Copywriting

You're going to do WHAT to VAT?

It is Sunday night, gone 11pm, and I have just seen an email from a client for whom I look after a wide spread of marketing matters.

The email points out to me that all the posters we sent out to print on Friday, plus the 30,000 leaflets we sent on Thursday, plus the national press advertisement artworks we have finalised this weekend, plus all of the prices as displayed on the website (contained in a database which we manage), are going to be wrong if the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes a change to the rate of VAT.

So if you or your clients sell anything which quotes prices inclusive of VAT, you have a choice: lots of work to re-price everything... or an increase in your profit as you decide to keep prices the same, effectively meaning a bit more for you, as the Chancellor takes a bit less. This, however, completely negates thepoint of the Chancellor's initiative, which is intended to reduce prices to end consumers.

Wouldn't it make more sense to increase personal tax allowances a little and leave VAT where it is? There'd be a lot less fiddling around to do.

Writing your clients out of the recession

So is this a recession? I'd say so. Or if it's not the full-blown baby, that won't be long in coming. I'm no economist, but I can sniff the air with the best of them and the anecdotal evidence tells me that tails are down, spending is down and so something is most decidedly up.

The question is what can you do to help your clients, if you're a copywriter, or to help yourself, if you're marketing your own business?

As always, the answer has to be to do all that you can to demonstrate relevance.

You need to think long and hard about what it is that whatever business you are trying to market offers that can plausibly be held to provide its customers with a way to beat the downturn. Once you've identified it, and interrogated it to satisfy yourself that the claim holds water, you find a straightforward way of presenting this news to customers and potential customers.

This isn't a time for periferal benefits, or dancing around the edges of a business's proposition.

This is the time to know where the business you're selling really adds value...and then make sure everyone else knows too.