Posts tagged: Copywriting

Underground Review: Hey Whipple, Squeeze This — The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads

January 21, 2013, by No comments yet
Hey Whipple

Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great AdsHey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads by Luke Sullivan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The advertising classic Hey Whipple, Squeeze This is subtitled The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads, and while the Fourth Edition of this well-known book doesn’t exactly tell you how to create great ads (I doubt any book could), it does offer a glimpse into the mind of one of advertising’s uber-copywriters — Luke Sullivan.

Sullivan is entertaining and clever, and the book reflects his more than three decades atop the advertising heap. At points, he *tries* to outline a method for developing great advertising, but in the end, you read a work like this for the perspective and insight on the work and the industry, not step-by-step tutorials.

Sullivan rose through the ranks during the “Golden” age of print, so it’s not surprising he focuses largely on print advertising. Fortunately, he also covers emerging online media, broadcast, etc.

In fact, the chapter on radio was a favorite, though the “online” chapter was a disappointment — it felt like little more than a recitation of all the standard online marketing/social media hype and buzzphrases we’ve been subjected to the last five years.

Copywriting now covers a lot more media channels than it used to, and Sullivan cops to that in later chapters by advising readers to avoid focusing on headlines or images, concentrating instead on ideas and concepts capable of spanning almost any media channel.

Along the way, Sullivan nicely illustrates his ideas with ads (many of which you’ll recognize from the award books).

A warning to the ADHD folks reading this: “Hey Whipple” is a long book and it took me a while to plow my way through it. At times it meanders and indulges, and at one point Sullivan describes the clients/co-workers you find in the business in less-than-flattering terms. It was funny, but mostly felt more like some bizarre form of payback rather than useful information.

“Hey Whipple…” is not without its faults, but there is quality here, and for those who think being a copywriter means typing SEO articles all day long, it provides a perspective on a more rarefied aspect of the profession.

It’s useful (and too long and a little too indulgent), but it’s a must-read for anyone thinking of building a career in the creative universe. More-established copywriters will also find a few goodies to reflect on, and overall, making this one of the better advertising/copywriting/creativity books you’ll find. 
View all my reviews

Why Don’t Copywriters Ever Fail? (or, Why I’m Reading Screenwriting Blogs)

October 21, 2011, by 8 comments

Failure’s as much a part of copywriting as it is any other writing endeavor, yet most copywriting blogs seemingly bounce from success to success.

It’s not very real (and a little boring), which is why I mostly read blogs by novelists, sci-fi writers and (especially) screenwriters.

Screenwriters seem less interested in foisting an image of omnipotence on the rest of us, which is probably why screenwriting is the most spectator-friendly arm of the writing universe.

A good example is Ken Levin’s excellent “The World As Seen By A TV Comedy Writer” blog.

In this riveting post he details the downward spiral you experience when writing for a failing television series:

You will know if your show is in trouble before the actors. You’ll discover that it’s harder to break stories than it should be. The flaws in the premise will become apparent. I co-wrote an episode of a new show once and it took two full days working with the producers to come up with a notion. This was for episode three. That show was dead in the water.

Once you see footage you also start to learn the weaknesses of your cast. This can be particularly alarming if the weak links were all people the network foisted upon you.

Still, everything is relatively calm.

Then the reviews come out. If they’re bad, or even mixed, get prepared to go down to the stage and talk your cast off the ledge. And watch. One bad review. Just one. And suddenly the actors stop trusting you.

Now they start questioning things. Every thing. You’re somewhat under siege.

It’s unpretty stuff (it gets worse before it gets better), but at least it’s real.

Facing Forward (It’s Easier to Face Plant)

I’ve been a working copywriter a long time and have made a good living, and I can say with some certainty we will all face plant at some point.

You’ll find a client you can only fight with, or the project will demand skills you don’t have, or everything will change and you’ll end up doing the opposite of what you pitched (and hating every minute of it), or [insert appropriate atrocity here].

Right now I’m struggling with what I thought was a Dream Client — a perfect match of needs and skills and knowledge.

I even just sent that happiest of emails; the “Wow” note detailing an email clickthrough rate 3.5x their norm.

So the numbers are headed skywards, and the delta between where we started and where we are is huge.

Yet the account’s hanging by a thread.

Really?

Yes.

But not their thread.

Mine.

Sweet Gig, Sour Taste

You land a gig that looks bright and perfect and shiny (maybe it was), but someone gets hired or fired, and suddenly you’re miserable, the work sucks, and your hair is falling out by the handful (full disclosure: I don’t have any hair).

It doesn’t happen often, but rather than dive into the details, I’ll offer up a few simple rules.

Rule #1: Things are usually not as bad as they seem, and from the client’s perspective they may look great.

Rule #2: When things are as bad as they seem, you can sometimes fix them if you can get some face time with the right person.

Rule #3: When you’re bumping heads with someone who has far more access to the decision makers than you do, you lose (about 98.5% of the time).

In this case, things are as bad as they look (from my perspective), but one of the benefits of freelancing is you don’t have to crouch in the corner of your office, trembling with fear.

I never walk away from a client easily — especially one this interesting — but I realize I can walk away.

And yes, I am idly looking around for a replacement client.

Who might have just showed up.

In what amounts to absolute proof the universe is an intriguing place, a client I haven’t seen in twelve years called to talk about availability; he’s got a startup going with a fascinating little product.

He’s a fine and experienced businessman who got sidetracked in the VC world (he might disagree), and he likes his marketing with a side of style and attitude.

Talk about your lucky breaks.

If his new product can get some traction, I’ll have a tough decision to make.

Keep writing (because you never know who’s going to call), Tom Chandler.

What Screenwriters Can Teach You About Dealing With Your Copywriting Clients

June 22, 2011, by 5 comments

I spent a good chunk of yesterday working my way through a surprise deadline project, and at one point the client asked my why I’d rewritten a one-page pitch document to move the “peril” portion of the pitch right up front.

Do this for any length of time and you’ll come up against the same question, and — if you’re like me — struggle a bit to explain what’s better in terms the client can understand.

Phrases like “it’s more engaging” and “you need to involve them in the issue right away” are too vague.

Fortunately, my recent detour through video scriptwriting introduced me to a couple of good screenwriting blogs (here and here are now found on my RSS reader), and I found myself leveraging a screenwriting classic (which the client immediately grasped).

I simply invoked the three-act dramatic structure:
Act 1: Create the conflict
Act 2: Escalate the conflict
Act 3: Resolve the conflict (in our case, this is the call to action)

To someone who hasn’t spent a few years among the ‘persuasion by keyboard’ crowd, concepts like conflict, drama, friction and others are far more accessible — and apparently more convincing — than the “This worked better in an A/B test more than a decade ago” or even the last-gasp “trust me.”

Copywriters need to remain cognizant of useful old formulas like AIDA, but we have to talk to clients in language they understand (and appreciate).

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

How to Become An Overnight Sensation in Only Two Years (or Two Decades)

March 15, 2011, by 6 comments

You know the drill. Someone’s ordained an “Overnight Success” yet a little digging uncovers a far different reality.

Namely, years of hard work.

In one of those Harmonic Convergence moments, I read a no-holds-barred blog post on the Sex In a Submarine blog about overnight successes, read a similar post on a screenwriting blog, then listened quietly (licking my lips like I do when I’m quietly disagreeing) while a somewhat clueless acquaintance congratulated me for being “lucky” enough to transition my business from (mostly) copywriter to marketing consultant “in just a few months.”

I was, she said, an “overnight success.”

She meant well, but I needed a drink.

The Only Overnight Successes I Know Are…

Those holding winning lottery tickets are the only real overnight successes; pretty much everyone else – at least in the “creative” fields – typically works their asses off for their “overnight success.”

William Martel – a real live working Hollywood screenwriter for twenty years – opened fire on the whole concept of “overnight success” in his Sex in A Submarine blog, which included this passage:

There are lots of people on message boards who think they will sell their first screenplay for a million bucks and date underwear models while sipping champagne and floating around in Spielberg’s pool. That’s the LIMITLESS version. The more realistic version involves writing a stack of scripts, rewriting them, doing all kinds of hard work and networking, and maybe landing an assignment that never gets made. Sure, I know a couple of people from message boards who worked their asses off and actually sold their scripts (not the first scripts for either one) and the scripts actually got made into theatrical movies with stars. Cool. Those are the couple that I know who *seem* like overnight successes – and I know a whole lotta people.

Martel referenced another blog post at JohnAugust.com (a screenwriting blog), where Allison Schroeder (also a working screenwriter who’s “making it” after two years of working as a gopher) posted her story, which – like most writer’s stories – included the typing of lot of words which never saw the light of day:

And that was it. I met with the network soon after; they read Stickgirls and approved me. I met with UTA that same day; they became my agents ten minutes after I walked out of the network meeting.

It happened “overnight.” Well, if “overnight” means after two years of hard work, building relationships, and endless writing.

People often want to know how much I wrote during my assistant years. In terms of time: many hours a week. In terms of material generated: two original pilots, one TV spec, two features, a novel, and a pile of tossed out pages. I meet many aspiring writers who haven’t finished a single script. That’s not going to be a path to success.

That’s a lot of unpublished, never-going-to-see-the-light-of-day words. And we’re overlooking all the words typed while Ms. Schroeder worked her way through film school.

Makes you wonder how many “overnight successes” suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome.

“I’m a Writer”

“Some day I’d like to write” is a refrain often heard by working writers, and the one thing I’ve learned that doesn’t advance the conversation is “Yeah, which day is that?”

There are approximately a bazillion “writers” out there, and the only thing preventing the writing industry from collapsing under all that weight is this fact: most are far happier labeling themselves “writers” than they are actually sitting down and typing through the rough patches.

I once suggested that every writer should probably blog, at the very least because it forces them to write more than they otherwise would.

I’m hardly the most productive writer on the planet, but between my Top Two fly fishing blog and the Writer Underground, I’ve published very close to one million words.

That’s not to say they were all artfully arranged or even intelligible, but that’s one million words I might not have written, and we all know I’m the better writer for having done it.

You could suggest that time would have been better spent pounding out a bunch of novels and spec scripts, and it’s hard to argue that little reality, but those weren’t goals.

And the real point is this: to an observer lacking historical perspective, my already-too-busy-to-finish-my-own-website marketing consulting business might seem like an overnight success.

But only if you ignore the 25 years I’ve invested writing marketing copy and learning the ins and outs of marketing, and not always in the most glamorous of trenches.

I can think of a dozen different moments when I stretched – and wrote my way through projects I simply didn’t know how to write, but did the work and learned (look for an upcoming post about screenwriting – something I haven’t done in over a decade, but will do again soon).

I’m not an overnight success and neither are the two writers mentioned above, and in fact, I don’t know a single “overnight” success in any creative field.

You work hard for years – stretching yourself in the process (doing the same thing over and over is a prescription for premature brain death), and one day you realize what you wanted is within your grasp.

It’s often been within your grasp without you realizing it, but let’s face it, most writers need to be hit over the head before they’ll recognize the trees and the forest are on fire.

You want to be a writer?

Then write. And not the same shit you wrote the prior 12 months.

Not sure you’ll stay committed? Then do what copywriter/aspiring novelist Graham Strong did and hold yourself publicly accountable.

One day – if you work hard and you’re lucky – you’ll become an overnight success.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

The Real Secret to Success as a Copywriter (or, What Darwin Said)

July 12, 2010, by 6 comments

The emails come almost weekly. And while they take different routes, the copywriters sending them all pretty much end up in the same place:
Marketing is changing

“How do I build a career as a copywriter?”

The answer is not what they expect.

Your ability to build a lasting career as a copywriter will not be based on your knowledge of “The Ten Headlines That Always Get The Sale” or a Super-Secret, Can’t Miss Sales System or knowing by heart the “Five Reasons Twitter Will Change The Universe Forever” blog post.

In fact, no post, article or book will prepare you for what’s to come.

And while businesses would like you to believe otherwise, the success of your copywriting career doesn’t rest on your choice of smartphone, Twitter client, or high-bandwidth wireless connection.

So exactly what is the key to long-term survival?

Simple. It’s your ability to adapt.

Marketing – Now With the Great Taste of Chaos

I just hung up the phone after a lengthy client conversation – but only after agreeing to teach several more online marketing classes.

Teaching was never a career goal.

In fact, I never considered it prior to the last couple years. Yet here I am, teaching classes. A lot of them.

It’s something I couldn’t do if I was close-minded about my career.

But then, when I typed my first paying copy jobs on an electric typewriter (I wasn’t man enough to go manual), I never imagined I’d write ads for high-end racing helmets, sell $10 million semiconductor manufacturing systems, eventually derive most of my income from consulting, or be successful enough to live on a beautiful property located on the flank of an inactive volcano.

In short, you may think you’ve got it all planned.

But history suggests your long-term plan is more fiction than reality.

Guess what?

For the smart, aware and adaptable copywriters reading this, that’s a good thing.

Really.

Adapt, Adapt, Adapt

If you’re building a copywriting career today, you’re facing a fast-changing marketplace, fickle customer base – and a marketing universe which will look very, very different when you wake up five years from now.

In prehistoric times (as little as ten years ago), you could handily pay the grocery bills writing corporate capability brochures. If you sprinkled in a handful of B2B direct response packages, life was pretty good.

Annual report gigs were the frosting that funded retirement accounts and new cars.

Today, two of those markets are largely toast. The other is a shadow of of its former self.

And the copywriters who specialized in the above – and didn’t see the fast-moving bus that was the Internet – became roadkill. (Ask veteran copywriter Copywriting Maven Roberta Rosenberg what happened to a couple of her print-only copywriting friends – who never made the transition to online marketing.)

The World Is Spinning Faster

If a decade seems too long ago to feel relevant, simply consider online marketing’s recent history.

Only a few years ago, every business “needed” a Second Life presence. Then a MySpace presence.

At one time, email was hot. Then it wasn’t. Now, it’s hot again (proof common sense sometimes prevails).

And let’s not forget the latest “hot” channels: Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter’s cruising, though Facebook is experiencing the inevitable backlash against their ham-fisted handling of their users and partners.

It’s tempting to say the old media channels are fading, but they’ll likely be back, albeit in different forms.

They’ll fight for survival alongside the new marketing channels, which are springing to life almost hourly.

Simply put – even within the narrow confines of the online marketing universe – much has changed in just 12 months.

And don’t doubt that more change is on the horizon.

Has your business changed with it?

All The Little Fingers, Typing

Here’s an unpleasant reality: There have never been more sets of fingers willing to type for hire.

And many of the emerging copy markets are – how do I put it tastefully – sorta low rent (the product of a [hopefully] transient lack of taste on the part of search engines, which are still in their infancy too).

And while we’re toting up the bad news, copywriting’s customer base has never been so reluctant to pay a living wage for words.

Which means today’s novice copywriter faces:

  • A chaotic media landscape
  • A search-engine derived emphasis on quantity over quality
  • The accelerating obsolescence of existing media (which will soon include some of the current “hot” channels)
  • Free-falling fee structures
  • Intense competition
  • Media channels which encourage “do-it-yourself” client marketing
  • A guarantee of more of the same

What keeps a new copywriter fed and dry in a landscape like that?

Hint: It’s Not The Alphabet

Clearly, the basics of copywriting will never change; “what’s in it for me” will still be the first question asked by prospective buyers, and your ability to answer it will determine the health of your bank account.

Still, even the basics of marketing may be bending a little under the strain of the Internet.

After reading uber-thinker Nicholas Carr’s latest book (The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains), I’m fairly certain my current thinking is right; we’ll have the same sales conversations as before.

But we’ll have them in smaller chunks.

An illustration?

When I first wrote corporate web sites, the word count on the average page was far higher than today’s sites.

Then we went through a spell when “clean” design was hot (I cynically named the trend “corporate sterile”), and the pages hardly said anything at all.

Thankfully, that phase passed.

Today’s site is fast becoming a convergence point for an organization’s feeds and streams (“Feed and Stream” is likely the best unused social media magazine title ever).

Home pages can no longer be considered a site’s main landing page, and in fact, the readership of many business blogs far exceeds that of the rest of the site.

Those copywriters and marketers who can’t adapt to streams, or chunking, or insist on writing web sites the same old way because “they worked before and they’ll work now” (something I once embarrassingly said) – will see their business (especially the interesting stuff) wither away.

The Big Finish

It would be wonderful if I could boil down a foolproof survival tactic into three short bullet points.

That would be highly tweetable, but not very real.

Instead, I can offer you the following:

Challenge Your Assumptions

What’s true today could be tomorrow’s empty (and cashless) cliche. Conventional logic suggested Amazon.com was never going to turn a profit (neither was Facebook or Twitter).

Something changed, and those who recognized that change prospered as a result. I have my own ideas about the future of marketing as it concerns copywriters, but what are yours?

And more importantly, which of your assumptions (“the annual report will never go away“) are about to go down in flames?

Let me add one thought. Listening to everybody else – and accepting it as gospel – is simply a cheezy way to substitute their assumptions for yours.

The Internet is full of parrots, con men and weak-minded fools, and like Carson Brackney said, it’s your job to avoid them.

Stay Aware Of Your Revenue Streams

This is manifestly not sexy, but it is critical. Small shifts in the kinds of projects you’re seeing – and in your own revenue sources – may herald a larger, long-term shift in your business.

Ideally, you’d stay ahead of those shifts, but that’s expecting a lot.

If multiple clients start asking for the same new project, is that coincidence? Or a whole new (and largely untapped) revenue stream?

Make Things Happen

If there’s one constant on the Underground, it’s that I constantly flog my readers to go out and find the clients/work/projects they want to write.

It’s truly marvelous when the world comes to you, but you don’t have to be a statistics whiz to know your chances of achieving happiness are a lot higher when you decide what happiness looks like — instead of the next guy to call.

Have a Sense of Wonder

Admittedly, this concept hasn’t found a home in too many MBA programs. But it’s absolutely essential if you’re going to survive.

It’s my final piece of advice to my online marketing boot camp students, and one of the few things that can sustain you over the course of a long career.

There are few certainties in copywriting, though we can make pretty safe assumptions about two of them.

First, you will deal with rejection. Perhaps a lot of it. New clients won’t like your pitch. Existing customers won’t like your first draft (or your second). Your mother will urge you to find a real job.

Get used to it.

Don’t take it personally. And recognize that hiding in a totally safe, rejection-free world is akin to living in a padded room because it’s safer.

It might be safe, but you’ll eventually go mental.

And – oh yes – you should regularly marvel at the idea that somebody pays you to write for a living.

Second, we can safely assume the copywriting universe is going to change.

A lot.

You either lead the change, ride along with it, or get run over.

If you see emerging technologies as interesting, wondrous things (maintaining the kind of skepticism it takes to survive in a hype-driven field), then you’ll last a whole lot longer than if you embraced a dark, sinister worldview.

I started the Copywriter Underground simply to see if blogging really was an effective lead-generation strategy – something I’d have to know if I was going to recommend it to my clients.

Four years later, my business has morphed to the point this blog has become a pointless artifact.

The time I invest here largely reflects that. Yet this is where it truly gets interesting.

I could look at the Underground and suggest it’s been a colossal waste of time. Or marvel that I could reach so many people just by typing a few ideas into a text editor every now and then.

How could anyone not have a sense of wonder about that?

Keep writing (and adapting), Tom Chandler

Storyboarding: The Modern Copywriter's Most-Overlooked Creative Tool?

April 22, 2010, by 2 comments

Storyboarding is an essential part of the creative copywriter’s process; every commercial I ever wrote first came to life as a storyboard.

But don’t think the storyboard’s utility is limited to video. Even if you don’t make movies, a storyboard can quickly become an essential tool when developing animated ads, web site sliders, podcasts, video and other “rich” media.

Storyboards - a Copywriter's Best Friend?

All require planning.

All involve movement, time, a sequence, and graphics, type or sound elements.

And all benefit from the application of a simple storyboard.

For example, on a recent Web project, I used a simple storyboard to plan the order & content of the site’s home-page sliders.

I was happy I did.

Originally, the concept in my head seemed lucid and logical. But getting it on paper made it clear my “lucid” idea was muddled and out of order.

Score one for storyboarding.

Storyboards: Care & Feeding

Storyboarding doesn’t require a lot of instruction; it’s about as intuitive as it gets.

You simply use the solid-line boxes to represent the visual elements, and add directions in the box below.

Those directions can include:

  • Copy
  • Transitions (like “fade to black”)
  • Voiceover directions
  • Music
  • Visual ideas
  • Actor’s direction
  • Whatever the heck you want

A Few Helpful Hints

Don’t overthink the details on your first pass.

Getting your concept down on paper – in broad strokes – is more important than sewing up every detail.

And you’ll be amazed at the number of times you realize – after storyboarding your drop-dead solid idea – that you’ve gotten it all wrong.

Also, some folks – who feel they can’t draw – won’t attempt a storyboard.

Which is a huge mistake.

A storyboard’s screen is not the place for a detailed drawing (unless you’re making a movie).

Use an oval to represent a face. A square to represent a book. In other words, use symbols.

You need a visual representation of any graphic element, but mostly to offer a reality check on size, movement, etc.

In other words, if you’re using a human face to convey an emotion, that face better be big enough to “read.”

In the same vein, storyboarding an animated 125 x 125 banner ad could make it clear you’ve got too much happening in too little space.

Finally, don’t be hemmed in by your storyboard. It’s a rare concept that can’t be improved by more thought, so don’t narrow your vision simply because you’re working within little square boundaries.

In other words, live a little (creatively speaking).

Templates? Did Someone Say Template?

In the past, I used a storyboard I created in a graphics program – complete with rounded corners on the screen – but found it too specialized for today’s online work.

And happily, I stumbled across one I like better. (Visit this site for other storyboard options.)

A simple storyboard template

(click to visit the download site)

It’s nothing fancy – it represents the storyboard stripped to its bare essentials – but it’s the perfect all-around storyboard for the all-around copywriter.

A Word of Warning

You might be tempted to storyboard on your computer.

Don’t do it.

At least not on your first draft.

You’ll find yourself contaminating your “big think” time with details.

Get the concept roughed out using broad strokes, refine it – and only then move to a computer storyboard.

I’ve used computer generated storyboards in the past, but in the client pitch stage, where the time invested finding photographs or drawings (and the readability of computer-set type) really pay off.

An Old Tool For New Media

Given the “rich” nature of today’s media channels, a storyboard could easily become one of the modern copywriter’s most useful tools.

Download it, save it, print it and use it whenever you’re working on a sequential, moving project.

It will help you get your head into the game. And your concept in order.

Keep storyboarding, Tom Chandler.

Copy Mangled By a Client? Relax. You're Not Alone…

April 19, 2010, by No comments yet

One of the most painful aspects of working as a copywriter is seeing your painstakingly assembled sentences sliced and diced by a client with a fourth-grader’s grasp of syntax.

It’s painful (we’re writers after all, eager for the occasional morsel of praise), but hell, we’re getting paid.

So we suck it up and move on, trying not to let the client drive a stake through our response rate or dangle a modifier in the midst of our call to action.

After all, almost no writer’s work is universally accepted or loved, and anyone who needs a reminder of that little fact might want to peruse an Examiner article titled “The 50 best author vs. author put-downs of all time.“

Even literature’s giants can’t agree about what’s good and what’s not – so what chance do we have?

A few examples of the carnage:

3. John Keats, according to Lord Byron (1820)

Here are Johnny Keats’s p@# a-bed poetry…There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables, that I am ashamed to look at them.

4. Edgar Allen Poe, according to Henry James (1876)

An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.

5. John Updike, according to Gore Vidal (2008)

I can’t stand him. Nobody will think to ask because I’m supposedly jealous; but I out-sell him. I’m more popular than he is, and I don’t take him very seriously…oh, he comes on like the worker’s son, like a modern-day D.H. Lawrence, but he’s just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top if he can do it.

6. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, according to Samuel Pepys (1662)

…we saw ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.

Today’s moral? Nobody’s words gain universal acceptance, and neither will ours. You just do good work, feel good about it all, and move along.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

OneWord.com: One Word & Sixty Seconds To Write About It

April 14, 2010, by No comments yet

From The Department of Time-Killing Online Diversions comes the OneWord site, which simply gives you one word, an editor, and sixty seconds to write about it.

The results are streamed for all to see:

OneWord.com

Not all the results are necessarily pretty (in fact, most are horrifying), but the occasional gem makes it interesting.

It’s yet another online-fueled way to kill an afternoon (similar to the WriteOrDie program, which administers irritating noises when you stop typing).

Still, you can’t watch an episode of Top Chef without wondering if a similar, timed format wouldn’t offer a compelling online competition for writers, who would chop, slice and cook up sentences for general consumption – and a trio of judges.

Keep dreaming, Tom Chandler.

The Writer's Toolbox: Bring Dry Statistics to Life With NumberQuote.com

March 31, 2010, by 4 comments

For those who would kill for a great number comparison quote (we grew revenues $2.2 million – enough to buy a MacBook for everyone in North Pole City, AK), but are too lazy to make one up themselves, we’re pleased to bring you the NumberQuotes.com site:

Numberquote.com

It’s simple. You enter a number (let’s say you’re writing a presentation for a company that has 146 stores), and it spits back dozens of bizarre number relationships, like:

“146 7 Eleven Hot Dogs would buy 1.61 iPhones”

or

“146: The population of Maiden Rock village, Wisconsin, USA in 2008″

OK. Maybe not the best example. Let’s try a bigger number.

Type in 112.8 million (the estimated number of blogs in existence in February, 2008), and you’ll get:

“112,800,000 dollars would buy a 2010 Cadillac Escalade for everyone living in Minco city, Oklahoma (population 1802)”

or,

”
112,334,376 US Dollars = The 1960 GDP (current dollars) for Fiji”

Frankly, this should revolutionize blogging as we know it – no longer will we be forced to make up statistics to fill blanks in our posts.

Now we can have pointless, irrelevant, real-life statistics generated for us in mere seconds.

While the NumberQuotes.com database seems a little limited, with a little work, it could actually blossom into a perversely useful tool for speakers and those trying to make an (admittedly obscure) point.

Keep making up statistics writing, Tom Chandler.

The Antique Typewriter: Old Writing Tools Now Serve As Mechanical Art

March 30, 2010, by 17 comments

I wrote my first copywriting projects on a typewriter (I should be posting this on GeezerCopywriter.com), and while that late 70′s electric hardly qualified as an antique, I’m like most writers – I get a shiver up and down my spine when I see a really old typewriter.

Antique Typewriters

That’s why antiquetypewriters.com stopped me in my tracks.

For those stuck on the machines writers formerly used to put words to paper, this site represents the motherload. It’s somebody’s antique typewriter collection, lovingly photographed and put on display for all to see.

Antique Typewriters

In an era when novels are being written on cell phones, big, mechanical, clunky typewriters have undergone a transformation.

From the machines which are recognizably “modern” in design to the oddball constructs, typewriters no longer bear the burden of useful tools; they’ve become little mechanical works of art, and I simply can’t look away.

Antique Typewriters

For those who have never done it, writing on a typewriter demands a level of commitment word processors don’t require.

And while I wouldn’t trade my out-of-control text processor addiction for a typewriter (I can stop anytime I want), I admit writing’s current “fire hose” approach to productivity lacks the elegance of thinking first, and writing second.

The kind of thinking forced on us by clunky mechanical beasts who now occupy museums, not desks.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

Falling Behind Your Copywriting Deadlines: Three Ways To Fix Things (Or Not Make It Worse)

March 22, 2010, by 15 comments

I’m behind. Way behind. I’ve been sick almost continuously the last month – the result of my adorable daughter bringing home every bug in the county. I’m recovering, but several iterations of the flu (and a cold, and a wave of power outages) clearly don’t respect a deadline.

What happens when you simply can't keep up?

In simple terms, I’m well and truly behind the 8-ball. Deadlines loom, and clients are waiting.

It’s an uncomfortable place for any freelance copywriter – especially given that my marketing consultant business continues to grow.

What’s a freelance copywriter to do when circumstances put you way, way behind the curve?

#1: Pare Down

This is the blatantly obvious – yet wholly painful – step where you stop investing energy in the things that can wait (the personal or vanity projects, speculative ventures, test sites, new technology, etc).

Instead, you focus on keeping your paying clients happy.

It sounds simple, but frankly, it’s not.

Because I’m trying to meet my clients’ needs, I’m in the embarrassing position of finishing my third project for my “marketing” company – yet my marketing Web site is only half completed.

And it will stay that way – at least until I catch up on my other commitments.

Painful? You bet.

Necessary? I think so.

#2: Stay In Touch With Your Clients!

I rarely sprinkle exclamation points in my copy, but made an exception for #2.

Sadly, I have to admit I’m not always great at keeping my clients in the loop when I’m struggling – usually the result of delusional, “I’ll pull a couple all-nighters and get caught up” thinking.

Or worse, I’ll embrace what I call embarrassing thinking like: “For several days – despite being sick and tired – I’ll be just as productive as I was when I wrote that entire ad campaign in two hours.”

Never mind your most productive day ever occurred over ten years ago, and you’ve not come close since.

As writers, we tend to remember the high points more readily than the daily slogs, and sometimes, fate doesn’t tap you on the shoulder and hand you a project after ten minutes work.

Sometimes you can pull all-nighters and catch up – your client none the wiser – but as I approach the half-century mark and now raise a little daughter, those all-nighters hurt a lot more.

And truthfully, are you really doing the best work you can for a client when you’re exhausted from working all night?

The moral? Tell your clients about your problem. See if you can’t buy a little more time (you do this by uncovering their real deadlines, or if there’s wriggle room left in the schedule).

If you don’t keep in touch, you run the risk of blindsiding your clients, which is where the real trouble begins – both now, and in the future.

#3: Don’t Make Things Worse

In the midst of my second brush with the flu, my Web host – which had been experiencing increasing problems with a server, but hadn’t addressed them – crashed spectacularly, losing several days worth of data for me and my clients.

When the dust settled (after a couple of long nights), I decided to switch to a new host. Immediately.

Good decision, but bad timing.

The move cost me several more all-nighters, a week’s worth of hassle, and yes – I got sicker in a hurry.

Simply put, I should have waited until I was better, and my deadlines weren’t so pressing.

If you’re sick, working on three hours sleep promises to make you sicker, creating a cascade which will put you even farther behind.

Don’t do it.

Other Strategies?

I outlined three critical strategies, but life’s never really simple enough to boil down to three bullet points. That’s why (absolutely free of charge) I’m including a few other useful strategies:

  • Hire help (Find another writer who can help you out of the jungle.)
  • Telescope existing projects (Find out which project bits must be finished now, and what can wait until later.)
  • Look for productivity gains (Grinding along on a ten year-old laptop? Maybe it’s time to upgrade. Write long, detailed emails? Time to shorten them.)

Freelance long enough, and you’ll find yourself the victim of circumstance – whether through sickness, accident, natural disaster or other calamity.

Some things can’t be avoided, but your response to those moments is always in your hands.

What will it be?

Keep writing (despite disease, power outage, etc), Tom Chandler.

The Secret To Success (or, Why You Never Set Foot In The Same Copywriting Market Twice)

February 2, 2010, by No comments yet

A couple weeks ago we experienced what the local paper termed “The Storm of a Lifetime” – which left six feet of snow on the ground, many of the trees on my wooded three-acre lot broken and toppled over, and the power out for the better part of a week.

That it happened while I was running headlong into several copywriting and consulting deadlines is likely proof of a vengeful god, and – like the snow-shattered trees in the yard – I’m still cleaning up the mess.

I’m also making big changes to my business model, and if it’s one lesson I’ve learned over the years, writing your own copy and consulting on your own marketing plan are much, much harder than doing it for others.

As several other bloggers have noted, the copywriting world is changing fast, and not always for the better. I’m simply recognizing those differences.

The new venture is the logical outgrowth of my focus on the value-added copywriter, and while I’d suggest I’m taking a bold new step, the reality is less hyperbolic; I’m hurrying the transition that’s been occurring for the last handful of years.

I’m a fly fishermen, and given water’s tendency to flow downhill, I’ve always known that you never foot in the same river twice.

Given the nature of our times, it’s equally true you never step out of bed into the same world you left when you crawled in.

Ignoring that reality is a prescription for something other than fulfillment, gratification and success.

We’ll resume normal function here soon – once the trees are off the roof (and the porch, and the driveway, and the…).

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.