I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a big fan of Apple and its terrific products. I’m no “fanboy,” but I do have a stable of Apple products that manage to enhance my life in their respective ways. That said, I hate my fucking iPhone 6. Continue reading
Grammar is your friend.
Save for frequent bouts of laziness, I consider myself something of a grammarian. I don’t know all the rules, and the ones I do know, I break (sometimes accidentally and sometimes on purpose). I come by it honestly. I used to work with a great proofreader or two who were so good that they allowed me to just write without worrying about grammar. But the more I worked with them to fix my grammar, the better my own understanding of the beast became. Eventually, I got to the point where the only red marks on the page were things that I screwed up intentionally for marketing’s sake.
Posted in Facebook, General, Twitter
Tagged Advertising, Copywriting, LinkedIn
Do as I say, not as I blog
Years ago, I mentioned in a post about how companies should have a blog and keep it fresh (Freshen up.). Well I didn’t. It’s been a year and a half since my last post. Why? Oh, I have a dozen excuses. One is that nobody but me reads this damn thing. Continue reading
The Folly of “And”
Nothing kills a good ad, email, TV spot, or whatever as quickly and as assuredly as the word “and.”
Sadly, the most common place to find the dreaded “and” is on the creative brief. It lives right there in the “What one key thing are we trying to communicate?” line. One key thing. And.
One.
And.
These two things have about as much to do with each other as apples and thermonuclear war. Continue reading
Posted in Facebook, General, Twitter
Tagged Advertising, Content, Copywriting, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
Why Most Ads Suck
I don’t subscribe to any magazines, but whenever I’m near one (no matter the publication), I flip through. I generally do it to keep an eye on advertising trends. One thing’s for certain, there’s a lot of craptasic advertising out there. And here’s why. Continue reading
Posted in Facebook, General, Twitter
Tagged Advertising, Copywriting, Facebook, Twitter
Off topic: Apple, why hast thou forsaken me?
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Apple. I sit here in front of a MacBook Pro with a Mac mini to my left. An Airport Extreme beams the Internet into both my laptop and the iPhone I rely on like it’s a kidney. Continue reading
Copywriting Job Searcher’s Lament
In a previous post, I talked about the changing nature of the job search for a copywriter. It’s gone digital. It’s gone cold, clinical, and corporate. And for the most part, it’s gone quiet. But one thing that hasn’t gone quiet is the excuses I hear as to why people would be less likely to hire me as their copywriter than some kid fresh out of college. What follows are just a few of the things I’ve heard from the folks at the unemployment office, interviewers at agencies, and friends both in and out of the advertising industry. Continue reading
Posted in Facebook, General, Twitter
Tagged Advertising, Content, Copywriting, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
Variety is the spice of online advertising
I watch a lot of TV. I also watch a lot of Web videos. Of my 17 waking hours a day, roughly 16 of them are spent with some sort of screen beaming something into my eyeholes. I am a consumer of content.
Of course, I’m also an advertising professional, so I can effectively turn off either side of my brain and examine Continue reading
Posted in Facebook, General, Twitter
Tagged Advertising, Copywriting, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, VO
What’s in a Name 3 (not) in 3D
It’s been just over three years since I got laid off. That’s nuts to me. When I was told that the company would be better off without me, I figured I’d be out of the 9-to-5 grind for about a year. Clearly, I was wrong. In these three years, my life has pretty much remained the same – except my title. Continue reading
Posted in General
Tagged Advertising, Content, Copywriting, Me
Advertising Dinosaurs and Five-Dollar Whores
Today I learned that I am a dinosaur. No, really. I am the product of a long-gone age of advertising. (And I’m not really all that old.). When I started in the industry, we measured our work in column inches and seconds. Now we measure things in impressions, click-throughs, and word-count. Yes, the advent of the Internet brought exciting new possibilities. But as with most exciting changes, the Internet came with a dark side. Continue reading
Posted in Facebook, General, Twitter
Tagged Advertising, Content, Copywriting