Web Copy Blog

Four of the most potent words in the advertising universe used to be “As seen on TV.”
How quickly things change.
Media fragmentation is making advertising choices increasing complex, with current predictions indicating that there may be fewer than 10 to 15 years left in which to establish a global or national brand the traditional way.
In the [...]

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“Positioning” must be among the most repeated words in the advertising lexicon rivaled only by “research,” “morph” and “it wasn’t my fault.
What’s most remarkable is that marketing survived so long before Al Ries and Jack Trout coined the term and explained their concept.
But once they did, everything changed. If they’d patented the word, they’d be [...]

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Imagine the movie Casablanca with Ronald Reagan (who was cast originally) instead of Humphrey Bogart.
Or Mission Impossible without Lalo Shiffren’s iconic theme music. My point is there’s occasionally a little something in the execution or production that really adds to a basic idea, improves/changes/replaces it, and literally makes all the difference to its success.
Maybe it [...]

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Marketers readily fall into rule worship. Faith can be blind. There are many false prophets.
One of these was called “The Great god of Negativity” by some of the creative departments I’ve worked in.
This meant that their precious idea had been sacrificed on the altar by someone, on high, in the pecking order, who’d killed off [...]

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Let’s be frank; it’s hard to be genuinely warm in a cold-hearted business. However, advertising is the business of ideas, it’s imagination applied to marketing, it’s an instinctual evolutionary tool developed as a means of ensuring survival in this jungle.
Which means the somewhat rational process of getting to a great ad must be carefully constructed [...]

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Who are we talking to?” is a question asked in the formulation of literally every ad campaign under the sun –The emphasis is always on the first word.
It’s about targeting. However, the offence is forgetting about the second bit. The bit about talking to.
Traditionally, of course, advertising has “talked at.” That’s supposedly changed in recent [...]

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This is a great article. Because there’s too much good in the world. Too many good, solid campaigns. Too many good, sound people. Too many good meetings. Too few great successes.
Can a good idea become a great idea? How do you recognize great creative people? Research and analysis, more time and a bigger budget, will [...]

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How to talk persuasively about topical and tactical advertising in a book? A medium more about shelf life than it is about plugging into the zeitgeist of whatever exact moment you happen to be reading these words.
Being topical isn’t so easy when the advertising process itself is so killing to freshness and immediacy.
An average ad [...]

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The customer is king. Except in many agency creative departments, where winning awards turns you into royalty.
The customer is king. Except in many agency network boardrooms, where winning new business rules.
The customer is king. Except in many client hierarchies, where advertising standards reflect what junior mangers believe will get the nod of approval later when [...]

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First things first. How on earth do you get your message through? There’s so much rival noise already distracting your prospect in such a cluttered world.
How do you rise above the daily ruckus, not just the static coming from other advertisers, but the clamorous information explosion we’re all living in?
Nature understands that in a cluttered [...]

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