Tag Archives: Copywriting

My top ten ‘NO!’ words.

I was in a meeting yesterday discussing US English versus English English, when my client reported that a colleague of his found the words ‘powered-by’ too American for their UK market (not guilty).

Falling off the fence

I’ve written a couple of blogs for different organisations this month. They all had one thing in common;  they wanted to give their opinion on something relevant to their industry or area of expertise without offending or alienating customers and service users. Which isn’t that simple, because it’s very easy to offend when you critique. Not because you’re being aggressive, but because others may be defensive.

To really withdraw from this risk, you need to sit on the fence. In this position, you can balance the view from both fields. Which is fine when you want to produce bland copy that helps people explore both sides of a coin. But, when you’re looking for something attention-grabbing, sitting on the fence – as the saying goes – gives you splinters.  Personally, I don’t get on with opinion ‘from the fence’.  Not just because I don’t want to spend my evening removing splinters, but because I don’t trust it.

So, what do you do? You take a clear position. Here are the benefits:

How To Spell Spam.

An interesting piece popped up on Yahoo News last week; an account about a council tax scam where fraudsters contact you to say you’re due a financial reward as a thank you for paying your bill by direct debit.

Now I don’t know about you, but the concept of my local council financially rewarding me for paying tax would be enough to make me click  ‘SPAM’ faster than you can say ‘seriously unlikely state incentive’. However, clearly enough people were falling for this to warrant its broadcast, albeit hidden within the confused jumble that is Yahoo’s landing page. So I read the whole thing and there – towards the end – was a paragraph about spelling.

Copywriter not required

A rather heated debate today with design friends resulted in my conceding to the view that a copywriter isn’t always necessary. I should point out that I was outnumbered by five to one for the entire duration of the debate and we were only talking about magazine ads. However, I’ve been presented with some great proof which, despite the obvious career suicide, I’m happy to share.

The real McCoy

Quote of the day from the hugely talented Rich McCoy:

“I think the whole world needs copywriters. The more I work with them, the more important I think they are in the mix.”

Perfect.

Rich’s quote is an extract from a brief online exchange we had earlier today about Saatchi. Saatchi and his quite gob-smackingly incomprehensible British Art Now catalogue. I shan’t sully this post with the details. It really needs separate treatment. Which I’m going to give it in just a minute.  In the mean time, here’s that quote again:

“I think the whole world needs copywriters. The more I work with them, the more important I think they are in the mix.”

Did you get that?

Eye Drops Off Shelf – the wonder of headline writing

I spent part of yesterday advising on sales copy. My client felt their existing copy wasn’t punchy enough and was – in parts – ambiguous. We talked a bit about ambiguity and then got onto the inevitable conversation about ambiguity in newspaper headlines, like this: “Stolen Painting Found by Tree.” Clever tree. And these: “Miners Refuse to Work after Death” and “Police Found Safe Under Bed.” Lovely.

From ambiguous to apparent, it’s always possible to swing too far the other way. Two cherished but quite hopeless headlines from the States: “Official: Only Rain Will Cure Drought.” And this one from the Collinsville Herald-Journal in Illinois: “Economist Uses Theory to Explain Economy.” Great!

Finally, from apparent to accomplished, my all-time favourite headline from Private Eye – on the library strike in Essex: “Book Lack in Ongar.”

Talent.