MadLibs and Merge Variables

4 Aug 2014

Creating Email and Mail Merge templates gives you the chance to standardise all your company communication and, if you’ve got an active imagination, let’s you relive some old childhood glory.

Do you remember MadLibs? Where your friend asks you for so many nouns, verbs, and adjectives and these get written down to create an (almost always) amusingly wacky story. My sister’s and mine always ended up with “lumpy” or “gross” simulacra of our friends and family involved in bizarre and “smelly” activities.

It occurred to me last week when I was working on a new Mail Merge document that using merge variables is, essentially, the exact opposite of MadLibs.

Instead of picking random words to make up nonsensical stories, our merge variables let you pick specific words, names, or other information from an individual Lead, Contact, Company, or other record to form a cohesive message. And when you find an unexpected word combination, instead of getting the giggles, you frantically try to figure out why you used the Billing City instead of Company Name.

The comparison between MadLibs and Mail Merge struck me as emblematic of so many opposites between childhood and adulthood. As another example, did six-year-old-you, like me, get up extra early on Saturday morning to watch cartoons? Does thirty-something-year-old-you, like me, now look forward to a long lie in on Saturday mornings?

…actually, saying that, I just cheekily Googled online MadLibs and spent a few minutes giggling over the idea of my “smelly” sister drinking “crab juice” from a “plant pot.” Maybe I haven’t really grown out of MadLibs…