Analytics are Cruel

So I was talking to this agency for a copywriting gig and didn’t get it. No biggie — there’s always opportunities here and there. So the creative director wrote me back saying that there was some “good stuff” in my portfolio, but blah blah blah. Except the “blah blah blah” bit was basically that they were looking for more than just a headline writer. They wanted someone who thinks strategically about the business and across new platforms.

I thought to myself, “Odd. I must’ve really fucked up my portfolio if he didn’t pick that up. I mean, that’s a pretty accurate description of me.”

Analytics are cruel because Read the rest of this entry »

WebVisionary Awards, 2010

One of my favorite projects ever, and I spent maybe 2 hours on the whole thing.

Just click through and read. It pretty much explains itself.

Click to get krunk, meatsack!

Click to laugh. Well, first the image will get bigger, and then you'll read the copy. But then you'll laugh, I promise.

Webtrends: The Great Bike Fiasco of 2009 Research Report

In a way, I started on this project before I even joined Webtrends, when I wrote a blog post titled: “Portland Bike and Marketing Freak Out.” It’s a good description of what happened when Webtrends bought an ad on the side of a TriMet train asking, “should cyclists pay a road tax?”  I stand by that analysis of the campaign today — a near miss. Read the rest of this entry »

Webtrends: A Facebook Contest for Nerds

Click to giganticize the Webtrends Great Data Giveaway screenshot

Early on at Webtrends, we decided to run a Facebook contest. That was pretty much the direction: let’s run a contest to see how it works.

So we wondered: what would make Webtrends’ faithful excited? And I came up with this idea of embracing the data nerd element. “Fly your nerd flag high” was an ad headline I remember.

Read the rest of this entry »

Making Webtrends Mobile Analytics Relevant

Click to embiggen.

Webtrends is best known for their web analytics software. When they came out with an analytics offering for mobile apps and mobile sites, we wanted to inject some personality and life into the launch.

What I love most about this headline is that, in hindsight, it seems completely obvious. The software lets you compare the performance of all your apps — regardless of platform — in one place. It lets you compare mobile to web. It lets you see app usage and adoption, rather than just how many downloads. Read the rest of this entry »

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

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. 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 »

A Dozen Doozies: My Favorite Pop Art Blog Posts

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

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.

If It’s May, It’s Time for More Copywriter Portfolio Tips

Every May, I get about 10-15 emails from graduating copywriters hoping to share their portfolio, and looking for copywriter portfolio tips. Most of them suffer from the same problem: no context. So here’s the portfolio tip I usually email back to them.

Dear Madison/Toby/Emily/Tyler,

If I could make just one (very long) comment on your portfolio, it’s this: I want to know why you made the choices you made for each ad/campaign. What business or creative needs led you to these executions? What funny dead-ends did you find along the way? Tell me a little story that explains why you did what you did. Read the rest of this entry »

Interactive Writing Puts the Punchline First

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 »