August 2011 - Otis Regrets... or not

Six shortcuts for copywriting research

What do you do when you get an assignment in an entirely new area, for a product you’ve never written about? Here are a few seat-of-the-pants research strategies to wrap your mind around the project.

1. Read what your audience reads. Is the campaign running on audience-specific websites? Or mailing to subscription lists? Reading the pubs can give you clues about what interests your prospects and what level of writing they’re used to seeing. One timesaving tip for magazines: look at the publisher’s column in the front of the book. These are usually fairly vapid puff pieces which appeal to what the publisher or editor thinks the audience wants to read. You can do better writing than this, and you will, but looking at the topics in the publisher’s column gives you quick insights.

2. Study the competition. The web offers a wealth of free competitive research for copywriters. Find out who your client considers major competitors and also do searches using their keywords to see who else comes up, then study the way those competitors are marketing themselves. As a bonus, you may find links to research and stats you can repurpose for your own client. (But be sure to follow the links to their source, rather than quoting a competitor directly. The stats may be erroneous or proprietary and besides, plagiarism is never okay.)

3. Read the product manual or documentation. Some manuals are overly technical or poorly written, but every now and then you’ll find that a good technical writer has done the groundwork of testing a product and finding the best way to assemble and use it for quick satisfaction. That’s a boon for you.

4. Talk to the product manager. In a technology company, the product manager is the link between engineering and sales. They know how the product works and they are able to explain it in a way that makes sense to a non-technical audience. They also know how the hot buttons that appeal to their target audience in demos and at trade shows.

5. Talk to the sales team… maybe. Some salespeople focus on “people skills” and pride themselves on being able to close on the strength of their personality, not product benefits. You’ll come away with a string of generalities that aren’t convincing when you set them down in writing. But if you ask them what are the most common concerns or objections they hear on a sales call and how they respond, even non-technical salespeople may reveal strategy points that the internal marketing people don’t know about.

6. Talk to customers. This is a tricky one. Somebody who actually uses the product can be a great source of insight as well as potential quotes or even copy platforms. However, your client may not be comfortable putting you in front of a customer directly. And the customer may expect that there’s something in it for them—they’ll get their name in print with a testimonial (perhaps a terrible one they have prewritten for you) or maybe some free samples. So be careful. Tell them at the outset that you’ll try not to take much of their time and thank them profusely, letting them know by implication that thanks are all they’re getting from you.

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

Converting your gas service from propane to natural gas

Our main house runs on natural gas but we have a small outbuilding (my office) which did not have gas service and ran on propane. When we bought the place we did some upgrades to the outbuilding and told the contractor we wanted to convert to natural gas eventually so he should do plumbing and buy appliances with this in mind. This year we finally got around to the conversion and found it a very expensive proposition.

First, the plumbing requirements for natural gas and propane are completely different. It’s not just the different diameter connectors. Propane uses copper, which isn’t legal for natural gas. So if you do the conversion, expect to replumb your entire gas service.

In addition, don’t assume all gas appliances are convertible. We were able to convert our stove and heater with a kit, but the most expensive item, a Navian on-demand hot water heater, isn’t convertible. Now we are stuck with a $1700 bill for a new Navian and the old one goes on Craigslist.

To sum up, don’t expect your propane to natural gas conversion to be cheap or convenient. It will be many years, if ever, before we get back in lower utility bills what we’ve spent on this conversion. Best thing to do is decide what your permanent needs are when you do the original gas plumbing, then stick to it.

P.S. If you’re a regular reader, you may be wondering why I am telling you this in the otisregrets blog. I apologize for the diversion, but it’s in a good cause. Do a search for “propane to natural gas conversion” and there’s not much out there except this post. By sharing my experience, maybe we can save someone a buck or two.

Should we let pandas go extinct, or tigers? World Wildlife Federation wants to know.

Pandas, tigers, bears... oh, my. — Pandas, tigers and bears... oh, my.

In the Biblical Book of 1 Kings, Solomon must judge which of two women is the mother of a baby and, as a marketing experiment, he offers to split it in half. The bogus mom says “go for it” while of course the real mother says “she can have it, spare my child!”

This lesson was not lost on the new crop of marketers who seem to be in place at the World Wildlife Fund. They worry about which species you might like to support, so they give you a choice. Select a panda, polar bear or tiger, and to hell with the other two.

Of course, that’s not exactly what is happening. WWF wants you to “choose your favorite species” and they will send you a “symbolic adoption kit” consisting of an adorable stuffed panda/tiger/polar bear, matching tote bag, adoption certificate and “information brochure” when you make a commitment of $8 per month.

What is wrong with this campaign is a tone deaf absence of common sense. If you are a person committed to supporting threatened nature, “choose your favorite species” is fingernails on a chalkboard or a punch in the solar plexus. And as an adoptive parent I can tell you the concept of “symbolic adoption” is like that turd in the pie in The Help—gag-inducing repugnant. Adoption is like pregnancy. It is or it isn’t, no qualifiers allowed.

The devils that infest this package do more damage in the letter, whose first paragraph in its entirety is “You hear it every day:” Holy endangered pythons. Can you imagine a worse way to begin a letter than by acknowledging I am going to talk to you about something you already know? Then the final and fatal self-inflicted wound is delivered in the response device which, after all the lead-up in the letter and doubtless the campaign planning, reassures on the panel the recipient sees when opening the envelope that this is a “one-time gift”.

I actually have some inkling where this misbegotten concept originated. When my older son (not the “symbolic adopted” one) was about 4 years old, his big sister gave him an adoption certificate for an Asian tiger he was going to save through her gift. He was bummed because first, he wanted a stuffed tiger and second, he did not think he was up to caring for a real tiger.

You can see the wheels turning at WWF’s marketing department, before they came off. Great idea for grandparents! The kids are confused by the idea of “adoption” so let’s make it “symbolic”. And since polar bears, pandas and tigers are all just so cute, let’s give them a choice which they want to protect!

Sorry if I am on a bit of a high horse here, but we are not selling Bass-O-Matics®. This is a legitimate and well established not-for-profit with a very clearly defined mission. The sin, and let’s use that weighted word rather than just calling it a boneheaded mistake, was in forgetting a/who we are and b/who our audience is and c/where our mission and message intersects with their passion and desires.

If you’re a copywriter with recurring clients, you know this. An experienced WWF copywriter never would have come up with this concept because you have your client’s brand statement stapled on the wall of your studio if not tattooed on your brain pan. Pandas, tigers, polar bears, there’s room for everyone. Can we all get along?

Who are you writing to? The marginal prospect.

After I had been working as a copywriter for several years, and long after I stopped trying to get my big break in the film business, I realized why I had never sold a screenplay: I didn’t try hard enough. (Well, the quality of the work may have had something to do with it too…) I’d be so full of myself at the end of my final draft that I’d just drop it off at the desk of an agent or reviewer and wait for the adoring comments and contracts which somehow never materialized.

Many mediocre copywriters have the same problem with their work. They don’t realize that telling a story isn’t enough. They need to sell it, by continually staying on form with benefits to tie into features and urgent appeals to act now and avoid missing out. And, they need to reach deep into themselves to continually entertain or move the reader so they can keep them on the hook.

Here, as elsewhere, the 80/20 rule applies. 40% of your audience (if you’re lucky) may be predisposed toward your product or service and don’t really need to be sold. Another 40% will never buy no matter how persuasive you may be. The final 20% is your audience: the marginal prospect who may buy, but only if you persuade them. Keep that marginal buyer in your sights and you will be less likely to become either discouraged or complacent.

This post is excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS!

Marketers, don’t make Apple mad

If your company held a giveaway and said I could enter to win an iPad if I bought a product, that would be illegal. “Consideration” is one of the legal no-nos in a sweepstakes which is why the rules always say in big letters, NO PURCHASE NECESSARY.

illicit iPad image — Use of images from Apple's website is also prohibited.

If your company had a giveaway and said I could enter to win an iPad with no purchase required, that would be…. prohibited. Say what? By whom? By Apple, according to their new promotional guidelines.

Apple, which will soon be or already is the world’s most valuable company, has decided it has the right to tell people what to do with products they have already purchased. iPads may not be used in promotions of any kind, period. iPod touches are ok if you buy 250 units. And of course everything must follow guidelines provided by Apple and be submitted for Apple approval.

The use of third party trademarks in marketing is a grey area. It’s not the same as my writing about iPads in this blog (there I said it iPad iPad iPad) where the primary purpose is educational so I’m protected by something called “Fair Use”. But what is very clear is that Apple has a lot more money and a lot more lawyers than you do.

I can’t find evidence of any marketer who has actually been dinged by Apple for violating this policy, which was issued earlier this year but is only recently garnering attention. But I do know at least one of my agency clients will no longer use iPad promotions. They are going to instead give away, and give free publicity to, a competing product from HP.

Boingo and the Netflix effect

I don’t have a lot of love for Netflix these days. But at least they are upfront about wanting to put their hand in my pocket. A much more insidious example of corporate greed showed up in my email this week with the subject line: Exciting Account Info, Boingo in the Sky, and a Celebration in Your Honor.

I signed up for Boingo wireless a couple of years ago when you had to pay through the nose for airport wireless access. I noticed that Boingo was often one of the carriers. I signed up for a month on a free trial, then when I tried to cancel at the end of the month they quickly lowered the $29.95 monthly fee to $9.95. I’ve been a subscriber ever since, though I’ve been wondering why since more and more airports offer free wireless now and, when they don’t, the Boingo network less frequently shows up as an option.

So, okay, I could use some exciting account news, and here’s what it is: Boingo wants me to download a new version of their app and, as soon as they do, my account will be tied to a specific wireless device. You get two devices so my laptop and Droid are ok, but if I want to add a tablet or occasionally connect on another computer, that’s another $5 a month per device.

That’s not exciting news, that’s a price increase, and I’ve hopefully avoided it for now by not downloading this Trojan horse of a new app (“It only takes a minute!”) However, Boingo promises “lots of surprises between now and the end of the year” and I would not be surprised if one of those is the disabling of the current software.

Publishing my ebook on FastPencil

Longtime readers may recall that I started my career as a writer, but not a seller, of screenplays. A special frustration of this status is that a screenplay is not a freestanding creative work. It’s not “done” until somebody makes it into a movie.

It used to be the same with the vast majority of book manuscripts which were lovingly and carefully written and then launched into an unappreciative world. If a publisher turned you down you could print it yourself at a vanity press but the distribution list was limited to friends and relations.

The phenomenon of epublishing has changed this scenario in a major way. Now anyone writing a book can indeed expect that it will be published and distributed if you’re willing to pay the modest sum to register it on Kindle, Nook and similar channels. The market may or may not love you, but you can now say to anyone who crosses your path, “I’ve got a book!”

I have now built out and edited much of the content in the “Copywriting 101” category to create an ebook called “Copywriting that Gets Results”. Initially I planned to use Amazon’s Kindle platform but after reading some reviews I chose to go with FastPencil.com. They made it especially easy for me to import blog posts as a working manuscript and they offer a choice where I can publish on their site for $9.99, or get wide distribution (a number of ebook sites, including Kindle, Nook and others) as well as the setup for a physical book (to be printed on a per-copy basis as required) for an all-inclusive fee of $199.

I chose the latter, and the finished product is now available on FastPencil and will propagate to other epublishing sites over the next few weeks. I was originally going to sell it for $9.99 and then offer a $3 discount to Otisregrets readers, but FastPencil doesn’t allow couponing. So I am publishing the ebook at $6.99 and offering a preview for free; you can also order a hard copy for $14.95 plus shipping.

FastPencil is by no means perfect. Their free publishing format has limited flexibility because they would like you to pay extra for “Silver” or “Gold” level services which come with more design choices and some consultation. And there were some technical glitches along the way which were quickly handled by their support team. But I was determined to make the free tool work in the same way I was determined to make the Copyblogger WordPress style work when I stared my blog. Free is good.

So, I’ve got a book! Now go forth and buy the ebook or printed copy and while you’re at it, sign up for a free FastPencil membership which allows you to do your own publishing. (That’s an affiliate link so by using it you are helping to support this blog. )

Thinking outside the “Johnson Box”

The Johnson box is named for Frank Johnson, who popularized it as a promotional writer for Time-Life books in the 1950s. In an era where most direct mail letters had the appearance of being typewritten, it would be above the salutation, usually centered, and surrounded by a row of asterisks at top and bottom and a line of asterisks down each side—in other words, a box.

Johnson box and intro of sub letter for Great American Recipes

The Johnson box has its equivalent in almost every HTML email today which, in addition to body text, usually has a graphic at the top and some kind of sidebar which is visible in the preview window. In print, it’s morphed into the “superscript”—a statement above the salutation in an attention-getting font that might be next to the address in a personalized letter, or even in the middle of the page with copy wrapped around it. The purpose in every case is to give the reader multiple entry points to increase the odds they will engage with the message.

The classic use of the Johnson box is to summarize the content of the letter—including the key marketing message, the offer and the call to action—in a paragraph. That way a busy reader needs read no further.

But I like to use Johnson boxes as a counterpoint—since your letter has two openings, they can be as different as you want them to be and the reader can decide which to read first. A good example is a letter in a package I did with Carol Worthington Levy for Great American Recipes, a continuity program that starts by sending a “gift” of several sample cards and a box to put them in. The Johnson box is all about the offer… but then I am able to squander the first three paragraphs of the letter without even mentioning the product. This was very useful because what we were really selling was the nostalgic experience of using the recipes. The package became Great American Recipes’ first non-sweepstakes control.

These days letters tend to have multiple calls to action (a URL and a phone number, plus maybe fax and mail-back instructions) which can swamp a Johnson box. So I’ll concentrate on one key element of the offer and then provide an abbreviated CTA. My control letter for Online Trading Academy does this. We tell readers they’re going to “learn the secrets of professional traders” and that this an exclusive, invitation-only event, and we’re done.

Herschell Gordon Lewis in one of his books provides an example of another use of the Johnson box: to incite curiosity. A subscription offer for Cat Fancy magazine starts with a quiz about cats. If the purpose of the letter is to engage the reader in a dialog, why not start at the top? A similar application is any letter or email that’s going to offer a series of numbered “rules” or “questions”. Pull out one example (always from the middle, never item #1) and use that to tease the reader into wondering what other secrets you have for them. E.g. “Rule #6: never drink water on an airplane unless you see the can it was poured from.”

You can tell I’m a big fan of superscripts/Johnson boxes, but they aren’t appropriate for every letter. Don’t use them for a very short letter which is meant to be consumed as one gulp. And since these devices immediately brand your message as advertising, they aren’t appropriate if you want to make the letter look very personal or formal. (Although there are exceptions, as always: the Online Trading Academy letter is supposed to be very exclusive, but it gets away with its superscript by using the fancy typeface of an engraved invitation.)

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.