Somewhere along the line we copywriters have given the world the wrong message. That’s pretty scary, when you consider our main function in professional life.

So how’ve we messed up? Well, people expect us to ‘do a little polish’ to rescue their sometimes dire homebrew copy. Now, I’m not denigrating their copywriting efforts. I’m not a bricklayer, a financial adviser or a designer of autoclaves, so my efforts at doing their jobs would be equally – probably more – dire.

The problem is that’s not what the best copywriters do. And, as a profession, we’ve not explained what we bring to the table.

Away from work on the glossiest and shallowest consumer items, we engage and understand with our clients, their products, their customers and their needs. We dig deep, research and develop messages, and prioritise and structure what we need to say (and even those working on perfume and all that stuff need to know a lot about their client and their client’s buyers).

Only once we’ve figured out what we have to say, do we think about how we’re going to say it.

So please don’t expect a ‘little marketing sprinkle’ will solve the problem. It probably won’t.

I’ve just seen it again. A local business’s strapline that always annoys the hell out of me:

‘Specialists in all types of glass’

it says.

It’s just so oxymoronic!

Well, we all know that Less is More, don’t we? I’d like to rock those preconceptions a little after a few recent conversations.

If you don’t tell the world all about the benefits of your stuff, the effectiveness of your communications will be less.

Go on, don’t be scared. Tell the world all the interesting stuff.

But don’t waffle – that’s where Less is More.

Worthing Lions started in 1952 and is one of the oldest clubs in the Brutish Isles and is now in its 53rd year of service to the local community. It is part of Lions Club International, which is the world’s largest service organization with 1.4 million members in 193 countries and active in 44,000 communities around the globe and the Brutish Isles has in excess of 20,000 members.

From Worthing Council Web site

Umm. Like many writers, I’ve been carrying around a quote in my mental baggage for countless years.

It goes something like ‘Nobody ever bored anyone into buying anything”, and I have it stuck in my mind that I should attribute it to David Ogilvy. So I’ve been Googling for the right wording, and to check if David Ogilvy was the originator.

No dice.

It doesn’t really matter for the piece I’m writing this evening, but it’s a bit sad to have one of your basic writer’s truisms at least a little wounded by hard evidence.

Can anyone help?

:: Norm ::
bringing you uninspired signatures since 1995

LOL

Those nice people at MSN sent me an e-mail today, asking me for my opinions on their service.

Normally, I like giving companies feedback. After all, it is a way of getting what I want from them.

What sank this one? ‘This questionnaire should take no more than 18 minutes to fill out.’ (my emboldening).

They’ve gotta be joking!

That’s why we choose to use words to express the thought, then

Thanks to James for these classics:

For you lovers of good writing, these are the 10 winners of this year’s
Bulwer-Lytton contest –AKA Dark and Stormy Night Contest — run by the
English Dept. of San Jose State University, wherein one writes only the
first line of a bad novel.

10) “As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind
in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it.”

9) “Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens.”
“With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned,
unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue
eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for
competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied
description.”

7) “Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept
along the East wall: ‘Andre creep… Andre creep… Andre creep.’”

6) “Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was
about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to
become the woman he loved.”

5) “Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from
eeking out a living at a local pet store.”

4) “Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins
often do.”

3) “Like an overripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the
corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor.”

2) “Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn’t know the meaning of
the word ‘fear’; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in
the eye of death — in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies.”

AND THE WINNER IS…..

1) “The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the
greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window,
revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in
frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her,
disbelieving the magnitude of the frog’s deception, screaming madly, ‘You
lied!”

On some food packaging from Waitrose, we are told:

“A belief in quality…

Our reputation has been built, above all, on the quality and freshness of our food. Of vital importance to us is the provenance and reliability of the food that is on our shelves. Each of our buyers is an expert in their own field…”

So nice to know their buyers have plenty of space to graze naturally