Back in the 90s, it was my voice that told you the Cellular One number you called was out of service. Sorry about that. I was a professional voiceover actor. You may have heard me on radio commercials for Spiegel, the San Francisco Ballet, Brita Water Filters, and Union Bank, and on computer games, including [...]
"The Business of Copywriting" Archive
Good copy can grow the bottom line. Trends we’re seeing.
How to Write a Great Sales Playbook
Like cars and movie stars, different types of marcomm assets fall into and out of fashion. Really long white papers? They’re so Hummer. Customer case studies? A perennial favorite, like Harrison Ford. Sales playbooks? Very hot at the moment. Why? In a tough economy, it’s only natural that smart marketers are placing more emphasis on [...]
How To Write a Great (Sexy) White Paper
White papers get a bad rap. Dull. Long. Overly-complicated. Anything but sexy. But they’re still one of the highest-impact marcomm assets you can create. Give your customers what they yearn for—variety, visual interest, and bold content—and they’ll fall in love with white papers (and your company) all over again.
Executive Blogs Need to Mix It Up to Lure Readers
The problem with CEO blogs, said marketing guru Seth Godin several years ago, is that they rarely have the qualities that make for engaging reading: candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness, and controversy. “Does this sound like a CEO to you?” Godin asked. Well, no—for the most part, executive blogs are pure vanilla, and at worst, simply [...]
We’re hiring! The Content Bureau seeks (only the most fabulous) New York-based salesperson
Happy 10th Anniversary to the Content Bureau! We could just sit around eating chocolate cake all day (hazelnut macaroons from Miette or anything from La Boulangerie on Pine/Fillmore would be fine, actually); instead, we’re looking for the perfect NY-based salesperson to ensure that our second decade is as sweet as our first. Content Bureau friends [...]
A Place for Jargon—and Jargon in its Place
There’s meaningless jargon–and there’s jargon that serves a purpose. What’s the distinction?
The Mystique of “The Trades”
Every subculture needs its holy scriptures. Business executives feel more like business executives when they read The Harvard Business Review. Marketers replenish their chops with Brandweek, start-ups with Entrepreneur. And so on. From The Mining Journal (founded in 1835) to Fish Farming International, name a specialty, and there’s a specialty publication that confers at least wannabe-insider status on its readers.
It’s All About the Relationship
What makes for a great client-vendor relationship? The same things we value in our friendships and marriages: trust, respect, commitment, open communication.
Snuffing Out Deadly Dull Buzzwords
At the height of the dotcom era, a few high-tech journalists created “Buzz Saw,” an email filter that would bounce messages from PR and marketing people who larded their pitches with overused buzzwords. If you laid it on too thick with catchphrases like “bleeding-edge,” and “strategic paradigm,” not only did your email get bounced, but [...]
