🎶 What Cornish Sea Shanties Can Teach You About Marketing (Yes, Really)

🎶 Proof Cornwall knows how to tell a story — and sing it too. Marketing tip: if your content doesn’t make people stop, smile or hum along, it’s time to rethink it.

Let’s be honest, when you think of modern marketing advice, you probably don’t picture six bearded blokes hollering about rum, rope, and regrettable tattoos outside a weather-beaten pub in Falmouth.

And yet…

Those sea-shanty-singing, barrel-clutching legends knew more about getting a message out than half the businesses on Instagram today.

It’s time to take notes, me’ ansum.

🎶 1️. Repetition Works (Just Ask The Drunk Man at the Bar)

A good shanty was repeated until even the deaf bloke’s cat knew the chorus. The trick? Hammer the message home until it’s impossible to ignore.

Your business? Exactly the same. If you’re posting about your services once every leap year and wondering why no one buys from you, you may as well be whispering into a wheelie bin.

Say it. Say it again. And then say it louder. Again.

💡 When your messaging hits home, people remember it. Say it, say it well — and then say it again. That’s how you build a brand worth talking about.

🎶 2️. Find Your Crew (Or Be Stuck Drinking Alone)

A shanty’s no good if you’re the only one bellowing it. That’s not a performance — it’s a public nuisance.

Your business needs its own noisy, loyal chorus too. Tag your mates, shout out local legends, swap pasties for mentions, and make some digital racket.

If you’re not showing up for others, don’t be shocked when your posts vanish like a rogue wave in a mizzle.

🎶 3️. Tell a Blinding Story

Every shanty was basically a glorified gossip session set to music.
Lost at sea? Curse a storm. Drank too much and married a lighthouse keeper? That’s verse two.

Your business has stories too — and if you’re not telling them, you’re leaving money on the table.

From the chaos of your first order to the time you dropped your phone in a pasty (don’t pretend it’s not happened), people love a yarn.

📖 Stories sell. Whether it’s your nan’s pasty recipe or your business journey, if you can tell it well, people will buy into it. No sea shanty required.

🎶 4. Stop Being So Bleddy Polite

Sea shanties weren’t written by delicate Victorian poets sipping herbal tea. They were bold, cheeky, occasionally scandalous, and utterly unforgettable.

Your marketing should be the same.

Stop posting captions that sound like you’re applying for a National Trust membership. Be witty, be daft, be the post people send their mate at 11pm with a cry-laugh emoji.

🎶 5️. Use The Local, Sell The Global

Shanties were born in tiny coves and smoky taverns, yet somehow reached the other side of the world.

Your Cornish biz can do the same. Root your content in local love. Your favourite beach, your nan’s jam sponge, the way the seagulls eye your chips like feathered gangsters and watch it travel.

People don’t buy dull. They buy character. And Cornwall’s got that by the pasty load.

☀️ Looks like the Med, smells like chips. Cornwall proving once again you don’t need to go abroad for paradise — or for standout marketing ideas.

🎶So, What I’m Trying To Say...(Before the Rum Runs Out)

That those beardy old sea dogs had the right idea all along.
Be bold. Be memorable. Repeat yourself shamelessly. Build your crew. And tell stories so good, people forget you’re trying to sell them something.

Or, y’know… carry on quietly gathering dust online and wondering why nobody’s knocking.

Your call, me’ lover.

Fancy a modern-day marketing shanty for your business?

📣 Give me a shout at Tide & Ink — Cornwall’s honest (and loudest) content creator.