The Hard-Working Words Blog

One wall of the bathroom at my Yoga studio is just plastered with business cards and ads. They’re mostly for massage, acupuncture and other hippie-friendly sorts of things and I always sort of shake my head when I’m in they’re reading them. Why?

Well, here’s my favorite example–an example that shows a real misunderstanding of what people are looking for and how to present your product.

One flyer has this headline:

“Interested in Rolfing?”
And then the body copy says some stuff about “Sam Sammicans Can Teach You All About Rolfing and Rolf, Rolf, Rolf.”

Which is great if I:
A. Know what Rolfing is (I have only the vaguest idea).
B. Know that I’m interested in Rolfing (Why would I be? It sounds kind of dirty.)

The problem here is that whoever wrote the ad (new adage, never have a rolfer write your advertising) is stuck in feature mode (and stuck in I’m a Rolfer and I’m interested in Rolfing so you should be interested in Rolfing too) mode. What he should have done is taken a big benefit of Rolfing and built his headline out of that.

For instance (and this is me doing absolutely no research at all).

“Suffering from Back Pain, Sore Muscles and (add a few more things that Rolfing takes care of)?”
Rolfing Can Help.

What the heck is Rolfing? Rolfing is a (explain what the heck Rolfing is.)

And then you go on and make an offer for a free first session or consultation. In other words, you don’t say “Interested in Rolfing” because the answer to that question could be a very simple “no.” Instead, you list out benefits you’re going to give a reader and then give a REASON WHY they should call you right now.

Damned Hippies. They’ll never get it.

I was bouncing around some copywriting boards this morning and found posted what might just be the worst sales letter ever. (The guy who posted it on the board got it in the mail and was so appalled he felt the need to share.) Here it is:

Dear Sir / Madam

Welcome to the new XXXX marketing campaign. We have officially adopted Einstein and other wise men to provide us with great business ideas.

The XXXX team have had great success this year with a previous campaign. We ran the “Da Vinci” Marketing Code campaign and were inundated with enquiries and orders for our service.

The reason for our new theme is the result of our recent success! The XXX team were running low on TIME hence our new theme. So we have recruited a bigger team!

We can provide an outstanding service that will provide you and your team with more time to create new business opportunities.

So if you need anything from “PRINT TO POST” we are the expert team to give YOU the TIME to grow new business!!

XXXX would love to provide you with TIME, so if we can help please take the time to:-

(followed by website, email, telephone, fax info)

Ok, dear readers. Have some fun. What’s wrong with this thing? Is it the lack of any real and discernible benefit? Is it the completely passive prose? Is it the fact that all the letter does is talk about how great the XXXX team is? Is it . . .dear god, I could go on and on. I could spend a whole day just drilling through this thing and pulling it apart. It’s like copy crime salad.

Remember, folks, a good sales letter:
-Is benefit oriented.
-Is about the prospect, not about you.
-Doesn’t read like stereo instructions.

Just read an ad that was the very epitome of the “wrong” way to promote a conference.
Or maybe “wrong” isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s just “pointless.”

My copy of “Marketing News” came in today, and the whole front cover is taken up with an Ad for the American Marketing Association’s flagship conference, MPlanet.

I can’t find a good scan of the cover online, but the copy goes like this:

At the top of the page:

ALL ABOUT MPLANET
At AMA’s unique marketing event, professionals will find any number of new ways to survive and thrive in the new world of marketing.

Then on the bottom 2/3rds of the page, we’ve got a picture of two folks sitting on a couch staring at a starry sky. And superimposed on that we get some more, err, “creative” copy:

MPLANET
Light Years From Ordinary
Introducing MPlanet, AMA’s unprecedented event for the marketing community.

Ok, so why is this sticking in my craw? Why is this worthy of me stuck here in my super-special copywriting crimes category?

Well, let’s think about it for a second.

Go back up and read that copy again. Now answer me a few questions.

-Who is this copy aimed at? Near as I can tell, it’s marketing professionals–the very folks that would be reading a publication like marketing news. But still, the clever copywriter charged with putting this high-profile cover together says “professionals will find. . . ” instead of “you will find. . . ”

-What’s the big ballsy benefit of this conference? As a marketing pro, what amazing thing am I going to learn at this conference that’s going to flip my whole world upside down? Honestly, looking at it, I don’t know. Sure, there are platitudes and weak, weak, (weak) statements about this conference showing me (or, er, “Professionals”) “how to survive and thrive in the new world of marketing” but there’s not a single example of what that means. There’s no specificity at all.

-What sets this conference apart? What’s the USP? Reading the copy, it looks like the Unique Selling Proposition is that the conference is . . .uh. . “unique” and, uh. . “unprecedented.” Which to me is, uh, lame.

Which is really how I feel about the cover, the articles inside and the flash-heavy and content-light website the AMA shelled out big gobs of cash to put together. It’s a bearish monster, that site. Hard to navigate, harder to read and full of some of the limpest copy I’ve come across in a while.

Having been in the marketing game for a some time now, it always strikes me as odd and horrible how utterly awful the marketing done by organizations like the AMA and the DMA (direct marketing association) is. You’d think with all the high-paid power behind these organizations, they’d have the basics down, but instead we get flat and useless drivel cut together by committees who pat themselves on the back for their artful use of the word “unprecedented.”

So what should they have done?
Well, how about actually finding out what their target cares about and putting forth a specific reason to show up at Epcot center? How about talking right to the people that matter? How about throwing off the stiff as a board prose style and remembering that marketing people are, uh, people? Tough stuff, I know. But I’d bet my right arm they’d get ten times the response.

I was at an AMA members only even the other day and got into a nice discussion about some of the most overused parts of the marketing lexicon. Here are my two favorites. These are words you are quite simply never allowed to use in your marketing copy:

1. Optimize. This one’s mostly found in internal marketing communications where some low level director is trying to impress her superiors. In use it goes like this: “We plan on optimizing ROI with optimetrix optimizator.”

2. Solutions. Solutions is the devil of marketing copy. What makes it so bad? There’s not a damned word in the world that says the same thing. Strangely enough, Solutions used to be a jim dandy of a word, but overuse by hyped up marketers has rendered it absolutely useless. Common use these days? “We’ll optimize your solutionator with our solutionazation stream.”

I woke up this morning, rolled (literally) out of bed and stumbled over to my desk to check the morning’s mail and news.

Here’s what I found in one of the RSS feeds I have setup on craigslist for a full time copywriting position (don’t worry, folks, I’m not leaving you.):

“This position will create online tactical copy solutions that support seasonal/brand strategies and drive sales profitability. ”

Uhh. Ummm? You kiss your momma with that copy? Bad writing is a plague. A plague of nasty, biting insects. Avoid it at all costs.

OK, I’m biased. I’ve been a hardcore mac user for a few years now and just the idea of going back to the UI Siberia that is Windows sends shivers up and down my spine.

Not that I don’t like the big M. I’ve worked for it in the past, I have an Xbox 360 sitting in my living room and I do the vast majority of my work in MS Word (OK, that last bit is more by necessity than choice. If I had a better option that had the Word track changes feature I’d probably jump on it.)

What really bothers about marvelous and monolithic Microsoft is just how massively mediocre most of their marketing is.

I mean, when you’ve got budgets like I know they have and smart, smart people like I know they hire, you’d think you could come up with better work than, well, this.

So, yea. Doesn’t exactly start you salivating, does it? Doesn’t exactly get you ready to cue up at Best Buy for when this long-delayed update finally drops like a bomb on the sky-gazing, fearful world.

How many man hours and millions went into developing the yawn-inducing tag line: “Bringing Clarity to your world”? How many dozens of drafts did that home page copy go through before it limped broken and beaten onto the Vista homepage?

It’s . . . OK, embarrassing is probably the wrong word. But it’s certainly boring. And it’s got the stink of engineers and middle managers and ambitious ladder-climbers who “just want to put their mark on something” and weary, weary creatives who have gotten so used to having their work ripped up and reorganized that they just gave up.

The worst part? With this limp, lazy, no-risk-taking, no-promise-making site, Windows is setting the tone that all of their partners and hangers-on and immitators are going to imitate for years and years to come.

I’m a big fan of Glaceau’s Vitamin Water. In fact, I hand over two of my hard earned dollars every day at my yoga class just so I can quench my thirst on their “Essential Orange” mix.

What I’m not a fan of is the copy on the Glaceau fridge case. Why? Because it uses math to lie to you.

Or, well, if not lie, at least to obscure the truth.

Here’s what the case says:

“Smart Water: No Water Hydrates Faster. No Water Hydrates Better.”

Let’s parse this clever bit of ad copy, shall we? What is it really saying? To find out, we’re going to have to do a little math (yay, variables!)

“No Water” basically means every other brand and kind of water in the world. So let’s say that “No Water” is “W.”

Glaceau is saying that “No Water” Hydrates faster or better than their Smart Water, so let’s say that Smart Water is “S.”

Taking that first sentence, we can lay it out as “No Water hydrates faster than Smart Water Does.”

Which translates to:
S (is equal to or greater than) W when it comes to speed of hydration.
So where’s the problem?
Well, S (is equal to or greater than) W, basically means that Vitamin water is just like, err, water.

Without the magic of a clever copywriter, Glaceau is basically saying “Our water is just as good as other waters out there and maybe better than others.”

Why? Well, because water is water. And because they aren’t able to say they’re the best.

Anyway. It’s an old trick and a lame one. I say avoid it and shame on you Glaceau. Shame on you.