“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 can do is take a stab in the dark.

The personality question gives us direction. Instantly.

There’s a number of standard questions I run through with a client when I take on their work. I’ll ask them what their USP (unique selling point) is because it’s important to find out what sort of through line they want me to push (are they the best? the cheapest? the fastest?). I’ll ask them to show me some styles of copy that they like, or copy that they don’t like, and I’ll ask them to describe their ideal customer. But I learn more from this one single question than I do from anything else.

Getting your character across.

My site’s a great example. As I’m a freelancer, my site’s design, layout and copy is designed to reflect my personality, so you get a good idea about who I am before you hire me. Your website should be the same. Ever noticed how certain types of people drive certain types of cars? Of course you have. Or how about certain types of people preferring certain breeds of dog? Try personifying your company. Give it a face. Is it rugged or smooth? What clothes would your company wear? What car would it have parked in the drive. Most importantly of all, is your company a boy or a girl? The list goes on.

The important thing is, you learn more about yourself and how you want to project your company’s image to your customers this way.

By answering these simple questions, you can learn a lot more about what makes your company great. Not only that, you learn about your weaknesses, too. After all, some types of people just aren’t attracted to certain types. By personifying your company or website, it’s easier to see who your ideal customer is. And if your company’s personality isn’t a good match for your target market, you’ve got to change.

It isn’t easy being a copywriter. Often, we’re expected to intuitively understand a client’s personality, even when we’re working across the internet with a customer who’s hundreds or even thousands of miles away. But with this one simple question, you can cut through every single layer of corporate bullshit and sales-speak, branding and marketing guff, and get down to the bare essentials of who your client is — and what they want.

Try it some time. I guarantee it’ll be the best question you’ve ever asked.

_______________________________

 
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 happy to pay you for your hard work. They’re not so happy to pay you to answer your emails, price up and send out detailed quotes, and, of course, do your taxes. Yet “admin” work takes up half my week. So I have to factor this into my prices. Every freelancer does. That’s why when people come to me with a job and say “this will only take you a couple of hours, so I’m only going to pay you for two hours work” I turn them down. I may have to spend at least a half a day looking for work, so when I get it, it needs to cover all my costs.

So how much is it fair to charge? Well, at my base rate of £150 a day for the simplest work, I’d say I can earn about £500 a week. I’m not exactly going to be a millionaire any time soon. But a thought recently occurred to me…

Should I be setting variable prices?

Some of my bigger clients are getting a bargain. They know £150 a day is cheap compared to a big London copywriting agency, marketing agency or similar. They’d be happy to pay £300 a day — and they’d still be getting a bargain.

But jobs like this only come along rarely. The majority of the time I’m dealing with SMEs on a limited budget who can’t afford big agency prices.

So the question is, is it fair for me to set variable rates,
charging those willing to pay the most more than those who can’t pay much?

I don’t know the answer — that’s why I’m asking you.

There’s something distinctly unfair about charging people more than others for the same thing.

For example:

A friend and I recently tried to go bowling at the Lakeside Superbowl, Chichester. We were told by a very grumpy member of staff that we couldn’t have the deal advertised on the website as we hadn’t booked a day in advance — even though there were plenty of lanes available. We were told we’d have to pay £40 between us for four games, rather than the £16 in total the website suggested. Naturally, we refused to pay, and left.

The bowling alley could have had £16 off us. Yet they ended up with nothing.

I’m faced with a similar problem:

I do a great job (if I do say so myself) and I’m pretty sure that some of my clients would think £250 a day is value for money. But I know that some of my clients with small budgets wouldn’t be able to pay these rates. Is it fair for me to charge big clients £250 and small clients £150?

The answer is that it probably isn’t. I factor in the complexity of the work when giving a quote, and that includes the number of expected redrafts and amount of client time in meetings, phone calls and emails I’ll expect. Bigger companies tend to be more demanding, so naturally I’ll charge slightly more because they’ll take up more of my time.

Big jobs only come along every so often — and I find myself doing smaller jobs for companies on limited budgets 3/4 of the time. I couldn’t in all conscience set variable prices because I don’t think my clients would stand for it — just like I wouldn’t stand to pay full price at the bowling alley.

So I’m faced with two options:

Either charge “standard” rates for a senior copywriter, which is at least £250 a day, and lose some business (but have more time to go after ‘big’ clients) or carry on charging £150 a day and get more work more often, but risk seriously undercharging big clients who’d gladly pay £300 a day.

This is the freelancer’s dilemma. It’s a dilemma that most businesses face, too. Price is an indicator of quality. By being cheaper than my competition, I run the risk of looking cut-rate, and scaring off bigger customers. But if I raise my prices and don’t get enough big customers, I end up earning much less.

For now, I’m content to keep my prices within the £150-£200 a day rate, which is definitely cheap. But as my portfolio continues to improve and I find myself landing bigger and bigger clients, I find myself thinking that at some point, I’m going to have to start charging more.

After all, I don’t have a boss who’s going to give me a pay rise. As a freelancer, I have to decide that, too.

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 may have been the greatest writer of the 20th century, he wouldn’t have made it very far in the advertising world. Headlines like this are far too glib. Soon, they begin to grate. It’s possible to be “too” clever.

Good straplines find a great balance between being clever and being helpful, positive, and eye-catching.
They should stand out by being sharp, with carefully understated wordplay.

My favourite strapline out there at the moment belongs to the House of Fraser:

Yes, it’s a pun. But it’s a good one. A good pun doesn’t get tired the more you hear it, and every time I shop here, I look at that strapline and go “yup, that’s good.” It amuses, it explains, it entices but most of all — it’s positive.

Negativity never works.

A while ago I was asked to create a strapline for Skint.com, a website offering short term loans. Their existing headline, “it’s no fun with no money” simply didn’t work. Why? The use of the negative, twice. Why depress people by telling them something’s no fun — even if your site promises to fix that problem. Be positive. Look to the future, not the past.

Here’s the slogan I came up with for them.

You may have noticed it already in my portfolio. But it’s one of my favourites, and I thought it deserved a little explanation.

It’s positive. It’s proactive. It feels natural.

Most importantly of all, it paraphrases the three most important words in copywriting: we can help.

A copywriter’s job is to introduce his client to their customers in such a way as the customers know that the client is able to help them. They want to feel able to come to the client and know their needs will be satisfied, their demands will be met.

That’s also why ‘Temptation on every level’ works well. It tantalizes, it promises… there’s an aura of mystique with the feeling of a promise soon to be fulfilled.

Still think any old strapline will do? Think again. If your budget is limited, you’re better off paying a copywriter a day’s work to come up with one simple sentence that sums up your business than producing five or six hundred words of sales text.

Good headline writers are hard to find. That’s because good headline writing is the hardest skill a copywriter will ever have to master.

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 design, because it’s easier than learning HTML. But English is a language everyone understands. Or so they think.

I studied hard to get my MA in creative writing, and I’m an expert copywriter. I know the English language inside out. I know what works and what doesn’t. I know how to turn a phrase and how to turn your customers on to your services.

The hard part is convincing you to think the same way I do.

It’s hard to sell your services as a writer. That’s why there are so many beautiful websites containing awful copy. It’s the bit everyone does themselves to cut costs. Why pay a writer when you can do it yourself?

The truth is, most people can’t write very well at all. Writing well for an audience is an art, and it’s as hard as fixing a car or a broken boiler. Okay, maybe it’s not brain surgery, but like most things, you get a better result when you call in the professionals.

Dustin Curtis provides an excellent example of how a well written call to action can improve your response rate. By changing his call to “you should follow me on twitter here” from “I’m on twitter” he improved his response rate from 4.70% to 12.81%

That’s a threefold increase just by crafting a better written sentence. Heck, even adding ‘here’ to the end of the sentence resulted in a 3% increase.

That’s the power of good writing. A good copywriter can take your message and sell it to your customers. In short, he’s talking their language. Are you?

The chances are good you could vastly improve your marketing right now by hiring a professional writer, like me. The question is, why don’t you?

You should get in touch with me. Here.

Happy holidays everyone. It’s been a great year.

Photo by my friend Spencer (here), check out the best and worst agency Xmas cards here (and the very best here) and remember: Rage at no.1 this year proved one thing: it’s been a really great year for viral advertising (and, err, Sony Records).

See you all in the New Year!

There were a couple of reasons for the change. Mostly, if I’m honest with you, it’s because I’ve noticed that while clients seem to prefer the image of the chain-smoking, three-day-stubble sporting writer on the page, when you show up at a 9am meeting looking like you’ve been on a week long bender and reach for your already depleted pack of Camels, they get a bit annoyed. So my new photos look a lot more like the way I look in real life — during working hours, at least.

This is what the old home page looks like:

and here is the new one:

I’m a big fan of the amazing Mad Men, the best TV show about advertising, ever. There’s some quite interesting anecdotal evidence about how “the Sterling Cooper effect” is changing people’s perceptions of how a creative should look and act. So I decided to suit up. But I lost the cigarette. They may want you to look sharp, but smoking in front of clients is no more acceptable than asking them if they’d like to split a pint of scotch (I haven’t actually tried this — I’m just guessing).

I also listened to my own advice and simplified my copy. Statistically, I have a bounce rate of about 36% — meaning that I lose a third of my readers after the first page. This is actually a slightly better than average statistic. Count how often you close a website down after viewing just one page. I bet it’s more than you thought.

The point is, I’ve pretty much only got one page to tell every visitor to my site who I am and what I do.

That’s how the web works –
You have to sell yourself in a second. Two seconds is too late.

Personally, I think both ideas are great. And they’re both definitely “me” — but they also project a different image.

So far, the feedback I’ve had has been positive. And prospective client enquires seem to be on the up. But I’m interested in what everyone else thinks. I’ve explained my reasons for the re-brand.

Good. He’s a hero. An archetypal, flawed, don’t-make-’em-like-that-any-more hero. He also happens to work in advertising.

He’s also a fictional character. But what can us real-life ad men learn from Don?

1. Stay ahead of the game

I just watched the finale of Season 3 online. I live in the UK. I’d have to wait months to see this on TV. So I didn’t.The world has moved online. Move with it, or be left behind — just like Harry is ahead of his time setting up a TV department at Sterling Cooper, so too have the agencies who saw the potential of the web powered ahead. Online advertising spend now outstrips television advertising. Get with the times.

If a film comes out in America but the release is delayed for even just a few weeks here, I’ll watch it online. That’s the way the internet works. Once it’s out, it’s out. You can’t censor it, block it, or slow it down. This is why Rupert Murdoch’s plan to make all his online newspapers subscription only will fail. Someone will reblog them for free.

2. Everyone at an ad agency should be creative.

It’s not just the creatives who have to think fast. Whether it’s a secretary coming up with a good excuse for why her boss is out of the office (hint – “he’s at the printers” doesn’t work in a digital age) or a personal assistant coming up with a reason why he needs an office, thinking on your feet gets results.

Pete Campbell gets made partner because he’s as creative as Don. No, he doesn’t have great advertising ideas. But when it comes to manipulating people, he’s good — one of the best .Whether it’s blackmailing Don or cooking up intricate schemes to get the next-door-neighbour’s au pair in the sack, he’s great at handling people. He’s creative.

Creative itself has to be creative two times over. Half of what Don does is to sell an idea to his clients. He has to be able to explain to them why his ideas work. If you can’t explain it to your clients, go back to the drawing board. Your idea’s just not that good.

3. Be cool.

Sharp suits. Sleek cars. The best barber in town. Everyone in Mad Men oozes cool the same way real-life ad-men sweat. Cool always saves the day. Whether you’ve been caught having an affair, or someone’s foot has been run over by a John Deere tractor, be cool.

For the last few years to be a “creative” you’ve had to look like a cross between a mad artist and an eccentric hobo. Either that, or look like you’ve just got out of bed. Times are changing. Clean cut is cool again.

Success breeds success. Successful people are successful because they look the part. People trust them. They look like winners. Would you let a loser loose on your account?

4. It’s tough at the top. It’s even tougher at the bottom.

Don’s broken away to form his own ad agency. He’s struck out, boldly — perhaps taking a leaf out of Connie Hilton’s book, or maybe just finally getting round to reading that Ayn Rand that Bert Cooper lent him. But suddenly the team’s gone from working in a gorgeous serviced office to working out of a hotel room. Sure, they’ve got room service, but it’s going to get cramped.

The point is, branching out on your own brings rewards. And if you don’t want to be a cog in a wheel, sometimes you’ve got to take risks. There are some agencies I’d love to work for. There are other jobs I’ve turned down. I’m a freelancer because the hours and the pay suit me right now. But if the right company made the right offer… or if a beautiful viscount’s daughter came along…

The most successful characters in Mad Men take risks. But they also take opportunities when they come knocking. And they’ve always got one eye on the next rung on the ladder. They play the long game.

5. There are some things you can’t get away with any more.

Drinking in the office. Now frowned upon. Try going for a gin martini after work instead. Drinks in the morning? Don’t get caught out in an embarassing pants-wetting episode. Try rehab. Sexual harrassment — it’s out too, I’m afraid. Homophobia — see how far that gets you these days. Television? Who cares. And for the love of God, don’t tell your boss you’ve had “a great idea to target the negro market”.

Mad Men is brilliant because it simultaneously shows us how far we’ve come, and how similar we still are. It’s a triumph of style and substance. A show whose popularity has spread by word of mouth.  In fact, Mad Men is just like the best marketing campaigns.

It’s won our hearts. We can all learn from it.

It’s hard setting time aside to relax, especially when you’re an “always on” kind of guy like me. I used to have a pool table (technically, a friend’s pool table) and that helped me to focus a lot. A fifteen minute work-out on the table gave my mind just enough breathing space to recover and get back in the game.

I wouldn’t say I’m a loner. In fact, I love being around people. I love watching them, love trying to figure them out — I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I couldn’t get into people’s heads. But when I’ve got two, sometimes even three clients, all expecting work to be delivered within strict deadlines… it gets hard.

I live about an hour outside of London, but when things get stressful, there’s a place I can drive to to clear my head. Sometimes I take a notebook. Usually I just go up there and sit for a while and ideas come to me. I’ve held off mentioning it here because I’ve often thought some clients might take exception to the fact they’re paying me to sit in a clearing for hours at a time and clear my head.

But that’s where the best ideas come from: a clear mind, uncluttered, unfettered by daily designs.

This is where I go when I need to come up with new ideas:

It’s really quite beautiful. Breathtaking, actually — this photo clumsily snapped on my 2MP BlackBerry hardly does it justice.

Us creative types are odd. When I was first starting out, a friend told me all I needed to succeed in advertising was a good haircut once a month and a good idea once every three or four years. I think that’s changing as social media makes the world turn that little bit faster and faster… but nonetheless — the busier the world gets, the more important this seems:

You’ve got to find time to stop and see things from afar.
That’s when the bigger picture becomes clear.

When you’re stressed, stop working. When you’ve stopped working, stop stressing.
Then get back on with the job.

I’m thinking about moving closer to London to be near to my work, but I’m not sure I want to leave this place behind.

I guess with all things it’s just about finding a coping strategy. Maybe I’ll have to buy myself a new pool table if I move back to the city.

In actual fact, it’s been a mixture of both this time. I’ve been doing a lot of copywriting, but I’ve not felt as if I have a lot to add in terms of sharing my thoughts with the world. There’s my random musings on Tumblr, of course… but I’ll spare you those here.

The most interesting thing that’s happened for me recently is the milestone that says more money is spent on online advertising than is spent on TV advertising. It’s linked to what I’ve been saying before — the web is fast becoming dominated by social media and viral video, and these are the two areas every company and advertiser needs to be looking at in terms of securing their online presence.

But this is something you should already know. Unless you’re living in a cave, of course.

Most of my work these days is for tech clients, is writing on the web. Even my offline product launches, the work I do for my “real world” clients in the Home Counties, involves websites and web-work.

The internet has changed everything, and social media and streaming video have changed it again. I really think we’re heading towards a day when other forms of media will be obsolescent. Television — destroyed by Youtube, Megavideo, BitTorrent. Radio obliterated by Spotify. Newspapers — available online through RSS feeds, Kindle readers and syndicated web portals.

It’s a brave new world. What I want to know is, why aren’t more digital design agencies modernizing to support it?

Most web agencies seem to think it’s enough to build websites,
or promote them, or provide content.

They don’t seem to understand the importance of what they’re doing –
targeting potential customers, selling them something…
even if it’s just an idea.

Just as the web is slowly making traditional forms of media obsolete, so too I think the big advertising agencies will make smaller design agencies obsolete. They’ll be squeezed out, at the very least — big clients will want big packages, and total solutions, targeted at their customers. They won’t just want beautiful websites.

I’m not trying to be a web guru here, sometimes I get it wrong. I remember being blown away by the launch of Facebook Lite (because it meant no more mafia wars) but going back to full Facebook 24 hours later when I found I couldn’t put rich content into my links. Having said that, I reckon I still know a good product when I see one. I’m still using my King of Shaves razor, and Frassy seems to go from strength to strength.

But I do think even a blind man can see the changes on the horizon, the changes that increased spending on advertising on the web is bringing — not just to the web, but also to design agencies, and to branding consultants such as myself.

These are exciting times. I think there’s a lot of money to be made out there — if you’re good at what you do…

This post, linked to by Guido Fawkes simply as “Twitter Tsar Talks Tosh” on PR-media-blog.co.uk, sums up a lot about what’s right and wrong with Twitter. Skip to the end:

Labour is experimenting with different social media activities, including a way of using Twitter to make grass roots activists feel more included…

…but is there a risk that Labour positioning itself as the “social media party” will detract from the real issues the public care about? “We’ve been careful about this,” says McCarthy, “as there’s nothing worse than politicians trying to be trendy. Authenticity is important and people will see if we are using it as a gimmick…

But how significant will social media be in helping Labour to victory in 2010? “It’s not the magic bullet that will win the election; it’s a small part of getting across the message but will help in getting activists enthused.”

PR Blog has highlighted a good point: twitter only reaches your converts. It rarely converts new listeners — and advertisers need to be noting that as keenly as politicians. They’ve also made a glaring mistake, by equating twitter with social media. Yes, Twitter is a form of social media, but it isn’t all social media.

As I’ve already pointed out, viral video and other ‘blitzkrieg’ guerrilla advertisements will be what changes the next general election. Tweets will merely give them more exposure.

With devastating simplicity, Guido has passed his own judgment in the comments:

“Oh and she is wrong about the use of social media in a political context, preaching to the choir or interacting without purpose with your base is not politically significant, nor will it have an electoral effect.

Carry on Tweeting, it won’t change the polls.“

I’m not against microblogging.

I’m just not a fan of the twitter format,

or the attitude that goes with it.

I’ve found one that I like – Tumblr.

It’s a great idea: a microblogging service that bills itself as a scrapbook for thoughts, musings, quotes, pictures, links and video. In short, it’s twitter without the restrictive word-count and the emphasis on links. You follow people and have followers. I’m already a big fan. I’ve been following Don Draper for quite some time. My tumblr is full of random musings and aphorisms — it’s also considerably less professional than my blog here. It’s good to let your hair down.

Can anyone recommend me any other good tumblr’s to follow? I’m hooked.

Speaking of mistakes…

…a neckbeard got in touch to point out, not nicely, either, that there was — shock horror — a spelling mistake somewhere on this website and I’d never make it as a writer if I couldn’t spell. I pointed out, rather brusquely, that I’m not a proofreader, and I am, in fact, shockingly, human. That’s to say, I do make mistakes. People hire me because I come up with brilliant branding ideas backed up with sound, cogent copy. They don’t hire me because I’m a grammar nazi. I apologise for my mistake.

He’s the first person out of 16,831 visitors to this site since July to notice. Or perhaps, simply the first person to care. I won’t be offering a prize. I’m sure fastidiousness of this nature is its own reward.

If my eagle eyed friend thinks my dropping an “e” from a word was the most enormous mistake I’ve ever made, I’d hate to see what he’d make of my last relationship…

Keep it simple

It’s not Shakespeare. Nobody wants Shakespeare, either. He’s old and nobody understands him. But I guess if you’re writing copy for a living rather than plays about kings and murder, you’ve figured that out already.

But what you might not have worked out is that simplicity isn’t just about using common words. That’s just patronizing — and audiences hate that. Sure, you want to go easy on the thesaurus, but simplicity comes from using a minimal number of words in a short sentence, without redundancies. Treat your reader like a savvy, time-poor client. Pitch to him quickly in easy to understand language.

If you can say it in a sentence, don’t use a paragraph. Because people won’t read it.

Break up your text

Like I’ve just done. If all the reader sees is the two sentences above in italics, and not the preceding paragraph, they’ll have got my message.

Nothing is harder on the eyes than blocks of identical, lengthy paragraphs.

That’s doubly true on the web. But even on printed copy, if you’re working with material of any kind of length, break up the text. I’ve been working on a 5000 word brochure. I’ve already got it down to 3000 words. That’s practically an essay. But I can’t take out any more text without the client getting unhappy.

So instead I’m going to break up the text with

headings

italics
bold
and of course

• bullet points.

Avoid bad words

There’s definitely a list of words you should never use. “Fresh” is one of them. Nothing described as “fresh” ever sounds fresh. It sounds like a marketing consultant with a clip on pony tail muttering things like “fresh and funky” whilst stroking his goatee beard. “Funky” also means “smells bad,” folks. So if your text is funky, it sure as hell isn’t fresh.

I could go on for hours. Apparently, the world’s most hated word (if you’re a woman) is moist. I’m not sure why. Perhaps we’re all living in a pornographic cliche. But it’s a reminder: know your audience.

My pet hate is the word “basically”. You know. “What I’m basically trying to say is…”

Stop. When you say “basically” you’re saying to someone ‘hey, I’m smarter than you, and I’m simplifying for you, because I don’t think you’d understand.’

If you have to simplify, use the word “essentially”. That way your reader knows you’re leaving stuff out because he’s busy and you’re just presenting him with the main facts. Not that you think he’s an idiot.

Last but not least… avoid cliche.

Think about it. Where did that idea for a great blog post come from? If it came from “that guy you read last week” don’t bother, unless it’s a direct reply. You’re just rehashing other people’s material. I post once or twice a week. Because, honestly, that’s about how much I have to say.

It’s also acceptable to use irregular punctuation when you’re speaking in a conversational style. If you’re writing formally, don’t dare. You’ll just look uneducated. But if you’re trying to build up a rapport with your audience, use punctuation as you’d use breathing marks if you were reading out loud. Your reader will love you.

You either get up in four hours, and sleepwalk through the day. Or you shut out the glimmer of light that’s already peeping through the curtains, and get up in the mid-afternoon.

Either way, your day’s been written off. Or has it?

In my case, yes, the day was definitely written off. I was so angry about being kept up I found it impossible to concentrate when I finally rose, zombie-like, from the pit of my bedchambers and poured myself what was to be the first of about twenty coffees. I ended up spending the day shooting pool. I lost almost every game.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

As a creative, I need my sleep. Without it, my imagination seems to die. There’s tons of research out there linking sleep with the creative process, so I won’t bore you with it. You might, you know, fall asleep. Suffice to say if I have bad dreams, I usually have a bad day at work. And I sometimes find my best ideas come to me in bed, which is why I always keep a notebook beside me. The draft copy for this website was written two minutes after waking.

I’m a big fan of the power nap. In my youth (I still think I’m young, but you try telling a teenager that) I used to swear by them. An hour’s kip before a big night out always got me through it. These days, sometimes, if I’m having a hard time, I’ll rest my eyes for an hour and let my mind wander. Usually, I snap out of it, and come back refreshed and with new ideas (hint: if your desk is in a large, open plan office, you probably shouldn’t try this at your place of work).

A friend once told me: I don’t have bad days, ever, because I can choose to start my day at any time.

It’s a good one to remember. Although it’s hard to live up to chirpy advice when you’re angry and you haven’t slept. But if you can’t sleep, you can’t beat a change of scenery — take a break, go for a walk. And if you can’t change that, maybe you should change your job, or find a more understanding boss who knows that productivity can’t be shoehorned into a 9-to-5.

There’s nothing wrong with taking a siesta. It’s probably a lot healthier than that eighth can of red bull.

Thanks to my neighbours, I’ve been doing research (research I’d admittedly rather not be doing) into unusual sleeping patterns. For me, I’ve found that six or seven hours at night, with a one or two hour top up late afternoon / early evening maximizes my productivity throughout the day.

But take a look at this. Theoretically, it’s possible to cut your sleep down to six twenty minute bursts throughout the day — to train yourself to get the “recharge” your body needs. I’m hoping it won’t come to that. There’s a reason this sleep pattern is called “the uberman”. But I can’t help but wonder. With a few half hour bursts of sleep a day, would I be more creative?

Or just mad?

I think Smashing Magazine think I’m a little bit arrogant. I suppose my face is plastered all over this site. But as regular readers of this blog know, I’m a big fan of the personal touch — adding that extra endorsement works, whether you’re a one-man outfit, or the boss of a much larger operation — it’s why I thought the promo campaign for the King of Shaves was so powerful. Sometimes, you have to be your own brand.

I’ve been taking on a lot of branding work lately — my favourite kind of work. It involves working with a client to figure out who their target audience is, then figuring out how to reach them.

So at the risk of sounding arrogant (sorry, guys) I thought I’d talk a little today about how I set up my own business.

It’s an example of what I can do for you.

The idea

This time last year I was a struggling journalist. To say I was earning peanuts would be an insult to monkeys. In fact, it’s an insult to peanuts, too. I’d done a lot of freelance copywriting, but I couldn’t get on the books of the big agencies. I was young, untested and we were in the midst of the collapse of the entire world banking system, after all.

Image is everything. How you pitch yourself determines who you are.

I saw an opportunity to take on the big agencies at their own game. I saw my chance to blow the opposition apart — not just the agencies, but also the old-school freelancers who knew a lot about writing (nice dictionaries, guys) but not a lot about what sells. After all, if they can’t pitch themselves right, what hope do they have of pitching anything for you?

A quick search revealed a lot of copywriters with poorly designed sites, loaded with copy as dull as a matt grey sky. You’d be amazed at the number of them who claimed their copy was “fresh”. Who even uses that word any more, let alone to describe a piece of writing? My competitors were stuck in the nineties.

I saw my chance. I took it. The result is this site, and this agency. You’re already here, so I won’t ramble on.

The secret

I’m a young, confident writer. I’m an individual. I work with branding, image and sales pitches. I don’t just work with words. Words are the end product of my work.

Most people who come to copywriters aren’t just looking for help with their text. They’re looking for a solution.

Copy is a string of words thrown together.
A brand is a sales pitch that gets results.

Most copywriters can produce the former.
Only a few can produce the latter.

My site is an example of good design, images and text that, taken together, create a pitch. My portfolio isn’t my words. It’s my image. That’s my brand.

When you buy my services, you’re buying me. You’re trusting me to come up with concepts that support my words. You want a troubleshooter, you don’t want the end-product of a team of suits “brainstorming” behind a conference desk. I get results, and I get them fast.

I’m more than just a writer. I’m a creative.

Maybe that’s arrogance. Personally, I think it’s just old-fashioned confidence. Either way, I’m certain it’s the secret to success.

Sure, I’m a freelancer. I can (and do) spend quite a bit of time writing at home, in the garden, in my shorts. But it’s tough out there at the minute. If the work’s not there, the work’s not there.

On quiet days when I have nothing to do I don’t laze around sunbathing or watching TV. I get back to doing what I was trained to do — to write creatively.

I had a free afternoon today so I popped down to the cafe, set up shop, and knocked out a couple of thousand words of fiction. It felt good.

I won’t bore you with the details (there’s nothing worse than writers writing about writing), but copyblogger has it right. I may not be a poet (I never could make things rhyme) but I am a creative. Writing pure fiction stretches muscles that other forms of writing just can’t reach.

They’re muscles that need exercising from time to time. After all, I use the same set of skills that I use to write fiction to create quality copy — my imagination, my vocabulary, my sense of style.

Copyblogger thinks that the best copywriters are creative writers. I agree. It’s one thing being proficient, competent, clean. But good writing has soul — a good writer will breathe life into his words, whoever his audience may be. Too much copy these days is bland and lifeless and feels like it could’ve been written by a machine. The best copy will always be the copy that establishes a dialogue with your clients. Good conversation is good communication.

Work’s been picking up a bit lately. I don’t have as much free time as I used to. And, of course, clients have to come first. But I’m going to keep setting aside a couple of hours a day to write for pure pleasure. After all, if I didn’t get any pleasure out of writing, I’d be in the wrong game, wouldn’t I?

Some days I just love what I do.

And they said — write about Twitter.

I said no. For starters, I don’t twitter. From what I’ve seen of it, I’ve no desire to be any part of it. Moreover, writers writing about twitter (from either side) have pretty much done the subject to death. Talking about Twitter (if you’ll forgive me sounding like a teenager) is just so 2008.

Then I read this. If you can’t be bothered to read it, I’ll save you a bit of time. It’s pretentious crap. If you don’t believe me, I’ll reprint the title for you. “Twitter ripped the veil off ‘the other’ – and we saw ourselves” it screams, all but adding a double!! exclamation mark in a hyperbolic gesture that boomerangs back right up its backside. The article goes on to loudly proclaim that twitter “allowed the world to connect with the Tehran rebels.”

Yes, we get it. With Twitter you can aggregate a vast number of voices in a very short space of time. And, obviously, a lot of them are pretty angry about the recent elections over there. But really, this is just stating the pretty-bleeding-obvious. Moreover, it doesn’t tell us a great deal else. Using twitter in this way is really just a way of counting crowds. It’s no more revolutionary than taking a straw poll of your mates down the pub — only now you can do it for people a thousand miles away. It’s something, I admit. But it’s hardly the reinvention of the web.

The simple fact is there are better sources available elsewhere — and the web has made those pretty much instantaneous, too. And if you want the real scoop on Iran, you’re better off looking at the detailed analysis. Already I can access this excellent report from Chatham House.

If you want a report with a personal twist, you’re still better off sticking to the blogs. Remember Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger? His reports were instrumental in giving us the inside story on the Iraq invasion. I don’t think his commentary would have been nearly as insightful had he been limited to a few hundred characters a few times a day.

And therein lies the problem. Twitter is a mess. It’s a morass of voices, most of them mumbling pretty inane stuff about their daily lives. I’ve seen people twitter about who they’re sitting next to on the bus — invariably a smelly old man they’d rather not be sitting next to. A fun way of keeping in touch with mates, perhaps. But a revolution in communications it ain’t.

Twitter isn’t good for business because it isn’t businesslike. It is a medium that demands immediacy, and that’s best done at a personal level. Sure you could have your CEO twitter, but shouldn’t he be busy running the business? And if you employ a firm to twitter for you, or leave it to your in-house PR people, well, you’re still missing the point of what Twitter is best at.

I don’t twitter because I think 99% of the time it’s vapid and inane. I wouldn’t encourage anyone in business to twitter for the same reason. Okay, so you can reach your clients quickly. But is sending them a 140 character message that shows up next to some other message about their mate who’s stuck next to Mr Stinky on the bus again really going to send out the message you want to project?