10 years of ingenious hard-sell condensed to 2 minutes for your modern attention span.

No related posts.

1. You have to be vain. Vanity is not a bad thing. At least, not in the proper dose. Advertising and vanity go hand in hand. It’s why you see so many beautiful women and hot guys working in advertising. It’s why you’re willing to spend an hour watching Don Draper be a likeable asshole.
2. The definition of vanity is changing. Used to be, there were the beautiful people and the ugly people and some middle ground where celebrities like Mick Jagger and Sandra Bernhart occupied. But Andy Warhol (also in that middle) was right. Everyone is getting their 15 minutes of fame. So the face of beauty is changing faster than ever.
3. Everyone knows what sodium lauryl sulfate is. And why parabens are not good things. Sure, it’s wealthy white women who know it most, but a younger generation is growing up with that information available everywhere. Teens are turning green. And when they become 20-somethings, spending their hard-earned, adult cash on cosmetics, the definition of beauty will also include knowing what goes into the products you’re using.
4. No one cares what sodium lauryl sulfate is. They know what it is, but they don’t care—at least not as much as they do about looking good. So the winning brands will be the ones that give them both effectiveness and good looks. You can’t work less good.
5. Tell your color story walking. The beauty industry owes its lifeblood to telling a good story. That seasonal take on colors with its catch phrases and dreamy imagery sells pretty powders again and again, economy be damned. And now, since everyone has the ability to tell their story, they are. We’re pitching the written word back and forth at an alarming rate. Something on the order of several billion pages per day, according to Google. So if you want your story heard, not only does it have to be a good one, it has to be where the people who want to hear it are. That means online and off, on desktop computer and mobile phone, 24/7. The message is the medium is the message. The winners will be as sensitive to this as a good cosmetics saleswoman is to your emotional yen for a new lipstick.
6. Your compact will be WiFi. There is a marriage of beauty and technology waiting to happen. No one has yet to do it well. The avatar experiments and “your face here” apps are flawed failures and serve to make women feel less pretty and not involved. But we’re getting the hang of this tech thing. The time is ripe for beauty to release the killer app.

Related posts:

1. An Agency Devoted to Branding Beauty
2. 25 tips for writing the user experience
3. Anorexic Web Writing, Plus Content and Writing Guide

Idris Mootee’s Presentations on SlideShare
(tags: brand_strategist branding)

Related posts:

1. Copywriting FAQs; What Makes a Good Advertising Writer
2. Ad Concepts from 54 Pics, Plus Theater Lobbies
3. Bank advertising takes disaster head on

And if only 1% of those people… | Derek Sivers

Related posts:

1. Ad Concepts from 54 Pics, Plus Theater Lobbies

Copywriting Frequently Ask Questions – Copywriting FAQs

Advertising Copywriter
(tags: copywriter advertising)

Related posts:

1. How Usable is Your Copy, Plus Interactive Copywriting & Design
2. Anorexic Web Writing, Plus Content and Writing Guide
3. Advertising & Marketing White Papers from AdAge

Creative AD Concepts | 54 Pics |

Related posts:

1. See ART & COPY, the new film about advertising
2. Copywriting FAQs; What Makes a Good Advertising Writer
3. Personas in Comic Form, Plus Readers and Content

Related posts:

1. Copywriting FAQs; What Makes a Good Advertising Writer
2. Ad Concepts from 54 Pics, Plus Theater Lobbies
3. Bank advertising takes disaster head on

The data is so far inconclusive. Sure, much of it points to increased time spent reading and writing—a writing renaissance, as it were, albeit sometimes limited to 140 characters. As to whether or not all the text-based time people spend online is helping or hindering that ability, there is great debate. (Not surprisingly, the answer is near and dear to those of us who write copy for web sites and interactive apps that primarily rely upon language for their interfaces.)

Take for example the advice on writing for the web from webdesignerdepot. They recommend that you write for an audience with a low-level reading ability, citing an extensive Pfizer study in which “43% of web users are ‘low literacy’ users who cannot understand a page written above Grade 6 level.” They say to write top pages at Grade 6 reading level, while more in-depth pages used deeper in the site at Grade 8 level.

But that seems to contradict what Clive Thompson on the New Literacy writes in Wired magazine. Clive states “Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, has organized a mammoth project called the Stanford Study of Writing to scrutinize college students’ prose. From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples—everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions. Her conclusions are stirring…young people today write far more than any generation before them. That’s because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text…But is this explosion of prose good, on a technical level? Yes. Lunsford’s team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across.”

Of course, skeptics reading this are already saying, that’s lovely that Stanford students are so literate. Considering what their families are paying for their tuition, they better be. But does that really answer the question for the online world at large? Exactly how literate are people online—and what does the mean for those copy writers who write for them?

The answer, like so many things in this business, is that it depends.

It depends upon who you’re writing for. And it depends on for what purpose they’re reading what you wrote.

A New York Times article called Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading? states it aptly. “The question of how to value different kinds of reading is complicated because people read for many reasons. There is the level required of daily life—to follow the instructions in a manual or to analyze a mortgage contract. Then there is a more sophisticated level that opens the doors to elite education and professions. And, of course, people read for entertainment, as well as for intellectual or emotional rewards.”

Which brings us back to the touchstone of writing for the user experience—namely, writing for whoever is going to read what you wrote, while keeping  in mind when, where and how they’re going to be reading it. Something that those aforementioned Stanford students apparently excel at, according to Dr. Lunsford. The key is to get good at kairos to get your point across, whether it’s in 140-character Twitter text, a graphic novella or a technical manual in PDF.

Coming from a direct marketing background, it’s fascinating for me to see the idea of kairos come full-circle. We weren’t taught the term back when I was a fledgling copywriter. We were taught, however, to visualize the person who held our direct marketing efforts in hand not even reading what we were writing, but flipping through the pile of envelopes, postcards and self-mailers retrieved from the mailbox as he or she stood over the trash can. If we didn’t make a connection lightning fast, we’d get plunked in with the rest of the junk mail. These days, one hopes it’s the recycling bin, but the point is the same. Start with the premise that you must earn your readers’ attention first in order to have the privilege, not the right, of having them read what you’ve written.

So perhaps there are quite a few folks online now who aren’t likely picking up a Dostoevsky once they close their browser windows. So be it. If your job is to write for them, you better know how to reach them first. It’s less about the choice of words than it is the choice of story. Choose well.

Related posts:

1. How to know what to write
2. 25 tips for writing the user experience
3. Writing the user experience

Six Questions to Define Creative Strategy

Tips to speed and improve creative design results.

By Susan Sharman, Sharman Studios

As a graphic designer, I spend a lot of time trying to explain the creative process. How do I envision layouts? Choose colors? Finalize content? Is it magic? Do I pull design rabbits out of hats? The answer is somewhere between yes and no. Sure, design—and particularly great design—does have an element of intuitive “magic.” On the other hand, no one can do that magic without a  comprehensive design roadmap and a detailed creative strategy. So, yes, there’s magic…but it’s magic that’s built on a stable, solid foundation of data collection.

Whether you are doing your own low-cost marketing project or you are working with a designer, before undertaking any new design or marketing project, there are six key questions about your business that you need to answer in order to ensure a successful and on-target outcome.The creative brilliance will come, but first you want to put on your logical thinking cap and answer these questions to help define, and refine, your project’s goals.

1. Who are you talking to?

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s the most commonly overlooked design question. And it’s a huge question! After all, your audience is going to inform both the content and the look and feel of your piece. Are you trying to sell to executives, or to stay-at-home dads? To tweeners or boomers? To people who live and shop in Rockridge or in Richmond? Sure, it would be nice to design a piece that speaks to everyone. Nice, but virtually impossible—and frankly not that cost-effective. After all, different people have different needs, and you want your prospects to know they need you as soon as they see your piece.

2. What do you want them to do?

This is a communications objective, and not necessarily a marketing objective. For example, do you want this piece to get prospects to pick up the phone and call you, or come into your store primed to buy? Cut out your coupon, or visit your website? All of these objectives call for different designs. The choices that you make will impact your hierarchy of information, the images you use, the tracking systems you devise, and the content that you emphasize.

3. What is the “big idea”?

Can you articulate the primary benefit of taking that next step? Why should your prospect pick up the phone and call you, or come into your store? Is there one main reason why—a sale, great coffee, snob appeal—they should take that step? Ideally, you can think of several reasons why your prospects should choose you, but for the purposes of a marketing piece you want to pick just one. If you clutter the piece with too many messages, you run the risk of losing your prospects’ attention.

4. What about the “other guys”?

Who are your competitors? What are they up to these days? How do they define themselves? Are you defining yourself in opposition to them, or in relationship to them? What’s really working for your competitors? Anything that might work for you? Or do you want to stay off of their coat-tails and do something completely different? This information will help you position your piece—and your business—for maximum market share.

5. What features and benefits support your primary message?

There are good and compelling reasons for your clients to buy from you. What are they? How can this support your primary message? Now, you definitely won’t want to use every supporting reason that you can think of to back your primary message, but consider carefully which ones provide solid reasons your customer should buy your product or service.

6. What are your design criteria?

What must be included in the piece? Your logo? Your contact information? A call to action? What is your existing color palette and typeface? What will help your piece stay consistent with your branding, as well as serving the particular purpose it needs to serve? Giving your creative mind totally free reign can be a lot of fun! But it also usually results in pieces that don’t have a lot of market viability, because they don’t extend the brand or serve the appropriate function. So, make sure you plan for the function of the piece early and often.

If you have given due consideration to all of these questions, you’re ready to start making design magic! Even better, you can rest assured that your creative efforts won’t go to waste.  You’ll end up with a well designed piece that fulfils your marketing objectives.

©2009. Susan Sharman. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Susan Sharman is a designer who can ensure that your business identity and marketing materials clearly express who you are and what your business is about. With over 23 years of experience, she collaborates with small to medium size businesses, taking their projects from concept to completion. For more information visit Sharman Studios or call (925) 228-0686.

Related posts:

1. 25 tips for writing the user experience
2. How to think and act like a marketing leader
3. Web literacy: can they read what you wrote?

“If you’re in advertising, you’d better learn to speak digital, because that’s the way the world is going.”

Those words come from Josh Bernoff’s Groundswell blog today, summing up Forrester Research’s just completed five-year interactive marketing forecast. Over 70% of the marketers they surveyed expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase, while the effectiveness of direct mail, television, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease.

They expect digital marketing to grow to about 21%  of advertising spend in five years, while overall budgets are declining. And of all aspects of digital marketing, social media is the area expected to show the greatest growth, growing from $716 million this year to $3 billion in five years, between social networking campaigns and agency fees. (And this doesn’t include ads on social networks, because those are considered display ads.)

What does all this mean for you, dear friends? Time to get your digital on. Old school just won’t cut it for much longer.

We leave you with this eulogy from, well, a social media site.

Related posts:

1. 7 and-a-half tips to start social networking
2. There is gold in them there social media hills
3. Social Media Advisor for Gap Presents Results from Twitter & Facebook