Kranz On Copy: Insights and answers on copywriting and writing copy

Congratulations to Noahm Sharon who's recently launched his own copywriting business at Write2Sell!

Noahm bought Writing Copy for Dummies a few months ago, then gave me a call in early March, long-distance from Israel, to talk shop. True to his word, he's begun his own copywriting practice.

I think his site looks fantastic and I wish him every success. Please drop by and tell him Jonathan sent you!

Last night, Dianna Huff and I presented Writing for the Web: Boosting Search Optimization and Improving Content at the Boston BMA event in Waltham. From the feedback we've received, it went over gangbusters!

Here's what we've heard so far:

“I found the presentation to be very informative and the timing couldn’t have been better. I am excited to put what I learned last night into action on our current website project. I just hope we’re ready to handle the increased inquiries.”

Corey Marcotte
Operation Coordinator / Sr. Applications Engineer
Beswick Engineering

"[Their] talk for the BMA on SEO was the jump start I needed to start writing my 'optimized' content for my site. It provided valuable information I can advise my clients with as well. Very educational and delivered with humor too, with no fluff, and real life examples. I would recommend the book and/or workshop to anyone needing to better optimize their web site content."

Nancy Shaw
e-conceptboard

Thank you Corey and Nancy!

In addition, I want to thank my colleague Dianna Huff for a terrific job (and for being so wonderful to work with). I encourage you to visit her DH Communications website, which has a wealth of great suggestions for improving your SEO.

Also, a big shout-out to Will MacNally of Grove Marketing. He did the heavy lifting to get the word out and put butts in seats.

Finally, I want to thank the participants. Your questions, enthusiasm, insights and interest made it all come alive. Dianna and I are grateful to you.

If Metro Boston is within travelling distance and you'd like to attend Writing for the Web: Boosting Search Optimization and Improving Content, e-mail me with your contact info and I'll notify you of our next event.

This Thursday, May 26, I'm going to share the stage with copywriter Dianna Huff to talk about Web copy, content and search engine optimization. The event, officially titled, Writing for the Web: Boosting Search Optimization and Improving Content, takes place at Microsoft's offices in Waltham, Massachusetts and begins at 5:30 with refreshments and schmoozing.

We're going to talk about:

The fundamentals of search engine optimization
How to determine and deploy crucial keywords
How to attract more links to your site (a key to increasing your Google ranking)
How to interpret and use your Web stats
How to mine your organization for content
How to write articles and case studies that attract and hold visitors
How to write a blog - and why it's important for increased visibility
Top tips for increasing Web site traffic and developing content ideas

In addition, I'm going to raffle off a copy of Writing Copy for Dummies. You are cordially welcome to attend and may register here.

You don't read much talk of "policy" or "policies" in good copy -- and for a good reason: It's almost always the bearer of bad news.

When someone begins a sentence with, "We have a policy..." that person is invariably telling you something you don't want to hear. It means you can't get a raise, exchange your gift, or get your order shipped overnight. It means you have to accept some inconvenience for the convenience of the "higher power" who holds the policy.

The word "policy" suggests something permanent and unchanging, like the orbits of the planets. Once something is "policy," we dare not challenge it. The Great Oz has spoken. It's policy.

Ultimately, "it's-our-policy" is a mask. It shields unreasonable actions (or inaction) behind a veneer of pseudo-logic. It hides the speaker from personal responsibility, allowing her to duck behind a parapet of corporate dictates. It's a desperate attempt to dodge the challenges of precarious reality, in which change is the one unchanging rule and compromise, negotiation and accommodation are the standard currencies of life.

I have a policy of not proclaiming policies. (Whoops.) What's your policy?

While thumbing the June 2005 Better Homes and Gardens this morning, two ads struck me for their dramatically different approaches to the consumer.

The first is a full-page, 4-color ad for the Clorox BathWand. Almost the entire page is given to a monochromatic photo of an antiquated museum display case with the label, "Tools of Ancient Man." The case shows a variety of stone-age implements -- and a dirty, modern-day sponge. (It took me awhile to notice the sponge in the case and, therefore, to get "the joke.") A tiny image of the BathWand and its packaging occupies the lower right-hand corner with an accompanying tagline, "The evolution of clean." And that's it.

Maybe this ad will defy my expectations and become a roaring success, but I doubt it. The conceptual leap this ad requires is too strenuous for most people to make at first glance: Museum case means old-fashioned; sponge is in case; sponge is old-fashioned; BathWand is the modern alternative. After the leap is made, the payoff is limp. The Clorox BathWand is the evolution of clean? So what? What the hell does that mean for me?

Then there's the ad for the Reynolds Wrap Release Non-Stick aluminum foil. The foil itself occupies most of the picture frame. On it, a variety of grilled vegetables and meats form the words, "Grilled foods won't stick." The last "c" and "k" are merely grease outlines of food that has obviously been removed with ease. The remaining copy: "Prevent sticking. Line your grill with Release Non-Stick Foil." Beneath this is a $0.50 coupon.

I suspect the Reynolds ad will do very well; the coupon, in addition to being a spur to action, will provide a very accurate assessment of its success. The "grilled letters" concept demonstrates the key benefit -- non-stickiness -- in a flash: no heavy thinking required. (And the designer was smart enough to use green and red foods -- a color combination that pops from the page.) The limited copy reinforces the benefit unambiguously.

I think the superiority of the Reynolds ad to the Clorox ad is too obvious to belabor. What really interests me is the thinking behind the ads, the process that led two consumer product promotions in completely different directions.

If I were to "reverse engineer" these ads in my imagination, I would suspect the Clorox ad was born from its branding. (Well duh, right?) After loads of focus group activity and other research, the brand people decided to make the BathWand distinctive by positioning it as the "evolution of clean." In turn, they charged the creative team with the job of articulating that brand message.

So the creative team focused on "evolution," a difficult idea to illustrate, as the basis for their concepts. Of these, the "museum case" must have seemed the strongest. Since the charter was to "articulate the brand," that's the way the concepts were assessed. No one noticed, or cared to notice, that the resulting work has absolutely nothing meaningful to say to potential customers.

The Reynolds folk began at a different starting point -- the benefit. The creative team must have been told to come up with something that vividly illustrates non-stickiness. Perhaps the "grilled food words" did the best job of communicating the benefit quickly. (While the idea is clever, it's not at all clever for cleverness' sake alone.)

My long-winded point? You end where you begin. The Clorox and Reynolds ads are dramatically different, and will generate different results, because they started with dramatically different objectives: articulating a nebulous "brand" concept versus communicating a benefit.

Computer programmers have a saying, "Garbage in, garbage out." Same is true in advertising. Be careful what you wish for...

This morning's Boston Globe featured a fright-fest of an article that surely caused many a parent to spew his or her coffee across the breakfast table. In "The Secret Life of Boys," writer Bella English rings the alarm bells about boys and Internet porn. Her most disturbing statistic? "The largest consumer of Internet porn is kids between ages 12 and 17."

Hold on parents. Before you race upstairs to pull little Billy away from the computer, consider the source of the statistic: Family Safe Media, a company "that sells Internet filters and other blocking devices." Hardly a neutral source. And certainly one that has a vested interest in stirring parental paranoia.

Now, given the recent spate of hoaxes -- the Wendy's chili-bowl finger, the three guys and a baby bundle of "found" cash, the absurd "runaway bride" fiasco -- you would think the Globe would be a bit more cautious. Perhaps do a little homework before running such an inflammatory statistic.

Well, I spent just two minutes on the Web and found something interesting. Take a look at this page on the Family Safe Media site. Scroll down to the subhead, "Children's Exposure to Pornography." At the second bullet, you'll find the statistic in question, "Largest consumer of Internet pornography" and in the adjacent column, "12 - 17 age group."

But doesn't the context for the statistic, under the "Children's Exposure to Pornography" header, imply that the 12 - 17 age group indicates the largest group of consumers among children, not the public at large? At the very least, isn't that a qualification that should have been noted in English's article?

And if you look carefully at the top of the page, you'll see that Family Safe Media has itself drawn these statistics "from a number of different reputable sources including Google, WordTracker, PBS, MSNBC, NRC, and Alexa research." Is such a potpourri a credible source of fact? Or would a reasonable person insist on research that was much more rigorously constructed?

And why isn't the Globe asking these questions -- before dropping bombshells on the front page of its Living/Arts section?

"Simple" and "easy": Two words that are often used interchangeably, but have two very different meanings, especially for marketers and copywriters.

In fact, it may be fair to say that many of our best opportunities lie in the trough between "simple" and "easy."

Take dieting, for example. Truth is, losing weight is simple: When you burn more calories than you consume, you lose weight. You want to drop the pounds? Eat less and exercise more. It's that simple.

But it ain't easy. And as someone who has been struggling to lose weight over the past year, I speak from experience. It isn't easy because I have to juggle my schedule to find time to exercise. It isn't easy because I love to cook and dieting robs me of one of my favorite pleasures. It isn't easy because I hate passing up seconds or a dessert -- especially when I still feel hungry.

I'm not alone in this -- which is why there's a multi-million (multi-billion?) dollar industry in the dieting business. While each plan has its own distinctive hook -- no carbs, more fruits, special pills, and so on -- all of them share one underlying promise: This will be easy. Or at least easier than exercising more and eating less.

That's why whenever I approach a new copywriting project, I always look beyond the obvious features and benefits for that something "easy" (which can be a lot of hard work -- on my part anyway). If there's some way the product or service makes an emotionally difficult or risky thing easier, it's likely to win customers.

Case in point: I've been working on a campaign for a student loan debt consolidator. Frankly, the second-to-last thing graduates want to think about is debt; the very last thing is having to compare and contrast different plans to choose the "right one."

In the copy brief from the client, there were all kinds of goodies about lower rates and special plans that reduced costs even further. Strong points -- but only if people stop to think, which people don't usually care to do.

Buried in the brief, however, was a hidden nugget I hope will pan out to be gold (this mailer just dropped and the numbers aren't in yet). The nugget: You don't need to gather your paperwork -- the client has specially trained representatives who can collect what you need and hold your hand through the entire process.

The key message? "You don't even need your paperwork to get started!" We built the entire mailing on an "easy as one, two, three" concept: Just pick up the phone; dial the number; we'll do the rest. Nothing to compare and contrast. Nothing to think about.

That's what I mean by "easy."

How are you making things easier for your customers?

You're in a noisy, crowded room. What's the fastest way to seize everyone's attention?

Lean toward the nearest person and whisper, "Let me tell you a secret..."

There's a lot of power in that one little word, "secret." Even when we know better -- even when we're sure there's no secret to be had, just blue smoke -- the word raises a doubt. A nagging itch. A disturbing fear that someone knows something we don't. And who wants to be left out?

That's why so many successful sales people package their pitches as "secrets": The 10 secrets of successful car dealers. . . the secret to increasing sales 345%. . . the secret techniques of today's top stock pickers. . . and so on.

Hey, I'm not above this kind of chicanery myself. But let me share one small not-so-secret with you: Before you invest hundreds of dollars -- or even thousands of dollars -- in copywriting programs that promise you the golden key to priceless copywriting secrets, simply go to the library.

Spend nothing. Just pick up and read the classics: Ogilvy on Advertising, John Caples' Tested Advertising Methods, Claude Hopkins' Scientific Advertising. The guys selling the copywriting "secrets"? They learned them from these books. And they earned their successes after years of applying what they learned -- with many frustrations and failures along the way -- in real life practice.

While I would never presume to count my book, Writing Copy for Dummies, among the all-time greats, I can promise you this: All the "secrets" are in there. Please ask for it at your local library.

The editors of 800-CEO-READ blog have invited me to host their blog, as its exclusive blogger, on Thursday, May 5. Please drop by at any time of the day to visit, read, lurk, or leave a comment (which I'’d be delighted to respond to).

800-CEO-READ blog is the official blog of 800-CEO-READ, a website dedicated exclusively to business books hand-picked by its president and chief reader, Jack Covert. One day each week, the blog features an author guest-host who addresses topics related to his/her book and relevant to the blog’'s business audience. Previous guest-hosts include Seth Godin, Marc Gunther, Ann Crittenden, John Winsor and many other prominent business book authors.

On May 5, I will post on issues such as:

• “"Good"” versus "“bad"” copy, and why looking for “good” copy may be the wrong idea.
• Content mining: How to uncover the hidden marketing treasures buried in your organization.
• Authenticity: Developing a voice that resonates with your audience.
• Just about anything you ask me to write about.
  

In fact, if you write me in advance with questions or topic suggestions, I'’ll put them in the hopper among the day'’s issues.

Thank you for marking your calendars on Thursday, May 5 for the 800-CEO-READ blog!

Whenever I hear the old saw about "one-to-one" as THE marketing mode of the future, I think of the similar hype surrounding germanium and its potential as THE super-chip substrata of the future. As one wag put it, "Germanium is the chip of the future -- and always will be."

"One-to-one" will always be as elusive as El Dorado or Shangri-La. Of course, we marketers want "one-to-one" relationships with our customers because it's in our interests to have them. But what about our customers? Can they possibly be as eager for "one-to-one" relationships with us? Or are we standing in front of slammed doors with wilting flowers in our hands?

Yeah, I know there are tons of opportunities to tie data to customized offers and to tie offers to specific behavioral triggers. Some of these may work (that is, prove to deliver profits in excess of their expense). But our prospects are growing increasingly wary of our access to their personal data. And they don't necessarily want us serenading under their windows all day and night.

Let's keep an eye on the basics: Customers retain the upper hand and will dictate to us the terms and conditions of any relationship, not the other way around. And you can communicate until you're blue in the face, but if your prospects don't see what's in it for them, you're not going to see a lot of customers.