You’ve probably heard it a million times: “No one reads long copy.” But is it true? Copy is text. People read long text all the time, in the form of news articles and blog posts – like the one you’re reading now. And they read it because it’s interesting (to them at least). So maybe […]
The past few weeks, I’ve been working in The Tea Building, the former Lipton Tea warehouse, in Shoreditch, E1, an interesting, edgy area: a mixture of dilapidation and gentrification. There are quite a few new businesses here, but no central gathering place where everyone goes to shop and eat. So the retailers in the Box […]
The UK bookseller Waterstones [sic] has been doing some odd things lately. Last week, much to the horror of grammarians, the store announced it was dropping its apostrophe. This is not the first instance of the company’s strange behaviour though. Just before Christmas I spotted one of its posters, shown on the left. So, what’s […]
An error marketers sometimes make when judging creative work. The other day an agency asked me to do something odd. They wanted me to rewrite the endline of a new campaign that was at concept stage. It was strange because I reckoned the existing one was very good. So did they. Unfortunately their client didn’t. […]
Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi doesn’t have 10 fingers. He lost the ends of two of them in an accident. Since then he’s had to play in an unusual style, which has helped give his band its distinctive sound. In Iran, there is widespread censorship. To find ways around it, film makers there have to […]
Imagine you have to stand up in front of a crowd and tell them about your business. You have 60 seconds to explain what you do. And why people should buy your product or use your service. You need to be persuasive. And make your audience remember you. So what are you going to say? […]
A long time ago a businessman came to me for advice. He was starting a men’s clothing store and wanted to know what to call it. I asked him his surname. “George.” “That’s a great name,” I said. “George. The name of kings.” I didn’t tell him it was also my dog’s name. He shook […]
Modern marketing seems so different from older forms, doesn’t it? With things like social media and content marketing, it’s easy to believe that advertising has changed fundamentally. But has it really? On the left is something interesting I stumbled across the other day. You can enlarge it by clicking here. It looks like an old […]