Commercial Writing and Creative Collaboration

Back to marketing basics

"A flood of data should never be allowed to wash away your common sense and your feeling for the market." -- Jack Trout

Marketing communications 101

Times are tough.
Times are terrible.
This is not the time for hardcore, in your face selling tactics.
Do this instead.
Get back to basics.
Join the conversation.
Don’t be a bore.
Say something that resonates with your audience.
Follow up appropriately.

 

Is your audience hearing what you're telling them?

That is such an important question.

Because, often marketers get complacent. They go along, day-to-day, creating marketing messages and assuming that everyone knows what they're talking about. But do they? Is the real message getting through?

Remember Joe Cocker? Okay, well anyway, back in the day he was quite a popular entertainer. Watch this video clip on Frank Martin's blog Marketing Magic. It illustrates how many marketing messages today get lost in the translation. It's entertaining. It's absolutely hilarious. And it drives the point home.

When you're making messages that matter, be sure to ask someone if they get it. It could save you a lot of disappointment. 

Humans are not cattle

They’re intelligent, emotional, and interested in products and services that improve their lives. If you have that product they’re likely to start a relationship with you; but their capacity for trust is paper thin.

You have to become the person you’re talking to. It is essential to stand in their shoes when you create your marketing messages. Your audience wants to know that you understand their problems. So be sure the hostile imagery of “exploiting our target audience” doesn’t spill into your marketing message. Why not speak to these fellow human beings in ways that touch them intellectually, emotionally, and connect with their powers of discernment. It’s time to offer-up some substance. Your audience demands it. You owe your reader something for the attention he or she is giving you.

Scriptwriting is complex, the story should be simple

The acronym A/V, to mean audio/visual, isn’t used much in management circles these days. It’s pretty much gone the way of the 35mm film strip accompanied by the live narrative. More often you’ll hear words like DVD, Flash, PowerPoint, CD, and to a lesser extent video or film. Technology has given us almost limitless capabilities under the heading of multimedia. Call it what you will, the creative process of synchronizing the spoken word -- with moving pictures, stills, animation or interactivity -- into a fluid composite that tells a story or conveys an idea, is still very much the meticulous process of blending the “A” with the “V”.

Communications managers don’t often understand the dynamics of this format. Their tendency is to employ too many words, cover too much territory, or use too many visual bells and whistles (made available today by technology) to tell a simple story. To avoid that, smart managers hire a professional scriptwriter.

The scriptwriter’s job is to “visualize” the pictures that will play for the audience, and “hear” the spoken word that will complement these pictures. The writer is involved in a rather complex mental rehearsal, a practice run that is worked and re-worked. Words and pictures are brought together; then words are edited away; other pictures are added; weak pictures are replaced with effective pictures; and words are tweaked -- over and over again. The end result is a script where both “A” and “V” are merged into a written document that provides the road map or instructions for producing a presentation that seamlessly tells the story.

Words and pictures must complement each other, not fight each other for attention. Less is more. Too much telling and not enough showing is slow-moving and boring. Too much showing and not enough telling may miss the message all together. To have an effective A/V presentation, no matter what the medium, you must have a narrow focus, eliminate all that is not necessary, and concentrate on the core message. The objective is to tell your story in a manner that your audience can appreciate effortlessly, learn from, and respond to in a favorable way. Creating a script can twist your brain. Viewing the final production should not.

Make your business an experience to remember

Some businesses are memorable, and some are not. If your business is not memorable, it won't be long and you'll have too few customers to keep the doors open. If your business is memorable, it better be memorable for a good reason, and not a bad reason, or again, you'll end up with too few customers to keep the doors open. Bad memories are rampant in today's business world. We almost expect to be treated poorly--it's so commonplace.

That's why being treated so well is so memorable--in a good way! Interestingly both Tom Peters and Seth Godin mentioned similar topics today.

The most pleasant person to deal with that I've come across in a long time is May. May is a technician at my veterinarian's office, here in Jacksonville, Florida. She is just a delight. Everytime I walk in the front door she belts out "Hello, Mr. Lemons, how's Abby?", and she juts out her hand to deliver a firm handshake. Today, I called to make an appointment for my Boston Terrier (haven't spoken to May in 5-weeks), and she greets me on the phone just like she does when I'm in the clinic. I almost expect to see her hand reaching through the telephone. I'm sure my name pops up on her caller ID, but who cares? She makes the effort, everytime, to greet me like I'm an old friend. Last week my mother (who has a different last name than me) called May using my telephone. My mother opens with, "Hello, this is Mrs. Fanelli". May says, "Hello Mrs. Fanelli, how's Tasha? We haven't seen "kitty" in a long time!" How does May do this? Does she mentally connect my mother with me? Does she digitally link my dog with my mother's cat? Who cares? Like I said, she makes an effort, everytime, and that's a memorable experience that we talk about often.

The office where May works is about 15-miles from my home. There are at least four other vets closer, but I always drive to the one where May works. Her dedication to her job, her professionalism in the office, and her cheerful, smiling face and willingness to assist, make it worth the trip. May has given her boss a memorable business, with a story attached--a story I've often shared with others. No matter how big or how small your business, having an experience like May delivers can only make you stand out brilliantly.

Seth Godin brings back the list

Seth Godin recently re-published a great list of "What Every Good Marketer Knows". Most of these knowledge nuggets have been true for years, but it's useful to be reminded of them over and over again. While the entire list is a treasure trove, I do have my favorites.

• Good marketers tell a story.
• You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
• Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.

Read the entire list, and share it with your marketing people--that's everybody in the company BTW.

Do marketers pay enough attention to copy?

When layout and design on the computer became a popular way of doing things (way back in the last century), copywriting very nearly became the forgotten creative. This was an exciting new technology for graphic design.  “Designers” multiplied exponentially by virtue of desk-top-publishing systems. Throw away the X-ACTO Knife and rubber cement! Forget about RC paper and Rubylith!

Now, anyone can design with keyboard strokes,
and your work is perfectly rendered on the 64-color screen!

Anyone with a computer could instantly become a designer, and the techno-frenzy began. The only thing that mattered, it seemed, was how good that advertisement or brochure looked. Marketers weren’t so concerned with how well it worked.

Copywriting got dissed big time

Designers” were called in to create ads while copywriters were often an after-thought. I can’t tell you how many times marketing managers would say to me: “Just give us some verbiage for this page, no one reads this stuff anyway.” Designers (well, desk-top-publishers), were marketing’s techno-gods of the age. Yes, some pictures may be worth a thousand words, but try to sell a product, or generate a lead, or engage the intellect with graphics alone.

Marketers have been slowly relearning the truth -- that good writing is an important component of good marketing -- but the 21st century has its own legion of techno-gods. Their marketing genius is preoccupied with abstract terminology like “client centered dynamics”, or “CRM”, or all the various shadings of “branding theology”. Few marketing professionals ever talk about the value of good copy, or persuasive storytelling. Look in your mix of industry publications. So-called marketing articles will spell out the finer points of e-mail design, search engine optimization, using legacy data wisely, and the latest in “business intelligence software”; but very few of them ever talk about the importance of good marketing writing. I see troubled times for those who think that technology is still the answer to everything.

I happen to have a branding theory myself. But mine's a little simpler. I think branding has a lot to do with storytelling, and storytelling has a lot to do with writing. You can use all the technology in the world, speak all the buzzwords you can muster, but the bottom line is a good company has a story to tell -- a message to deliver -- and it nearly always takes a good writer to make a message that matters.

Why do we make simplicity so difficult?

What is the objective of marketing communications?
It’s to sell more of your product, service, or process to your target market. That’s the bottom-line: sell more, profit more. There really is no other purpose. How do you accomplish this? First, you must interrupt your audience (without frustrating them), then tell your story. To keep their attention, and to avoid any misunderstanding or confusion, you craft a story that is clear, engaging, and persuasive. If your story is wisely written, and it reaches your target at the right time and in the right place, sales can be made. It's certainly not easy. There are myriad details involved, but at least we know the process required for success. It seems a simple enough equation that we should have it down fairly well by now. After all, this is the 21st century.

My question: How did the state-of-the-art get to its current level of ineffectiveness and chaos?
Why are there so many commercials on television that make us laugh, but afterwards we can’t remember who was selling what? Why do they employ so many high-tech camera tricks that they leave the viewer strained and with a nervous tic? Too much television advertising has no discernable message at all--especially when it’s flying past you at a hundred miles an hour.

Print advertising is seldom any better.
Ads use irrelevant photos and graphics that do nothing to move your story forward. Layouts are hard to follow, and the type is hard to read. If the reader does struggle through a poorly conceived advertisement, the message is often obscure, and response options are missing. (In many cases magazine design has even become a fragmented visual landfill.)

Websites?
I won’t even go there, except to say that a lot of people are spending a lot of money to get an outcome that can only be described as confusing, un-navigable, extravagant, and devoid of useful content.

Marketers should be a lot wiser at this stage of the game.
Our advertising, PR, and other communications should be a lot more effective than they are. We have powerful technological tools, but often employ techno bells and whistles to make noise (visual and audible), not to advance our purpose. Some folks think “creativity” is synonymous with crazy, kitschy, and chaotic--it’s not. Sometimes we think a concept to death, and turn simplicity into something no one understands. We’ve been told by those-in-the-know that today’s consumer is smart, he can’t be fooled, he wants the information necessary to make an intelligent buying decision. Why aren’t we giving it to him? Why do we over-complicate, obfuscate, and play jokes with our marketing dollars? We’re trying way too hard! Creating messages that matter is difficult, but the difficulty is in the simplicity. And simplicity is a hard sell in business, and an even harder sell in marketing.

Marketing as if it mattered

I’ve been in this business a long time, and I can’t count the times I’ve heard people who should know better say things like: "...the copy’s not that important, no one reads this stuff anymore."

Unbelievable, but true! Companies continue to throw good money after bad creating new marketing tools that they don’t think anyone will read. So what’s the end result? You can see it all over the Internet. Websites full of inappropriate bells and whistles. Websites with extreme design, and so much superfluous content a visitor doesn’t know where to look first. Websites that will test your patience and your sanity. Websites that do little for bottom-line results.

When a marketer discovers that no one is reading his marketing message there’s only one reason: Nothing has been said that the audience can relate to. How does this happen? One way is: copywriters write marketing messages to suit managers, rather than the needs of the target audience.

Human beings have a built-in monitoring system. We tune-out the monotonous, ill conceived, misdirected clutter that accosts us moment by moment in our daily lives. We neutralize the useless and confused, and integrate into our conscienceness that which has purpose to us as individuals.

Imagine the potency of a marketing message that offers value. If your marketing messages became a source of timely, reliable, valuable content, you’d have readers, listeners, responders, and quite possibly the beginning a beautiful relationship.