copywriting « Brendan’s blog

A double-decker bus is this big

October 11, 2007 — Brendan

A perennial problem in copywriting is trying to convey sizes, lengths or weights. So something is 348 metres long. Great. Try making it real in the reader’s mind. How about we say it’s the equivalent of nearly 42 double decker buses?

The marvellous chrico Double Decker Bus Calculator is your key to unlocking this particular problem. Simply type in your amount, your ‘convert from’ units and your ‘convert into’ units, and you’re off.

So, suddenly, I know that it takes 178.954903 double decker buses to make a km; that the distance from Lands End to John O’Groats is 0.00252 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon; and that you would have to line up nearly 170 Friendly Ghosts end-to-end to make a blue whale.

It also has the fantastic footnote on the ‘about‘ page:

If at any time you get a message similar to the following: 1 square inch is equivalent to 0 Australias (to six decimal places).; an error has not occured – this has happened because the amount of Australias in a square inch is sooooooo small that it won’t register with only six decimal places.

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Tech PR Copywriting: The whole of feedback can be greater than the sum of its parts

September 27, 2007 — Brendan

Today, copywriting, and the lot of a copywriter when presented with negative feedback.

It’s not often you get a piece totally right first time. You can be as thorough as possible with the copy brief, but you’ll find from time to time that people prefer to see a written piece before they really start to think about what’s required. And when I say ‘people’, I mean separate individuals: they will all review it, independently, and add what they think are a few comments. In toto however, this becomes a wash of revision marks and comments, and when they return to the copywriter they can be very dispiriting.

Everyone reads something and thinks they can add to it. In fact, I think they feel compelled to do so, because it’s a direct message. It doesn’t have the ambiguity or interpretation of an image: it’s something more tangible, something they are actually ’saying’, through you, to the world. Naturally everyone involved wants to comment, even if just to put their mark on it.

So far, I’ve articulated the reason. But emotionally, for a copywriter, it’s hard. Even if you write a fairly routine piece, you put something of yourself into it. Even if it’s just a standard contract win press announcement, when changes come back, it’s a knock-back.

You have to keep in mind, always, that you’re working for the client. You have to understand that non-positive feedback is not necessarily negative: it just means it’s different. If you believe you’re right, you must say so and give reasoning. If the client disagrees, you get one, maybe two shots at convincing them otherwise, but at the end of the day you have to give the client what they are happy with, whether or not you personally believe it’s right. You will get it right second, maybe third time around.

You have to be like a brain surgeon. Effectively you’re plunging into someone else’s brain and finding out what’s in there. Sometimes you have to do this dispassionately.

I digress. How does a copywriter handle difficult feedback? Professionally, with distinction. Personally, with difficulty.

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Putting the tech into tech PR

September 26, 2007 — Brendan

Do you have to know about tech to do tech PR? I’m hoping not, because hardly anyone seems to know hardly anything.

My background is fairly techy I guess. I had a ZX81, and a ZX Spectrum. I did a degree in IT. I’ve been a programmer at a large bank (lasted about six months), a technical author for a financial software house, a designer at a multimedia hardware company, and a publications manager for another financial software house.

So, whereas I wouldn’t say I’m deeply into tech, it’s always been around me. I just enjoy it. I especially enjoy the creativity it affords me (I’m also into home-based music production based on a PC - warning, yes, this is me, download of about 6.5MB MP3). And, in turn, it gives me an appreciation of what I’m writing about, or the nature of the messages we’re trying to promote.

But it often strikes me that the people I work alongside know diddly squat about it. As in, almost zero knowledge, across the board. Recent episodes have involved someone wondering why it took longer for their home page to load because they’d set it to a corporate website rather than, say, a blank page or Google (yes, you see those pictures…?); being asked why I would want to save something as a separate graphic file rather than a Word file (still not sure about that one); and someone taking two hours to install a printer on their machine (how long…?).

I know there’s an argument that ‘non-technical’ people (whatever that means) might be better at tech PR because they get a new, fresh angle on what’s good about it, and the mechanics of PR should operate no matter what specialism you adopt.

But I do think there are often astonishing gaps in people’s knowledge which, to my mind, put them below the bar for truly grasping what they’re actually supposed to be talking about.

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Posted in PR, copywriting, technology. 10 Comments »

I think I may be… a Geek Marketer.

September 13, 2007 — Brendan

From Micropersuasion via 7hobbits (all italics and bold are mine):

Enter Geek Marketers. These cross-trained specialists … are marketers by trade, yet they also have a hard-core interest in technology and social anthropology. As curious individuals, they are constantly studying how digital advances are changing our culture and media. Armed with these insights, they regularly apply them in a marketing context by working closely with brand teams to codify new best practices.

Geek Marketers create competitive advantage through rapid-fire testing and learning. The people I know in this role are shepherding the development, testing and measurement of all kinds of groundbreaking marketing programs. Their pilots span from the simple, such as building RSS feeds, to the complex, creating multifaceted community programs. Often they are paired with people like me, who are in a similar role on the agency side.

This may sound like the trendy occupation du jour, but something tells me the position has staying power. To be sure, the entire industry is innovating and everyone’s technical acumen is slowly rising. Still, Geek Marketers are freed to live just a little bit further out on the edge than most. And with no end in sight for what technology can do to transform business, they can continue to play a key role.

I’m a Geek Marketer. Straight up.

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US to UK English – a quick reference

September 8, 2007 — Brendan

I was asked advice on converting from US to UK English the other day, a task which at first seems simple enough but there are pitfalls to avoid. Here are the main three:

‘ize’ to ‘ise’. You could be forgiven for thinking you can just do a straight search/replace for this, but if you do and then read the results you’ll start wondering what that peculiar word ’sise’ means. Yes, the word ’size’ will also become part of that search/replace so be very careful.
‘color’ to ‘colour’. Usually, this does work, but in some fields you can have tradenames that must use the American spelling. For example, HP has ColorSphere toner and they will get annoyed if you start calling it ColourSphere.
‘program’ to ‘programme’. Even in UK English a computer program is still called a program, but everything else – a TV programme, a radio programme, a development programme – is different. Even ‘gram’ and ‘kilogram’ should change to ’gramme’ endings. If you’re doing this for people on the European continent and they insist you’re wrong on this, insist that you’re right.

If you’re going to use search/replace then the best advice is to confirm every change rather than do it all in one go, and check it all again afterwards. Either that or try and get the entire US nation to refer back to its Latin roots.

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Good communication and good design do what they’re supposed to

September 4, 2007 — Brendan

Tech for PR posts a great piece today on how technology just gets in the way. This is something I keep coming back to, that good communication and good design don’t get in the way because they help, without hindering. If they’re done properly, you don’t notice them at all.

I spent several years as a designer, including software interface design, and so I spent many hours putting myself in the head of a user, trying to figure out how best to word a message, or what colour a menu should be, or how large fonts to use. They’re all really important and yet I would often have to fight for my suggestions to make it into the software. The tech viewpoint seemed to be that if it worked, that was all that mattered. Mine was, what do you mean by ‘work’? Could you drive a car without any labels on the dashboard? Eventually, possibly, but only after a few bumps. This is why some time ago I had a major gripe about Lotus Notes which has frankly bizarre features such as a menu entitled ‘Actions’ with a submenu entitled ‘Tools’. Where’s the sense in that? I still come across ‘funnies’ daily but I’ve given up documenting them.

I’m currently going through a presentation slide set and the ineptitude on display (literally) astonishes me. The message is very astute – or at least I think it is. I’m still trying to figure it out. I have a strong feeling I’ll be able to distil it from 15 rambling bullet points to about 7 succinct ones. And remove that spaghetti-like diagram altogether.

Here’s a solution for all you bad communicators out there: take up blogging. Find out what it’s like to put together a brief piece of prose, actually saying something in a joined-up way, with a compelling headline so that people notice it in their readers. Think long and hard about which graphic to include. Do this every day and next thing you know, you’ll be communicating like a Friendly Ghost. You too will be someone’s invisible friend.

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Posted in copywriting, design, web design. Leave a Comment »

These stories do nothing to promote science. They sell products and pay money, misrepresent the notion of doing research, and sell the idea that scientists are irrelevant boffins.

September 3, 2007 — Brendan

Could it be that Ben Goldacre really is that naive?

I rejoiced on the day ex-Dr. Gillian McKeith became plain old Gillian McKeith aka ‘The Awful Poo Lady’. This was in no small measure due to Goldacre’s relentless hounding through his Bad Science column in the Guardian, exposing her every fatuous claim to authenticity – the ‘energy’ in seeds, the ‘oxygen’ in chlorophyll – until she was forced to drop the PhD.

But whereas Goldacre had a sharp nose for the poo lady’s tang, he doesn’t seem quite to appreciate the bouquet of PR surveys. Surveys are a trusted weapon in the PR arsenal. People love them and if the subject matter is titillating, all the better. Pick up any newspaper and chances are there will be several surveys in them, the vast majority of which will have originated from a PR agency.

I’m currently writing up a report on a survey that truly does have ‘pub conversation’ potential. For a copywriter it’s a godsend: for once, no dry-as-a-bone press releases, no anally retentive articles. It’s fun to write, the public laps it up and the PR company gets exposure for the client. Who loses out? The boffins, apparently. Well, they didn’t have to play if they didn’t want to. Perhaps the allure of pretty PR girls did it for them. Perhaps they wanted to get invited to those sorts of parties.

Some surveys really do contribute to knowledge. But let’s face it, some do not. They’re tongue-in-cheek, or have a wiggle in their walk and a giggle in their talk. And if Goldacre really is affronted by this then perhaps he should leave the soft targets and get on with what he does best: exposing really pernicious offenders.

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Posted in PR, copywriting. 4 Comments »

Ghost-blogging: when the chips are down the balloon goes up and the lights go out.

August 11, 2007 — Brendan

I was recently asked to advise on whether it’s a good idea to ghost-write a blog. I personally have never written a blog post on a client’s behalf although I produce ghost-written articles (hence my moniker). You could argue that they’re the same thing. However, my take on it, and I think the general view, is that ghost-blogging is not only different but potentially very dangerous.

Blogging is much more personal and immediate and whereas people accept that articles aren’t necessarily written by the supposed author, with blogging, they do. The whole ethos of blogging is that it’s an open and transparent dialogue. With this in mind there are definitely practical objections to a PR agency writing a blog.

Firstly, if it’s a dialogue then who deals with comments after the first posting? The copywriter? The account manager? The client? Does every comment have to be approved? Logistically, how would this work? Surely a top-ranking director doesn’t want to deal with approval of every message that goes out? This is where the ‘immediacy’ would be lost too.

Secondly, given that people have often strong feelings about being genuine in blogs, if you’re found out then you’re in really deep doo-doo. And you can be found out: if you comment on another blog or forum then people can run a ‘whois’ on your IP address. Even if there is a genuine desire to give out useful information, if you’re not upfront about representing clients then all hell will break loose. Do you really want to take that chance?

In fact I would even question the need for most corporate blogs written by the directors themselves. When blogging’s done well by a CEO or director the results can be very impressive. People really do respond to the ‘inside view’, complete with its typos, grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. It’s all part and parcel of blogging and adds to its charm. But which directors have the time for this? Where’s the ROI? And do you really want to risk doing a Ratner?

Given all the negatives, and few positives, I wouldn’t take such a risk with a client’s reputation. I just wouldn’t do it. Writing for yourself or your own enterprise is fine, but I wouldn’t second-guess another company’s messaging or pretend to be someone I’m not.

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Posted in blogging, copywriting. 1 Comment »

Has Onalytica’s Flemming Madsen settled the PR blog debate?

August 1, 2007 — Brendan

Onalytica use sophisticated techniques to identify blogging influence and Flemming Madsen, its founder, has just published his take on PR Blog influence.

His methodology is summarised as:

Using a topical crawl of the Internet, blog posts that discussed the topic of “PR” and “Blogs” in the same article were collected along with blog posts that were sufficiently referenced in this context. (Meaning: If you discuss the topic of “PR” and “Blogs” or being discussed in that context, then you are a candidate).
Some blogs, that appeared to be very closely related, were consolidated and some blogs/websites were manually removed because they were not deemed relevant to the context.
The posts were analysed for references/citations between them. The citations were extracted and turned into a massive system of simultaneous equations that were solved to provide influence.
The influence was normalised to a scale between 1 and 100.

The resulting list looks like this (I’m hosting it here for comparison purposes and so I don’t pinch any of Flemming’s bandwidth – I recommend you read his posting in full for the details):

Can you see me? Yes, I’m second bottom. As Flemming says, different searches might yield different results, so I guess you could say I’m not exclusively PR and blogging because I’m also copywriting. Or perhaps I’m just not very influential!

A comparison of the blogs common to Onalytica’s study and my PowerPR index shows this (both studies contained about the same number of blogs so these positions are comparable):

Onalytica	PowerPR	Blog
1	1	Micro Persuasion
2	22	Strategic Public Relations
3	19	PR meets the WWW (Constantin Basturea)
4	10	Pop! PR Jots
7	4	NevilleHobson.com
10	41	Murphy’s Law
11	38	PR Studies
12	11	Communication Overtones
14	7	On Message Wagner Comms
15	2	Online Marketing Blog
16	8	PR Squared
17	46	KDPaine’s PR Measurement Blog
20	43	Corporate PR
23	17	PR Blogger
25	33	PR Communications
29	3	Center for Media and Democracy (PR Watch)
31	51	Young PR
32	24	Tech PR Gems
38	40	Buzz Bin
40	27	Media Guerrilla
45	34	Common Sense PR
48	23	Pro PR
50	20	A PR Guy’s Musings (Stuart Bruce)
64	49	Alan Weinkrantz PR Web Log
66	67	DummySpit
67	26	IndiaPRBlog!
69	42	Piaras Kelly PR – Irish Public Relations
71	48	Heather Yaxley – Greenbanana PR
79	37	PR. Differently
82	58	Naked PR
84	56	Friendly Ghost

There are some agreements – Micropersuasion will always be pretty much in a league of its own, and there are occasional near-parities such as Communication Overtones and Dummyspit, but mainly Flemming’s study shows a very different picture. PR.Differently, IndiaPRBlog, Murphy’s Law and A PR Guy’s Musings (Stuart Bruce) all shift rank by at least 30 places.

It’s a telling comparison between simple home-brewed methodologies looking purely at publicly available metrics (ie mine), and a rigorous approach using established analytical techniques.

Of course, a lot of this boils down to the initial list. Flemming has some on his which I do not, and vice versa. However I’m surprised that a shel of my former self, Strumpette, Todd Andrlik and the world’s leading aren’t included because my perception was that they were heavyweights. Todd owns the Power150 which is competing to become a standard and whereas Neville Hobson is rated, his close associate Shel Holtz is not. And I can only assume it was modesty on Flemming’s behalf not to include Onalytica’s own blog in the study.

So what happens now? Has Flemming settled the debate? Or does it merely contribute to the ever-increasing number of measurement tools being developed? I think it’s very interesting to see how proprietary number-crunching systems throw up unexpected results. Having talked with Flemming and seen the system in action, I have confidence in the Onalytica study.

However, by its very nature it is proprietary, and therefore it still doesn’t ’standardise’ on measurement. We don’t all have server farms or software that can solve huge numbers of simultaneous equations. So unless we all approach Onalytica with certain unspecified sums of money, we’re still largely working with what’s publicly available.

Personally, it also raises the question as to whether there’s much point continuing the PowerPR list. In the light of the Power150’s ascendancy to the firmament and pretty much proof positive that true influence has little to do with popularity, I struggle to think of a reason why my pitiful attempt at devising a ranking scheme should survive. It provided great linkbait, but that honestly wasn’t the reason I did it.

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Posted in blogging, copywriting, social media, web 2.0. 9 Comments »

A mischief of mice, a kindle of kittens and an egoplex of bloggers.

July 31, 2007 — Brendan

Today, collective nouns. There was an interesting debate recently at work. An article was circulated about ‘The Cat of Death‘, featuring a cat called Oscar that apparently has remarkable powers of telepathy: when he curls up near someone at a nursing home, they inevitably curl up and die hours later.

I quote:

[Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill], was convinced of Oscar’s talent when he made his 13th correct call. While observing one patient, Teno said she noticed the woman was not eating, was breathing with difficulty and that her legs had a bluish tinge, signs that often mean death is near.

His previous 12 ’successes’ involved several people who weren’t moving, three who had turned green, four who had gone a bit stiff, and two were lying prone on the floor. In one spectacular diagnosis Oscar was found asleep on the face of one resident who only minutes before had fallen out of a cupboard.*

The debate ensued as to whether or not it was still legal to drown kittens at which point I tuned out, but it reminded me of the collective noun for a group of kittens. It’s a kindle. A kindle of kittens. Further investigation brought up this wonderful page which lists just about every collective noun going, and then some. Among my favourites:

a mischief of mice
a covey of ptarmigans
a pomp of Pekingese
a horde of hamsters
a babble of barbers
… and, from the Some That Might Be section, a shower of meteorologists and a jam of tarts. I’d add an egoplex of bloggers to that.

Whoever owns the website clearly has a preoccupation with English As She Is Spoke: this page features a treasure trove of resources for anyone with a passing interest in English and who wants to find out something fascinating about it.

* This paragraph is, of course, not true.

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Posted in copywriting, humour. 1 Comment »

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A double-decker bus is this big

Tech PR Copywriting: The whole of feedback can be greater than the sum of its parts

Putting the tech into tech PR

I think I may be… a Geek Marketer.

US to UK English – a quick reference

Good communication and good design do what they’re supposed to

These stories do nothing to promote science. They sell products and pay money, misrepresent the notion of doing research, and sell the idea that scientists are irrelevant boffins.

Ghost-blogging: when the chips are down the balloon goes up and the lights go out.

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