fallen steadily all night long, and in the morning, I awoke in a room filled with light and silence. The whole world seemed to be held in a dreamlike stillness. It was a magical day, and it was on that day I made the snowman."
A few soft notes from a piano. Snowflakes but sound.
The entire experience is quiet. It turns out volume and power aren't the same things.
* * *
So many communicators and creators today focus on volume, often at the expense of power. Their ideas are fine at best, forgettable most days. They haven't been developed, haven't been carefully crafted into a message or a moment or a story or a series worth anyone's time. But they think just because they hit Publish, they now deserve an audience. They now demand our attention. Because to them, it's about the transaction, not the transformation. It's just a tactic, nothing more. As a result of "creators" who don't care about the craft, don't respect the audience, and don't see the magic in the minutiae, the internet has gotten obnoxious. It's gotten shouty.
I've been publishing online since 2005. It didn't always feel this way. People used to be excited and hopeful when creating things on the internet. Then everybody figured out "what works," and companies like social media orgs and AI vendors figured out how to incentivize certain types of content for their own gain, almost always at the expense of ours. Even people sharing meaningful ideas and advice haven't considered that they should invest more in finding the best way to show others what they see. Instead, they just take their very well-meaning and genuinely important thinking and spit it out however comes to mind, and when that doesn't work, they press harder and hype it louder. As a result, you get people with meaningful ideas and expertise showing up like the old Buzzfeed headlines or Outbrain and Taboola ads. You get business advice delivered as diet pills. Overpromising as a strategy.
But I take hope. Volume and power are very different things. Attention and influence are not actually as closely connected as we like to think. They may be closely correlated, but one doesn't cause the other. Scrambling for attention does not guarantee trust. More than ever, ideas like "followers" and "traffic" and "reach" are massively different than trust, influence, and fans.
So what can we do to show up well in this world?
I told you earlier there are no words spoken in The Snowman, and while that's true, there are a few words someone sings. The entire film is scored to music to replace dialogue, and one song looms largest: "We're Walking in the Air." Only when a key moment arrives does the volume increase, and only during the MOST important rise in action are lyrics sung.
The snowman and a young Briggs go running out of the house and across pillows of snow in the yard. Then they launch themselves into the air ... and fly. They soar over Brighton (in the UK), over the ocean, past the whale and the drunk jester, and they arrive to the North Pole, where they meet Santa and dance with other snowmen.
The moment carries so much more weight precisely because it's one of the few times the music swells. They bound through the yard, and the piano is greeted by harps and violins and percussion, and when they jump into the air, the violins grow frenetic before ... !
The rich, deep tones of the song fill your chest, and you're transported with the characters.
The violence and uncertainty of a takeoff, met by the impossible floating feeling of actually, somehow flying.
By communicating softly and only sparingly using volume, the entire experience is arresting. Imagine if that's how we operated too? Everything is delivered calmly, until a moment or two needs to be loud. We move through the world with a kind of quiet power as a result.
We're walking in the aaaaair!
We're floating in the moonlit skyyyyy!
The people far below are sleeping as we flyyyy!
(In my family, this song has become a bit of an inside joke. You'll be minding your business when someone bursts into an operatic "We're walking in the aaaaair!)
(Someone is a synonym for Jason.)
The Snowman is a beautiful tribute to feelings of wonder in a world so hellbent on stamping those out of you. Because wonder incubates in the quiet, hatching something big and grand only after awhile. Life simmers, then occasionally boils. Things move slow, then speed up, then get slow again—or is it all at the same time? It's the musicality of it all, the deft combination of changing speeds and combining subtle strokes with thicker lines, which actually makes anything come to life for us.
Someone should tell the internet.
The internet is all thick, bold lines, highlighted five times with six colors, hurled at top speeds straight at your face.
The Snowman is a beautiful escape from all that.
Maybe your work can be that too.
The entire film is like a gentle hand reaching through the screen to tap you on the heart and say to you, "Remember?"
Maybe your work can be that too.
The movie ends sadly, though I won't spoil it. (You've heard of snow, I'm guessing.) Literally none of it makes for what media executives would probably consider "good kids' TV" according to their best practices.
And yet.
* * *
As we reach the end of another year, I'm more tired and more disillusioned than ever thanks to what I see online today: people constantly scrambling for attention, lurching from trend to trend, being yanked back and forth between clickbaity content and overhyped ideas, clinging to values they hold dear but loosening our grip on them as others promise their "secret" tactics can drive instant results.
As a result, I come to you with a simple question to inform your 2025:
What if you had to whisper?
What if you were forced to stop shouting, leave the feeds, and provide work rooted more in quiet introspection—punctuated with occasional volume when and only when it's needed? What would you say to me and to others if you had to speak calmly, quietly, with just a few words, before you kept crunching across the field?
What if you had to whisper?
What if you were required to share a message, to write, speak, and record your ideas and stories, with the volume locked at 2 out of 10? What might you say then, and how might you say it, if turning up the volume wasn't an option? What would you do then?
You'd turn up the power. You'd have to compete on the impact of your ideas, not the volume of your marketing. THAT is a worthy aim in 2025.
Because then, when you do start shouting about something, when a moment came along where you provided a little extra volume to your existing fans and supporters, you'd also be taken more seriously in that moment. But without that musicality, that interplay between mainly soft and momentary crescendo, literally everything is just ... noise
Not EVERYTHING is a grand launch. Not EVERYTHING is deserving of the hype. Not EVERYTHING should be pushed harder, hyped louder, sensationalized as the greatest thing since sliced gingerbread. In fact, most things aren’t.
There's a reason so much business advice feels today as if it's a diet pill but for the world of work: people don't know what else to do, so they keep sprinting down the path of volume. They don't understand there's another way, a better way, that doesn't need more shouting.
They don't understand that when your ideas actually, deeply resonate, you can merely whisper.
The business world and most public voices within it would have you believe that this doesn't work, that the only way to stand out in a storm is to add more wind. Or pull a stunt. Or use a gimmick. It doesn't matter what you're saying or what you offer, as long as they pay attention. Sell them the sun when you're holding a flashlight. "Call to action" is to be taken literally. And loudly. No, not yet. Louder than that. Cmon, louder.
They'd have you create mediocrity at infinite scale, and look! Now we have actual software tools and services selling you that ability. This is a trap. This doesn't serve your business, nor your audience. It serves only the people selling you that solution.
What if you had to whisper?
What if what you said MATTERED enough to others that you didn't need to scream about it? What if you could walk around this digital world quietly, calmly, writing and speaking with greater impact?
Differentiation matters more than optimization.
Resonance matters more than reach.
Influence matters more than followers.
The amount of trust you've earned matters more than the size of the list you've built.
What if you had to whisper? Because what you know matters. But what you say and how you say it determines whether or not they care.
There's a certain quiet power in people who can tell great stories. They don't need to grab you by the shoulders and shake you and demand you pay attention. They reach out through the screen and tap you lightly on the heart. But that light tap makes the biggest impact of all.
The internet has gotten more pushy and more obnoxious. My man Briggs would like a word. Just a few. Delivered calmly. Or maybe no words, delivered with a few solemn notes on the piano and some light flicks of the wrist with a colored pencil or two.
In reaction to the onslaught of noise and sensationalism, I say, we speak softly and carry a big idea. We know how to turn ideas into meaning, not just information. THAT is the difference between people who create "content" and people who create connection. While everyone tries to compete on the volume of their marketing, WE can win on the impact of our ideas.
Develop a distinct premise.
Turn that into your IP.
Tell stronger stories pressed through that lens.
In doing so, you'll influence how others think, rather than waiting until the last minute to scream at others to buy.
This is a quiet way, but a viable way. Either way, it's a choice, and it's entirely yours to make in this one life you've got.
What if you had to whisper?
I know you want to serve others. I also know you want attention for your work. And I know, there's a part of you that doesn't want to believe it's possible to do anything but shout louder, push harder, and play into the very tactics you dislike. But there's another part that wants to pursue a better way. Let THAT part of you win all year long in 2025.
When you need to be louder, the option will still be there for you. But that moment can't be every moment. It shouldn't be. It should mostly feel like a tap on the chest and a gentle reminder of what really matters. Like a fluffy white snow falling towards an old stone wall. Like a couple of kids, scooting their little bums forward, mouths hanging open as piano notes whisk them away.
As you think about your next year, I'd ask you:
How would you show up if you weren't trying to fit a feed?
How would your work feel if you didn't need to shout?
Create the things that reach out with a gentle hand and tap you on the heart. The things you could whisper to others and leave a lasting impact even still. The things that amaze you and terrify you and move you, while you sit there in the quiet, as the light dances through the trees.
* * *
A special version of this with plenty of musical moments can be found on my podcast, How Stories Happen, as of December 30, 2024. Follow the show in your preferred player.