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”?

The "integrated" section of the KRS website.

As you can see, I lost that battle.

And yes. Solutions. "Hmm, what should I click on here? How about solutions?"

But the site was a winner.

When I took the job, we’d just started re-designing the website with their agency, DeepPlay. Awesome group. They did the design and I did all the copy.

And interviewing the department heads (so I could actually write the copy) turned out to be a great way to get up to speed on the company and the industry quickly.

I also coordinated several other marketing endeavors: brochure writing and printing, sales sheets, PR, and design contest submissions. I even got some of our photos into a coffee table book about grocery store interiors. (I didn’t know they existed either.)

Side story

It was at King that I first learned about search engine optimization. The day after the new site launched, the CEO called me in. He liked some things, disliked a few others. But the reason that the site “utterly fails” was because when he Googled “King,” we didn’t show up on the first page.

” Wait, did you say, ‘King’? The single word ‘king’? Really, the King of England comes up before us? Martin Luther King Jr. comes up before us? Burger King comes up before us? Wow, you’re right, that is really WEIRD. Hey, what happens if you search for ‘grocery interior design’ or ‘grocery interior manufacturing.’ Oh sweet. Front page? Yay us.”

I can be a defensive and snarky SOB at times. I’m just saying.

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.
3. What good will those brand workshops do if your writing doesn’t reflect it?
4. Viral ideas need support to get them to pandemic mode and beyond the sniffles. One way to do that is to study how wildfires grow.
5. I actually had a client say that they wanted to market their small travel agency to everyone. Bad idea. But here’s a good idea: figure out different elements of your company and let them appeal to different people. Targeting online is a great way to do that.
6. In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a recession on. Here’s what I’ve learned about managing people and balancing work demands during lean times.
7. When we set out to re-do the Pop Art site, one concept we considered bringing forward was the people. I did some quick and dirty research into our team. Very interesting.
8. How do you measure creative? Perceived ad spending.
9. Call it the Tiger Effect; it says in the face of a dominant force, people play for second place.
10. When I look back on hiring my most recent intern, Kevin, I’ll remember the experience not so much for finding him, but for having to say “no” to three other insanely qualified people. One continues to work for Babywit.com, and we correspond every so often about interactive marketing. Here’s an interesting conversation about e-commerce and email.
11. Social media and transparency. Duh.
12. Last, but the first blog post I wrote at Pop Art: The nine-point copywriting checklist.

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.

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.

It is the copywriting equivalent of your fourth-grade math teacher harping on you to “show me the work.” As your future boss, I want to know how you approach a problem. Because unlike math, copywriting never provides a single correct answer.

And here’s the real twist: Only your future boss will care about this. The person who’s reading the advertising doesn’t care — they don’t get the benefit of that context.

But if you’re a copywriting and social media expert, you’d better be able to tell me how/why you’ve targeted Headline A to Audience A, and Headline B to Audience B.  Or why that line works for a print ad, but not for a direct mail piece. Or what emotion you’re trying to elicit. Tell me a story.

Anyway, add a little intro to each of these (no more than a paragraph) explaining what you were trying to do, and why you feel it works. And shoot it back to me sometime soon.

-Thom

p.s. Please proofread. I’m not a huge stickler for the traditional rules of grammar and punctuation, but tweak them consistently or you risk me focusing on the wrong thing. Besides, it’s always a good idea to get a second set of eyes on something you’re sending out. Especially to another writer — we’re a prickly bunch!

Another frequent portfolio email? Where I explain to aspiring copywriters that their blog is NOT copywriting. Oh, it’s funny, sure. But it’s not copywriting. Copywriting has a point. It has constraints.

Copywriting is writing for hire — where a client gives you a product, an offer, an audience and a medium, and then you write something more brilliant than they could’ve hoped to read.

But blogging about the smelly guy on the bus, or tweeting about the colossal ass you made of yourself at the bar? That’s not copywriting. This rant? It’s not copywriting, either, and I sure would never put it into my portfolio. Please don’t put it in yours.

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.

This concept isn’t really new, but it was driven home to me during a two-day course on presentation and public speaking skills. Putting your point of view and punchline first was one of several skills that overlap between online copywriting and public speaking.

During the seminar from Blue Dragon Communications, we practiced again and again stating our point of view right off the bat. “Point of view, action requested, benefit of the action,” coach Denise Harrington would remind us. Again and again.

When it comes to applying this to online text, copywriters need to remember this sequence because they’re typically funny people. It’s usually the copywriter who’s loudly telling a joke in the office. It’s usually the writer who’s got the amazing story that keeps the clients and co-workers in stitches.

And that’s part of their job. A quiet copywriter is a writer who isn’t testing his ideas, constructions, and interpretations out in the real world.

But when it comes to putting that information online, the punchline and the point must lead. Putting the core of your message first is almost never the way you’d speak casually. But if you’re presenting publicly or writing for the web, you should.

They stripped this tool to the bone. There’s nothing left but the tools you need. If you can’t get out of trouble with these tools, you probably don’t deserve to get out anyway.

These ads helped launch the Leatherman Skeletool and Skeletool CX. I carry mine everywhere, and despite how light it is, I can feel it when I’ve somehow forgotten it. Forgetting your Leatherman feels like forgetting to wear your seatbelt. It feels like walking out with your fly down. It feels like going on the jobsite without a helmet.

Target Audience

Alternate GIF backup to the Flash ads we created. I wish we'd made a poster out of this one.

The Leatherman Skeletool represented a giant step forward for the brand. It spoke to a younger audience: more outsidehub.com and less Field & Stream. More GPS and less Jeep. More backpacking and less horsebacking. (Yes, I know “horsebacking” isn’t a word. Who’s the copywriter here?)

The Skeletool also looks completely bad-ass.

Using data from Nielsen @Plan, the team targeted a younger outdoor crowd online. We found they post their photos online, love to talk gear, and tend to be a little more affluent.

We also found a sub-genre of people who love techy looking gear like this, and while they may not be the ones leading the charge up Mt. Baldy, they do aspire to be that guy.

The Creative

The copy had to stay sparse. We knew we just needed to show the tool and the name and we’d have people hooked.

So knowing all that, I Sharpie’d up a few approaches with my designer. The GIF ad here was actually just a back up, albeit a very provocative one. The brand has headed in a different direction (see our re-launch of the Leatherman website).

This GIF represents the tougher side of Leatherman, but it’s not a position they actively court. Their competitor, Gerber, is the Red State, blood-n-guts, Ford F-350 brand. Leatherman wants the smarter, wilier, quieter, more respected outdoorsman.

The SWF ads took a more aspirational approach. One thing that I’m particularly proud of is very subtle: Notice how the clouds are sort of moving in the background? We were struggling with that last screen feeling very static, so I suggested we copy the look of those sweet Gatorade ads with Kevin Garnett — the ones where they fake slow-mo using AfterEffects? — to give it a little bit of motion.

Inspiration: League of Clutch from Gatorade

I rewrote this headline about a million times. I think I still like "Born in the Wind Tunnel" better, but it didn't explicitly talk about saving money. Go check it out at Drive Cascadia.

In 2007, Freightliner called together all its marketing and advertising vendors to announce its first new truck in nearly a decade. And Freightliner loved this truck. Our job was to get fleets and owner-operators to love it, too.

Here’s the thing: Fleets and Owner-Operators have two very different mindsets. Two distinctly different audiences? Two distinctly different sites. Ah, the beauty of interactive marketing…

And now, something a little more fun. Have fun when you go to Visit Cascadia.

In hindsight, it amazes me that I finished this writing in about three weeks.

OnMouseover: The horn says: "Excuse me sir. Please note my strenuous objection to your abrupt and reckless lane change."

Drive Cascadia: Rational Doesn’t Mean Boring

The Drive Cascadia site, in particular, required an ungodly amount of interpretation of “FaBs” documents (Feature and Benefits), and interviews with engineers and product managers. There’s no shortage of rational, long-form selling in the Drive Cascadia site. But more importantly, we pushed the client to use a tone that was a little more personable and entertaining:

The Reverse Ejector Seat

Nightmare scenario: somehow the Cascadia rolls, and the safety features snap into action. The seatbelt tightens and the side airbags deploy. And to make more headroom, the truck’s seat fires downward to the floor like a reverse ejection seat. Everything happens in less than a second, greatly improving the odds of walking away from a bad wreck.

Visit Cascadia: Change Drivers’ Perceptions

The issue facing Freightliner was that its trucks are considered the white Ford Taurus of trucks. The perception is that they’re the least expensive, most reliable, but least sexy fleet truck. There is actually a country song called “White Freightliner Blues,” which reflects the easiest color truck for a fleet to resell.

The Cascadia does NOT suffer from this perception. Every driver who climbs up and takes it for a spin remarks how quiet and smooth the car is. “Like a luxury car,” they say.

So as I wrote the the Drive Cascadia site, I kept a joke file on my desktop for the Visit Cascadia site. While the client reviewed the Drive Cascadia content, I started cracking myself up with such articles as:

• The Seat on a Seat Contest, which is going into its second month.
• The Virtual Tour of Cascadia, which includes the Jackelope Ranch amusement park and petting zoo.

Jackelope Ranch Petting Zoo and Mini-Golf: All the holes are named after myths: Sasquatch, Jumbo Shrimp, Traffic Flow, and Clean Truck Stop.

Perhaps the most interactive piece from Visit Cascadia was the Request-o-matic. It allows drivers to have an email sent to their boss, buddy, wife, hubby, or someone else recommending the Cascadia. (Remember, the bulk of drivers in the U.S. work for a fleet, and fleets are Freightliner’s strength.)

"So who do I have to convince to put you in a Cascadia?"

And below, here’s the resulting letter. To write this, I ended up making an INSANE matrix of copy based on options chosen in the form. There are a few hundred variations of the letter. Even then, I missed about 15 different variations, and ended up doing some of the programming with a template provided to me by our developers. It was like Mad Libs on steroids and amphetamines.

Letter excerpt: "I know repeat customers are good, but Thom is here too much. He hangs out in the lobby for hours. He drinks all the free coffee. He eats all the free popcorn. And he ruins the crossword puzzles in the free magazines by writing in pen. What’s a 4 letter word for nuisance? T-H-O-M."

The campaign was a success. The client was thrilled. Freightliner Trucks ranks No. 11 on Google and No. 6 on Yahoo for a search for Cascadia. The buzz about the truck is positive. Over time, we’ve done a few more projects around the launch, such as a Google Adwords campaign targeting the competition, a video banner ad campaign, and numerous messaging updates.

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.

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.

The oil crisis in 2007 and 2008 sent diesel prices sky-rocketing. Carrier contracts could absorb small swings in diesel prices over a quarter or two, but fuel was double and triple what it was.

And here was Freightliner with a truck that got better fuel mileage, looked hot, and, unlike previous trucks, had a luxury car ride. After all, this is a company owned by the parent of Mercedes Benz.

So rather than touting the numbers, we went on the attack.

We used drivers talking about their test drive to give the claims credibility. And we used Google to target competitor’s search terms and steal their traffic. And we could get away with it because Freightliner had done their homework in the wind-tunnel out on Swan Island. Freightliner provided us with direct comparison fuel saving numbers*.

We gave the numbers context. Saving money became a cause. Run Smart meant more than padding the pockets of the owners — it meant keeping everyone working.

A few weeks afterward, Frank Roehr of Young & Roehr fame, stopped by our offices. He saw the Hard Facts manifesto on the wall, and said, “When I came up with Run Smart, this is exactly what I had in mind.”

* Postscript: As it turns out, the numbers we received were disputed. We ended up taking the campaign down. Seems to me the thing to do would’ve been to fix the numbers and move forward, but I don’t know all the details.

Who gets paid to write stuff this fun?

When Leatherman celebrated their 25th Anniversary, it marked a big year for the company. They rolled out amazing new products like the Skeletool, and planned several more big steps forward.

That said, they were still working within their old “Tool Tales” branding, which featured monologues by the tools on the front page. Pretty fun stuff.

We worked with our client to make several updates for the 25th Anniversary, including a contest, a historical look back, and some fresh content for the About Us section.

Like a lot of projects that seem to take off, no one initially cared about the timeline. But once a few people at Leatherman saw it, they ended up printing up a huge version that now hangs in their lobby, and they brought a vinyl banner to several tradeshows that year. Our client told us “even Tim likes it!” High praise, indeed.

One of the most rewarding research projects from my tenure at Pop Art

A fun poke at how Oregon's natural beauty kept reaching out and killing people.