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 when I looked at the web analytics on my portfolio between when I sent it to him and when I received the rejection email, there was only a slight uptick. Very few pages were viewed for more than 10 seconds. And none of the larger “zoom in here to read” files were viewed. None. So I can surmise that he spent about 90 seconds on my site.

Analytics are cruel because I know that I wasn’t even really considered. Pity, that is.

(Oh, and I stole the title. We had Ze Frank as the emcee for the Webtrends Engage conference a few weeks back. And he had this bit about how “Analytics are Cruel.” It’s good! Watch it below.)

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.

Ironically, I left Pop Art shortly thereafter, and ended up at Webtrends where I was tasked to do the final analysis of the campaign. To be honest, I didn’t agree with doing it. The whole fiasco had died down, and it seemed folly to bring it up.

Since this is my portfolio section, the thing to point out here is that I did all the sentiment analysis and calculations myself. (Yes, I can do math.) And then I wrote up my conclusions for a downloadable PDF.

Our goal was to highlight our online tracking and measurement capabilities measure and analyze the content and sentiment of the resulting online conversation.

In other words, we try to understand what people say and how they feel about the topic. This measurement can be helpful for businesses and organizations who are exploring new ideas, and who want to find out how the ideas will be received, unearth misconceptions, and identify influencers.

Measuring sentiment and opinion is not a new science — public relations firms and politicians have used it for decades through opinion polls and surveys. We apply similar fundamentals and modern tools to digital conversations.

It’s not the most exciting thing in the world — I intentionally wrote it more like a flat research paper so that it wouldn’t inflame the conversation again. But given the way I naturally write (kinda like a smart ass teenager), it’s a good example of my ability to write in a different voice.

It’s also a good example of my ability to hold my nose while I do something I strenuously disagree with, both on a business and personal level.

Situational morality: That’s why I work in marketing!

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.

We got sponsors like Wolfram | Alpha and ReadWriteWeb to give away a bunch of datasets our winners could correlate to their own data.

Anyway — I still love this text:

“Because you collect data the way some people collect unicorn snowglobes. (And get just as many puzzled stares.)”

It was a pretty successful contest. A few days into the project, once someone in management realized it wasn’t going to go down in flames, we picked up a new goal: to increase our “quality fans.” Considering we were giving away .csv files of historical Twitter data, these fans were definitely quality. And we went from 500 fans to about 2500 fans in a month.

I also created, bought, placed, and optimized all the ad campaign for this. It was during this time that we started to notice the 3-day rot for all Facebook ads. What that means is that most Facebook ads do pretty well for the first 3 days. After that, they start to get ignored by users.

So here’s a little media-planning tip: if you’re resourcing for a month-long Facebook campaign, you need 10 fresh ads. (And really, if you just use new images and new headlines, you’re fine.)

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.

Click to enlarge and read.

The “Beyond Wow” section is the sort of thing that I tend to dig up in most projects — the most obvious and plain spoken way to describe the product’s benefit. It never seems to be in the creative brief or messaging direction. It’s my inability to defend and pitch my own work that it always seems to get hidden away, moldering at the bottom of the page. Hell, given the direction that the product team has taken the mobile analytics page today, I’m shocked that the word “wow” ever made it on there at all. Boooring.

Doing my own SEO research and optimization, the page sat at No. 1 for “mobile analytics” for months. I credit the opening paragraph and H1. Keywords, I gotz ‘em. Since the “enhancement,” it’s fallen to No. 3. NOT THAT I’M BITTER OR ANYTHING.

We ran some banner ads, too, which I directed more than I wrote. Killer stuff. I’ll have to dig those up — they totally slayed.

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.