A brief update today, because I’m very busy with work. But I saw this in the supermarket and felt I had to share it with you all.
Now, I’m sure if you look closely you’ll notice, like me, that this headline is actually about the packaging this product comes in. But no food product, not even one for cats, should ever advertise itself as containing less cardboard than before. It’s just too easy to make the wrong connection.
I watched the Mad Men season premiere last night and was blown away. As I’d predicted, Don completely lost his cool…
Every good copywriter knows that simplicity is the secret to success. Getting the message across quickly and effectively is what copywriting is all about. I’ve had clients come to me with briefs for 4,000 word sales brochures. That’s longer than some undergraduate dissertations at university. “Who’s going to read 4,000 words,” I ask? The client looks dumbstruck. He’s even more amazed when I come up with a 100 word sales pitch that tells the customer everything they’ll ever need to know.
Simple Sales Copy
A brief description, followed by a call to action. That’s as much as most sales copy…
As a freelance copywriter, I’m frequently brought in on projects that are already half way through. Sometimes, I’m brought in by a design agency. Other times, I’m brought in by a company who’s already got their design and now they’re looking for someone to fill it. While I’m happy to work on these projects, in fact, being brought in as a last-minute troubleshooter is where I make my real money — it’s not an ideal situation. For you, or for me. Here’s why:
Content is King
You may have heard the expression before. In fact, if you’re a writer or…
No, I’m not going to make you take another stupid quiz.I’m about to let you in on a little secret. This is the most important question I ask my clients when I take on new work. I ask:
“If your website / company / brand was a person,
what sort of person would they be?”
Copywriters thrive on detail. Often, we’re given a brief for a site, design or company that lacks character. The client has come to us because they want our copy to provide that character. But without direction, all we…
It’s the Don Draper effect. If you’ve seen Mad Men, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you work in this business, you know you’ve had to adapt. A couple of years ago, clients expected you to show up in jeans and t-shirt and a beard and they expected to tell you what to do. Now they expect you to show up clean-shaven, suited and booted, and ready to tell them how to run their business.
Mad Men is a pretty extraordinary show, not just because of the quality of the…
I briefly touched on Facebook privacy issues in my last post, mentioning that I’d stripped all information out of my profile in response to my growing concerns about Facebook’s constant push to share more information publicly.
There are a lot of so-called “social media experts” out there. The truth is there is no such thing. The majority of “social media experts” are simply people with regularly updated twitter feeds, a lot of friends on facebook they don’t really know, constantly bombarding you with requests to “like” their public page, which if you…
If you live in the UK you can’t have failed to notice there’s an election going on. I say going on, because for the first time in a generation, it hasn’t produced a decisive result in terms of forming a government. But that’s not the only area of indecision. Before the results were in, even leading political bloggers such as Iain Dale were reporting that the internet played a minimal role in the campaign — in stark contrast to many social media, marketing and web experts (including myself) who were confident this would be the UK’s first “internet…
This is a blog entry about changes to my pricing structure. If you’re looking for details about my current daily rate, or would like me to quote on a project, take a look at my rates page here and then get in touch.
_______________________________
It’s hard work being a freelance copywriter. In fact, it’s just hard work working for yourself. Not only are you unable to blame the boss when you’ve had a bad day, half the time, you’re expected to work for free. Here’s why.
Clients are…
Straplines, headlines, taglines, slogans. Call them what you will, they’re what make the advertising world go round. It’s rare to find a good headline writer. That’s because headlines are hard to write. Anyone can fill a page with four hundred words, but how many people can catch an audience’s attention and sum up the product they’re selling in four or so words?
It’s more important to sound natural than to be clever.
F Scott Fitzgerald famously started out in advertising and came up with the slogan “we keep you clean in Muscatine” for an Iowa based laundry service. While he…
I’ve written before about the difference between professional copy, and copy you’ve just written yourself. “Everyone who can speak English and read and write thinks they can be a copywriter,” I said. But they can’t. The question is — why? What does a professional copywriter do that you don’t?
A good copywriter writes sales-focused copy.
What does that mean? Well, here’s an example. Client A comes to me with Product A, and it’s the best product ever (so he thinks). He’s already come up with a great description of Product A to use on his website. But nobody’s buying.
Let’s…