Overly complex copy – why?
Imaging getting a brief of ‘make this as difficult as possible’? If it was a brief for an escape room, a maze or a crossword then maybe. But not in the world of copywriting. I can only imagine that overly complex was definitely part of the brief for whoever did the...
Rubbish copy – nudge on bins
Every time I go away I come back with some ‘don’t they do this thing better than we do where I live’ notion. This time it was all about bins. If you’ve been around these parts for a while you will know I am a big fan of nudge/behavioural change. Can the wording on...
Why am I talking about AI in copywriting when no one else is?
What AI isn’t – original.
What AI is – data mining.
Shingles knows what now?
Let’s look at health-related copywriting. A telly ad I didn’t understand has prompted me to write about it. I’m talking about that shingles ad. “Get to know shingles because shingles knows you.” I think it says. I’ve seen it loads of times and yet I still have no idea...
Reputation, reputation, reputation
Trust your gut. And if you’ve had a good experience somewhere don’t forget to leave the business a review!
Lost in translation
Some of us copywriters (me) often write for an international audience. If you’ve been reading my posts for a while you will know that my specialism is plain English. It’s this skill that means writing for an international audience is not a tough gig for me. We’ve all...
Beware the acronym
Who doesn’t love an acronym? Me. That’s who. I started writing notes for this a while back. And I had, randomly written, WDLAA at the top. I now have diddly squat idea what that is/was? Which kind of makes my point for me. The end! Are you with me though? Acronyms are...
Customer service words – the good, the bad and the reaching out ugly
I am not alone in feeling that some organisations are yet to recover from the pandemic. We were all (even if some of us to a much lesser extent) ‘patient at this very difficult time’. But, this current period of permacrises has everyone's nerves frayed and bad, or...
What’s in a name
Telly ads normally make me glaze over and zone out, but the latest/current one from Hyundai caught my ear. The entire ad was about how we’ve all been pronouncing the name wrong. I don’t know how long Hyundai has been around or why they chose now to do this (though...
Who wrote what?
Ghostwriting is quite the hot topic at the moment. In the sense of both the facts and the prose, in that OVERLY written about book by a prince. I’ve not bought the book. I don’t intend to buy the book. I don’t even want to read about the book. But I haven’t been able...