Words Matter

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nasty-woman

You’ve seen it a million times already–in their recent Presidential debate, Clinton was ripping into Trump when Trump muttered to the camera, “Such a nasty woman.” It was a stupid thing to say for obvious reasons, but had he changed one word it could have made a world of difference.

After the debate, internet memes went crazy with the line, “Nasty women make history.” It was a reference to the Laurel Thatcher Ulrich quote, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” It was a brilliant meme. Perfect, really. And a coup for the first female presidential candidate in history.

But … had Trump said “person” instead of “women” things would have been way different. Sure, he would have still been chastised for interrupting and name-calling, but, as we’ve seen this entire campaign, that stuff doesn’t stick to him. No, the use of the word “woman” was the flaw. And it probably alienated a few of the still-sane female GOP voters who were on the fence in this election because of other things he’s said. (Probably not.)

Anyway, “Nasty people rarely make history” doesn’t work. Because if it did, it would be an endorsement for Trump. And that would have been a coup for him. Plus, no one likes calling their candidate demigod “nasty” unless they have a breaking ball worthy of the phrase.

Words matter, kids. 

Further proof that words matter is the term Obamacare vs. The Affordable Care Act. When this healthcare plan was created, Obama’s team (who are freaking genius mass mobilizers, by the way) knew that in such a hostile political environment the name of the program would matter. A lot. So they named it Affordable Care. Two really good words. Remember, positive + positive = positive. You can’t argue with it, it’s math. Anyway, it was such a good name, that the other side couldn’t even use it.

“Rant rant rant rant rant Affordable Care rant rant rant.” Nope. 

So the opposition did something pretty smart themselves, and gave the ACA a human face. In an Us v. Them world, they gave the polarizing healthcare program the face of “them.” Instant uprising. And that uprising is why congress has attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act more than 60 times since its inception. I wonder if had they not named it Obamacare, whether it would have made it past 30 attempts.

“If thought corrupts language, then language also corrupts thought.” – Orwell

Words matter. Choose them well. 

On Billing for Creative Work

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I was sitting in my first big client meeting where we were rebranding a Fortune 200. There were four of us from the agency at the table, while the other six seats were filled by C-level folks from the company. About ten minutes into the meeting, after the executives from the company had finished their introductory arguments on why they needed a rebrand, I wrote a tagline on a notecard. As the clients continued to talk, and reinforce what I wrote, I stealthily slid the notecard to the AE on my left. He glanced down at it, and then slid it under his notebook—smiling at the client the whole time. 

We didn’t show the line to the client for about six months—during a period when we showed them a lot of other creative. When we finally did present the line I wrote during that first meeting, they jumped on it and it went on to become their corporate tagline worldwide. 

Over the years this ability to deconstruct and filter fast has played out time and time again. It’s why I no longer bill by the hour, but by project. And I don’t do this to make the most coin possible, but rather in the spirit of fairness and efficiency. For both the client, and me. 

Back when I first got into advertising as a freelancer, I billed at something like $25/hour. And I diligently kept my time. Most clients never had a problem with my billable. Others, ones I’d avoid in the future, would quibble over my time like they were haggling with a Tijuana sombrero salesman. 

Look, every project has a budget. A client might say it’s $25/hour, but they know how much they’re willing to spend for a final product. It’s not like they have an unlimited budget. The thinking is that if you work hourly and come in under budget, good for them. But if you come in over—it’s haggle time. 

This whole idea makes me crazy. What we do as creative professionals isn’t contained by a clock.

I wrote the tagline for that Fortune 200 in about fifteen minutes. Because I was a junior copywriter, I was probably being billed at $75/hour (while being paid a fraction of that, obviously). So in essence, the agency should have billed the client $18.75 for the line. Right? But they didn’t. They billed them the whole project amount which included all the time of all the people involved. 

Just as every project has a budget, every project has an estimated value. A “worth” to the brand. 

It’s not just a landing page, it’s data capture. 

It’s not just an ad, it’s a lure. 

It’s not just a tagline, it’s the literal embodiment of a culture. 

There’s no value in being fast in advertising. Besides, the value of our work is nearly incalculable. Sure, we can monitor analytics to prove the effectiveness of an ad, but when something is effective the value is oftentimes beyond measure. Especially in branding. 

Just Do It was the brainchild of Dan Wieden in 1987. How long do you think it took for Dan to come up with that line? Some (including me) might argue that it took his whole life—all of his experiences that lead to that epiphany—but the truth is, it probably just appeared to him after immersing himself in the problem for a while. Hell, it probably appeared to him in the shower. Don’t laugh. That’s how it works. 

So … that highly resonant, deeply personal tagline helped catapult worldwide sales for Nike from $877 million to $9.2 billion between 1988 and 1998, and is currently the cornerstone of a cultural icon. Unless Wieden arranged for a % of future sales, I’m pretty sure the line was worth waymore than the agency fee. I just hope that it was equitable—but given the story of the $35 swoosh design, who knows? 

My point here is that creative work can’t really be contained by a clock. Even though neither the client nor the creative professional have unlimited budgets or buckets of time to work with.  

I recently wrote the tagline for a branding project as I walked through the client’s parking lot after our kickoff meeting. I showed the tagline as part of a creative presentation 10 days later, along with two other options. They went with the line I wrote in the parking lot. Sure, I spent a lot of time framing the problem and researching it after the meeting, but because it was a project rate, there was no need for me to obsess over every minute. I know how long it takes to get from tabula rasa to keynote deck. I know how long it takes to refine concepts. I know how long it takes to go live. Client is happy. I’m happy. And you know what? So what if it took me ten seconds or 100 hours to solve the problem? The value of solving it didn’t change. And as long as it’s on budget, based on a previously agreed-to project rate, everyone’s happy. 

I get it, sometimes we have to work by the hour. Especially when you’re starting out. But when you can work at a project rate, I implore you to do so. Your final product will be better because you’re not sweating over every minute you spend thinking about a thing.

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Jim

The Truth About Branding

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Let’s talk about brand development–or “branding,” as it’s known in the world of marketing and advertising.   

Most folks think of a brand as an organization’s name, logo, type treatment, color palette, and tagline. Except, these are simply brand elements. When done well, these things can effectively reinforce a brand’s promise of value—but they’re still just supporting players.

The brand goes deeper. In fact, it lives right next to whatever it is you make and sell. 

Product/service first

Brand second

Everything else after

Branding is the discovery of an essence within an organization. This essence then outflows as tone into all forms of communication that a company deploys—from its website, to advertising/social media/packaging/customer service/business cards, or virtually any other form of intentional communication. The reason we get hung up on names/logos/taglines is because they’re so pervasive. So front-facing. 

Anyway, discovering this essence is what I do for a living. And sure, I then turn it into tangible marketing elements like names/taglines, web copy (that engages humans and robots), advertising, tactical content, etc. But at the tip of the spear is the essence. The tone. 

“One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.” — Salman Rushdie

I came across this quote last week and mulled it over all day. For Rushdie, asking difficult questions means something different than it does for me. He challenges dogmatic institutions, after all. I just write commercial narration. But I’ve done this job for two decades, and here’s what I know—branding doesrequire asking, and answering, difficult questions. The kinds of questions that someone within an organization might not have the courage to ask. Questions that make you think about your product/service in new ways. Questions that make you think about the people who need your product/service in new ways. Questions that seek the truth. 

Because the best branding reflects the truth within an organization. 

And getting to that truth takes time, effort, and a willingness to brave the uncomfortable questions. 

Whether you’re launching a startup, refreshing a legacy brand, or you’re taking a new product/service to market, when you treat the branding process with respect, and have the courage to answer the tough questions truthfully, you’ll be fine in the end. The key is to hire the right people to guide you along. And trust them to get you where you need to be. 

Branding
Matters

How to Write Branding Copy

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I never show clients what they want to see in the initial round of branding copy.

My job as a copywriter requires that I be two people. One is to think tactically about goals, benefits, target audiences, and so on. The other is to be completely disconnected from the brand. It’s an absurd way of thinking. And yeah, as you can imagine the process can get weird with two contradictory voices in your head. But the results are almost always unexpected, and effective.

That’s because when you’re writing copy there’s almost always an expectation of how it should play out. Especially when you’re always trying to squeeze in the who, what, where, when, why, how, blah, blah, blah. That’s the template, right? Gotta follow the rules so everyone buys off.

Only, I believe that those expectations come after the initial branding copy.

Branding copy should aspire to make the reader feel something in a way that gets them to take favorable action.

A person landing on your page via an organic search doesn’t want the mission statement shoved in their face. They want a reason to keep reading and researching what it is you do and how it affects them.

Once you gain that trust, then you can get into the guts of it.

(Granted, there are obviously exceptions to this rule. Particularly in retail when someone already knows what they want and they just want to navigate to the proper page on your site to buy it. No need to make them feel much with any initial branding copy. In these cases, just get to the point. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t want a crappy website, but rather one that’s easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and branded authentically. When you have a product or service that people like, the brand will take hold.)

Over the years I’ve had good clients who have trusted me to capture the voice of a brand in a way that moves its audience to take action. I’ve also had clients who wanted to micromanage each syllable because they know their product best. And of course they’re absolutely right. But, ironically, this proximity to the product/service is why they have a hard time seeing past the who, what, where, when, why, and how to make their reader feel something. Many times these clients are pressed for ROI, so it’s easy to resort to tactics that have proven effective in the past (SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!).

But branding and storytelling take time. As does improved ranking (unless you’re paying, of course). People want to like the brands they buy. And that means more than a hard sell on your homepage.

It means having the courage to change.

No, most clients that micromanage branding copy can’t separate themselves from themselves to see things clearly. They can’t be two people.

So when I pitch that first round of initial branding copy, I read it aloud. I want that inflection to sink in. I want them to feel it from the voice of ‘another.’

This is usually the copy we end up using. With a few tweaks, of course. I’m an effective writer, but God knows I will never know everything about every brand.

When a client isn’t sold on that copy direction, I suck it up and create something more in line with their expectations. Then it’s usually a “hurray” moment because the client is happy. Even though the message could have been stronger.

What about clients that hate the initial branding copy? That hasn’t happened yet, so I have no idea. I reckon I’d refer them to someone else. But when a client choses to work with me they’re hiring me because they like my work. Not because I take them to fancy lunches.

And over my career I’ve learned that the work that works best, is almost always what clients don’t expect to see.

The Truth About Brainstorming

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Brainstorming. It’s a valuable business concept that makes us valuable members of a team. Except, it’s a death knell to creativity.

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The Rise of the Internal Ad Agency

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Once upon a time you hired an agency to build amazing ad campaigns, and place that content in places people congregate. Not much has changed.

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Building the Perfect Website

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Everyone wants the perfect website. But it’s more than “doing SEO.” You have to keep people in mind throughout the process. SEO will take care of itself.

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Advertising. It Ain’t What It Used To Be.

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With the Super Bowl ads breathing down our necks, it’s time to admit that traditional advertising doesn’t sell shit. Times have changed. No longer is the :30 second TV spot, or the full page print ad a guarantee of anything like a bump in sales. (If it ever was.) That is, of course, unless you’ve got a coupon.

No, advertising isn’t advertising any more.

When advertising exists as an entertainment vehicle, it’s no longer about sales. It’s about branding.

Brands hope you remember their clever ads. Just remember. Not even do anything specific. Maybe then you’ll decide one day to use that brand because you remember that funny commercial.

But that funny commercial alone isn’t reason enough for anyone to do anything. Its purpose is branding. Only.

Don’t get me wrong, as a copywriter I love getting people to think about things just slightly differently. Clever is my middle name. But driving people to do a thing isn’t the point anymore.

The age of calculating ROI from traditional advertising is dead. If it ever existed at all.

Now there are other ways to do that. Including sustainable marketing. Which is what we do here at Smash Communications. Sustainable marketing is authentic, relevant, and measurable advertising. Without the big media buy. Think of it as modern advertising. No need for TV or print which loses its “value” when the ad stops running. (I put “value” in quotes because frankly, when is the last time you were moved to do ANYTHING because of a print ad you saw in a magazine at the dentist’s office? What is this, 1950?) Sustainable marketing helps tell your brand’s story in a human way that also satisfies the search engine bots. No, it doesn’t result in a spike in revenue (or inquiries) right away. It takes some time. But once it’s in motion, it continues to provide long-term value. Which is more than even the best Super Bowl ad can do. Click here to learn more about this radical, new kind of advertising. Because it’s real. And it’s effective.

It just requires that you think a little differently.

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James Mitchem

Seven Steps to Killer Content

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Creating authentic branded content is more important to marketing than ever. You need to write because your audience demands it, and Google requires it.

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SEO Killed the Video Star

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Video is great for a couple of reasons. It’s quick. It’s human. But it falls short in the area of SEO. This post explains why.

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