The process of irritation by imitation
Anyone that runs a website knows how irritating spam can be. Since the early days of just posting links, the systems that spammers use have gotten increasingly sophisticated, aiming to…
Are your communications aligned with your mission statement?
Coincidentally, I've worked on a number of corporate branding projects recently that threw up a similar problem. Although the brand statements and guidelines were developed with intelligence and insight, their…
Clout is a noun, not a goal
The social media world is in a bit of a tizzy due to Klout's new rating system. The overall complaint is that everyone seems to have gone down in the…
Open letter to an SEO copywriter
At least once a year, I am contacted by a customer or agency that has produced some web texts to meet SEO criteria and that wants a copywriter to brush…
CVTrust voted “entrepreneur of the year”
Interesting to see that our customer CVTrust has picked up an award as "entrepreneur of the year" from the Belgian organisation Enterprize. We were called in to work on the…
E-commerce is not a carrot any more
Remember e-commerce? That shiny new thing that would save business and give us all the exact coordinates of the end of the rainbow? When did it die? Or, more precisely from a copywriting point of view, when did it stop being a desirable goal of its own?
Copywriters love carrots. They’re good for the eyes and we think that readers will always jump at them. So when developing a headline, body copy or e-mail shot, we’re always looking for exciting carrots to dangle in front of the readers’ eyes.
E-commerce is not a carrot any more.
The creative gold rush: tinsel or tears?
I can’t help feeling excited about the buzz in communications recently. Despite the obvious and very noticeable downturn in the advertising business, it seems like everyone has a plan up their sleeve. I just read that the Belgian agency Boondoggle has a co-development project with its employees, where they invest time and share profits for business ventures that might come from it. One of the first (and oh so topical) is the Tweetnotebook that I Tweeted about a while back. I’ve also been asked to help develop no less than 3 iPhone apps recently. And there are others
PERSONAL BRANDING IS NOT LIKE A PERSONAL COMPUTER
I’ve been working on a few projects recently that can best be described as “personal branding”, coaches or consultants that decide to build their business under their own name. But “personal branding” has a very selfish ring to it. At its worst, it’s an exercise in ego-stroking. But as the “brands” in question were perfectly aware, there’s more to personal branding than “me-me-me”.