Copywriting

Here's how you do it.

I just saw this reposted on facebook by a friend. It appears to be the work of a brother and sister in Ontario (assuming it's not the very cunning work of an ad agency). Whichever way, it's great copywriting. So long as ytou have a Facebook account, I think you shouyld be able to see it. But click through all the photos: it's a sequence. Josh and Gracie

 

Guardian Copywriting careers Q&A TODAY

Join me online between 1pm and 3pm today for the Guardian Copywriting Careers Q&A. Here's your link.

In store sales from online search

I have a valued client with whom I regularly debate whether sales that occur in-store, or by phone, but which were initiated by a customer making a web search, are correctly considered as online or in-store sales.

Well, this link seems to shed some light on this based on real research, rather than just gut feel.

According to 2 years of data reviewed by RevTrax, from August 2009 to August 2001, every $1 of e-commerce revenue generated from paid search, generates approximately another $6 of in-store revenue. 

In other words... paid search has 6:1 impact on offline sales over e-commerce. 

You can read it here in full.

Certainly makes your PPC spend seem a little more viable!

How not to write an SMS to your customers

Look at this!

"Hi from Orange. We're increasing the price of your monthly plan by 4.34% from 8 January 2012. For more information please visit orangeworld.co.uk/r/planupdate "

Got to love it, haven't you? 

They could have sent:

"Hi! Here's an annoying, presumptuous and unapologetic message to tell you that we have unilaterally decided to increase your bill, even though you are mid contract. But we're doing it, and you have no say in it. Seeya."

This is such a **** poor SMS message to their customers that a chum, my wife and my son had ALL, without any prompting from me, contacted me within an hour to say "Have you had that text from Orange about the increase?"

Now, here's the interesting part. When you click through to the web page, it is apologetic and explanatory, sets out their record in holding prices down and even offers to show you the bit in your contract that entitles them to raise the price mid contract in line with the retail price index, then mentions that this rise is actually a little lower than that would be.

The web page is as good a job as you could do of sharing a little bad news with your customers.

So why did they leave an ignorant, thoghtless and insensitive imbecile to write the SMS and alienate millions of customers with one tactless sentence?

In fact... know what... I'll just Tweet this for them :)

 

Google crosses the ad divide

So Google is to introduce a new ad unit, 'Circulars', that serves an expanded, large format display ad as a result of clicking on a conventional search network or content network text or small display ad. In other words, click on an innocent looking AdWords ad, and get smacked in the head with a pop up that looks as though you've just picked it up off your doormat.

Up until now, Google has satisfied itself with serving ads that enabled advertisers to pull searchers/surfers through to content that they as the advertiser were hosting. With Circulars, however, Google compiles and serves the first-click content for the advertiser. Effectively, it moves the advertiser's own content a level back in the user journey, by interjecting the Circular.

It's interesting (if you find this kind of stuff interesting) in itself; but as an ex ad-man I can't help find it doubly so for the simple truth that with all it's technical innovation, Google has taken the humblest items of DM, the doordrop and insert, and whacked them online.

 

You can read more about it and have a look at an example in this article from Mashable, 4/10/11.

A dreadful title... for quite a decent little book

'Copy. Righter.' Oh dear. A more juvenile piece of copywriting it would be hard to find than this title to Ian Atkinson's addition to the pantheon of 'how to's for wannabe copywriters. (LID Publishing, www.lidpublishing.com, £16.99) And yet... within the covers Atkinson has come up with a very neat and helpful book that delivers far more sensible, practical help than many of the offers already in the market.

Where many seem to me to attempt a definitive work in what is far too shaded an area of interest to make this simple to achieve, Atkinson has satisfied himself with noting down and organising sensible, down to earth and usable professional tips gleaned from hard won experience.

It's his refusal to be ponderous that I like. It feels to me like a two hour chat with an organised, serious-minded pro, rather than a three year course taught by someone with all the theory and none of the practise.

The only book you'll ever need? No. Probably not. But if you're inexperienced and want an accessible and encouraging book that will move you forward in absolutely the right direction, it's worth £16.99. And definitely worth the under-a-tenner price from our Amazon-powered Bookstore ('Copy. Righter.' £9.46 from All Copywriters Now Bookstore)

Lazy old Orange

Orange (my mobile provider) texted me this morning.

"Best Plan is our free service that reviews your mobile usage every 6 months to make sure you're getting the best value. We've just looked at your usage and the good news is that you could save money by switching to our recommended Orange talkplan. For details visit Orange.co.uk/bp"

So I did. 

When I got there, it said my Best Plan review wasn't available, and that I should call a number it provided.

So I did.

"Yes. We've looked at your current plan, and you're on the best possible deal for you."

"So why did I get the text that says 'We've just looked at your usage and the good news is that you could save money by switching to our recommended Orange talkplan' " I asked.

"Oh we send that automatically to all customers when we've done their Best Plan review."

Why? Respect my time as your customer and either write two texts, sending one to people like me whose review shows no need to change, and another to people who do need to change and so do need to visit the website; or, if you really can't be bothered to do that, just reword the one text so it doesn't overpromise, underdeliver and waste customers' time by saying "you could save money by switching to our recommended Orange talkplan", when there is no such possibility.

News for newsletter strugglers

If you struggle to get together interesting content about your business to fill an e-newsletter, read this from the Woodkeepers in Highgate Woods in North London, snapped as I passed by this morning.

Only shame is that as it's simply penned on a whiteboard, you have to be there already to read it.

Us, You and Our Staff

This scrap of paper is a soft, brown, recycled napkin from Pret A Manger. Look what's printed on it.

 

"This napkin is made from 100% recycled stock (Pret's environmental department is militant, we're making headway)."

But then comes the good bit.

"If Pret staff get all serviette-ish and hand you huge bunches of napkins (which you don't need or want) please give them the evil eye. Waste not want not."

It's fantastic. Instead of Us (Pret Management) and Pret Staff on one side, and You (the Customer) on the other, They (Pret Management) are asking You to help keep Pret Staff in order.

And to cap it all, We and You are napkin people by nature: but wayward staff are likely to become "serviette-ish".

Bond building. Great writing on a scrunched up old napkin.

ASA CAP Code extends to online marketing

 

The end of innocence is upon us. If you're an entrepreneur or small business owner who has until now enjoyed the unregulated largesse of the online environment lending a little extra something to your marketing this is, I have to tell you, something you need to give thought to.

If you're a copywriter, it's now a part of your job to understand this too. If you don't, and your clients do, you might expect to find yourself doing quite a lot of rewriting in the future.

As a copywriter who learned his trade in advertising, I was brought up with the idea that what a company says in its marketing really ought to bear some passing resemblance to the truth.

TV advertising always had to be cleared at script stage by the BACC (the forerunner of Clearcast, who deal with this now), and then approved again as an actual edit ready for broadcast.

Aside from that, and aside from the Compliance departments of clients in regulated sectors, the Advertising Standards Authority was always on hand with its catchy 'Legal✔, Decent✔, Honest✔, Truthful✔' to ensure that advertising in any medium remained the right side of downright misleading. Though the ASA did not require advertising to be pre-cleared it did, by industry-wide self-agreement to comply, have the authority to require advertisers to revise or withdraw advertising material in the event of its committee upholding complaints received from the public.

Well, after a good fifteen years of online marketing claims being free of any such regulation, as of 1 March 2011 the ASA Committee of Advertising Practice Codes will apply to any kind of marketing claim a company makes online in its advertising or even on its own site when this might be deemed to be marketing: which of course covers just about anything a company says on its site.

This is from the ASA's website: From March 1st, the ASA’s online remit will be extended to cover marketing communications on organisations’ own websites and in other non-paid-for space under their control. The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (the CAP Code) will apply in full to marketing messages online, including the rules relating to misleading advertising, social responsibility and the protection of children. 

This significant development in advertising regulation is good news for both consumer and business protection as it will ensure the same high standards as in other media. It will cover:

• Advertisers’ own marketing messages on their own websites, regardless of sector, type of businesses or size of organisation
• Marketing communications in other non-paid-for space under the advertiser’s control, such as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The Code applies to any business based in the UK. If you're a UK business, publishing non-compliant material on a domain that is not 'UK designated' makes no difference. You are still contravening the Code.

The ASA website provides a raft of training and services to enable you to check that your communications do comply with the Code.

Get on board. Regardless of whether or not you 'get away' with misleading or hyperbole-laden copy, it reflects badly on your business, or on your client's business, and it makes the world a worse place in which to be a consumer.

Universal truths

Sent on to me by my son Jack, who is a student at Birmingham University, this is by the poet Luke Kennard who teaches at the University. Poets: universal truths. 

"My friend, your irresponsibility and your unhappiness delight me. Your financial problems and your expanding waist-line are a constant source of relief. I am so happy you drink more than I do and that you don’t seem to enjoy it as much. When I hear you being arrogant and argumentative, my heart leaps. Your nihilism is fast becoming the richest source of meaning in my life and it is my pleasure to watch you speaking harshly to others. When you gossip about our mutual acquaintances I sigh with satisfaction. Your childish impatience delights me. The day you threw a tantrum in the middle of the supermarket was the happiest day of my life. Sometimes you say something which reveals you to be rather stupid — and I love you then, but not as much as I love you when you are callously manipulative. Your promiscuity is like a faithful dog at my side. When you talk about your petty affairs, you try to make them sound grand and important—I cherish your gaucheness and your flippancy. At times it seems your are actually without a sense of humour: I bless the day I met you. You bully people younger and weaker than you—and when oth- ers tell me about this, I am pleased. Sometimes I think you are incapable of love — and I am filled with the contentment of waking on a Saturday morning to realise I don’t have to go to work. I often suspect that you do not even like me and my laughter overflows like water from a blocked cistern."

 

When a blogger stops shopping

If clothes, shoes and shopping are your vices, purleeese subscribe now to Deborah Mills's brand new blog, STOPSHOP. A smart and successful woman with a happy family and a great job says..."You know what.... I actually don't NEED any more clothes." Should be a political movement, never mind a blog.