Category: Uncategorized

LinkedIn says: Congratulate Otis on his new position!

Last month LinkedIn asked me to update my profile. I did so, and the next day got a flood of emails congratulating me on my new position, as “copywriter” at a client I haven’t worked for since 2014. One person was miffed because I had recently told her I had no availability for new work… so why was I now going on staff for the other guys? This is similar to another “update” a year or two ago when I was announced as the new creative director of an agency… at which point another agency client said they could no longer work with me, now that I was employed by a competitor.

I don’t know what is going on with these bogus announcements… why LinkedIn does them and how it is of benefit to anyone. Obviously LinkedIn has little use for freelancers since its primary role is to bring individuals and employers together. Maybe there is an algorithm to deliberately sabotage us?

Anyway, the solution seems simple enough. Anytime LinkedIn asked you to do something… ignore them.

P.S. One of my contacts who works in database management put it well when I told her the announcement was bogus: “I was wondering about that, and that’s the downside of data driven triggered communications, when the business rules are not fully vetted or not taking in consideration outliers and exceptions.”

Donald Duck is my spirit animal

Donald Mug
My new Donald Duck mug. Waak!

I took one of those stupid online quizzes and was told my spirit animal was the deer: “When you have the deer as spirit animal, you are highly sensitive and have a strong intuition. By affinity with this animal, you have the power to deal with challenges with grace. You master the art of being both determined and gentle in your approach. The deer totem wisdom imparts those with a special connection with this animal with the ability to be vigilant, move quickly, and trust their instincts to get out the trickiest situations.”

Balderdash. I’ve long known that Donald Duck was my spirit animal, because of his ability to continually get in his own way and fly off the handle. Yet for some reason other ducks trust and accept him. He’s the guardian of three young triplets and Daisy Duck, who is undeniably hot even though her fashion sense is rather outdated, can’t get enough of him.

My long time friend and colleague Carol Worthington Levy knows all this, and occasionally delights me with a piece of Donaldana like the mug she just sent for my birthday. Each time I sip from it I will rage at the stupidity of the world and think about how things would be better if people would just let me fix it. If your name is Donald, or if Donald is your spirit animal, that’s what you do.

You can’t hide in social media

Over the last few months I’ve been involved in two situations which could not have happened before the advent of social media. A friendly acquaintance had made a commitment (in one case to do something, in the other to look into it) and I emailed at the appropriate time to remind them about it. There was no response. I then took to other means—Facebook messaging in one instance, Facebook plus LinkedIn in the other—with the same reminder in case their email wasn’t working or I ended up in their spam folder. Still nothing.

At this point, you have to assume that the other party is receiving my messages and for whatever reason is ignoring them. Presumably they’re no longer able to meet the commitment, but why can’t they just come out and say that? It’s not that big a deal. I’m a bit inconvenienced, but not to the point of being harmed or angry about it. We can still be friends. I should also say there’s zero possibility I have done anything, directly or indirectly, that would make either of them not want to continue a relationship with me.

Now, the lack of follow through has led to a social media radio silence. I know these folks are okay because they continue to post on Facebook about the usual stuff. I’ve rattled the cage by liking or commenting on a couple of their posts. In the normal course of events we would have had a bit of back and forth on one topic or another. But, possibly because they’re embarrassed, these two people are unable to engage with me in any way.

I will add that one of these folks is a copywriting colleague who moved out of state so it’s unlikely anything will happen to resolve the issue. But the other is someone I regularly see at local events. It’s inevitable I will run into her sooner or later at which point I expect I will ask her about it face to face and she will give me an answer and an apology for not responding sooner. But why can’t she do that online?

Has anything like this happened to you? Of course it has. What do you do about it? I’m interested because it’s a social phenomenon that could not have existed in an era when letters got lost in the mail or voicemails got erased by mistake. Now that we have no place to hide, is there a way to make ourselves selectively invisible? If not, should we even try?

Free marketing advice from Warby Parker

The other day I was on a plane and got in a conversation with my seat mate. When she found out I worked as an advertising guy she told me her husband designed neckwear and wanted to sell his ties via the internet. What free marketing advice did I have?

My first thought was, uh oh. Fashion is a very fickle industry. I had some experience early in my career when I was an ad manager for a large department store. In that bricks-and-mortar era a men’s fashion manufacturer had to sell a network of retail buyers each season, starting with the MAGIC Show  (is it still around?) and other industry events and and once you had a few retailers signed up, manufacture and distribution was the next channel. Maybe online sales have broken down some of those barriers, but the subjectivity of the ultimate buyer probably hasn’t changed.

Then it occurred to me: Warby Parker. Here’s another niche fashion product that seems to be very successful, based on the frequency with which I see their Facebook ads. So I advised her to study Warby Parker, or another single-line internet retailer, to see what they do. If it seems successful, then consider emulating their strategy.

I don’t think this is bad advice. One of the great things about working in marketing is its transparency. It’s not like the technology industry where a company’s special sauce is kept under lock and key so competitors won’t steal it. To the contrary, retail advertising is in plain view and the more you see it the more successful it probably is.

“What advice can you give me as a marketing pro” has just been added to the topic list for my DMA Ignite session on Monday, October 17 at the DMA &Then conference. This session is evolving into a sort of town hall meeting in which creative practitioners and ad managers will share their ideas and frustrations with their peers. Come join us at 4 pm at the Los Angeles Convention Center. And in the meantime, if you have any free advice of your own, please comment below.

DMA &Then 2016… I’ll be back

I’ve been asked to repeat my Ignition session at this year’s annual Direct Marketing Association conference, which will take place in Los Angeles. My slot is Monday October 17, 4:00-4:45 PM.

Titled (for legacy reasons too complex to go into here) “Devilish Details: Looking for an Advantage in Your Copy and Design”, it’s essentially an opportunity for creative practitioners and managers to let down their hair in a town hall setting. You know all those times you’ve seen a really good or bad example of creative and wished you could talk to somebody about it? Or that ridiculous assignment that you aced in spite of the suits? Or how your legal department maimed your dream concept? Here’s your chance to share.

I’ll come prepared with a few examples to prime the pump, and would love your suggestions either as comments or emails to me. Some of the areas I want to touch on are “Brands saying bae” (cringeworthy examples of corporations trying to be hip in social media, as featured by the @BrandsSayingBae handle or seen in the wild), infographic abuse (some are ok, but some are graphics for the sake of graphics, right?), mumblecore emails and whether they work, and fake-official direct mail that makes you wonder how stupid marketers think we really are.

Got any more ideas? Please share!

We will also have food! Not in the session (though copies of my book will be given away), but repeatedly during the conference because Los Angeles is a great food town. I’m specifically interested in great Chinese in the San Gabriel Valley and interior Mexican and am starting the research process now. Again, suggestions appreciated. This will be fun!

How to turn your life insurance policy into a cash machine

I don’t know how many of my readers this will apply to, but it’s too good not to share. I got an alarming notice from my insurance company the other day that the premiums are going to increase on my universal life policy and I should consider increasing the premium payments.

If you don’t have a universal life policy (or don’t even know what that is) stop reading here. If you do, take a look at the annual statement of value you receive. That’s what I did when I got this notice and I discovered my policy has a guaranteed interest rate on the cash value, which is what’s left over after the premium is deducted, of 5.5%.

There are not many things you can safely earn 5.5% on these days, so I asked the insurance rep if I increased my payments, not by the few dollars required to cover their premium increase, but by hundreds of dollars a year, would they still have to pay me 5.5% on that surplus? The answer is yes. So it in effect becomes a savings account that pays 5.5% compounded with each payment.

I’m not going to name the company (they are a former client, actually) and it doesn’t matter because your situation will be different. But if you have an old policy with a fixed low minimum interest rate that’s not so low any more, this is worth checking out.

P.S. This strategy only works if you plan on liquidating the policy for its cash value at some point before you die. If you die, your heirs will have the choice between the face value and accumulated cash value, which will probably be less.

Why copywriting is like fixing a hole in the wall

I live in a 135-year-old house with lath and plaster walls. I have two teenage boys. Thus, I have a lot of opportunity to patch holes in those walls. Recently I’ve gotten a lot better than this, and it occurred to me there are lessons that apply to copywriting or any repetitive artisanal task.

Originally I patched the holes with Durham’s Water Putty, which is a wonderful substance so long as you do not ever plan to sand or otherwise change it after it dries. Fortunately I did not fix too many holes this way. I’ve evolved to what I think is a pretty standard formula: two layers of gypsum patching compound over the lath, then a final layer of Sheetrock drywall mud. (There’s possibly been some new regulation for health reasons, because the drywall mud is no longer available powdered but only in a premixed tub labeled “Dust Control”.)

Sometimes the laths are missing or broken. I use 1 x ¼ inch trim strips from Home Depot to replace them, applying wood glue and clamping the ends to the backs of good lath till it dries. The resulting lattice has a Rube Goldberg look, but once the plaster is applied nobody can tell what’s underneath.

Sometimes the plaster has separated from the wall. Using the technique I read about on this site, I drill numerous 3/8 inch holes through the plaster with a masonry bit, squirt a generous amount of Loctite All-Purpose Power Grab adhesive through each hole, then tighten the plaster down against the lathe with a short drywall screw and a fender washer. Two days later I remove the screws and knock the washers off with my drywall knife, and the wall is ready to be patched.

Applying the final layer is critical to making it look like you have not patched a hole. The coat needs to be even and it also needs to be “proud”, a wonderful plasterer’s word which means it’s raised slightly above the existing surface so it can be sanded down flush. If the coating isn’t proud, you will end up applying another layer to fill depressions left after sanding.

I’ve also learned to use the right sanding tool. Power sanders are too rough and kick up dust. Squeezable wet/dry drywall sanding sponges take forever. I use a flat drywall hand sander made by 3M with a 3” x 9” sanding face. It makes the wall as flat and even as it can be and exposes areas that will need to be built up. I start with 80 grit paper (also from 3M, and specially cut for this sander) and finish with 150 grit. On a couple of occasions my initial surface was way too high so I attacked it first with a Stanley surform plane.

So how is this like copywriting? First, your work improves with repetition. You observe what you are doing both consciously and instinctively, note what works and what needs to be corrected. In my experience improvement doesn’t happen gradually. You start a task you’ve done many times before, and suddenly realize you’re must better than the last time.

Second, you need to use the right tools and materials. For a writer, these include your creative brief, whatever method you use to organize your work and any props you use to improve your focus. (One great copywriter I know keeps a photo of his intended reader stuck to his monitor, for example.) You can’t just sit down and expect that inspiration will strike on a regular basis.

Third, you want to spend your best energies on the things that get noticed first. In a wall patch, you want to avoid bulges, dips, rough spots and separation lines where the patch doesn’t feather smoothly into the underlying wall. For the copywriter, pay attention to the outer envelope teaser, the subject line, the headline, and of course the clarity of the underlying concept.

Don’t get bogged down in the details until the big picture is clear in your mind. Your reader will forgive you the occasional flat sentence in body copy as long as your core premise is sound. Just as my home visitors, and future home buyers, will look past an occasional nick or ripple. Because no 135-year-old-wall is perfect… and neither is your copy.

Standing up to the Department of No

NRDC Bees appeal
The “some of” is the result of an overzealous legal department; they were concerned that not all species of bees are dying at the fastest rate ever. But as we copywriters know, adding the qualifier waters down the teaser and weakens its appeal so that less money will be raised to save bees.

Not to get overly sentimental, but as a marketer you’re one of the good guys. By selling more products or services, you help create and maintain jobs. To the extent that they are of good quality, you may even be changing lives for the better by introducing people to your offerings.

Suppose there was a department in your company that kept you from selling as effectively as you could, and watered down strong marketing statements so they were less effective and sold less products and services and generated fewer jobs and changed fewer lives. That would be a terrible thing, right?

Yet there is such a department in almost every organization. It’s called “legal”. And in the name of protecting the brand, trademarks or whatever, they may be sabotaging your best efforts. You need to push back.

Here are some of the most egregious issues:

1. Being overprotective of your trademarks. You are asked to put an ™ after the first occurrence of a trademarked phrase (or, worse, after every mention which is completely unnecessary to protect your ownership_, or to only refer to a product by its full official name even though it’s too much a mouthful to say or remember. Legal feels this is protecting you, but it’s reducing response because people are distracted by all the foliage or simply can’t make sense of it. (As we’ve often pointed out in this blog, there is a certain percentage of your prospect audience that will bolt at the slightest excuse, and this exactly what they’re looking for.)

2. Being protective of OTHER brands. I never understood this one. You think Apple might sue you, so you’re sure to put a trademark after every mention of the Apple product compatible with your doohickey. It’s true that Apple is a very brand-centric and litigious company but if you look at all the advertising mentioning Apple you’ll see that most people violate their guidelines on a regular basis (by, among other things, giving away Apple products in promotions, which Apple says is absolutely verboten). Why should you be the one to kowtow, before being asked to?

3. Rewriting copy because of legal paranoia. You, the copywriter, have done your research or relied on solid background from the product team. If you say something, it’s true and can be supported. But legal is concerned about a hypothetical objection and makes you water it down. This is death.

4. Rewriting copy for reasons that have nothing to do with legal. This is a Lord of the Flies outcome, but it happens more than I would like to admit. Once all power is ceded to the legal department they think of themselves as the final arbiter of brand and they make you change things just because they can. If things have devolved to the point this is happening, it may be time to look for a new job.

But I said push back. What does that mean? First, don’t anticipate those legal objections by putting in all those qualifiers and curlicues before you’re asked to. Write the strongest marketing copy you can. Put a stake in the ground. Then water it down if you must. At least you’ll have the original draft to show your boss.

Second, when the legal changes come through fight back. If it seems like the requests are overreaching say so, or just ignore them. Make the nitpickers escalate it and see if their supervisors are more interested in jobs and sales than ®s and ©s. You just may win, at least once in a while.

P.S. This article is legally protected under Creative Commons. You are absolutely welcome to quote or misquote in any way you chose.

CES, Comdex and me (plus a few survival strategies)

CES 1979
On the floor at CES, 1979

I first attended the Consumer Electronics Show around 1980, when it really was what its name says. I was a young account executive working on the Federated Group, an “entertainment superstore” that was sort of like what Best Buy is today. Being low on the totem pole I was placed in the Showboat Hotel, a marginal facility located downtown. (Then as now, hotel prices skyrocketed during conventions; unlike now, you didn’t have the internet to comparison shop and find available rooms.)

3d pen at CES
Demonstrating a 3D pen at ShowStoppers, my favorite CES press event

The audience was mom-and-pop retailers who took a yearly junket to Vegas where they met with suppliers and made decisions about what to stock in the coming year. Betamax and quadraphonic were big. Even though I was not invited to the back-room discussions, I found myself fascinated by the opportunity to watch the watchers. I’d attend demos, and look at the faces of attendees as the features were explained. When their eyes lit up I would take note of hot buttons that might be used in my marketing.

Fesco Bags
Collecting bags is a big deal at CES. Extra points if they are from obscure Chinese companies or are sturdy and actually useful.

By the 1990s I’d moved up through the ranks and then out, with my own freelance copywriting practice. My clients were primarily technology based and I started attending Comdex (the name stands for Computer Dealers Expo, which it was not; the focus was on much larger operations and installations) on a yearly basis as well as the much smaller Interop show in May. We now had the internet but not Travelocity or Kayak. My lodging philosophy was to rent a car and drive around till I found a room at a reasonable price. I stayed at some pretty scary places. I’d park that car on a north-south street (no longer in existence) parallel to the LVCC and walk about 10 minutes to the convention hall. Parties were plentiful (the best ones were from Oracle, IBM and other large companies for their clients, which usually included my clients) and I rarely paid for food or drink. Comdex was dealt a crippling blow by the events of September 11, 2001 and limped on for a couple more years before closing for good in 2003. I believe I attended the 2002 show and it was a shadow of its former self with many sections of the LVCC hidden behind fabric drapes.

Meanwhile, CES was picking up where Comdex left off and many of the largest vendors moved there. It became a place for big electronics hardware companies to show their wares and, as before, I could watch the audiences and see what I should be saying in my copy about these products. It also took on something of the third-world bazaar personality of Comdex in its wildest years, with massage chairs among the technology exhibits and adult entertainers in the lobby at the Sands (not by accident because AdultX was held at the same time, a schedule which has sadly gotten out of sync in recent years).

Massage chairs at CES
Massage chairs are an irresistible attraction for the foot weary CES visitor.

I’m not attending CES every year these days, since it has gone increasingly back to its consumer roots and most of my clients are b-to-b. So in lieu of my usual posts-from-the-floor, this year I’m sharing a few of my personal practices:

• These days, I always stay at the Econolodge on Convention Center Drive which is around $100 if you reserve well in advance. The only reason to do this is that it’s a 5 minute walk to the LVCC.
• Rent a car. They’re not that expensive compared to other jacked-up prices because most people take shuttles or wait in the endless cab lines. You’ll only use it to go from the airport to your hotel and for evening forays around the desert.
• Go on Yelp and explore local ethnic restaurants. Vegas has a vast array of Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean places that are insulated from the tourist traffic and prices.
• Go to In-N-Out on Tropicana at least once, unless you live in California and get to go all the time.
• Don’t go to parties. They’re not what they used to be. Don’t go to buffets. They’re no longer a bargain and the food’s not that good. And of course, don’t gamble.

Here are a few more dos and don’ts from someone who is on the ground this year as a vendor.

The USPS is getting better

USPS tracking
Tracking for my two-day Priority Mail package that took a week to arrive

Remember my fiasco with the Post Office last holiday season? This year they’re a lot better. They’ve updated their tracking tool, so you know what’s actually happening in their system rather than simply that it is “in transit”.

Using this tool I was able to determine that just 1 of my 7 packages arrived in two days as printed on the “2-Day Priority Mail” box. (To be fair, the clerk at my post office said it’s “two to three days”.) One just arrived today, after a week on the road. We’re getting there.