Tag: copywriting

The creative parable of the 100 light bulbs

A creative director recently shared with me the parable of the 100th light bulb. It goes like this:

When you turn on the first light bulb in a dark room, the effect is transformative. Where before there was only darkness, now there is light. But by the time you switch on the 100th light bulb, the incremental difference is so small that nobody notices. The lesson is that there’s a point of diminishing returns where it’s not worth the effort to keep exploring new ideas.

I disagree.

For one thing, if your project is a web page or an email, turning on the light bulb is so trivial a task you shouldn’t give it a second thought. Through multivariate testing, marketers can not only turn light bulbs on and off, but move them around at will to see if one arrangement is better than another.

But beyond that, turning on the 100th light bulb is what we as creatives are paid to do, assuming we charge more than the journeyman copywriter who can take a brochure and turn it into a sales letter.

In the heyday of subscription direct mail, the 1980s and early 1990s, writers like Bill Jayme and Linda Wells were paid tens of thousands of dollars (1980s dollars) to produce circulation promotions that, if they were successful, might increase response rate by a microscopic fraction of 1%. But because the numbers mailed were so large, it was a savvy investment by the publishers.

I myself once wrote an ad that appeared in Computerworld, for a long departed agency and software client. They marketed primarily through direct mail, but some targets just didn’t ever respond. This ad won a new account from one of those targets, and the value of the business was such that it paid for the entire cost of the ad, including media, for the life of the campaign.

Was that worth the 100th light bulb? I think so.

Dealing with writer’s block

Early in my freelance copywriting career, I suffered three serious episodes of writer’s block. I no longer have any memory of the assignments or why I was stuck, but I have an intense physical recollection of each attack.

At the time I was living in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles, just below the reservoir. First time it happened, I decided I would pace around the park as a way to calm myself down. I remember a beautiful day, warm sun beating down, and me miserable because I got nothin’. I’d give myself a few minutes of strolling, then go home and sit down at the typewriter (yes, this was a while back), flail, repeat. I put on a lot of miles and probably got some sun damage that day.

During the second episode I got so agitated I could not eat. I was subsisting on peanut butter sandwiches at that time and I made one and cut it into bites and left them on the wraparound butcher block counter of the kitchen. Each time I passed I’d grab one of the bites and stick it in my mouth without looking. Some made it down, some didn’t.

The third must have been years later because I had a daisywheel printer (remember?) and my downstairs office. When writer’s block attacked, I decided I would just keep writing till I got it right. When I was finished, or maybe gave up, I pressed the print button on my Mac Plus (remember?) and page after page of virtual identical paragraphs spat out, a piece of evidence I still have posted on an office bulletin board.

I’m remembering this because I had a near-attack the other day, the first in many years. I was working on a large-scale, long term project (doing a new draft of my novel after it came back from an editor, to be specific) and I got to a part and realized it wasn’t very good. I started in, got stuck like a car with bald tires in snow, took a deep breath and backed off. Then, within a few hours, a number of short-turnaround paying projects came to life and I knew I would not return to the big project for a while. I also knew, from experience, that when I did return I would feel blocked.

So I gave myself an hour to return to the troublesome episode, and write through it. I actually came up with a solution that I think will work, but that was a bonus. The main thing was not to find myself greeted with failure and a problem when I next approached this project. I went through the black hole and came out the other side. The key to this technique was that I did not require the section to be any good. It simply needed to take my main character from point a to point b.

There’s another solution to writer’s block, which is to stop as soon as you feel it coming on. But this isn’t always possible when you’re on assignment. How about you? Am I the only one this happens to? If not, you might want to get my book. There are several ideas for curing writer’s block in there.

Brands get their (big) game face on for Super Bowl FSIs

Big Game FSIs 2015
How many ways can you say “Big Game”? Not that many, apparently.

The big day for football fans has come and gone. Of course, I’m referring to the Sunday before the Super Bowl when the newspapers are full of FSIs touting snacks of all varieties (except healthy) as super savory, fan favorites or a tasting touchdown without ever using the actual name of the event which requires an exclusive and very expensive license from the very litigious (unless you are a wife-whacking or child-whipping pro athlete, in which case you are exempt) National Football League.

Except… hardly any of the headlines are anywhere near as creative or alliterative as the descriptives I tossed together above. Take a look above… a majority of the ads have “Big Game” in some variation as their headline with only the lamest attempt to tie it to the product. We have two incidences of “big flavor for the big game” and one “big taste for the big game” along with “big game lineup”, “stock up for the big game” as well as “game plan” and the ever popular “game changer”. You’d think that copywriters have a vocabulary of 50 words, but that’s wrong because a lot of the non-Super Bowl ads in the same edition are very clever. (My personal favorite, “What the Yuck?” for a super strength detergent that gets the “yuck” out of deeply soiled clothes.) They are bored with this tiresome yearly charade and as a result get sacked for a loss, creatively speaking.

Super Bowl P&G ad
Look! A Super Bowl ad that says Super Bowl!

Interestingly, the words “Super Bowl” actually do appear, in a spread in the P&G Brand Saver. Their Gillette shavers, it turns out, are indeed an official sponsor. All the senior people were in the jet on the way to Phoenix (where this year’s game will be played) so the playbook was left in charge of a novice copywriter and a too-cute art director. “Smooth moves and fresh plays?” I don’t think so. And can you find the Roman numerals XLIX, for 49, hiding in the ad? Sadly, Ex-Lax is not a sponsor and this will be the last Roman-enumerated Super Bowl; we’re moving to 50 next year.

My prediction: Seahawks by seven.

Persado is not going to put copywriters out of business. (Whew.)

Persado Try It Page
Persado “Try It” page; click the image to try it for yourself

A recent article on artificial intelligence in the Wall Street Journal had me trembling with fear. It described a technology called Persado which writes emails and landing pages for multivariate testing, stating each component of the message in an infinite number of ways which can be mixed-and-matched through AI to surface the result that gets the best response.

“A creative person is good but random,” according to Lawrence Whittle, head of sales at Persado. (Note that the reporter relies on the sales department, rather than talking to a technologist.) “We’ve taken the randomness out by building an ontology of language.” The article goes on to explain how Persado deconstructs each ad into five components including “emotion words”, product descriptors, the CTA, text position and images and then offers up every conceivable option. (Actually I guess it does not offer them up but simply inserts them into an automated test.)

I experimented with the “play with the technology” page today (after taking over a month to get up the courage to visit the site) and am greatly relieved. The static page is shown here; you can click through to the site and try it for yourself. The “free storage” subhead, button and the text in between will dance around as you mouse over them showing all the options Persado has come up with.

However, there’s one thing that’s obviously wrong with this example landing page that Persado doesn’t address, at least in the demo. Any cub copywriter can tell you the biggest problem with the ad, which is that the company’s logo is used as the headline and the true head, a benefit statement about free storage, becomes the subhead. The logo head is actually completely unnecessary since the logo is repeated in the screen shot of the smartphone. (To be fair, Persado lists “image” as one of the things it tests, but it’s not happening here. It would be embarrassing if they put up a demo which does not properly represent the product.)

What Persado is going to kill is not copywriters, but boredom. I’ll certainly experiment with headlines and different button text, and if there’s more than one way to express a key selling point I’ll give my client options. But I don’t have the patience, and you’re not going to pay me, for micro-experimenting with every word in the copy. Persado, be my guest.

Mumblecore Marketing

We Boomers have a bug up our rear for Millennials, much as the “Greatest Generation” probably felt about us back in the day. Wall Street Journal reported on how they don’t like to use the telephone (probably because it intrudes too much on their personal space), and there’s now an app that allows them to hire household help without the awkwardness of meeting face to face and giving instructions.

In short, Millennials are self absorbed. Just look at them: walking with their heads down, obsessed with their iPhones, as they board their Google buses with the dark windows that will swoop them up to earn big bucks at whatever it they do. Goddam kids…

I have noticed a consequence of this in what I’ll call Mumblecore Marketing: emails that are deliberately casual and slouching, as if it’s almost too much trouble to get around to selling you something. As a side benefit these emails seem like they were written by somebody you know, though you can’t remember exactly how you know them.

Nicole Marshall of DMNews—by definition a direct marketing best practitioner and careful tester—is a great mumblecore marketer as far as subject lines go. “Did you see this email” “Re: 2 weeks left” “Are you free at 1 PM ET?” and “Log in now!” are a few that made me look. The body content is fairly straightforward, but the casual subject lines get my attention which is what they’re supposed to do.

Peter Coates of insideout.com starts with the subject line “Following up” and begins,

Hi Otis,

I sent you an email the other day… if your inbox looks like mine, you may have missed it. Just wanted to let you know Inside Out is holding a Performance Coaching workshop at the Fremont Marriott Silicon Valley on March 11.

It’s designed to help more leaders coach more often, for more business impact. Would you or your colleagues like to attend the training? There are a couple of discounts available if you are in a position to evaluate for your company or if you would like to bring your colleagues with you.

I’m happy to set up a call. Let me know a few times this week when you are available for a conversation.

Warm regards,
Peter

This is a very hard sell situation—a paid seminar—but the casual tone is disarming. Mentioning a previous email I didn’t read—a classic direct response no-no—makes it fresh and personal. And referring to “a couple of discounts” without getting into the details of pricing raises curiosity rather than objections. Once I get this far, there’s more straightforward content (including the price) below his signature.

Mumblecore, as you no doubt know, has its roots in independent film, usually low budget and featuring actors who try to appear non professional in order to create a realistic, slice-of-life storyline (though often there isn’t a storyline) including Greta Gerwig taking off her clothes. The term was coined by a sound editor, who was probably frustrated that he could not always understand what the actors were saying.

In mumblecore movies and in mumblecore marketing, the illusion of authenticity is absolutely essential. Make one false step and you turn yourself into a laughingstock. Such was the case with this email, which arrived with the subject line: “Young entrepreneurs… disrupting the food industry – Fancy Food Show 2014”.

Otis-

My name is Blake & I’m the Founder at eatKeenwa. We’re a bunch of mid-to-late 20 year old entrepreneurs disrupting the status quo in the food industry and re-pioneering American manufacturing. We’re doing something different for once.

We make a stellar snack out of quinoa. It’s robust in flavor, full of functional benefits and packaged with commanding presence.

Please stop by our booth, #5126. I would love to share our story with you. It will leave you engaged and will resonate with your audience.

Please check us out at www.eatkeenwa.com.

Thanks & Be Well,

Blake Niemann

The casual tone is there, but it’s disrupted by jargon and hype: “resonate” “engaged” and “commanding presence” are meaningless and overused and instantly tip off the reader. Kudos, though, for inventing a new word, “re-pioneering”. That truly is “doing something different for once”.

I hear often from Peter and Nicole, suggesting their marketing works; Blake was a one-shot wonder. I have the feeling the mumblecore marketing for eatkeenwa was suggested by a consultant, probably an elderly wretch with tobacco-stained fingers, who then couldn’t resist adding a few time-tested zingers. Blake, if you’re reading, try writing your own copy next time. After all, you and your fellow rambunctious twentysomethings are the real deal.

“Hope you are well” email intro makes me sick

Here’s an email typical of many I receive these days. It’s to a business account, and it begins:

Otis,

I hope all is well. I’m not sure if you’re attending the Fancy Food Show in NYC on June 29th – the July 1st, but if you are I thought you would be interested in visiting the Crown Maple booth…

Why do so many marketers these days think it is appropriate, and maybe disarming, to inquire about the recipient’s health as a way to start a mass email? What’s it to them? What business is of theirs? If I’m well I’ll attend the event, unless I get run over on the way, and if I’m not I don’t need you reminding me of it.

Note the odd use of “the” above, before “July 1st”, which suggests the writer is not a native speaker. Could this have something to do with it? The French (this is for a maple syrup product, so I suspect un Habitant at work) have the equivalent phrase Comment ça va but that just means “how’s it going?” which I don’t find at all offensive.

I’m preparing a longer post on the general trend toward faux-casual business email but this stuck in my craw so I couldn’t wait to get it out. There. Now I feel better. Thanks for asking.

What are you on, Diet Coke?

Diet Coke Kiosk
Diet Coke’s fiendishly ironic (or not) kiosk at Fisherman’s Wharf; click the picture for a closer look.

The riskiest kind of advertising is that in which you are so much inside the head of your audience that you can actually poke gentle fun at them and they will be appreciative rather than insulted. My favorite successful example is an etrade billboard that towered above San Francisco in the height of the dot-com craziness: “Sure, it’s scary. But so is falling in love.” Sly reinforcement of the trepidation the internet bubble investor was feeling, and implication you should do business with etrade because they understand. Of course, this love affair didn’t end very well, but that’s not the copywriter’s fault.

A less good example is the badvertising kiosk I photographed at the Hyde Street turnaround, one of the most touristy areas of San Francisco. “You moved to San Francisco with a crowd-funded website. A dad-funded hatchback. And a no-funded bank account. You’re on. Diet Coke.” Please tell me how the target of this ad could be anything but insulted.

To parse it, you’re a loser who can’t afford to buy a car and you have no money in your bank account, and you’ve moved to San Francisco like thousands of other idealistic young people who are about to get a harsh lesson in reality. The “crowd-funded website” is what does the greatest damage here, though. I don’t think the copywriter (who I have the feeling is some old cackling dude in New York, with arthritis-gnarled fingers, who last visited San Francisco when Carol Doda was performing on Broadway) has any idea what a “crowd funded website” is—that’s actually quite a complex thing to pull off, hardly in the wheelhouse of somebody who can’t balance a checkbook. No, they’re just trying to paint a picture using some phraseology they grabbed out of Wired magazine and the general idea is that’s what young people move to SF for these days, instead of serving coffee at Vesuvio.

Actually, it isn’t, necessarily. There’s quite a battle among young people these days for the city’s soul as evidenced by protestors vomiting on the massive buses with the black tinted windows that whip the techies back and forth. Being an internet billionaire is not on a par, karma-wise, with being discovered playing your guitar in Golden Gate Park. The stock photo (behind the Diet Coke logo) of the “Painted Ladies”, another touristic attraction with little meaning for the young scrounger unless he sleeps under the bushes in Alamo Square, and the very location of this kiosk where few actual San Franciscans would see it all suggest the campaign was conceived by a couple of nicotine-stained hacks peering out the dirty windows of an office in Midtown Manhattan.

I haven’t yet mentioned the tag line, with its subtle-as-a-brick double entendre. Note in the photo that the period in “You’re on. Diet Coke.” is in a smaller font than the rest of the type (compare it to the punctuation in the body copy) to give us an extra wink. Oh. I get it. “You’re on” is one of those anthemic phrases like “let’s ride” but they just couldn’t resist suggesting the youngster is hopped up on caffeine and artificial sweeteners.

Which makes me wonder…. Could this actually be intended as irony? Is it in fact designed for the tourists, inviting them to mock the Friscans they know are mocking them? If so, genius. But I don’t believe that is what is happening here. Diet Coke team, if you’re reading, please tell me it is or isn’t so.

Playing the “oops” card in email marketing

Have you noticed how many emails you get these days with a subject line like “OOPS, we goofed” or “please accept our apologies”? Then you read and it’s a company that you may or may not recognize, telling you that they previously sent out a message in error saying that your discount was void when it really wasn’t, or they sent out a very private offer by mistake to the entire list and now they’re going to have to honor it?

Made you look, didn’t they? It’s the virtual equivalent of the good old “our buyer goofed” sale. We made a mistake, and you can reap the benefits, you greedy bastard you.

Well [IF YOU ARE MY CLIENT, PLEASE STOP READING RIGHT NOW], I found myself with a natural marketing opportunity this week when my internet service provider actually did face an “oops” moment in real life. It seems that SpamCop went all Putin and decided to block all kinds of completely legitimate non-spamming email servers. The ISPs have to plead to be unblocked and even after they are, it takes some time for the pending emails to resolve  and be delivered.

After thinking I was having a wonderfully peaceful week, I discovered today why I was not getting replies to my various project-based emails: they hadn’t been delivered. Several frantic hours were spent following up to re-send from gmail, in each case asking the recipient to confirm receipt.

Several of these were emails I wouldn’t normally expect to be answered: a casual conversation with a prospect, for example. But when I re-sent they dutifully said yes, I got it which means they read my email. Wait a minute! So this gave me the excuse to email a few folks [YOU CLIENTS AND PROSPECTS AREN’T READING THIS, ARE YOU?] I have been trying to light a fire under and saying hey, I’ve been trying to reach you, maybe the emails just haven’t been delivered, I’m still interested in working with you!

Try it yourself, if you dare. Disclaimer: professional driver on closed course. Possible side effects may include drowsiness and over-optimism.

What we can learn from college solicitation direct mail

My son is a high school junior who recently took the PSAT, so he’s receiving a ton of prospecting mail from colleges. The other night we went through a stack of these direct mail packs, and it was interesting to see his reactions.

There was a lot of good stuff. Overall, the colleges did a strong job of presenting what makes them unique, and if it’s not a good match for my high school student there’s no fault to either side. But he had a couple of interesting comments from which lessons can be learned.

A couple of colleges disqualified themselves for consideration with cut-rate production. Here’s a college he’s never heard of, and you send him a solicitation that looks like you’re operating on a shoestring, and out you go into the discard pile. Lesson: be aware of the competitive environment in which your solicitation is viewed. If you really can’t afford a professional photographer and designer, maybe a heart felt letter from the president, in laser addressed envelope,  is the way to go.

And, a good third of the schools wanted my student to continue the dialog by going to a special web page and logging in with his name and password. This is Gen-X, or even Baby Boomer, marketing: assuming people will feel special because you’ve gone to the trouble to set up a “personal web page”. My millennial found it laughable. Passwords and user names are for World of Warcraft and a discussion of them usually leads to how you have been hacked. He also drew amusement from how he was “gmaxwell” on some college sites but maybe “gmaxwell3” on others and wondered if that meant he was less desirable to the latter.

To me, the best of the bunch was a completely non personalized self mailer from Carleton College with body copy that started: “Nice work on the PSAT!” Do they have access to his score? No matter. Why not assume the best about him and give him a compliment he may or may not deserve?

Chrysler, Dylan show how not to use celebrities in your advertising

Much has been made of the expensive nonsense that was the Chrysler ad in last week’s Super Bowl. What does “more American than America” mean? And is it disingenuous to proclaim “you can’t import American pride” when Chrysler is in fact owned by a German company? What was most troubling to me, however, was the way that Bob Dylan’s most public product endorsement (surprisingly, there been others) turned him from an icon into a pitchman.

The use of Eminem and Clint Eastwood in the two previous Super Bowl spots was brilliant. Eminem didn’t appear till toward the end and he looked like an anonymous and well-dressed young hipster, no visible tattoos, prompting many viewers to say “who’s that?” (The theme of the spot in that dark year, by the way, was “Imported from Detroit,” a direct contradiction to this year’s.) There’s no hiding Clint Eastwood’s voice, but the man himself was in shadows until the very end for the “halftime in America” spot, another piece of brilliant writing and staging.

By contrast, Dylan is in almost every frame of the 2014 spot so it comes to seem like a “you’ve seen him on…” retrospective. It doesn’t deflect the blatantly obvious to have the ironic cut of him flipping through his own albums in a record store. And at the end he does in fact turn to us and come right out and say it: “we will build your car.” And if you act fast, you’ll get a bonus set of floor mats!

Celebrities stand for something beyond their (often tawdry) actual selves. If you pay to put them in your advertising and fail to leverage that aura, you’re shooting yourself in the crankcase. The only exception might be the Ed McMahon/Bob Dole category of commercials used to pitch to an elderly audience, which is believed to have great respect for figures of authority. Come to think of it, Dylan’s actually old enough to join those ranks.

Here are the actual words to the Chrysler Dylan 2:00. Thanks to Mike Wayland, Michigan Live automobile blogger, for providing them so I don’t have to watch the spot over and over again to write them down.

Is there anything more American than America?
‘Cause you can’t import original.
You can’t fake true cool.
You can’t duplicate legacy.
Because what Detroit created was a first
and became an inspiration to the… rest of the world.
Yeah…Detroit made cars. And cars made America
Making the best, making the finest, takes conviction.
And you can’t import, the heart and soul,
of every man and woman working on the line.
You can search the world over for the finer things,
but you won’t find a match for the American road
and the creatures that live on it.
Because we believe in the zoom,
and the roar, and the thrust.
And when it’s made here, it’s made with the one thing
you can’t import from anywhere else. American…Pride.
So let Germany brew your beer,
Let Switzerland make your watch,
Let Asia assemble your phone.
We…will build…your car.

And, here are the Eminem and Eastwood spots in case you to watch and compare.