Katie Price and Rio Ferdinand are facing a probe by the Advertising Standards Authority for their part in a wicked spoof by Snickers that quickly went viral across the ‘net. The celebrities posted a series of out-of-character tweets: Katie, whose breasts are bigger than her head and, almost certainly, than her brain – posted about quantitative easing, liquidity in the bond market, and the political economy, while footballer Rio Ferdinand posted about the joys of knitting.
Several tweets later, it was revealed to be a marketing ploy by Snickers: the celebrities tweeted ‘you’re not yourself…
Unlike graphic designers – who clearly provide a service most people can’t perform themselves – as a copywriter, I’m often asked exactly what it is I can do that anyone who can read and write can’t. And I can talk about my extended vocabulary, my sales knowledge, my daring ability to start sentences with the word “and”. But really, there’s one vital thing I can do that most non-copywriting folks can’t.
I can pick an appropriate tone of voice.
If McLuhan’s oft-quoted phrase ‘the medium is the message’ is true, then how you say something is at least as important…
Don Draper, the eponymous head of fictional ad agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in AMC’s Mad Men, is a man with a past. He’s intriguing, popular, and his relationship status and family life is asked about by most everyone he meets.
In other words, you’d imagine that Don is exactly the kind of customer who’d embrace Facebook Timeline with open arms. So much so, in fact, that one individual even mashed up one of Don’s famous pitches to create the Don Draper delivers Facebook Timeline…
You can’t hurry love. But as a copywriter, can you rush creativity? Is it possible to have too many ideas? Or is more always more?
- Is it better to go to the client with just one idea?
- Is it better to go to the client with two or three of the best?
- …or does your client want to pick and choose from a hundred different options?
The answer depends on the client — and on how well you can read them.
Some clients want to be told what to do. They’re paying you, the expert, to tell them…
Wordplay can be a fantastic thing. Several years ago, in an effort to convince my not-entirely-computer-literate parents to migrate to Firefox from IE5, I renamed the desktop shortcut from “Internet Explorer” to “Internet Exploder” and solemnly warned them “if you use this program, you will destroy the internet.” I think they got the message.
Sometimes wordplay is subtle. Sometimes it’s not. The pun, that most maligned staple of Englsh language humour, can be both.
More importantly sometimes it works in copywriting and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes a pun can liven up a dull sentence and keep your client’s message in…
Editors. Hard drinking, hard smoking, hard to deal with. When I was just starting out as a journalist, my editor took ten seconds to finish his drink, stub out his cigarette, and offer me a few words of advice.
‘You’re a good writer,’ he said. ‘But your stuff won’t be great until it has a through line.’
It’s the best writing advice anyone ever gave me. And it’s advice I’m still using as a freelance copywriter today.
Whose through line is it anyway?
A through line is a single message, or set of messages, that’s repeated throughout your copy. Whether…
“Dear Sir (or Madam),
Unfortunately your application has not been successful at this time. Thank you for applying, we will keep your details on file for future reference.
PS, F**k you.”
It’s a letter we’ve all seen at some point in our lives. Whether it’s from a potential employer, a bank, mortgage broker, university, or other institution, the message is clear. We don’t like you. Go away.
Like most people, I’ve seen a fair few of these letters in my time. And, as I’ve become a better copywriter, I’ve noticed one thing that really bugs me about them — the…
What kind of child were you? Did you have brothers and sisters? In the playground did your parents ever tell you off for not ‘sharing’ your toys? Or were you the kind of child who got everything, and never had to share?
Is sharing always a good thing? Do you think you got more pleasure out of that new toy when you played with it alone, or when you were forced to share it with others?
I ask because that’s exactly how Facebook works. Like a pushy parent, Facebook is forcing you to share more and more. And, perhaps inevitably,…
It’s not uncommon for clients to ask how much a copywriter charges per page, or even per word (How long is a page? For that matter, how long is a word? Should you charge by the letter instead?). I always ask the client if a builder or an architect would give them a price per brick.
Using arbitrary word counts to arrive at a quote simply doesn’t work. The only thing worth quoting on is time and complexity. How many hours will this take? How exhausted will you be at the end of it? How much of my time is…
The joy of being a freelance copywriter is that you can work, pretty much, from anywhere. From home, from a hotdesk, from a beach in Goa, if you really want. With an 11″ Macbook Air and an occasional wireless connection you could probably write trekking through the Himalayas, if you really wanted. But I’m in London. One of the most expensive, most crowded, and oldest cities in the world. And I don’t mean old in a good way. I mean old as in, our antiquated public transport network makes even the simplest of journeys an absolute nightmare…
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