Posts tagged “Effective Writing”
Whose New Year’s is it, anyway?
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Effective Writing, The writing life, Web writing on January 1, 2012 | 4 Comments
Our calendar is barely 430 years old.
Any marketing person with training and experience begins any assignment by looking at context and environment – perspective. I can’t help approaching New Year’s that way. While we may think our calendar is now 2,012 years old, it is in fact (as of this writing) only 429 years old, and was created not to mark the passing of 365 days of our revolution around the sun, but rather to know when to celebrate Easter.
As you likely know, the calendar we use is the Gregorian calendar, also called the Western or Christian calendar because it’s based on significant dates in the Christian bible. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII via a papal bull, a decree, signed on February 24, 1582, and took several centuries to be adopted throughout the western world. The motivation for the Gregorian reform was that the Roman Julian calendar placed the time between vernal equinoxes (a year) at 365.25 days, when in fact it is roughly 11 minutes shorter per year. (Pretty cool stuff for 1582, huh?)
That 11-minute error added up to about three days every four centuries, which resulted (back in Pope Gregory XIII’s day) in the equinox occurring on March 11, and moving earlier and earlier in the Julian calendar. You know what that meant, right? The date for celebrating Easter wasn’t reliable. And Easter is the single most important date for the Roman Catholic Church.
Easter, by the way, was calculated using the Hebrew calendar to accurately fix the date of “the last supper,” which was in fact a Passover meal that Jesus was attending with his disciples. Pope Gregory XIII wanted to be sure that Easter was being celebrated on the correct date, year in and year out, so the date of the last supper was the starting point for the development of his new calendar.
Today, of course, we think of the calendar as a business tool rather than a way to keep track of religious events. And commerce was the main reason the Gregorian calendar was slowly adopted over time through much of the world. But it’s worth remembering that its origins were entirely based on religious celebrations.
Think about this: anybody who uses a computer, anywhere in the world, inevitably is following the Gregorian calendar.
Is it New Year’s everywhere?
2012 may well be the year that globalization truly takes hold. We, in the U.S., have come to grips with the fact that we are no longer an island unto ourselves, dictating “what comes next.” Our clothing, computers and customer service (sadly) can come from anywhere in the world … and usually do. Our economy is clearly affected by global events and our export markets can be countries that not long ago did not even appear on our maps. Brazil has taken a monster lead on the global stage, moving ahead of Great Britain in 2011. So, too have Russia, India and China moved up. (Investors call them the BRIC nations and place “emerging markets” investments there.)
So, bearing that in mind, does January 1 have the same significance to all inhabitants of planet earth? How about to the Chinese or Indians? Or those who follow the Hebraic and Islamic calendars, which were both based on lunar rather than solar cycles? For the Chinese, 2011 was 4708 (or 4648 depending on their epoch starting point). For those following the Hebrew calendar, 2011 was 5771. And for those using the Islamic calendar, 2011 was 1433. India has as many calendars as it has religions, though in 1957 they settled on the Indian national calendar (Saka) to align themselves with the Gregorian calendar.
That diversity of global populations is one of the reasons that New Year’s celebrations have always struck me as a tad odd. First of all, Father Time is winning, whichever calendar you use. Every new year means that we’re all a year older. And the yearly cycle is hardly celebrated the same way by all people on earth. Perhaps some of the old Roman superstitions lurk in our Bacchanalian New Year’s celebrations. Perhaps we truly think that we and the world will be magically different when the ball drops and the calendar changes.
What do we measure when we measure time?
Clocks, watches, calendars … do they measure actual time, or the experience of the passage of time? It seems that we “mark time” rather than inhabit it. We tick off the time we’ve used, or lost. And we look forward to the next calendar event, such as a religious holiday or vacation, which will only arrive after we’ve marked off the appropriate amount of time.
But time, according to Albert Einstein, was an indication of our relationship to space and gravity – how fast and how far we were able to move through space. And, in a way, that’s what we measure when we say “day, week, month and year.” A day is the spinning of the earth on its axis (creating the illusion of sun up, sun down). A year is the time it takes for our earth to orbit the sun completely – an elliptical journey that takes us closer to and farther from the sun, creating our seasons. Days and years are actual markers of time/space travel, while other calendar-based measurements are an artificial construct that in fact measure simply the passage of time as it relates to us.
Einstein and Paul Langevin addressed that “relativity” with a theory of time that has come to be called the “twins paradox.” One twin leaves the earth traveling at the speed of light and returns; the other twin stays behind. For the traveling twin, only seven years have passed, so he has only aged by seven years, but for his brother back on earth several decades have passed and he is now elderly. How can this be? (For a practical demonstration, watch the Jodi Foster film “Contact,” from a story by Carl Sagan.)
It’s all relative.
My point? Time is not as fixed as we think it is, or as our Gregorian calendar would have us believe. In fact, time is entirely relative. So we do not measure time objectively, but rather subjectively, based on our experience of time on our planet and the calendar we’re using. We subjectively say, “one year has passed,” “our child is two years old,” “we have a doctor’s appointment next Monday.” All of these are important, yet create a slightly false or inaccurate sense of time, an imposed sense of time, one that doesn’t matter to or affect the movement of the planets around our star.
Think of it this way: if we were still using the Julian calendar, we’d experience time differently. The same goes if we were using lunar calendars. Which is why I just can’t help remembering that the actual calendar we use isn’t even 500 years old, and that it has a back-dated, subjective starting point.
In fact, the new year did not always begin on January 1 for everyone everywhere. It depended entirely on which calendar was being used. What we now call New Year’s day is a very recent innovation, and an entirely subjective event. New Year’s used to be celebrated on days such as the vernal or autumnal equinox – days when you can actually feel something new is coming.
New Year’s resolution? Nah, thanks anyway.
Occupy Madison Avenue?
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to, Social Media on December 1, 2011 | 2 Comments
The harm we do.
(As David Mamet repeats ad nauseum,) here’s the thing: advertising is the life-blood of free-market capitalism. It’s the critical building block of our competitive marketplace. Without advertising’s ability to create awareness of options, choices, innovations and benefits, none of the global, powerhouse brands would even exist. None. And the world would be a very different place.
If it weren’t for highly effective marketing, we’d likely have just one brand of automobile, or soap, or burger. We’d likely have just one place to buy clothing. Might as well be communists, right?
But that doesn’t mean that all we do in the name of competitive advantage is good and just. Much of what we’ve done is inexcusable. For one, our profession has permanently affected language in negative ways that may well never be changed back.
Just one example is “think different” (created by TBWA\Chiat\Day … not Apple.) That intentional aberration of adverb use (along with its gap-toothed cousin from AT&T, “rethink possible”) has wrongly taught at least one generation, and infuriated a good many of us.
Another highly annoying example is “lite,” the moronic bastardization of “light” that has become the norm for beer, music, “healthy menu options” – just one more aberration that confuses the hell out of school children. Does this stuff bother you the way it bothers me?
Granted, the English language is highly inconsistent. We say bite, but not nite (or lite … or nite-lite). Bear and tear serve multiple purposes. It takes practice and focus to keep it straight. Knowing and sticking to the rules is the only way to make certain things are as clear as possible.
Language defines us.
So, is it all right to be hip and cool at the expense of language? Be careful how you answer that. To many (me included), language is culture – the very thing that defines who we are.
English in the U.S. is already 400 years away from English in the U.K. We’re culturally distinct. (The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary have said that in less than 200 years’ time we’ll need translators.)
How powerful is language? Imagine that one morning every German suddenly could only speak Italian, and all Italians could only speak German. Would they still be Germans and Italians? If that morning had occurred in the 1930s, would there have even been a WWII?
You see where this is heading. Language doesn’t just inform us, it defines us; language conveys our level of consciousness; language is what distinguishes us from all other life forms. So how can ad agencies be so casual about its fundamental laws of use?
The before-our-time Madison Avenue slogan “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should” outraged grammarians and educated people everywhere back in the 50s. Yet it stuck. For 20 years. Such is the power of advertising. If you’ve seen it in print, it’s hard to argue against it.
“Winston tastes good as a cigarette should” hardly would have sounded as snappy in the brand-making, RJR cigarette-selling jingle of early television days.
“Think differently” would likely have not had as much of an impact as the entirely incorrect version that has come to define Apple.
But at what cost?
This is your brain on advertising.
The very language that we’re taught and depend on to communicate clearly and effectively is what suffers the consequences. At the very least, we’ll have more and more misguided “copywriters” bastardizing the English (or your choice) language.
What am I talking about? Take a look at these jaw-dropping, grammar-destroying automobile commercials:
Mercedes C-Class Coupe – More power. More style, More technology. Less doors. (Uggghhhh. I can hear the copywriter’s mind working … “People say ‘more or less,’ right? Not ‘more or fewer.’ So it must be ‘less.’ Besides, we don’t want to be less hip than Apple…”)
Honda Civic – To each their own. (Ouch. This noun subject and possessive pronoun disagreement may well have arisen from a desire to be ‘PC.’ … “You know, why ‘his,’ why does it have to be male-oriented all the time? What? Singular, plural? What are you talking about? Let’s just go with ‘their.’” “Yeah, dude, ‘their.’”)
[That's a whole other topic: if you don't use a cliché in its original form, it loses its power.]
This slope is very slippery.
See where this is going? See how things are snowballing? As more grammar-flaunting (grammar-ignorant?) “copywriters” decide that they, too can bend the rules, the ill-advised will be increasing the number of the ill-educated. And who’s at fault? Yep, ad agencies.
It must be a conscious decision to warp grammar in order to suit a marketing concept. There’s even a warping of a “rule” to justify it: The Pareto Principle – the 80/20 rule, which originally described how 20 percent of Italian landowners owned 80 percent of the land.
As applied in advertising, the Pareto principle has come to mean that 80 percent of sales come from 20 percent of a specific target audience. In the case of messing with language and grammar, the ad agency self-justification seems to be that 80 percent of people won’t care about bad (or non-existent) grammar … or even recognize it. (Shudder.)
Clearly, I’m one of the 20 percent. Are you? Wonder if we should occupy something …
Social media fatigue and really bad writing.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Differentiation, Effective marketing, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to, Social Media, Web copy, Web writing on November 1, 2011 | No Comments
The sheep in wolf’s clothing.
A great deal of social media is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. There’s absolutely nothing simpler than posting an opinion or an article to a blog, or a brief message on Twitter, etc. Does that mean everything we see and read is trustworthy, reliable … even true?
One of the biggest lies is about SEO. So many folks out there are still shouting that SEO is the end-all and be-all of marketing. But you know better. You’ve been frustrated by pointless search results that bring up mash-ups of rehashed articles that ultimately say nothing of interest or importance. That’s why Google has clamped down on SEO abusers.
And that’s one reason we’re all suffering Social Media Fatigue.
Here comes the research.
The Gartner Group’s December, 2010 and January, 2011 survey of 6000+ social networking users – among the first adopters of Social Media – showed that they’re experiencing fatigue and are visiting social networking sites such as Facebook less often. Gartner’s recommendation: “Advertising and marketing firms should re-think their stance as this survey might point to the beginning of boredom as a result of the ‘social media fatigue.’”
They said “people are bored,” but they didn’t say “why.” I can tell them. It’s not just about being overwhelmed by too many sites and options multiple times per day; it’s because of the truly dreadful writing you find on so many of the sites. If there actually was good content, would we be so bored? So fatigued?
Professional writers constantly see pleas for help writing “content.” That’s because so many businesses have launched Web sites and Web-based businesses without really thinking through content. So when we get there, we find little of value, and simply click away.
These dolts believe that all they need is “words” to hold people’s interest … any words. So they’re paying SEO and “content writers” to provide said words.
However, most of these so-called writers couldn’t create compelling match-book covers. Bad content is bad content. People will always click away.
Welcome to the Wild West.
The World Wide Web is the Wild West of today. Seemingly, anything goes. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and more and more software comes out every day that does most of it for you … except for creating compelling content.
Think of it this way: you’ve decided to launch a new magazine. It’s going to be a doozy. It will top all other magazines that have come before. So, how will you do that? Could you possibly, just maybe need some really good writing to fill those stellar pages? Are there that many great writers out there with articles at their fingertips to enthrall the throngs waiting for your whopper publication? Sadly, no. (You knew that, of course.)
Listen up people: no content, no audience.
Web sites that are like this fictional magazine are desperate for stuff to fill their pages. Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of truly bad writers offering wholly unoriginal, uninspiring content. Once again, we get there, take a quick look around … and click away.
That’s why contemporary marketing departments are stuck between a rock and a mouse click. They feel they have to have a “social media component.” But they’re never entirely sure it’s working. Maybe that’s because it’s not. If it was, you’d know. If we found something tremendously interesting, we’d spread the word in a nanosecond.
The wedding dress story.
Some years ago, a fellow who seemed in every way a down-home, even red-neck kind of guy put his ex-wife’s wedding dress up for sale on eBay. The writing was down-to-earth, straightforward and hilarious. For example he wrote, “I’ve been told that you have to have someone model clothing. Since I don’t have anyone to do that, I’m just putting on the dress myself.” Yes, he had photos of his burly self in a wedding dress. The reaction was likely the textbook definition of “going viral.” It had more hits in less time than anything ever before on eBay. He even got multiple marriage proposals. And the dress sold for a very high figure.
So “social media” can work, if the content is compelling, interesting or relevant. But that’s rare these days. Most of it isn’t any of those things. And that’s why we’re just plain bored with it.
You’re the client. You should get what you need.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in Advertising, Branding, Effective marketing, Marketing How-to on October 1, 2011 | No Comments
Notice that headline didn’t say “you should get what you want?” The difference is not as subtle as it may seem. If I give you what you want even when I know it’s not what you need, I’m simply laying down and letting you roll over me. That’s not helpful, and it’s not professional.
When it comes to marketing, the client is not always right. Sometimes the client needs significant guidance to avoid major marketing mis-steps. This topic is often discussed among professional marketers: do you give clients what they want, or what they need?
It’s your business. But it’s our job.
No one knows your business better than you do, certainly not us marketing folk. So you wouldn’t and shouldn’t accept it if we started telling you how to do what you do. You probably feel that way about nearly every other profession and professional – they know more about their business than others. Let them do their job.
So what happens to clients when they start spending marketing dollars? Why does it sometimes turn into “it’s my money, give me what I want”?
If you think people who fold and do your marketing exactly the way you want are treating you properly, you may be stepping into a trap. They’re not doing you any favors when they don’t stand up to you if your ideas are off the mark. You’d be far better off with designers, writers and agency folk who have the gumption to say, “we can try it your way, but we’d like to also show you how we’d rather do it, and here are the reasons why …”
To spend your marketing dollars wisely, you need wise marketers.
People who are experienced, knowledgeable and self-confident will tell clients when something they want is not a good idea from a positioning, identity or branding point of view. It’s important to listen to them. They know what so many clients don’t: you don’t create marketing for yourself. Whether you like something is hardly as beneficial as whether your target audience likes it.
Business is business. And that means it’s about profitability. Running an ad campaign or building a Web site that pleases you but does nothing for your target audience is not a good marketing approach. Marketing is both an art and a science, and its ultimate goal is to produce results. To do that, marketers slice and dice the target audience by asking tough questions: How does your product or offering solve a specific need for your target audience? How do your benefits and claims set you apart from the competition? Is your marketing message relevant to your audience’s concerns? What moves the needle for your target audience? How do you know when your marketing is working?
Sometimes the client is right.
I had a marketing professor who liked to say, “a good idea doesn’t care where it comes from.” He meant, get your ego out of the way and solve the challenge with whatever works. Sometimes clients do have good solutions for their marketing challenges. And a true professional will see that and acknowledge it. If your ideas are better than mine when it comes to your marketing, then it would be very wrong to ignore them just because they came from you. That’s tough for some people to do because they’re convinced that if all the ideas don’t come from them, they’re not “adding value.”
But there is no hard and fast rule that only the marketing folk you hire can come up with the best marketing ideas. If you have good ones, they should be used. So here’s where things get fuzzy. How do you know whether your idea is really a good one or whether your marketers are merely rolling over? That comes down to your relationship. If you know each other and trust each other, it’s not going to be a problem. I’ve often had clients improve on my ideas. And I’m happy when they do, because the end product is better for both us. It’s a better piece of marketing for them, and it’s a better sample for me.
Ultimately, we’re a team. We’re all trying to achieve a common goal. If your ideas are a mistake, it’s my duty to say so, and hopefully you’ll understand why. If your ideas are an improvement, then it’s my duty to use them … even if you are the client.
Is your marketing in the twilight zone?
Posted by L. C. Sterling in Advertising, Branding, Differentiation, Effective marketing, Marketing How-to, Social Media on September 1, 2011 | 4 Comments
Marketing is far more than merely making a statement. The “if you build it they will come” approach doesn’t work. Seriously. “Hey! We’re here! Come on in!” Seriously?
It takes real marketing to bring real attention to both your business and … your marketing. Because the first job of any marketing worth its salt is to call attention to itself. And hold onto it. The best way to do that is for your marketing to convey not just what you do but also how it benefits your specific target audience. If your Web site is merely an electronic business card, it will only be noticed if you push it into someone’s hands.
In today’s “online first” approach to marketing, many firms are shouting to be heard among billions of others shouting just as loudly. The question is: “how do you make your voice stand out?”
What is real marketing?
Ask that question and you’ve opened a real Pandora’s box – endless answers, opinions and variations will bubble up. Historically, the concept of offering to sell something to someone else was associated with carnival barkers and “snake-oil” salesmen. (Naturally, that kind of history makes us “professionals” want to avert our eyes.)
But marketing is much older than that. As old as rug merchants and camel traders in souks and bazaars – the pre-Christian era, and the kind of Oriental markets that lured Marco Polo. Those, um, business people pre-dated used-car salesmen by at least a few thousand years in hawking their goods as if they were the finest ever produced in their corner of the world.
The point is, marketing has undergone an evolution. It’s evolved from “making claims” to presenting “benefits.” Give people a compelling reason to listen to your pitch and you’re heading toward better marketing – real marketing.
In the 50s and 60s, gasoline companies were led by savvy marketers to talk about “the experience of the road” rather than about the components of their noxious product. That was something big. They were guided into talking about the benefits of using their fine petroleum distillates rather than the gasoline itself. (Eventually, though, they moved on to claim that their ingredients were tops, or clean your engine, or give you better mileage … you get the idea.)
How to get there.
Giving things new names doesn’t always make them better. So beware “branding” experts when entering marketing waters. Building a brand and an identity involves much more than merely a checklist of what current, self-styled “professionals” refer to as branding.
The basic rules of marketing will always apply: (a) define and refine your core message about your offering; (b) determine your true target audience; (c) determine what that audience needs or wants; (d) determine who else is doing what you do and what they say; (e) make sure you have at least one point of differentiation; (f) make sure your benefits are clear; (g) make sure your messaging “speaks” to your true target audience’s concerns, needs and desires.
What’s happened recently in marketing is a mass move to an online presence led by technologists, not marketers. Many of them claim to be marketing experts, and many of them cry “social media” much like that boy in the fable about the wolf. But they often know not what they say. Social media can never be more than one component of a complete marketing strategy. And it’s still in its infancy.
Remember The Great Oz behind the curtain pulling levers and cords, saying “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain“? That’s a good metaphor for social media as marketing.
Remember who you’re talking to.
We don’t produce marketing for ourselves – we do it for our specific and distinct target audience. So it’s not about what you or I like. It’s about what “they” like. Too often, clients think their tastes should dictate the messaging. But what if your tastes are nothing like your audience’s? Will you lose your audience – and sales – by sticking to off-base messaging?
And if you’ve already dipped your toes into the social-media-as-marketing waters, you’ve already learned that “followers” seldom equal “customers.” You have to do a lot more work to get that pay-off.
Social media may have altered the landscape, but it hasn’t changed the basic rules of marketing. Client, know thy audience.
The Amazon.com model may be entirely Web-based, but is everything? Is your business? Not if you’re in a service business, a retail business or in business-to-business. For those, the classic marketing rules apply. And assuming a Web site and a social media agenda is the be-all and end-all of marketing will land you in the twilight zone of one-dimensional marketing.
Communication: Practical Magic
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Effective marketing, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to, Public Relations, The writing life, Web copy, Web writing on August 1, 2011 | 2 Comments
The title of this article is from Abe WalkingBear Sanchez, who posted this on LinkedIn: “Words are magic. The very idea that by making sounds we can paint pictures in the minds of others, is magic. We choose whether we practice white or black magic.” – Jack Brightnose, Cree Medicineman.
That post really made me sit up and take notice. A writer’s life is all about communication, yet how often is it about the magic? WalkingBear’s teacher knew a great deal more about what was to become my life’s occupation than I did. I’m sure I had some teachers along the way who understood what Jack Brightnose taught. But what I remember most was their individual preferences for certain authors and certain kinds of phrasing. Not the reverence for the pure power of words shown by Jack Brightnose.
The dark side is always there.
Everything we do in marketing is about communication. But everything we do often becomes so habitual that we forget about the magic of words. In the world of marketing, the ultimate objective of communication is to influence, and perhaps sell something. In many cases, such as tobacco, liquor, fashion and pharmaceuticals, that’s leaning toward black magic – designed for profit, not for the good of the public. And I’m not making judgments about tobacco, liquor, fashion and pharmaceuticals – I’m talking about how they’re sold, how the words and images are used.
This is the dark side – the black magic – from which we professionals avert our eyes when asked to write copy for things that we might never ourselves purchase, or allow anyone in our family to use. It’s always there, in the background. And it’s hard to avoid when you enter the world of business. After all, that’s why agencies are hired, to help sell stuff. And as soon as anyone is trying to sell us something, motives become questionable.
Clearly free will was taught by Native Americans. Our choices define us. If we choose to profit by using words to convince people to buy our stuff, stuff we know can harm people, we have chosen black magic. But somehow that has been completely forgotten. The idea of profit as justification has wedged itself between white and black magic like some form of religious indulgence. In modern society, the profit motive excuses the intentional use of black magic.
Communication makes us human… sometimes.
What struck me when I read what Jack Brightnose had taught WalkingBear was how little respect is left for the magic that is communication. It’s virtually the only thing that sets us apart from the world of beasts. Sure, we have clothing and automobiles and iWhatevers, but would we have any of those things without the ability to form and understand words? Clearly not. We’d still be among the beasts, with bodies covered in hair, as we foraged and hunted for food and shelter.
Words lifted us out of that prehistoric life. Words gave us the lives we have today. It’s a little disheartening, though, to think that in only a few thousand years we went from “In the beginning was the word …” to sitcoms. No doubt that particular road to hell was paved with a loss of respect for the magical power of words. Instead, the shine of silver and gold became the lure, and the use of words to get the booty became the meaning of the words, not the magic inherent in communication.
So choices had to be made and we made them. Landing and keeping jobs became the new hunting and gathering. And we’re often asked to make tough choices as a result. The words used to force us into those choices are definitely not white magic. If only it were easier simply to walk away.
Can’t forget why we communicate.
Am I undergoing some sort of religious awakening? Nah. I’ve simply been reawakened to why I first fell in love with words when I was a boy. WalkingBear’s post reminded me of that. I’m sure the magic was what attracted anyone who chose to live as a writer. But being reminded that there’s always a choice between white and black magic is the real awakening.
In an almost indefinable way, I think that Jon Stewart’s Daily Show gets its mojo from calling people on their misuse of communication. He calls out liars and connivers and deceivers. He pulls back the curtain to reveal that The Great Oz is in fact a fake. And we all instantly recognize the truth of the revelations. We laugh, but recognize that what we laugh at is tragic. His show reminds us that we’ve learned to ignore the deceptions, because they’ve become standard operating procedure. We don’t pay attention, until our attention is drawn to the deceptions.
The Internet has both exponentially increased communication and brought it down in ways we could never have imagined. Not long after the explosion of the Web onto our psyches, it became obvious that sites (early on given the ludicrous euphemism “portals”) were only of value if they provided relevant information. Content (could there be a more demeaning term for writing and communication?) became critical. Site owners became desperate. So “content writers” were born, largely manipulators of existing content into mash-ups. Most of them are rank amateurs, often linguistically challenged, who are apparently happy to make a few dollars per day.
Here’s another fascinating quote that goes beyond marketing: “All poetry begins as self-expression. But if I only write for myself, who’s going to want to read what I’ve written except me? I tell my students that, at some point, writing stops being self-expression and starts being communication, or it fails. Whether you read me or not, I’m writing for you.” – David Kirby [Kirby’s “Thirteen Things I Hate About Poetry,” in Lit from Within: Contemporary Masters on the Art & Craft of Writing].
That was from a post by Erika Dreifus who has a blog and newsletter titled “Practicing Writing.” And it’s about the other side of what Jack Brightnose taught: in order for words to be magical, we have to remember that we’re not using them for ourselves alone – we’re using them to communicate, to paint pictures in the minds of others.
What does it take to be a copywriter?
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to, The writing life on July 2, 2011 | 5 Comments
Can the answer be in a book?
There was a rather interesting question posed on a LinkedIn group: ”What ‘must-have’ copywriting book do you recommend?”
That seemed to imply that reading a book on copywriting could allow anyone so inclined to become one. Nothing could be more misleading. Of course, if the question was meant to learn how to become a better copywriter, then it’s slightly more possible. But it’s still the same answer: copywriting is a craft, like any other, which will only improve with continual, ceaseless practice and experience.
You really have to want it.
I’ve never known anyone who woke up one day and decided they had to be a copywriter. To want that, you’d have to desperately want to earn your living crafting finite messages in an enormously competitive field. You’d have to want to perfect the use of language, metaphor, euphemism, vernacular – all of it – so that what you write might not only stop readers, viewers, listeners and visitors, but might also convince them to focus on your message. You’d also simultaneously have to be far subtler than the morning news.
Screaming headlines do not make any of us more interested in marketing messages. To be universally appealing, copy must be clever, enticing and compelling. And if you’re targeting a very specific audience, you also have to be unerringly relevant.
So before you count on a book to guide you into this parallel universe to diamond cutting, you damn well better have some relevant life experience – as a reader and writer – before jumping into these shark-infested waters.
Further, no book on “copywriting” will get you a job. Only your samples will. And you’ve got to have the chops to get there.
Catch 22, again.
With a nod to Joseph Heller, copywriting is one of those professions in which you can’t get a job until you’ve had one. No, that wasn’t a typo. You have to have extraordinarily impressive samples of the craft to even be considered for a job. The wormhole we’ve all found is to create a portfolio of spec samples until we have actual, produced ads to show.
To pass on the very sage advice I was given when I was starting out: “only do samples of things you really love so that that will come through in the writing, and get a young art director to help you so that you both have samples to show.”
I took that advice to heart and created a pre-job campaign for my favorite Indian restaurant. If they ever did much advertising, they certainly would never have done the full-page, four-color ads I created for them. But they were great ads, in all humility, because they were fun. The first headline in the campaign was “There’s no such thing as curry powder in India.” Which is true, and educational. I had fun doing the sample ads, and people had fun reading them.
It took several months of working on my spec book along with willing art directors to get to the point when I actually landed my first ad agency job, on “Madison Ave.” In advertising, you’re only as good as your last campaign. That’s why everyone’s portfolio is worth its weight in Au (http://bit.ly/lM7nWn). So like many others I knew, I had duplicate portfolios in case one was lost. Why would a portfolio be lost? Because advertising headhunters were forever shuttling them around to various agencies looking for copywriters and art directors.
And that’s another fact of life about advertising: to grow your portfolio, you often have to keep changing jobs. (My first assignments were on Seagram’s 7-Crown and Crown Royal, and Schaefer beer. All booze, all the time. I needed a change after a year of that.)
The book I recommended.
So was there a single book that everyone agreed on? Ha. Every single answer was different. And each showed the author’s background, preferences and proclivities. Nearly all advertising books are either memoirs, which don’t help neophytes get past square one, or self-advertisements, which are equally unhelpful.
That’s why my recommendation was: “Get yourself a copy of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style.”
No book can ever guide one into how to write – the most any book can do is describe what it”s like to write. You really have to work and work and work. You have to find your voice, play with tone and style, and ultimately just keep doing it. Inevitably, as you do, questions of grammar and style will come up. The NY Times Manual of Style and Usage is great, along with the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook. But for something small, handy and wholly reliable, I most often turn to the The Elements of Style.
Has social media fatigue set in?
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Branding, Differentiation, Effective marketing, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to, Social Media, Web writing on June 5, 2011 | 6 Comments
My problems with social media.
Quite recently, Google began severely limiting how several of the largest placers of SEO (search engine optimization) can do business. Why? They finally had to admit that the quality of online searches had been significantly degraded by “SEO tricks” that always placed certain companies (e.g., JC Penney) at the top. People were starting to lose interest in even searching on Google. And, worse, Google was losing credibility.
That’s one problem. The other problem is the very anti-climactic explosion of so-called “social media marketing.” Is it really marketing if it’s social media? Seriously.
Jaron Lanier, one of the original Internet gurus, has himself said that much is wanting in terms of what happens when we view “search results.” His warning is that the methods of aggregating data now leave out the human element. In other words, searches will bring up results, but they may be futile, and worse, frustrating. Why? Because SEO can be rigged, like bad slot machines. What Lanier says is that SEO is ultimately marketing to machines, not people. It’s based on bringing about certain results between computers, not humans.
Sadly, social media marketing can indeed force us to momentarily look at results and ads that are wholly irrelevant, but if a certain percentage of naïve folks click on those links, the SEO “gurus” rate that as a success. It ain’t necessarily so. It’s a numbers game, not a targeted marketing campaign.
The next big thing isn’t really that big.
Very few of the very young proponents of social media know much about advertising. Most of them are technologists, not conceptual creative people. They also know little about recent advertising history. For example, how everything about advertising changed in the 1980s when the Saatchi brothers and then the WPP Group (led by Martin Sorrell, the disgruntled former employee of Saatchi & Saatchi) ran amok with mega-mergers.
The tone, quality, look and feel of American advertising was never the same again once so many professionals ended up on the streets as a result of what the British call “redundancy.” (A very appropriate term since both the Saatchis and Sorrell are British, and are now either Lords or Sirs … follow the money.)
Part of the outcome of all the ugly mergers was the burgeoning of smaller shops, most in places other than New York, Chicago or L.A. Boutiques became more common, and creativity got a second chance at life.
Then, over the past decade, social media started to poke its head out of the horizon. To those of us who came of out Madison Ave. agencies, trained in surgical marketing techniques, we instantly saw social media for what it was: a shotgun approach to marketing or branding. The social media approach is diametrically opposed to the targeted marketing approach.
I know of lots of folks who will claim that you can slice and dice Facebook, Twitter, etc. like other media, but I frankly believe they know not what they talk about. You can also see numbers on how many people drive down a certain highway. That doesn’t mean they’re all heading to your business.
Where’s the science? Where’s the methodology?
My experience has shown that you can’t truly target a specific audience through social media. You can “assume” you have, and you can also “hope” that you’ve attracted the right “followers” for the right reasons. Saying, “dear client you have 5,000 fans on your Facebook page” is ultimately a far cry from buying lists for specific zip codes or doing magazine buys like “Vogue” or “Car & Driver,” or buying TV spots during the Super Bowl.
Just because someone “likes” your company on Facebook doesn’t mean they actually “like” your offering. That’s a whole other kettle of fish. And even if you have 30,000 “followers” on Twitter, what does that actually translate to in sales? (I’m waiting …)
The biggest advances in advertising (e.g. Doyle Dane Bernbach) were symbiotic with the growth and sophistication of research and media departments. Social media is an entirely different ball game, and has very little to do with what was achieved in the best years of Madison Ave. when advertising became both a science and a methodology. The creative was always the wild card, but it could always be measured against a very well-defined strategy to make certain it was at least on target. (Remember creative briefs?)
With social media, you’re ultimately saying the same thing to everyone at the same time. Google Adwords, for example, are very similar to billboards on highways. They have milliseconds to get their message across. And there’s no way of knowing that the exact right people are on that very highway on the very same days when the billboard is up. While clicks are an indication of something, they’re not at all the same as telling us know how long people actually stay on a page, or what they do as a result of “visiting.”
You’re on social media right now, right?
Am I suggesting we ignore social media? Of course not. (I’m doing this blog, aren’t I?) I’m saying that marketing is evolving, and that social media is still figuring itself out. We don’t entirely know where things are headed. What we do know is that we all zap TV commercials now, we listen to anything but radio in the car, and print media is struggling to stay alive. Things on the social media landscape are nothing like the creative for which some of us won One Show, Clio or Andy awards.
We can (and must) create “spiders” with online media, but are their results anywhere as precise as knowing who reads “Nature” or “Sports Illustrated” or ” Better Homes and Gardens?” Clearly not. Yes, social media results can kinda, sorta tell you who’s searching on “dry skin issues” (although blocking “cookies” defeats that). But it doesn’t help you much beyond seeing numbers for the search. You may know that some folks drilled all the way down to a $2.00 coupon for some dry skin treatment. But then what do you really know? Was there actually a sale, or was there merely someone intent enough to actually drill all the way down?
There are only two ways I can get information about who’s visiting this site: Google Analytics (anonymous) and comments. The lack of precision is my bugaboo. Along with the fact that social media is largely dependent on numerical averaging vs. real “reader/viewer/listener/visitor” stats about “real humans.” (Back to Jaron Lanier). Alas, what we get more than anything with social media is spam. Put yourself “out there” and the “there” bites back. (I delete around 10 per day.)
The Internet has changed the world. Literally. And social media is one of the outcomes. It’s certainly here to stay. But it’s also certainly far from fully formed. (Infancy would not be a stretch.) When a client asks for links to FB, Twitter, blogs, etc. on their new Web site, I always ask, “Who’s going to maintain them?” “Who’s going to keep the content fresh?” “Who’s going to make sure your spiders are up to date?” Hardly anyone ever knows the answers to those questions.
The (critical) role of storytelling in marketing.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Branding, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on May 1, 2011 | 2 Comments
One of my jobs is teaching effective story-telling to businesses.
Stand in my shoes for a few minutes and here’s what you’d see when a copywriter meets with new clients for the first time. We’re warmly greeted, offered coffee or water, then told in great detail about the product or service this new client wants to market. They’re truly excited about their offering and believe all we have to do is tell the world it exists and sales will tumble like the falls at Niagara.
But frequently they’ve missed a critical step: placing themselves in the minds of their target audience.
The effective use of narrative means, most of all, knowing (a) who your audience is and (b) knowing what they want to hear. This is a tough hurdle for many clients. This is the moment when they’re faced with a hard fact: we are not running ads for them. In fact, anyone who does an ad strictly based on pleasing the client is wasting the client’s money. (Dear Client, you run ads for your target audience, not for yourself.)
For example, a headline that pleases your client may bore the pants off your true target audience. Just because they think ‘thermal wrapping cloth’ is better than a moon landing doesn’t mean the people who actually need it will be as excited by it. You have to find out why it will interest them.
So here’s where the science and methodology of copywriting comes in. You have to understand both who will be most interested in what you’re writing about, and why. You have to become familiar with the specific marketplace and understand what the competition is saying and selling. You have to do a lot of homework before you even start writing.
If you are selling a product or service that’s custom-made for college-educated women between the ages of 24 and 54, you have to know what they read, what they watch, what they listen to, and – most of all – what matters to them. By understanding the kinds of books, magazines, newspapers and broadcast media they care about, you can target both your media buys and your messaging to grab their attention. And that is ultimately the objective of all marketing.
Think about it this way: you know you won’t get the same audiences reading Car & Driver and Vogue. Use the right medium to reach the right audience with the right story.
Crafting the story: the real work in writing.
Many professional copywriters have had the experience of telling someone what we do only to have that person say, “oh, you write jingles?”
No, we don’t write jingles. (The days of jingles are long gone.) We craft stories. We make new cars sound impossibly enticing. We help you believe that new watch is something you can’t live without. We convince you that this new beverage will change your life. Etc. Are we lying? No, we’re doing our jobs through the effective use of narrative to promote products and services for our clients to the most appropriate target audience.
For narrative in marketing to be truly effective, it can seldom be just about the product or service. It must also be about a very specific target audience. E.g., if we happen to be writing about a high-end Mercedes-Benz, we have to understand the mindset of the people who could afford one and might want one. We have to know something of what their lives are like. And we have to do the very same thing for everything we write about. We have to understand the specific demographic for each specific product or service.
Take high-tech. The typical audience for high-tech products, such as computer networks and data centers, are people who are highly knowledgeable about their industry and profession. So you aren’t going to win points writing for them as if you’re describing a vacation in the Bahamas. Telling them their life will be “a walk on the beach” with this super-duper new wireless router will sound, to them, like someone’s trying to sell them the Brooklyn bridge.
Believability is key to effective narrative. And to be believable, you have to be knowledgeable about both your product and its true target audience. In the case of the high-tech example, the story you tell has to sound like a day in the life of an IT manager, or CTO. And that’s never a walk on the beach.
Everything is part of the narrative.
Every part of every marketing effort – down to the way ads, marketing materials and Web sites are designed – should be there to support the narrative. And a key part of that narrative should be a call to action. It can be a soft sell or a hard sell, but it ought to be included as part of the story.
I’ve had the unfortunate experience of being paired with designers who thought that how something looks is far more important than the lowly message. Fortunately, I’ve also had the experience of working with true professionals who understand that everything we do is about communication. We’re telling a story in words and pictures.
A key aspect of any design is where your eye is led. Really good designers understand that. They know that when you open a magazine to your client’s ad your eye should be led through it to the ultimate objective, whether that’s branding or a bold call to action. And when you open your client’s Web site it should be easy to follow how its constructed and how to get where you most want to get within that site.
When the opposite is true, when an ad or Web page is a jumbled mess of graphics that simply confuse the eye, the narrative falls apart. There is no story when there’s merely confusion. Lots of “off the shelf” Web sites create an impression of cohesiveness, but that will quickly dissipate if you’re left scratching your head, wondering, “what exactly are they trying to say here?”
The narrative must grab a viewer or visitor, it must pull you through, and it must leave you with a better understanding of the product or service as a result. That’s the job of story-telling in marketing. Now that you know, you’ll start to see when it works … and when it doesn’t. And you, too, will know the importance of story-telling in marketing.
The digital effect: losing our written history.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Effective Writing, The writing life on March 1, 2011 | 2 Comments
The digital age has changed everything.
If you read the biography of John Adams by David McCullough, you know that that wonderful book was based entirely on letters from the lifetime of one of our country’s most important founders. Think about this: if John Adams were living today, how much of his correspondence would survive?
Being part of the digital age means that we are required to do more than merely write – we must know how our particular computer works. That knowledge is now part and parcel to knowing how to use that digital tool to write. We don’t sit down to draft a letter; we create a “doc,” assign a sub-folder, give it a title, and then we save the doc and fiddle with it multiple times before actually using it.
When we e-mail, do we know if our messages are saved? I certainly don’t save every single e-mail I receive. Why? I’m thinking about my computer’s e-mail program more than the messages. I’m thinking that it’s overwhelming to see 4,000+ messages in my in-box. So, every few months, starting from the bottom, I highlight and delete. And that would seem to be common practice for pretty much everyone.
Imagine what that means for our written history.
While a digitized data world means that now we can store an entire basement’s worth of files on a tiny hard drive, managing that trove has proven overwhelming. And it’s become a problem for corporations of every size since data retention is now a legal requirement for many business and government sectors.
Our society is now our data.
The modern world could not function without information. We cultivate and harvest information the way our agrarian ancestors worked the land. We no longer work directly to produce what sustains us – instead we produce goods and services that are proffered and supported with communication, from marketing to manuals.
We also no longer identify ourselves, when challenged, as the son or daughter, brother or sister, niece or nephew of so-and-so, but instead must produce documentation that defines and validates us.
This information is also not limited to the kind referred to as “data.” While data is a product of the “Information Age,” the kind of information that forms the core of our society is significantly more far-reaching. Birth certificates, school records, social security statistics, building plans, mortgages, aircraft records and nuclear facility specifications make up the kind of information that’s vital to our continuity. It just happens to be a fact that much of it is now digitized.
Too often, the importance of this information isn’t recognized until it’s urgently needed. Personal lawsuits, corporate litigation and disasters can impact the need for information that was once considered not worth saving. And not being able to access this much-needed information can change the course of lives.
Old, paper-based filing systems had the advantage of transparent logic. Ever try to find a doc on someone else’s computer system? I have and it can prove an impossible task.
The way we save data keeps changing.
Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, stated that digital technology would be virtually re-invented every two years. (Specifically, he was talking about the number of transistors in a CPU doubling every two years.) That statement became “Moore’s law,” which defined how rapidly our data management systems would change. Today, that time period can be as short as six months.
In the face of such continual technological change, it’s not surprising that we’re all faced with increasingly rapid computer obsolescence. And every time we replace a computer or data device, we may be losing more of our written history.
The author of a New York Times article titled The Virtual Attic describes some of the changes through the years that have meant replacing the computers on which work was done and writing was saved. The first computer I bought (an IBM PC) had two 5 1/4″ floppy drives and no hard drive. (It also had a “green” screen – no color, no graphics, just green, glowing text – and cost $3400.) Do you remember loading programs that meant swapping out a dozen or more of those floppies?
I was living in a Manhattan co-op apartment when I’d bought that computer and when I put the apartment on the market Joyce Carol Oates and her husband, Raymond Smith, came to look at it. But they were far more intrigued by the monster computer on my desk. “Doesn’t it give you migraines?” Smith asked. They were both writers who had not yet begun working with computers, and I found myself spending more time describing what that was like than the renovations of the West 67th Street one-bedroom.
What will be left of your story?
Eventually I migrated what I felt needed saving onto the “newer” 3 1/2″ floppies, then onto CDs, and now anything that seemed important over the years has been backed-up onto hard drives. But what was lost? What was left behind? While I may have been using computers since the mid-to-late 1980s to write, I certainly don’t have any of the e-mails from that far back. Do you?
What will people know of us when we’re gone and all that’s left is a hard drive or e-mails account that’s very likely password-protected? Will people scour our e-mail to see what kinds of thoughts we put down to good friends and life partners as David McCullough did with letters for his book on Adams? Will our personal history evaporate when our computers are donated or recycled?
I find it fascinating and mind-boggling that the letters of people who wrote with quill dip pens may ultimately be more durable than anything from this digital age.
(This just in: a. Google apologizes for Gmail bug that shook 150,000 users; b. NY Times – The Digital Pileup (or … “we’re saving too much”)
Content Mills: Bad for Writers … Bad for Clients.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to, Web copy, Web writing on February 2, 2011 | 8 Comments
Is content still king?
Ever since the earliest days of the Internet, there has been one great need above all other needs: content.
Without good, relevant content, there’s no value to a web site or portal. Ignoring this truism, some enterprising sorts decided that aggregating and automating content would be a good business idea. Is it? Forbes doesn’t think so: Congratulations Demand Media. You’re still pretty dumb
There are so many things wrong with content mills that one could go on forever. One of the worst things is how inane the content turns out. Why? The mills want generic articles that can be blasted into almost any venue as soon as one enters search terms. The result is stuff nobody really wants to read.
An equally bad thing is their pay scales. Demand Media pays an average of $15 for 500-1,000 word articles. Think about that for a moment. The lowest rates paid to writers for articles are in the range of 50 cents per word (where it has been for about a century). For a 1,000-word article, that’s $500 … a long way from $15.
The better markets pay $1-2 per word. So you can see where things are headed if the content mills have their way. You can also see why the typical content mill writer would want to grind out content rather than craft their copy. If you’re only making pennies, why kill yourself?
What does this mean for clients? Content mills are training clients to expect to pay far less than typical. But clients don’t really want lesser quality, do they? Trouble is, you can’t have it both ways.
Here’s an independent writer’s take on it: Demand Studios’ IPO reveals more reasons writers should be wary
Seasoned pros won’t touch the content mills.
Since 1988, I’ve largely earned my living as an independent advertising and marketing writer. The contemporary combination of globalization, the Internet and a flattened economy has created a plethora of content mills/farms that pay writers far less than minimum wage.
Demand Media is only one of many content mills. Examiner.com is even worse, recruiting “writers” (non-vetted, non-edited) and then making them work to publicize their offerings (and annoy everyone) because they pay by the click vs. by the word or article.
These mills are paying writers pennies on the dollar, if that much. It’s a brilliant business plan that depends entirely on the submissiveness and low self-esteem of writers.
Let me say that again: it’s a brilliant business plan that depends entirely on the submissiveness and low self-esteem of writers. And it cuts writers out of the markets they’ve been writing for long before the mills showed up.
Wake up, writers.
Writers need to wake up and realize some things about the critical need for their particular skill. Industry cannot grow without communication. Business cannot grow without communication. Capitalism cannot function without communication. Ultimately, communication (via marketing, advertising and p.r.) drives capitalism. How can there be competition without communication that makes the target audience aware of choices?
So, can we really afford to have communication dumbed down any further than it already is? The word on “the street” is that Google has become weary (and wary) of the mills that use “optimization” tools to place their articles at the top of search results.
Clients should be just as wary. Do you really want “mash-ups” rather than original, professionally written, carefully crafted articles? I didn’t think so. Think carefully about SEO before you jump on that bandwagon. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the gurus of SEO said that it has turned into “content written for machines rather than for people.” If you want people to respond to your calls to action, you need to write for people, not for search results.
The mills promote a culture of minimal thinking, minimal work and total plagiarizing. They virtually force their minions to work as quickly as possible in order to get out as many articles as possible so that they might actually survive. The concept of quality isn’t even part of the mix. Who needs it?
Remember:
No writer, no newspaper.
No writer, no magazine.
No writer, no web content.
No writer, no owner’s manual.
No writer, no package copy.
No writer, no cereal box copy.
No writer, no program guides.
No writer, no museum guides.
No writer, no dictionary.
No writer, no ad copy.
No writer, no radio copy.
No writer, no catalog copy.
No writer, no business.
No writer, no sales.
No writer, no company.
No writer, no book.
No writer, no poetry.
No writer, no songs.
No writer, no laws.
No writer, no play.
No writer, no movie script.
No writer, no TV script.
(You get the idea …)
Writers: the engines that drive growth.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Branding, Effective Writing on January 1, 2011 | 2 Comments
The message matters most.
Can we exist without communication? I think not. Can we prosper without communication? I’m sure not. Who produces the communications that help us prosper? You guessed it, writers.
No matter what the product or service, no matter where in the world, in order for commerce to take place, there must be communication. Communication is the keystone of commerce. From the days of merchants rolling carts through villages, shouting their wares, to the half-time commercials during Super Bowl games, communication is key to making the sale.
Everyone knows that. No one gives it a second thought. But where would companies be without written communication? Where would the global economy be without written communication?
Our entire economy – indeed the economy of the majority of the world – is based upon competition. The message is frequently “why our product is better,” “how our product improves things,” “why you’ll be happier with our product.”
On this first morning of this new year, I sing the praises of the creators of the messages that make the world go ’round.
The writers craft the message.
Could Coke be Coke without the commercials and ads that proclaim its unique benefits? Could Mac be the rising star in the computing world without the commercials and ads that inform us why we should choose their offering over a PC?
Would we even be seeing and hearing those commercials and ads without TV, radio and print media? And would we even have those forms of “information and entertainment” without the writers who create the content?
When the Web was born, its progenitors announced, “content is king.” And you know who creates content …
You could justifiably ask, is there too much of everything these days … too many messages, too many puerile shows, too much competition for our eyes and ears? Yes, indeed, but again I say that thanks to writers we have the choice of what to watch, what to listen to … and what to buy. Communication informs us of our choices.
We vote with our choices, and in doing so we guide what the future brings us. If there are way too many ‘reality TV’ shows, it’s our own fault. We’ve chosen to watch them and reward their advertisers. What we have in the way of choices reflects the choices that have already been made.
It all starts with communication.
I worked on the introduction of the Sony Mavica – one of the very first commercially available digital cameras. It cost between $5,000 and $10,000, and when I asked my Sony clients, “who will be the target audience for this amazing device,” they answered, “probably just the national news media.” They had no idea what they’d helped spawn. Digital photography had been introduced to the masses. Sony also brought about digital music, as well as CDs as a medium, and look where that’s gone.
Sony knew, as every major manufacturer knows, that inventing something – however spectacular – is hardly enough. You have to get the word out. And who does that? Yep, the writers. We ask the key questions and put down the key answers so that the most appropriate target audience will get the most relevant message.
Marketing is about communication, not sales.
Sales comes after the message. First you have to inform, then you can seek the sale. But forget the sale if the message isn’t clear and compelling. That’s what we do. We’re the writers. We craft the message, and we do our damnedest to make it clear and compelling. We form the communication. We get the word out.
Without writers, companies wouldn’t be known, their products wouldn’t be known and their futures would be uncertain. The better the writer, the better the result.
It all starts with the message, the communication. Everything follows from there. Everything. And that, folks, is what it means to be a marketing writer.
November 22, 2010
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Effective Writing on November 22, 2010 | No Comments
I was in my first year of junior high when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated on this date in 1963. It was a consciousness-raising event that may have set me on the course to being a writer.
I was in the English classroom of the toughest, scariest teacher I’ve ever had, Mr. Doucette (a French irony), when he answered the phone that never rang. It was on the wall by the door of every classroom for emergencies. With all of us watching him intently, he seemed to shrivel a bit, said “oh my god,” and then only grunted answers toward the wall he was now facing. When he hung up the phone, he turned toward us, but avoided looking at us. We knew he was extremely upset; it was rare for Mr. Doucette to be at a loss for words. In a much quieter voice than he’d ever used, he finally said, “there’s going to be an announcement over the P.A. system from the principal. It will be fairly upsetting. I want you all to try to stay calm. After the announcement, you will be sent home to be with your families.”
The principal gave us the bad news in the briefest possible way. Several girls screamed. Some started crying. Most of us boys were more silent than we’d ever been. This made no sense. This was America. Things like this did not happen here.
As it turned out, since both my parents worked, I was home alone, watching the black & white TV picture and listening to Walter Cronkite who choked back tears as he told us that JFK was dead. Whatever mattered in my world suddenly became far less important. The first president of whom I’d had any awareness was gone. Suddenly and shockingly.
The need to make sense of things is one of the key reasons writers become writers. It’s the reason I became a writer. What we learn in marketing is that people’s emotions frequently play a bigger role in decision-making than facts. That’s why what we write is the exact opposite of scientific treatises. We are seeking to connect with the emotions that lead people to want something, to become curious about something, to feel the need to know more about something.
What I have wanted badly, since 1963, is to know who killed JFK. A NY Times piece that came out today, written by Jackie Kennedy’s Secret Service guardian (Clint Hill), raised all the questions all over again. Mr. Hill wrote that he heard the first shot and saw the president grab his neck. He was immediately so intent on running toward the president’s car that he didn’t hear the second shot, and then he “was just feet away when I heard and felt the effects of a third shot.” A lone gunman? I don’t think so. All three shots hit the president. And that supposed one gunman killed two days later by a terminally ill mob hitman shortly after being arrested? No, Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, if he acted at all in the murder of JFK.
This has been the most burning question throughout my lifetime, with little hope of knowing the answer since the facts of the case supposedly must remain sealed until 50 years after the last remaining Kennedy child is gone. No president or public figure who came after JFK has been as electrifying, as unifying and as filled with purpose. He may have been the last one who put objective good ahead of personal beliefs and preferences. He could have put our nation on the path toward global participation instead of isolationism. He could have made a mark in history far greater than he was allowed.
Soon he will be merely another part of history rather than a signpost in the lives of people who were around when John F. Kennedy was murdered. Soon he will be like Abraham Lincoln – a president who was assassinated before he could accomplish all that he was meant to during his days on earth.
A few years later, we lost Martin Luther King and then Robert F. Kennedy. Yes, the 60s were a crazy, crazy time.
The value of a very good writer.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Branding, Effective Writing on November 15, 2010 | No Comments
When a good advertising idea appears, it goes on and on. Example: those brilliant MasterCard commercials that ended with “priceless.” They’ve been copied so often that it’s impossible to keep track. But that just proves how good the idea was.
The “got milk?” campaign was equally brilliant, and even more frequently copied. But how poorly great campaigns were imitated proves why it takes a very good writer to turn a good idea into a great idea.
Locally, some real estate outfit has put up “got space” signs all over the place, complete with black background and the same font as the “got milk?” campaign. Except, he/she/they never understood the meaning and importance of the original “got milk?” campaign since he/she/they left off the question mark … or any punctuation. That little bit of punctuation makes all the difference. (Writers know that.)
Example: does the “got space” rip-off mean this advertiser a) has space available? b) wants to know if you do? c) only has space where the sign appears? So much unknown … because of such a little thing: punctuation. Even a period would convey clarity and help make the sign more meaningful.
Much of what it means to be a very good writer is understanding the importance of choices and what those choices will mean to anyone who views the communication you produce.
Example: knowing when you’ve got something original, distinctive and memorable; knowing how to talk about it so that it will attract the right target audience and produce the desired effect.
The “got space” signs are a nod to greatness, but ultimately a pointless waste of “space” – both on the landscape and in any viewer’s mind. And also proof that this particular advertiser never really understood the original “got milk?” campaign. Such imitations abound and are painful to see because of the lack of clarity. They’re not just wasted opportunities; they’re wasted dollars.
Clarity in communication is vital, critical and necessary. Without it, who really knows why you’re saying what you’re saying, or to whom?
The secret to good P.R.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Links, Marketing How-to, Public Relations on October 18, 2010 | 2 Comments
It’s not promotional.
Public Relations is a clear, precise, methodical communication function that innumerable people mistakenly equate with promotion. When they do, their “releases” are doomed for the circular file. No editor will consider anything as a valid press release if it contains hyperbole or promotional language. And attracting the attention of editors is the ultimate objective of any true press release – in print, broadcast and online media.
If that’s not your objective – if you’re actually simply trying to put out some sort of announcement – you might want to rethink your communication piece, and you will definitely not want to call it a “press release.” Because that means very specific things to very specific people.
Just the facts, ma’am.
The secret to good P.R. is relatively simple: a true press release is always written in third-person, journalistic style and is wholly objective. Its first paragraph always contains the “who, what, where, when, why and how.” Promotional copy is the exact opposite – it’s entirely subjective, full of adjectives and frequent use of such phrases as “we’re thrilled” or “we’re very excited.” Those are the kiss of death.
While the formula is simple, it can be challenging to execute unless you’ve been taught how.
How, then, do all those articles from your competitors end up in all those editorial pages? Why do the publications seem to feature story after story about some company that’s not so different from yours? The answer – as you surely suspect – is that they have knowledgeable, experienced public relations pros working for them.
What the pros know.
P.R. pros not only know how to write a release that will get an editor’s attention, they also know that relationships with those editors are key to getting both good coverage and … interviews. Yes, the holy grail of every sales effort – the interview. (Kind of like free advertising and an endorsement all in one, isn’t it?)
P.R. pros have lots of media experience and know how to select the pubs that best match their clients’ category; how to sell a story to those pubs, who to promote it to and how to work editorial calendars to your advantage.
Those P.R. pros also know how to successfully set up media interviews and tours, and how to help make trade shows successful.
Good P.R. is more than P.R.
Good P.R. means creating the right editorial climate for clients’ businesses, products and services by influencing the target audience through appropriate media. That can mean a great many more things than just the releases. Things such as:
- Background materials/press kits
- Editorial round-tables
- Media relations
- Executive speeches
- Feature articles
- Case-history testimonials
- Trade-show support
- … and News releases
Truly, the biggest problem with press releases is that so few people understand what they are, or what they’re supposed to be. I’ve frequently been provided “press releases” as input for writing projects and have just as frequently been horrified to see entirely promotional copy vs. true releases. Along with a dearth of facts (who, what, where, when, why and how). Too many people just don’t know. But editors do.
What P.R. is not.
Press releases are not ads, they’re not fliers, they’re not trade show hand-outs, and they’re most definitely not akin to wedding announcements. If you actually want something to be a press release, then it’s got to be in classical, third-person, objective reporting style. Period.
Why? So that an editor might drop it in to a publication, as is (the real secret), or use the first paragraph, as is. (The who, what, where, when, why and how of the story.) Send editors promotional garbage and it will go where other garbage goes.
P.R. has far less to do with what corporations want to achieve or say than what news outlets will accept. That’s why a true, classical press release is indistinguishable from an AP or New York Times news story. No hyperbole, no exaggeration. Ever.
Naturally, companies are welcome to put out whatever they want, even dinner napkins. But if they plan to drop something “on the wires” or send it directly to editors, it has to be in the lingua franca of the business. Anything that isn’t is a waste of both your time and your resources.
Separating the pros from the pretenders: craft.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Links, Marketing How-to on October 12, 2010 | 4 Comments
“That’s not writing, that’s typing.”
With a nod to Truman Capote’s summation of Jack Kerouac, typing is not necessarily writing. Writing is ultimately the practice of a craft.
Anyone who crafts words into sentences, and sentences into the grammatically correct perfection of a thought, a story, a piece of marketing, journalism, technical documentation, etc., is someone who understands what it means to be a writer.
Ironically, while one may have to show credentials or a college degree to be hired as a writer, one can’t really go to school to learn how to write. One simply has to write, lots and lots. Schools can only teach techniques, tricks, methods of practice and examples of good writing. But, just like pottery, it’s ultimately up to the practitioner. And writing requires a very similar kind of centering to reach the inner voice that then can be transmitted.
This thing called the World Wide Web has created the impression that writers are everywhere. They are not. They are outnumbered by typists. The Web has also been steadily lowering the bar for quality of writing. And that is sad. Writing, in so many ways and in so many places, seems to have been reduced to “content.”
It also saddens me that while the world is continually being increased in population, that growing population is less and less familiar with the truly magical power that words on the page have held since the original Egyptians elevated what we do to “scribe,” and Guttenberg first set paper on a press. It was why some of us longed to be writers, and why we struggled to learn the craft.
Before there can be a movie, there has to be a story. And so it goes for every form of communication: the genesis is always writing.
The power of communication.
The author and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu wrote: “The real technology – behind all our other technologies – is language. It actually creates the world our consciousness lives in.”
This is an astounding summation of the power of communication. From the moment we learn language, most of us begin taking it for granted. It seems that it’s a precious few, like Codrescu, who remain in awe of the ability to communicate our thoughts, feelings, needs and wants.
This awesome power is at the heart of what we writers do for a living. People throw the word “branding” about as if it’s magic dust. Just say it and you’re suddenly creating a higher level of communication. Not so. The real magic is in the language. If the language is not effective, relevant, compelling and consistent, there is no branding. If the message does not hit home in the eyes and ears and emotions of the target audience, there is no branding.
Language is the ultimate tool.
Everything about marketing is communication, whether it’s words, images or sounds. And what is communication if not language? Even when we see a commercial without words, we’re working out in our thoughts what it means and whether it’s relevant to us And those thoughts are the language of our consciousness.
I almost hate to admit it but brands make up a large portion of our consciousness in the western world, “the world our consciousness lives in.” It was distracting at first to watch the film Minority Report and see all of the brands flash by that were part of that particular time and consciousness. Then I figured out what was bothering me – the sub-text was, “we are what we want.” Minority Report was, of course, written by Philip K. Dick, the brilliant, visionary sci-fi writer who also wrote Blade Runner. There were nearly identical brand images in that film as well, even though the word “branding” barely existed, if at all, in 1984.
So is it our job to make people and companies want things? I prefer to think of what we do as creating awareness of choices. That’s what capitalism is ultimately all about – the freedom for anyone to create a competitive offering, and the freedom for each of us to choose which competitive offering is right for us.
It is, of course, remarkable, that we can go from using language for reasoning to using language for offerings. But both prove our humanity. Because, in the end, nothing sets us apart from the animal kingdom more than language. Without the ability to communicate effectively, we are hardly human. And that is why language really is the ultimate tool.
Links to sites we love.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Effective Writing, Links on October 11, 2010 | No Comments
This is an eclectic list, and it’s not all about writers and writing, although it leans that way.
(Is our true self revealed through the blogs we follow?)
Hmmm … literary agents, writers, editors, humor and cowboy boots … oh my!
(Hover your pointer over the URLs for hints.)
http://snideties.blogspot.com/
http://www.eriksherman.com/WriterBiz/
http://eucalyptusway.blogspot.com/
http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/
http://jenniferonwriting.blogspot.com/
http://miraslist.blogspot.com/
http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/
http://randmacivor.blogspot.com/
http://realworldmedia.blogspot.com/
http://ronnielebow.blogspot.com/
http://loriwidmer.blogspot.com/
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/
http://www.evowebdev.com/2010/09/why-bad-websites-happen-to-good-companies-not-hiring-a-writer-2
Give clients what they want? Or what they need?
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on September 24, 2010 | 4 Comments
Every professional writer has been faced with the client from hell. They’re the ones who insist that their marketing materials or Web sites must contain every last detail about their business. Yes, even the kitchen sink. If we do what they want, are we really giving them what they need?
Any effective and competent marketing professional knows that we’re writing for the client’s target audience, and that often it’s not about writing what the client likes.
Yes, the client loves reading about their product or service. And, yes, the client can’t comprehend how others may not find that level of detail fascinating. But, if you give in, are you doing yourself a real favor? Or are you just taking the easy way out?
You’re not writing for the client, you’re writing for their target audience.
In the long run, when materials don’t work, the client will blame the writer. If you know that what you should be doing is very different from what you’re being asked to do, it’s well worth mustering up the courage to say so. If your client understands, they’ll thank you. If he or she doesn’t, you’re better off moving on.
Clients frequently need to be educated about the fact they they are seldom the true target audience. It takes a real sense of objectivity to separate oneself from what’s written for one’s company. If you can help your clients get there, they’ll value you all the more for helping them make that leap.
Watch out for “give me something just like this.”
Creating a “me-too” product is bad enough. Creating me-too marketing will only take your work down several notches. (And you may even be helping the competition.) You’ll also find yourself apologizing for samples that remind everyone of “that something else.” Saying, “the client asked me to do that” won’t cut it.
As has been said in every creative writing class ever taught, “writing is about making choices.” Just because the client can’t understand originality and differentiation, it doesn’t mean you should lower your standards.
Making our clients’ product or service stand out from the pack is the ultimate goal of the marketing communications we create. Help your client figure out what makes their offering different or better. Find out what their target audience cares about most. And, if possible, find out what would make them switch.
Don’t wait for the second date.
Find out as soon as possible if you’re going to have creative freedom. And find out if you’ll get the input you need to execute effectively on an agreed-upon strategy. We’re not investigative reporters, even though we often have to act like them. It’s not our job to provide ourselves with input – but it’s usually our job to have to dig for it. That’s because clients don’t always know where the gold lies.
Most clients expect that it’s enough to announce to the world that XYZ Widgets are now available. We know that we have to create both awareness of and interest in XYZ. Especially if the public at large has been using ABC Widgets for years and is perfectly happy. We have to dig for really good reasons why people should care, and why they should try something new. If we do our jobs properly, then XYZ won’t be viewed as just a me-too widget, it will be viewed as an important and valuable addition to the world of widgets.
Content mills: degrading writing quality and writers’ lives.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Branding, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on July 20, 2010 | 2 Comments
Have you noticed sloppy, even grossly inaccurate writing on “how-to” Web sites? Or on travel and food sites? How about oddly similar articles showing up on multiple sites? Or enticing headline links for articles that entirely disappoint when you click on them?
There’s a reason. A new animal recently emerged in the online world: content mills. They are brokers of online content, and they’re quite uncaring about writing quality, let alone writers. And every self-respecting writer is outraged by what the mills claim as “fair pay.” So self-respecting writers won’t work for them. And that’s why you may have become disenchanted with so much of what you see online.
What kind of writers are producing this muck?
The only writers actually writing for the mills are the desperate kind. Writing, after all, is a lonely, cerebral, isolated profession. That fact alone seems to have made us ripe pickings for this mostly Internet-based phenomenon. Some examples of mills are Associated Content, examiner.com, Demand Media, Elance, and Seed. They all follow the same business model: pay as little as you can for words to fill up online pages.
What exactly do they pay? Demand, for example, claims to pay $5-15 for 500-1,000 word articles. Consider the fact that it takes a decent writer 2-4 hours to do a decent 500-1,000 word piece. So what do you do if you’re only making $2.50 per hour? You rush, you “borrow,” you plagiarize. Your mission in life becomes writing as many articles as you can, as fast as you can, so that you’re making slightly more than $2.50 per hour.
Hence, we have “mash-ups:” material grabbed from all over the Web and “re-purposed” for an article. Associated Content and examiner.com are even worse – they only pay writers by the click. So writers have to become promoters of their own sloppy writing to make anything.
Do mash-ups equal plagiarism? In many cases, yes. When the original author isn’t even given credit, what else can it be?
What should writers be paid per word?
The average good-quality magazine article pays $1-2 per word. So a decently written1,000-word article should pay $1,000-2,000. Not $10. But before you think of dashing off 1,000 words and looking for the $2 per-word market, you should realize that to get to 1,000 really good words for the really well-paying markets, a writer typically puts down 4-5,000 words, then works, re-works and polishes their material. And that can take 20-40 hours.
So, how can writers survive working for the mills? We can’t. And that’s my point. The mills don’t actually care about writers because quality has nothing to do with what they’re after. They only care about selling content, whatever it is. The business of the mills is to stockpile random content to sell to sites that need “stuff” on their pages. All kinds of sites and publications buy that stuff just so that you and I might be attracted to visit … and just possibly click on the ads there.
Where might you read some of this paltry-paying stuff? Demand Media lists eHow.com, LIVESTRONG.com, Cracked.com, Trails.com, Golflink.com, Answerbag, Mobile, and Impact Stories as some of their content. And here’s what Associated Content says about how they pay their “contributors:” “You earn money for every one thousand page views your content generates (PPM™ rate). The baseline PPM™ rate is currently $1.50 – meaning if you generate 30,000 page views, you’re paid $45.00 in Performance Payments.” That means that you only get paid if you drive the masses to click on your articles. So you’re not only paid peanuts for your work, you have to work pretty darn hard to get paid the peanuts.
What does this mean for you and me? The quality of online content is rapidly and clearly declining. But you may have noticed that.
The valuation of content over quality.
This really is a David and Goliath scenario. The mills are extremely well-funded and some of them are owned by some of the wealthiest people in the country. So even though the Web has brought a great many boons, if you’re a writer, globalization and content mills have become your foes. There is likely no stopping them. But a growing demand for quality may set them straight.
Jaron Lanier wrote about this very thing in his book, “You Are Not a Gadget.” He sees similar ills in the rise of aggregation of data with total disregard for the human element. In other words, many of the factors driving the growth of the internet are not based on what you and I really want. It’s based on getting those ads clicked. Period.
If writers were like other trades – teachers, police, electricians, carpenters, firefighters and so on – we’d be talking to each other, getting angry and starting to organize. But we’re not like other trades. We’re largely solo enterprises, and some of us truly hit the wall looking for work. Those of us who have reached that level of desperation actually bow down to the demon and start writing for the mills. None who do like it. But they think they must.
A similar phenomenon occurred around 30 years ago when stock photography came into being. It pretty much killed professional photography. Ad agencies and magazines that used to pay thousands of dollars for photo shoots began paying $1-200 for stock shots instead. As the stock houses grew in number and strength, photographers bowed to them and turned over their images. That only helped drive the nails into their coffins.
The basics of branding.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in Advertising, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on July 19, 2010 | No Comments
Branding baby steps.
The idea of “branding” may sound formidable to many companies. A daunting new task for marketing to add to its plate. I can make it simple for you. A company’s brand is ultimately defined by three things:
- Competencies – what you do
- Standards – how you do it
- Style – how you relate to your marketplace
These are things that need to be both defined and agreed upon before any creative work starts.
Once they are agreed upon, they need to be maintained with consistency across every form of communication – from e-mails to business cards, and from one-on-one conversations to a major marketing campaign. Without that consistency, there can be no brand.
To put it into simple steps, you need to determine: your message, your target audience, how your product or service benefits them, what the competition is saying, and how you’re better or different. And that, folks, is what branding is all about.
Tag lines rule.
This may raise a few hackles: to me, a tag line is the heart of any brand. Headlines come and go. Vision and mission statements are useful when you can’t fall asleep. But to know what an enterprise’s brand is really about, look at their tag line.
One of my favorite, short-lived tag lines of all time was from UPS: ”Moving at the speed of business.” When that came out, I thought, “boy, now they’re going to give FedEx a run for their money.” But what did they do a year or two later? Changed it to: ”Trust brown. ” Trust brown? Their rationale (if there is one) was that they didn’t want to frighten off their non-business clientèle. Umm, no matter what you’re shipping, or to whom, wouldn’t you want it moving as fast as possible? ”At the speed of business” sounds pretty darn fast, doesn’t it? Alas. (Imagine a FedEx did me-too … that might be “Pick Purple.” Ugh.)
And only a tag line can consistently appear in ads, commercials, on stationery, at trade shows … heck, you can even answer the phone saying your tag. (Although I don’t recommend that since those scripted greeting are long enough already …) The bottom line – in my experience – is that tag lines are the hook for everything you do that’s marketing. Choose one carefully because you don’t want to be changing your tag every six months.
Super-brands.
There are many “super-brands” in our marketplace today – Coke, Kleenex, Xerox, FedEx, etc. They are super-brands not just because of how they define their product or service, but also because they define their category. That means, in part, that we refer to Coke when we mean most any soda, or Kleenex when we mean any tissue, and Xerox when we mean any kind of photocopying. (It’s good to be a super-brand.)
While UPS is a huge company with a well-established brand, it still needs to distinguish itself from FedEx, even though they are in the same category. We, the people, have given FedEx a significant branding edge by making it common to say “FedEx it,” regardless of how we’re actually going to overnight a package. “UPS it” just doesn’t have the same catchy feel.
I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that the only people who say “UPS it” are the ones who mean just that and only that, while “FedEx it” has become ubiquitous, no matter which company we ultimately use to overnight something. We’ve done the same with Kleenex for years, which was why some years ago they changed their actual product name to “Kleenex brand facial tissues” in order to protect their brand. (Thank goodness for lawyers.)
Branding is not new.
While some “marketing folk” may try to beguile you with their branding acumen, know this: branding is a repackaging of “USP” – Unique Selling Proposition. USP was invented by Rosser Reeves in the 1940s at Ted Bates & Company.
USP became the standard by which all advertising and marketing agencies would judge themselves and their work: ”Are you selling the benefits? Are you making empty claims? Why should people care?” Little things like that. Every agency came up with its own nomenclature for the USP process, but it was all thanks to Rosser Reeves.
The key differentiation that branding brings to the table is the concept of companies having internal and external audiences. To put it simply, you have to market to your own troops before you market to the world at large. This means creating an awareness of your branding and an esprit de corps within your firm while pushing the message out.
Some will go so far as to encourage companies to “live the brand.” I draw the line there, recalling what my European father always said, even after moving to America: ”we work to live, we don’t live to work.”
Now you know enough to cause some serious damage. Go forth and brand.
Why writing for the Web is like writing for the road.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Advertising, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on June 1, 2010 | 2 Comments
Writing for the Web is a lot like writing billboards.
Think about it: when you’re driving at highway speeds and you see billboards, you can actually only read the ones that are short and sweet.
There’s a reason: the rule of thumb for successful billboard headlines is about five words. Five, max. And the rule for clutter is none. You’ll know it immediately when there’s a billboard created by people who didn’t know the rules. You’ll catch some piece of it, but never all of it, and you’ll already be half a mile down the road when you decide to give up.
Billboards like that are a complete waste of money since no one can read an entire paragraph – let alone a sentence – going at 65 miles per hour.
Guess what – the Web is exactly the same. We’re all learning to click through Web sites faster and faster. The briefer the message, the more likely we are to get it. The best Google ads are the shortest. The best Web sites are the easiest to read.
The rules of the road.
This online world is whole new way to communicate. Interestingly, the rules of the road apply more than any others. People are speeding by to get where they want to go. They don’t want to be distracted. And they especially don’t want to be confused. If your Web site slows them down, your visitors will be gone in the click of a mouse.
Here’s the key: focus on the essential message you’re trying to communicate – the core message – then say it in as few words as possible. Play with the order of the words – you’ll be amazed at the possibilities re-ordering a sentence will open up. The great concepts didn’t just happen. The key thoughts were edited, honed and crafted until the fewest words possible said it all. Then compelling ways were created to deliver those words.
Look where you want to go.
All new motorcycle riders are taught: ”look where you want to go.” That may sound absurdly obvious, but it’s a matter of life of death on a two-wheeled transport. If you’re riding around a curve and you become fixated by oncoming traffic instead of looking at the spot ahead where you want to get to, you’ll involuntarily start heading toward that traffic. It’s quite simple, and quite dangerous: our focus affects our steering on a motorcycle. Look at what you want to avoid instead of where you want to go and you’ll be heading for disaster in no time.
It’s the very same when we’re surfing the Web. The way to keep visitors on course and on your site is by providing relevant, meaningful content that’s easy to read and understand. Don’t distract them with eye-candy or pointless side-trips. If you know where you want your visitors to end up, put them on that road and keep them on that road.
Unique is an adjective, not a benefit statement.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on May 4, 2010 | No Comments
The use of adjectives such as “unique” to describe a product or service is a sure sign of weak or lazy copywriting skills. It takes real work and real effort to uncover benefit statements that are meaningful to customers, and that help products and services stand out.
Most of us start with questions when we work with clients. And the common element in all our questions is the uber-question: “why should people care?” When clients answer, “because we’re the best,” it doesn’t do us much good. We have to dig deeper because our client’s customers will demand to know: why are you the best; how did you become the best; how long have you been the best; who’s your closest competitor; what makes you better than them?
That’s why any copywriter worth their salt (Roman soldiers were paid in salt way back when) will insist on benefit statements over adjectives, because they’re the only way for products or services to truly have “unique” as a takeaway, without ever having to say it.
Adjectives are a crutch.
If you’re working with a writer who uses adjectives like “unique,” or “one-of-a-kind,” or “exclusive” as easily as most people use napkins, you could be working with a writer who’s dependent on a crutch.
That’s what those hyperbolic adjectives are. They’re known in the trade as “empty claims.” Pretty much in the same category of believability as “the check is in the mail.” No truly professional writer will settle for such lightweight writing—and you shouldn’t, either.
However, if your writer backs up those weak adjectives with powerful facts, that’s a different story. E.g., “we’re unique because we’re the only auto detailing business in town that will come to your home or business.” If that’s really true, that’s not so bad. But unique is still an adjective, so you still have to back it up. And as soon as someone else starts doing what you do—where you do it—you’ll have to drop it.
Find the difference, use the difference.
What if instead you could say, “the only auto detailing business in town where every employee is trained by Norm, detailer to the stars.” Nobody could ever take that away from you. See?
Sometimes clients realize their uniqueness and can provide benefit statements to back it up, but most often they don’t. So it’s up to us professionals to dig for them, polish them and present them to the most appropriate target audience for that specific product or service.
If your business really is a “me-too” business, such as another burger joint in a sea of burger joints, then your writer will need to work very hard to come up with that certain something that sets you apart, and then play it up for all it’s worth.
Five steps to creating marketing campaigns that work.
Posted by L. C. Sterling in About Writing, Branding, Differentiation, Effective Writing, Marketing How-to on April 5, 2010 | No Comments
The most important element of marketing campaigns is effective communication. Marketing, after all, is all about communication. Effective communication is the only way to produce positive results.
How can you produce effective communication? By understanding that communication is a science. What’s more—as in any scientific field—there’s both a methodology and a sequence that need to be followed in order to achieve a stated goal.
The methodology for marketing is a sequence of steps based on critical questions. The people handling your communications need to know which questions to ask at each step.
The answers to those questions are essential for the people who write, design and execute a finely-tuned marketing program.
“If you build it, they will come” has led to many a business failure. The rule that businesses have learned the hard way is “if you create awareness, they will come.”
STEP 1: Define your message.
- What is it about your product or service that needs communicating?
- What sets your product or service apart?
- What specific need does your product or service fill in the marketplace?
- Who else is out there offering a product or service like yours; how are they doing?
This can’t be a haphazard attempt: this is your USP, your brand. The message needs to be clear, concise and compelling. And, most important of all, you’re not producing the message for yourself—you’re doing it for your target audience. So it’s not about what you like or what folks in your company like; it’s about what your target audience likes and will respond to.
STEP 2: Define your target audience.
Once you’ve defined your key message, you need to know to which audience it will be directed.
This is not based on whimsy. The only way a product or service can succeed is if:
- It fulfills a specific need for a specific target audience
- You make the specific target audience fully aware of the existence of that product or service (which, by the way, is the key role of any communications effort).
These are the questions that need to be asked in order to arrive at your true target:
- Who’s the key audience for your product or service?
- What’s the key benefit to that audience?
- Is your product or service something they’ve been wanting, or is it entirely new?
- Who’s the competition? What’s their track record?
- What’s different about your product or service?
- What will it take to win?
STEP 3: Determine an adequate budget.
A base rule of thumb is to assign at least 5% of gross sales to marketing communications. But, remember, the most successful companies are spending an average of 15%.
The key here is to realize that it’s not enough to create great advertising—it needs enough exposure and time to be seen and assimilated. For advertising to work and build, it needs to be a sustained effort.
STEP 4: Establish an effective tracking system.
Most sales people in most companies typically ask the marketing people, “How will I know the advertising is working?”
One way is to have a “response mechanism.” For example a business reply card (BRC) in a magazine, or an 800 number in broadcast and web site advertising. In all cases, however, it’s essential that leads be tracked from their origins.
The BRC, for example, would be coded so you’d know which publications are pulling the most; the 800 number should be a dedicated number that makes it easy to track the source of calls. The Web site should have a response field for “How did you hear about this site?”
Another way to track the effectiveness of your communications efforts it to track sales for a measurable increase.
Once again, advertising is a slow-building process. It may take several exposures of an ad or commercial before results are seen. But once the momentum is established, the speed can be maintained.
STEP 5: Plan an on-going campaign to maintain ongoing sales.
Advertising is not just a kick-start for sales. It can actually be the engine that drives sales cycles by creating and maintaining awareness .
The way to convince those who doubt its effectiveness is to ask, “How many additional sales people would it take for us to match the kind of exposure our marketing communications are giving us?” A single ad can expose your product or service to thousands or hundreds of thousands of people at one time.
Once you’ve seen that what you’re doing works, you need to understand how to keep up the pace and—if you’re ready—how to increase it. Important caveat: don’t increase demand when you can’t match it with supply. Advertising works. If you’re not ready to meet the demand it can create, you can do more harm than good.
There are multiple ways to get the word out, including online. Ad placement is a science and needs to be carefully considered, preferably by media placement professionals who understand demographics and target audiences. Allowing yourself to be persuaded to advertise by a sales rep at a publication or media company most often turns out to be just like the definition of a boat: a place in the water where you throw money.