Who is your customer? What precisely do you want them to do? And what would make them do it? To write any piece of copy you need to ask these three questions of your customer. If you don’t, you’ll struggle to persuade anyone to do anything. You probably agree. They seem pretty obvious, pretty sensible […]
Category Archives: COPYWRITING
As a copywriter, your job is to communicate ideas. It’s something I do almost every day, for companies of all shapes and sizes, all around the world. Trouble is, in writing for those folks, I don’t often take the time to communicate with myself. Maybe you’re the same. Maybe you think so much about how […]
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In my office, there are five paintings. Not originals, of course. If they were, I’d wear far more gold top hats than I currently do. But as I sit here – slightly frazzled having just been working on my new book – I’ve been looking at them and thought it would be interesting to share […]
Reviewing a piece of copy I’d been working on, the great American copywriter, John Forde, made a brief note in the margin that read: I know you love this bit, and it’s very good. But you need to delete it. Of course, I was outraged. I knew the line he was referring to immediately. It […]
Karl Marx money pot. Receipts. Trio biscuit bar. Bust of Marcus Aurelias. Fluffy mic. Small painting of Apollinaire. Dog biscuits. Ceramic ghost. Rickenbacker bass guitar. Glass of peach squash (yes, peach). Pen. Hello… Don’t worry, I’ve not gone mad. No madder than usual, anyway. It’s just I’m just sat in my office and those are […]
Before we get into today’s email… You’ve no doubt opened an email that starts with a line like this before. But by that point, you’re technically in the email already, aren’t you? So that’s nonsense. It’s too late to say Before we get into today’s email. But people do this in email marketing all the time […]
“What you working on, Phil?” asks Barbara as she brings a cup of lapsang to her husband. He doesn’t look up, seemingly absorbed by the image of a large chicken egg he’s drawn in the middle of the A3 sheet of paper in front of him. “What is it, Philip?” She sees him jump as he […]
I want to talk to you about liberating ideas… But before I do, I want to bring some more attention to a campaign fellow copywriter Jane Evans is running. Jane is a fantastic copywriter and previous guest of the podcast… (You can listen to her share her story back in the Christmas episode here) But she’s […]
I’m a weird person. But I don’t mind. Being weird means I’m free to say weird things and come up with weird ideas. As a copywriter, I see that as my job. It’s my responsibility to question the norm and wonder if there might be a different way of doing things. But here’s the problem… […]
You’ve got your idea… You’ve been floating it around your head to make sure it plays… And you’ve been figuring out how you’re going to express it in your copy. Now you need to sit down and start writing. Before you do… Here’s my advice: Take a run-up. Huh? I mean, literally. Open the word document, […]