Don’t make Waterstones’ mistake with your posters

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 […]

Improve your marketing in 60 seconds

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? […]

What hasn’t changed in 350 years of advertising?

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 […]

Four tips to help you avoid producing junk mail

No one should write, produce or have to receive junk mail. It wastes marketing budgets, not to mention precious natural resources. And it annoys vast numbers of recipients who aren’t interested in what’s on offer. The following is an account of an experience I had. I hope it will help you prevent your direct mail […]

Do you really need an endline?

Whatever happened to the advertising slogan? It hasn’t disappeared; you still see endlines under quite a few logos. McDonalds still says “I’m lovin’ it”. Barack Obama used “Change you can believe in” to help him get elected. And a lot of local brands here in the UK continue to use endlines/straplines/slogans or whatever you want […]

Is Groupon’s copy driving its multi-billion dollar success?

According to Mashable, Groupon are preparing for an initial public offering that would value the deal-of-the-day website at $15–$20 billion. It was only last December when Google tried to buy Groupon for $6 billion. So how did this company, just over two years old, become so successful so fast? Well I don’t know. If I […]

When copywriters are “too clever”

Have you ever experienced this: The other day I saw a very funny commercial.                                                                 It was well shot. The casting was excellent.                                                                  And the dialogue between the two, very antagonistic                                                    characters was worthy of Raymond Chandler. It had a simple, clever idea – usually the basis for an award-winning ad. The trouble […]

Negative copy can sell

What advertiser in their right mind would knock their own product? Volkswagen, that’s who. The ad on the left is over 40 years old, yet it’s far more daring than most of the ads you see today. Customers expect advertisers to boast about their products, not to say something negative, as this ad does. When […]