The Hard-Working Words Blog

I love zombies.

Love them.

Fast ones. Slow ones. Dead ones. Diseased ones. I eat that stuff up like cookies on Christmas.

So just imagine how excited I was when I found out that Max Brooks (Mel Brooks’ son and author of “The Zombie Survival Guide”) had written “World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War.”

I picked it up while I was down in San Francisco for John Carlton, David Garfinkel and Harlan Kilstein’s Copywriting Express Seminar. And by the time I landed back in Seattle on Sunday night, I’d devoured the whole thing. And learned a little something about target marketing too.

Because, you see, in the book, Zombies (the dead, slow ones) run absolutely rampant, killing off billions of people and infesting the planet like cockroaches on birthday cake. They swarm. They bite. They moan (actually they moan a lot) and they walk right through all the high-fallutin military tech that the US army throws at them.

Why? Because the military is using the wrong tools for the job. If you’re fighting zombies, shrapnel-throwing land mines, eye-burning tear gas, napalm, silly putty and tactical air strikes are all wasteful and just about useless. The only way you can stop a zombie is to destroy its brain. And the bast way to do that? A single bullet from a single gun. Or a good stab with a sharp stick.

Which is kind of like what happens in the marketing wild. I see all sorts of businesses wasting tons of money on weak, wimpy and ineffective marketing when all they really need is a sharp message and a medium to shoot it from (now that’s a mixed metaphor.)

Mm. Zombies. Is there anything they can’t do?

It can be tough putting words in people’s mouths for a living, but sometimes it all seems worth it. Like this morning when I got feedback on some copy for a client. It said:

Damn Chris… this is f*cking great! Let me look at it again when I am not zombie tired but you definitely got what I am talking about!!!

Which is definitely going in the testimonials section.

Hey folks,

I just want to take a moment to raise a glass to the greatest marketer I’ve ever had the honor to know. Kenneth G. Haddad was an absolute sales machine. As a manufacturer’s rep in Worcester, MA, he won more awards than they had names for, pulled down big piles of cash and charmed the heck out of everyone he met. He wore a suit every day, had no upper lip to speak of (hence his trademark mustache) and would tell anyone who asked that he was actually an alien and that he was just waiting for the day that the spaceship would show up to take him back to his home planet.

Ken died 10 years ago. He was my Dad. And I wish like hell he were still here showing me what marketing and salesmanship were really about.

So big ups, Mr. Haddad. You’re missed.

HWW #24

Welcome back to the Hardworking Words Newsletter. It’s our 2 year anniversary here at HWW. I like to think the snow we’ve had here in Seattle has been celebratory. It’s like the skies are giddy at 2 years of marketing wonder and just can’t help but show it.

Err. Or something.

You can check out a bunch of past issues of HWW at http://haddadink.com/blog/?cat=8

And if you’ve got a friend who needs some HWW in her life, tell her to go on over to http://haddadink.com/newsletter.php to sign up.

In today’s big first issue of 2007, you’ll learn:

-The blunt and ugly truth about the marketing/sales divide.
-Why getting a “New pair of glasses” can knock your whole business for a loop.

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Fuzzy Wuzzy
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Her name was Julie, she sat next to me in my 10th grade homeroom, and she had glasses.

Not the sleek fashion frames of today, either. This was the early 90’s, when glasses were stark and shiny utilitarian things, crafted by angry Eastern Europeans to keep the pretty from getting uppity and to give the homely something to hide behind.

But Julie’s glasses were nice. They looked good on her. They fit her face. They made here look coy and intelligent and made you think that at any moment she might rip her glasses off, tousle her hair and say something sultry and deep out of a daytime soap.

One morning I picked up Julie’s nice glasses, perched them on my nose and let out a little strangled “hoogamagasuh?” of surprise as suddenly the whole world snapped into sharp focus.

Suddenly I could actually *read* the words and formulas up on the blackboard. Suddenly the scowl Mrs. Dadah was giving me for that little strangled “hoogamagasuh?” noise made sense.

Suddenly I could see.

Which was a bit of a shock, because I *thought* I could see before.

I didn’t know I needed glasses. I didn’t know that things were all Fuzzy Wuzzy.

Which, in my experience, is a problem a lot of folks have out in the great big world of business.

So let’s do a little marketing laser surgery here. (Don’t blink. It’ll ruin your night vision and possibly scar you for life.)

If you’ve been swallowing what Madison Avenue has been feeding you all these years, you probably think that advertising and marketing is supposed to entertain.

It’s supposed to be fun and funny and get people talking around the water cooler and win awards and earn you slaps on the back from your golf buddies at just how clever and cool your company is.

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Which is pure and unmitigated fuzzy wuzzy bulls**t.
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Good advertising and marketing (and you can read all about the difference between the two at http://haddadink.com/blog/?p=130) *sells.*

Good advertising and marketing *makes you money.*

Does that mean it can’t be friendly and engaging and maybe even a little entertaining? Not at all. In fact, the more personal you are, the better your marketing will be.

Does that mean you have to be a plaid-coat wearing, cliche spewing, shiny-toothed used car salesman? Hell no. You try something like that and most customers will be diving into the middle of the street to avoid you.

But if you want to create marketing and advertising that actually builds your business and gets you closer to buying that island you’ve always wanted (Johnny Depp has one. Why not you?) you HAVE to:
-Tell your prospect why what you’ve got to offer is amazingly the answer to
-Paint them a picture of what their life is going to be like when they buy your product or service.
-And — and this is the big on — ask for the sale and make it as easy as falling off a shoddy trapeze to buy what you’ve got.

That’s marketing. That’s advertising. That’s how you build a business when you don’t have millions of dollars to drop on national ad buys, wasteful superbowl spots with cats being herded or (and I saw this one in Times Square recently. Check out pics at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluespf42/343588896/in/photostream/) absurd Willy-Wonka-esque musical Charmin-sponsored Bathrooms.

And if anyone tells you different, well, they’re just using “Fuzzy math.”

Now put on your glasses and get to work.

And if you’ve got a question, hit me up at chris (at) haddadink (dot) com

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©2007 Haddad Ink. Copywriting Services. All Rights Reserved.

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I was reading through screenwriter John August’s blog today and found this gem.:

Sundance frowns upon selling festival tickets on Ebay. But looking through the ads, I’m heartened to find that most sellers are technically selling “Sundance guides.” And when you buy the guide, you get one free ticket!

The best disclaimer, however, was this one:

Note: These tickets are free with the purchase of the paper clip that will hold them together.

Which I think is probably my favorite ever example of pumping up the value of a product by throwing in free bonuses.

“There are two reasons a man buys anything: the reason he tells his wife . . . and the real reason.”

Apple just changed everything. If you’re a marketer with even a passing interest in podcasting, I hope you’re paying attention today.

A friend of mine got me Hog Bay Software’s Writeroom for my birthday and I really haven’t been able to stop raving about it since. WriteRoom is software done simple with no bells, no whistles and a super-clean old school interface that turns your high-fallutin computer into a low-fallutin early 90’s word processor.

For the easily distracted, this thing is a godsend, banishing all the flashing bebobs of email and chat to the aether so you can get down to work.

Version 2.0 was just released as shareware. At first I thought the new version was going to descend into bloat, but after having played with it for a couple hours now, I have to say the features they added in are worth the upgrade.

Hey folks,

First off, happy new years. I hope your 2006 kicked all sorts of ass, and if it didn’t, well, you get to start all over again.

I’m just back to the desk and shaking the cobwebs off my fingers after a wild and whacky holiday East Coast tour. I hit New York City, New Haven Connecticut (which is charming no matter what the crime statistics say) and ended up celebrating Christmas back in Massachusetts.

Oh, and I also got to go to a funeral and learn a little marketing wisdom along the way.

You see, the Friday before Christmas, my great Aunt Loretta died. She was a sweet 95-year-old lady with a distrust of men and an irrational love of her stuffed kitten, “Baby.” And she passed of nothing much more than living too much life for her old body to take.

The funeral was on Tuesday. My mom and I got to the church a little early and while shuffling heel to heel in the lobby I looked up and saw a sign that said “Pro-Life Bulletin Board.”

Now, I don’t want to get political here, but reading through the stuff that people had tacked up on that board taught me something fierce about marketing, and direct response marketing in particular.

Because you see, right there in the middle of that board somebody had tacked up a 4 page fundraising letter for a pro-life cause.

Just think about that for a second. Somebody had gotten a piece of “Junk mail” at their house, had read it, and had been so affected by it that they’d brought it to church with them on Sunday and tacked it up for the world to see.

Why?

Because it was good. Damned good. I read through ever word of that letter and just marveled at the craft. Whoever wrote it was a master. He told a story, used sharp language (the term “Baby killer” popped up several times), asked questions, quoted statistics and–and here’s the key bit–offended the living hell out of me.

And that’s a good thing.

Why?

Because I’m a 29-year old Northwest, yoga-doing, dance-going, church-avoiding liberal.

I’m NOT the market that letter was aimed at. I’m not the market that’s EVER going to send money to this particular cause. And the copywriter who wrote that letter? He knows that. And he also knows this little pearl of wisdom you should add to your daily affirmations: “If you’re not offending someone, you’re doing it wrong.”

When you’re selling something, you’re target market matters, and just about everyone else can go to hell.

Yea, I know, it’s 2007. I know we’re supposed to be PC and inclusive and take great pains not to get anyone’s feathers ruffled.

But when it comes to direct response marketing that’s bull. Your marketing isn’t public service and it isn’t art. It’s sales. Sales that, if you target well enough, the folks you might offend will never even see. But your target? The folks you want to get into the heads and the hearts of? The more sharp and direct and powerful your prose–the more tuned and focused it is to their way of thinking of talking and living–the more they’ll respond.

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Quick Aside: I did find one thing to criticize in that particular letter. It was damned well written, but it read overwhelmingly mail and was “signed” by a woman. I don’t think that will tank the response or anything, but it stuck in my craw a bit.

Oh, and if you’re offended by this blog post (I can’t see why you would be, but it’s amazing what gets people’s gander up) . . . well . . .you know how I feel about that.