We all speak English. I just happen to do it for a living.

King Retail Solutions: Really? “Solutions” as Navigation Item?

Posted: September 3rd, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: creative, interactive marketing, krs, online copywriting, portfolio | No Comments »

For a short period of time down in Eugene, I took a job as Marketing Coordinator of King Retail Solutions. They did interior design and fabrication for retail. The fact that they did both design and manufacturing was the “solution.”

The King Retail Solutions homepage.

The King Retail Solutions homepage. Click for a larger view to read. We got a new client in Europe within a week of launching the site, who specifically said it was because of the site.

I fought solutions. A lot. I mean seriously. You want one navigation item to be the word, “solutions” and the other to be the word, “integrated”?

Read the rest of this entry »


Ending Interruptions in the Office

Posted: August 1st, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: copywriting tips, interactive marketing, management, social media | No Comments »

Cross-posted from my Pop Art blog.

There are Two Types of People in the World: Makers and Managers

There are two types of people in your office, Makers and Managers. And scheduling a meeting with Maker can kill that person’s effectiveness for the day, according to Paul Graham.

I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning.

Makers Need Uninterrupted Time

Makers do the work — at Pop Art, our Makers are designers, developers, programmers, writers, designers and media planners. These people create the work that ends up online. Here’s how Graham describes the conundrum Makers face.

They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.

Read the rest of this entry »


Ad Testing: Use Facebook CPC Instead of Polling

Posted: July 6th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: facebook, interactive marketing, management, posted via iPhone, social media | 1 Comment »

How do you test an awareness campaign with traditional and online display media? What if you ran a Facebook cost-per-click campaign that tested all your messages and offers across your demographics?

By doing minimal targeting — regions, for example. Or another variable not expected to influence results — then you could compare the percentage of impressions to the percentage of clicks to tell how varying demographics respond to your messages and offers.

In other words, instead of paying an ad testing company to poll customers, you can use Facebook to extend your campaigns for similar actionable data and yet more impressions. Ad testing can extend your campaign, rather than merely being an added cost.

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A Dozen Doozies: My Favorite Pop Art Blog Posts

Posted: June 21st, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: copywriting tips, creative, interactive advertising, interactive marketing, management, online copywriting, social media | No Comments »
This cracks me up to no end.

This cracks me up to no end.

Hard to believe I’ve been blogging and working at Pop Art for more than two-and-a-half years now. In that time, I’ve tried to write posts that other writers will find useful, and maybe even demonstrate that we know what we’re doing.

Lately, my blogging has fallen off since I’ve taken on our media planning and buying department. But I thought it’d be a good time to look back.

  1. The fake layout above comes from one of the funniest jokes ever made at Pop Art. Well, it was funny to me, anyway.
  2. At some early point at Pop Art, we moved a lot of the SEO responsibility over to editorial. Here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »

WebVisions Recap on Twitter, 2009

Posted: May 22nd, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: interactive marketing, online copywriting, social media, twitter | Tags: , , | No Comments »

Here’s the link to all the WebVisions chatter on Twitter, using just the #wv09 tag. I’ve been going through and reading it to see what people were commenting on — an excellent reminder about how a hashtag can unify and aggregate people’s experiences at an event. And it makes great notes to crib from later…

My Two Favorite Slides from WebVisions

  1. First day, @bikehugger‘s slide about how to be interesting online: “Do Epic Shit.”
  2. Each one of @erictpeterson‘s slides had his twitter handle and the (wrong) hash tag in the footer. Super convenient.

I’ll keep reading the #wv09 hashtag comments and see what other interesting tidbits I can pull out. I know @texagonian (Kevin Platt) had some good comments and nuggets, as well as at least one laugh-out-loud putdown. As you might expect if you know him.


Qwest Launches Social Media for Customer Service

Posted: April 18th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: customer service, interactive marketing, social media, twitter | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

Qwest began using social media for customer service recently, according to the Phoenix Business Journal. It’s remarkably nimble for a large, bureaucracy-laden, unionized labor force. I mean that as a positive — clearly, this is their social media prototype. They have not rolled social media out to their entire customer service group, but rather have just seven people tweeting.

Visit Qwest at http://socialmedia.qwest.com

Visit Qwest at http://socialmedia.qwest.com

Start Social Media Small, and Learn from It

For a large company like Qwest, starting with a small dedicated group with a motto of “Be Smart” will allow them to find what works and what doesn’t.

For example, Read the rest of this entry »


Use Social Media for Customer Service

Posted: April 17th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: customer service, interactive marketing, social media, twitter | Tags: , , | No Comments »
Twitter and Customer Service

Twitter and Customer Service

Sometimes, I gotta write a blog post for the job. So today the focus was on how smart companies are using social media for customer service. I’d met with Martha Brooke from Interaction Metrics in the morning, and she dropped an interesting point: Her company helps businesses get the most out of their customer interactions, and social media is just another venue for those interactions. “Yes,” I thought. “Someone else who gets it.”

Her company has Read the rest of this entry »


Interactive Writing Puts the Punchline First

Posted: April 10th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: copywriting tips, interactive marketing, online copywriting, public speaking | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

Writing for the web is no joke, because online copywriting always puts the punchline first. Think about the order with which you tell a joke: first you tell a little anecdote, then BOOM! Punchline. Writing for the web, however, requires you to put the punchline in a headline, in the first sentence, and in the first paragraph.

Here’s why: Putting that point of view and main message right at the top of a web page allows your reader to quickly decide if the information you’re providing is the information they want. If it is, they read on. If it’s not, you haven’t wasted their time. Read the rest of this entry »


Carrier Generator Ad Campaign

Posted: January 4th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: carrier, creative, interactive advertising, interactive marketing, online ads, online copywriting, portfolio | No Comments »

What happens when a storm knocks the power out? You flip the switch back and forth a few times, and then realize the digital clock isn’t on and neither are any of the lights in the neighborhood. Damn.

Carrier wanted help positioning generators as a necessary safety item in areas that fall victim to big storms frequently. Being without power in the middle of a heat wave or a deep winter chill means no HVAC, and that can be dangerous.

We bought space for Carrier down in areas of Florida during hurricane season, and then ran different campaigns. Unsurprisingly, the ad that faked the news killed it.

From the ad, the user arrived at the microsite we built. Generators work by figuring out how much wattage you’re going to have supported by the generator. When the power goes out, those circuits you choose will keep running.

The question is: which circuits should you choose? Go visit the Carrier Generator site: It’s seriously a very cool experience.

No seriously. You should go visit the Carrier Generator site. We had a blast designing this immersive experience.

No seriously. You should go visit the Carrier Generator site. We had a blast designing this immersive experience.


Freightliner’s Frontal Attack

Posted: January 1st, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: creative, Freightliner, interactive advertising, interactive marketing, online copywriting, portfolio, posted via iPhone | 1 Comment »
The Cascadia gave us an opportunity to revisit the Run Smart manifesto.

The Cascadia gave us an opportunity to revisit the Run Smart manifesto.

Breathing New Life into “Run Smart”

Freightliner Trucks is the left brain of the trucking world. They make durable heavy duty trucks that run until the wheels fall off. They pride themselves on total cost of ownership, uptime, and ROI.

They are, however, almost apologetic about it. When they launched the new Cascadia truck — their first new truck in nearly a decade — we tried to change that. Read the rest of this entry »