So, it’s April Fool’s Day. And along with the usual plethora of tech-related pranks (well documented by TechCrunch) this spoof by The Guardian really caught my eye. In my last post, I talked about negative campaigning in politics, and how only a campaign based on hard fact is good enough to go on the attack.
But how do you counter-attack a negative campaign?
The Guardian’s April Fools joke may point us in the right direction.
OK, so it’s an obvious spoof. But…
I’m following the impending general election in the UK with increasing interest. Some of you may remember I responded positively to the Conservative Party’s first campaign poster — a positive, aspirational message. Evidently, it didn’t work. It wasn’t so much this poster — which, regardless of what you thought of it, generated a lot of media interest giving a pretty good ROI in terms of press exposure — but the ones that followed. The general consensus is, they’re pretty limp:
In fact, on seeing this poster, most people just say “what plans?” The Conservative Party are losing ground because…
My car is a bit of an unsung hero. I drive a beat up old Mercedes W202, and I probably love that car more than I’ve ever loved any woman. She’s never let me down and she’s no plans to leave me for a richer man. She’s survived two crashes where lesser cars have perished. Having said that, she’s looking a little rough around the edges these days and probably can’t do any better than the handsome young copywriter she’s currently hitched to.
Anyway, between personal, family and business reasons, I’ve clocked up several thousand miles in her this month.…
As a copywriter, I often get asked to make my work SEO compliant. In short, people are relying on me to know what works in terms of SEO — where should keywords go, and how often should they be repeated? Until now, I’ve relied more or less on a working knowledge of search engine optimization best practices I’ve learned from working with web designers, bloggers and other copywriters. This week, I’ve started using Scribe — a Wordpress SEO plugin developed and promoted by Brian Clark of Copyblogger.
What does it do?
In short, Scribe…
I’ve posted before about the perils of twitter. Twitter is a bubble used by a relatively small community of people — particularly, for some reason, politicians and web designers. But in small bubbles, news travels fast. And if you get it wrong, you get the entire self-righteous community coming down on you, as they did recently with Jan Moir and AA Gill or, more noble-mindedly, over the Trafigura case.
But it’s the fact that Twitter is so immediate that makes it so dangerous. It’s like having a gun with no safety catch. If…
What with email, chat and social networking, who sends letters any more? Arguably, the long-letter format is a dying art. At most, we can expect the occasional postcard from family members abroad. But there’s one day of the year when you might want to say something a little more personal than ‘wish you were here’.
Love it or loathe it, Valentines Day is the mandated time of the year when we’re supposed to make a pitch for our lover’s heart. Some say it with flowers, with a special breakfast… or even a special ring to surprise their loved ones. But…
I can wire a plug. So somehow this makes me think I can re-wire my house. Several electric shocks later, I’m reaching for my yellow pages. I’m not a mechanic, so when my car breaks down, I call the auto club. When I get sick, I call a doctor. The point? These are all professionals plying their trade.
But when it comes to writing, everyone’s a DIY merchant. Everyone thinks, well, I speak English, so I can write well. That’s why it’s hard for a copywriter to make it in this modern climate. People will happily shell out for web…
What do you do when your brand is worthless? What do you do when people who’ve bought your product and been burned by past failures to live up to expectations hate your brand so much they won’t ever touch it again?
You go on the attack.
There’s no point launching a ‘new and improved’ campaign — nobody believes those three trite words anyway. It’s not enough to win back people who don’t trust your brand. You could change the name. But if you’re a big company, that gets expensive.
So Domino’s Pizza tried a different strategy. They attacked their own…
I’m very impressed with Woods PR team. In case you haven’t spotted it yet, this is their simple response to all that negative publicity –
A while back, I suggested Tiger ought to try humour to deflect some of the criticism about his adultery. You know, give a lovely smile and a “who, me?” shrug of the shoulders. After all, anyone who’s ever read Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction knows that rakish charm can be very effective — like it or not, he argues, women love a cad.
This response is better. Tiger’s a number 1 sportsman. Okay,…
As a one-time political student, I have to admit I’m still a bit of a political junkie. But I love election campaigns because they give a real insight into what’s happening in the world of marketing. If world wars force technology to grow faster, then election campaigns are the atomic bomb of the advertising world. The biggest guns are brought out. And very quickly, it can lead to total annihilation.
Remember this blast from the past?
Well, a good campaign does stick in the mind. You have to look at the Tories’ latest offering and wonder what they’re thinking……