If you’ve ever had to complain to a company, you probably contacted their complaints department. Most customer-facing organisations seem to have one. They’re staffed by one or more hapless drudges who: serve as punching bags for angry customers have to talk and write to the customers to cheer them up. I know what they go […]
You might think your customer and business communications are easy to read. But would your customers and clients agree? I’ve been working a lot in the financial services sector lately. It’s been an education. The FCA’s Consumer Duty regulation is forcing providers to make everything they write and say to customers easier to understand. So […]
It’s been pretty crazy here in the advertising and marketing industry over the last few years. If you looked around at the mayhem – COVID, budgets being slashed, agencies laying off staff, IR35 changes screwing freelancers, a dire economy, the advent of AI as a creative tool – it was enough to make your head […]
As I write, an important gathering is taking place in London. Heads of government and other leaders from the Commonwealth’s 53 member states are meeting here, all week. “Big deal,” many Londoners might say. And I, too, might have said it, in my ignorance of what the Commonwealth does. Like a lot of people, I […]
This coming week, I’ll be doing something unusual: working in an agency. I’ve not done that since last August. In the not-too distant past, I nearly always went into agencies. Increasingly though, I and other freelancers are working either remotely – usually from home – or directly to clients on their premises. Even when we’re […]
The word content seems to cause a lot of discontent. The term is so general that many people can’t agree on what it means. It’s become a catch-all for the “stuff” that fills the web. As a result, its usage leads to misunderstandings between copywriters and clients. The other day a client asked me if […]
Want to watch an entertaining video? It’s an infomercial for Chatbooks. I had nothing to do with it; US agency Harmon Brothers made the ad. They claim it’s had 75 million views and 467,000 shares. The version I saw on YouTube had only 16 million views. Even so, that’s a figure you’d expect of a […]
When you’re trying to solve a problem, do you just work on it flat out, come up with a solution, then move on to your next challenge? Probably not if you’ve got time. If you’re not under pressure to crack it, you’ll think about it a bit. Then put it to one side while you […]