Who. The. Hell. Would be a copywriter? Seriously. I threw out a request on Twitter for folks to tell me what they thought the hardest thing about being a copywriter is and…jeez. Ping. Ping. Ping, went notifications. Hundreds of fellow sufferers gave their two pence and the little tweet soon turned into some kind of […]
Tag Archives: COPYWRITING
Did you hate it?” No, the interviewer replies. “Shame. You’re supposed to,” says McQueen. When it comes to getting someone’s attention, you’ve got to go for emotions. If you don’t at least try, you’re guaranteed to fail. If you’re not thinking about how your audience relates to your writing, you shouldn’t call yourself a copywriter. You’ve […]
No. This is not the introduction I was planning. I hate using I. It should be ‘you’ – that’s more engaging. I is self-indulgent. All good copywriters know that. But I need to use I, don’t I? Sometimes I wish I could open every piece Trott-style… In 1805 Gary Bingham was a captain in the […]
I get so worried by what other people are doing. It’s the worst kind of anxiety. Right now, I’m reading The War at the End of the World by Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. It’s great. It’s also massive. 750 pages. And no pictures. I’m halfway through and can’t believe how dense the damn thing is. The […]
Before I wandered unwittingly into the world of marketing and became a copywriter, I was a punk. Well, not strictly a punk in the proper sense. I was a little too young for tartan and safety pins. But one element of punk that thrived in the ‘post-punk’ era was the DIY ethic. Driven by record […]
In 1963 things were really beginning to take off for Rowlf. After a false start recording several commercials for Purina Dog Food, he was put in the cupboard and almost forgotten. But when his owner was invited to do a skit on The Jimmy Dean Show, Rowlf was brought back in for a second shot at stardom. […]
Copywriting should be fun. It should be challenging too. But if you’re finding it too challenging, it’s wearing you down or it’s taking up too much of your time… You’re probably doing something wrong. So here I want to give you some tips on how to better manage your time as a copywriter. Most of […]
He looked at me gone out. Really? You read everything aloud? Even the 10,000-word letters? I was being interviewed for a podcast and we’d got on to my editing process. Yep, I answered. Pretty much. Between you and me, dear reader, sometimes I’m in a rush and won’t get a chance. But I would say nine times […]
This will upset some copywriters. But it will cause other copywriters joy. You see this is a piece about how to write more engagingly. But it’s not entitled 15 Tips For Writing More Engagingly. I dislike those pieces. I dislike them immensely. I see them all over the Internet. On Twitter, on LinkedIn, littering my inbox. 10 Rules […]
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It’s 1938… Very bad things are going down in Europe. Anti-Semitism is rife. The Nazi’s are about to annex Austria. And for a little known university graduate, there’s no choice… He needs to get out of the country. Fast. He flees to America. He’s lucky. He gets a graduate place at Columbia University, where he […]