WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH STYLE? - or - HOW A GOOD ASSIGNMENT GOES BAD: Doreen puts all Kamikaze Copywriters on Alert: Stop writing ads – start writing.

Let me put it this way.  Last style assignment, One Hit.  Sixteen misses.  The misses showed the following trends:

• Tone changes, often none in selected style
• Run-ons (hint: all those “ands” – take them out, break up the lines, restructure)
•  Where’s the product (this is a course on ad writing, not writing writing)
• The answer to most writing problems is structure (hints:  try reversing order of clauses, mixing up order of information from para to para, then attack those lines for Copy Sins, readability, tone, etc.)
• What did you mean to say?  (Sometimes the writing is so disorganized and/or product free, I have no idea what it’s supposed to be about)
• How is this writing in any way/shape/form written in/to reflect the selected style?  One or two words do not a Style make.  The entire piece should reflect the era you’re trying to use.  Still not sure?  See the one hit, which I’ve put at the end, compare it with what you did.  If you still don’t get it, we can talk Thursday.

It’s the last one that surprised me the most. An assignment requiring me to live in someone else’s skin, to speak someone else’s language – the discovery of all the clichés and truths to spoof, warm and dress up often boring features and benefits – how much fun is that!  I thought this would be a less expected way to stretch and challenge you as writers.  I tried to inspire.  Guess it’s time to talk process. 

There is a process.  It’s not necessarily my process.  It’s not necessarily a process you should emulate. It’s just one way of doing it you can try, see if it helps, makes your life easier.  What does the process do?  Hopefully, it’ll give you what you need to take another, completely unrelated shot at it.  This isn’t your expected rewrite – you still must rewrite last week’s assignment (and do a better rewrite on what you handed in last week).

Keep in mind we are retro-fitting this assignment.  You normally wouldn’t be looking at a few styles, choosing one, then bending everything else in the name of whatever era/sociological phenom you decided on.  No, normally you’d be doing your input, writing your KCWP, concepting from the KCWP (and especially the KKF), then writing in the appropriate voice/Language of Concept.  This time, however, we start at the end and move foreward.

Pick a style from last week's list.  Do yourself a favor and choose one you either know a great deal about (first hand is good), have a special interest in or have special access to relevant insights.   When I say relevant, I don’t mean Wikipedia.  DIG.  Art, lit, fashion, history, the whole magilla.  The more you know, the better it’ll be.  Always loved big band music, the intensity of WWII, the lonely freedom women gained so long as the men were on the front?  Did you wish you were there to march with Susan B. Anthony or Margaret Sanger?  Be one of those cool cat poets on the podium as part of the Beat underground?  Here’s your chance.

• Got your Style?  What Prospect does it speak most strongly to?  Does it touch a certain prospect’s fantasy life?  Another’s patriotism?  Glory Days?  Look deep into your style, then retrofit your prospect from those it speaks to.       
• Take one more step.  What product/service might your prospect desire/be motivated by Style to consider differently than before?
• Learn everything there is about the language, look, attitudes, heroes, music, comedy, everything held in the style’s/decade’s cosmic conscious.  Use this to feed your growing expression of your chosen style verbally, with pushed structure and occasional risks, talking about product to customers, sales staff, C-level managers and all?  Go vintage clothes shopping, try on period pieces, put yourself into the style in every way possible.
• Don’t write an ad.  Write something else, something bigger, something carried by style but not buried by it.  However you pair your style with your prospect, however you integrate your product, keep reminding yourself you’re not you.  You’re Al Capone, one of Hendrix’s groupies.  Tears are falling as you wave your hubby good-byeas he leaves for to fight the Hun.  You can out-disco Travolta.  Put yourself into the style, even if you have to play dress-up to do it.
• Edit Edit Edit.   Look up some terms in a slang dictionary, then edit it some more.  That reason your 30s era flapper would buy the product?  Make sure it corresponds to the today’s modern reader, yet keeps her soundly in the roaring twenties.

LAST WEEK’S GREATEST HIT

Headline:

She came in like a light draft on Sunday morning. Another dame in distress. But then came her scent.

That smell, while it paralyzed me, floated through the room and breathed life into this dank stale office of mine.

She told me the particulars of her case. I didn’t hear a word of it. I said yes anyway, nodding like the fool I am.

“What do I call ya?” I asked. Getting up to leave, she turned back to say, “Mademoiselle.”  Like that, she was gone. *Her scent still lingering.

CHANEL Coco Mademoiselle

 A true femme fatale.

*My one suggested edit, “The memory of her scent still lingering.”

As an aside, I apologize for the lateness of this post.  Yesterday was technical problem Monday – I wrote it Sunday, was going to do final edit yesterday, the document was nowhere to be found. Learned quite a bit about Windows and PCs (mainly I want my Mac back), then gave up and tried to re-create it this morning.  Not your fault – this assignment – do your normal edits + write one more ad w/style from your choice of last week’s list, as long as it’s not in the same decade (EX:  You did a 50s Happy Days before, you can’t do the 50s Beats this time.  Use another era.)

  

Because I’m late with this, you have the option of our going over your continuing rewrites this next Skype go-round and moving the deadline for this assignment to 5 pm Friday. I'll go over it, send it back, then we can discuss next week.   If it’s not in my inbox by 5 pm Thursday, you will not be given credit for the assignment. 

As usual, (c) 2013 Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

THINKING AND WRITING IN STYLE: Kamikaze Copywriters, make sure your ADs, GDs, WDs read this

There are two kinds of Style.  The first is a technical-anthropological-cultural-sociological phenom created within the collective conscious.  The second, a personal expression of who we are and how we articulate our vision of ourselves to the world.  This week we’re going to focus on the first, Style as expressed by the collective conscious.

As a Kamikaze Concepting Creative, there are some truths you need to grok before we can start:

Concept can be expressed with Style

Style is never a Concept.

There are many different advertising styles. In TV alone, there must be thousands across the decades.  Think Drill Sargent, Animation, Late Night TV (Sham Wow, Valuable Collectibles, Hair Goo, Yelling Car Guy), Slice of Life (Smart Kids/Stupid Parents, Dumb Dad/Smart Mom/Smart Kid, Horny Teen, Lawnmower Lust), High Tech (digitized synthesizer music, techie images, references,flashing LEDs, etc.), Talking Food, Talking Babies, Talking Animals or inanimate objects, Rock Video, Police Interrogation, put your least favorites here _________. 

You could hardly call any a Concept.  Yet all are used for products of every size, shape, function. They’re merely vehicles for driving the client’s message home. Treatments, translations.  Style.  Most fall under the category of Monkey See/Monkey Do.  As a rule, they’re painful to watch, so similar, even the most ardent viewer couldn’t tell you who/what the spot is about.  Many wouldn’t remember seeing them at all.

On broader terms, ad styles include Industrial Financial Editorial Fashion Pharma Children’s Corporate High Tech Senior Medical – almost as many as there are categories. What they all have in common - trying to motivate a specific market.  All well and good, but to truly attract, affect and motivate, style must be relevant to your Kamikaze Prospect and fall out of your Kamikaze Key Fact/Concept: Iinner commonalities among highly diverse people, all categorized by one external characteristic.

Other styles define the decades from which they spring.  20s Flappers, 30s Dust Bowl, 80s Disco.  90s high tech, 70s punk/post-punk and today, the Great Recession.  Decades can be defined by music, fads, circumstances art fashion advertising.  Style can also be localized (the beach, a particular city, wilderness, Wall Street, Texas), popular culture (comedy, amusements, dances, food, transportation, class, fashion, music, industry, circumstances, popular TV/movies, etc.).

I knew a creative team in Houston, working on a catalog/installation guide for drill pipe and connectors, who swept all the big award shows in their category (brochures, direct, promotional) with what would normally have been a dry, boring manual.  Their piece mimicked – in copy and graphics – the military/WWII General Patton.  I’ve done the same tapping into cowboy/cowgirl rodeo culture, Film Noir murder mysteries and 30s movie newsreels.

The thing about this kind of style:  as much fun as it can be, it also requires semantic and visual accuracy to a degree that sent us all to (pre-internet) libraries (public, military, film, history, etc.), had us renting movies, listening to music we might not have otherwise discovered, attending sporting events, even visiting VA hospitals and retirement homes, VFWs, Am Vets, etc. 

You can’t fake it.  To work, you must be spot-on accurate.  As soon as you miss something, hundreds of people with nothing better to do start writing letters to the client (and sometimes the agency, if they’re ambitious) gleefully pointing out inaccuracies, anachronisms, misquotes and bad examples.

What can working in an established cultural style do for your creative?  Normal Rockwell illustrations and period design + copy got one Circus grad and his art director a big fat Athena check.  If your style is one your Prospect resonates to, is compatible with the product, it’ll show dividends for the client, as well. 

  

Writing in culture driven styles can be lots of fun.  One of the most hilarious days I’ve ever spent banging out copy was doing Rodeo-Beer-Babe-Promotions.  Freelancing in Chicago at the time, my considerable mastery of rodeo speak really wowed them, even though it was merely stuff I’d picked up living/working in Texas.

What determines which – if any – Cultural Style you can use to dress up a strong concept or In place of one?  As always, it starts with the Prospect.  What Prospect commonalities suggest which Cultural Style?  Does this style work with the Kamikaze Key Fact?  Will it support the Promise, make a rational connection to the product?

Are there pitfalls?  As with all copy, one of the biggest problems is falling in/out of tone/language of concept (the Cultural Style’s lingo becomes your Language of Concept).  You can’t fake it.  Using all the stylistic terms you know in headlines, then reverting to mere conversational or expository writing won’t cut it.  It gives the Prospect – and award judges – an easy out to dismiss the work as dilettante, sloppily/lazily done. 

It may be perfectly fine for the graphics to attempt subtle updates to compensate for changing media and production requirements.  The copy, however, must stay true to voice, true to vocabulary, true to structure.  If not, you’ll loose your audience as soon as you break down into Today Speak.

This Week’s Assignment

For my Advanced Circus students (and anyone who wants to give it a shot), I’ve devised a sort of reverse-engineered Cultural Style assignment.  You have your choice of One (1) of the styles listed below.  Determine what Prospect, then what Product, could be best tied conceptually to the style you choose.  Write a KCWP (Kamikaze Creative Work Plan), then submit KCWP and copy by 9 a.m. Thursday, 1/24/13. That’s one piece of body copy, with headline, written in the style you chose from the list below. Accompanied by the KCWP which inspired it.  Body copy must be at least three paragraphs long.

For my first-time Circus students, this Cultural Style assignment is optional.  If you want to give it a shot, be my guest.  Regardless, you must submit three paragraphs of body copy (preferably w/headline), either new or something you’re working on in a teams or other class, by 9 a.m. Thursday, 1/24 (if your skype session is on Thursday), 5 p.m. Thursday 1/24 if your skype session is on Friday. Even if it's something from another class, it must be accompanied by a supporting KCWP.  Submitting the advanced Cultural Style assignment is, again, optional.  The only one that counts is the required copy.

Any non-Circus class readers/writers who want to give it a shot, go ahead.  Have fun.  If you’d like me to take a look at it, I’ll do that on a first come/first served basis as time allows if you submit it in English, as a separate Word doc. (or pdf I can copy to word for edit).  I can’t promise an immediate response, but do promise to go over it and make comments, then return to you as soon as my schedule allows.  The styles listed are pretty much USA – if you do one from another country, please also send me some background on the style you use.  You can email them to kamikazecreative@gmail.com.  Use subject line:  Non-student Cultural Style Assignment.

CULTURE-BASED STYLES:  CHOOSE ONE

1920s-30s – Flapper Culture (Gatsby, Thin Man, F.Scott and Zelda, Prohibition, Al Capone)

1920s-30s – Depression/Dust Bowl (Margaret Burke-White, WeeGee, Grapes of Wrath, New Deal Propaganda)

1940s – WWII (Music, War Machinery, Fashion, Cultural Norms/Social Changes, Military, Allies, Celebrity USOs/Stage Door Canteen)

1940s - Film Noir (Cinematography, Stars, Stories, Fans/Cinemas, Dashiell Hammett, Bogart & Bacall, Ida Lupino, Black/White Film, B-Movie Stars)

1950s – Happy Days (California – Cars, Stay-at-Home Moms, Music, Fashion, Popular Culture, Leather Jackets, Ladies Home Journal, Automatic Washing Machines, TV, Doris Day/Rock Hudson)

1950s - Beat Generation (NYC – Long hair, Black leotards/turtlenecks, Poets (Ginsburg, Ferlinghetti), Coffee Houses, Goatees, Literature (Kerouac)

1960s – Hippie Culture (Woodstock, Communes, Organics, Long Hairs, Underground Newspapers, Weed, Jane Fonda, Mini-Skirts, Carnaby Street, Beatles, Motown, Pop/Modern Art)

1960s - Vietnam (War, Protests, Veterans, War/Warrior Culture, Music, Choppers, My Country Right or Wrong, The Great Society)

Whatever your choose, be sure to check out the movies/movie stars, news, fashion, food, transportation, art, magazines/literature/ newspapers, advertising, new products introduced.  Because we’re all writers here - the slang, literature, film dialogue, etc., will help you stay in voice.

Good luck.  Have fun.

 

As always, ©2013, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

WHAT THE JAPANESE POETS KNEW ABOUT KAMIKAZE COPYWRITING: In English, for all Kamikaze Copywriters, Bi-Creatives, Ads, GDs, WDs and others who want people to read things they’d rather not.

Ad copy should be a lot of things – visual, active, interesting, relevant, conceptual and, no matter how many hundreds of words you need/think you need – read short.  That last one – reading short – is too often where things go wrong.  You see lots of “short” in ad, web, direct, promotional and other forms of commercial writing.  Most of it’s like a bad date.  Clever, hopefully compelling greeting (headline), attractive looks (design/visual) get you interested.  Body copy – whether two lines or two pages – so dull you forget why you thought you should ask him out in the first place.

 

It’s almost as if the writer - regardless their title - wants you to stop reading at the headline.  Or someone with a bigger title approved their concept and headline, then said Better put in a line or two about product, even though it doesn’t matter if it gets read.  Even though, in ad copy, you need the prospect to remember something, then somehow act/respond. 

 

What the classic Japanese Haiku Masters knew – and you need to learn from them – is how to get – and keep – a reader engaged.  Even if it’s only three lines, five syllables + seven syllables over five.  They were (and modern aficionados/writers still are) highly visual, conceptual and - through a device called kiru - force the reader to participate. 

Kiru is a haiku’s most important technical/conceptual detail, the twist the turn the juxtaposition of thought.  In ad writing, Kiru isn’t the concept.  It’s the device lying in wait, revealed in language rolling out of the concept, to deliver the KCWP’s (Kamikaze Creative Work Plan’s) Promise.  In simple terms, the point the Prospect absorbs the big benefit the product holds for them.

Modern form haiku, which does not strictly adhere to the 5-7-5 format, still requires Kiru.  Visual, evocative, as much about mood and attitude as they are about words, experience, conjuring up theater of the mind.  Same as we modern copywriters must deliver – forgive the term – content. 

Sounds good, right?  Isn’t that why we write?  Another subject.  Why Advertising Haiku?  To get our minds around the art of saying much with little. Deft in bending the prospect in our use of language, tense, meter, tone, syntax and especially, kiru.  The twist that turns poetic skill to trick unwilling readers into reading – and identifying with – the manner in which a client’s product will make their life better.

Last week’s Circus class focused on the art of writing short.  Yet another of our copywriter tricks.  I’m attaching it below, and invite anyone reading to join us.  Students will be posting their assignment in the Comments, so we can all enjoy – and learn from – each other.  I’ll post my comments briefly, and my students and I will go over them in detail via skype.  Have fun – join us.

Advertising Haiku

When you think of ad copy, think short.  It doesn’t matter if it’s an ad, a TV spot, video, web page, brochure, corporate white paper, social media or an entire site.  No matter how long it is, two lines or two long, detail-packed corporate web pages, copy should read short.  Long and elegant, poetic with complex structure works great in classic novels.  In ad copy they slow the reader down instead of moving the prospect quickly from point to point, feature to feature, benefit to benefit. (Think Poe and Dickens got paid by adding words.  Ad writers get paid for eliminating them.)

A slow reader is a thinking reader.  We want a feeling, doing reader.  To motivate, no matter what the style/Language of Concept, you can’t ask them to make a decision.  Especially if it means they need to consider what your write thoughtfully over time.  You don’t have to give up style to write short.  You don’t have to give up timely, relevant content.

What you do give up is excessive commas, run-on sentences, complex structure and clause after preposition after clause.  Empty descriptors, clunky structure, unnecessary articles, prepositions.  Instead, you use the style, the Language of Concept, to carry the reader’s interest quickly through sparse, clean messaging, a logical order and expression of your conceptual connection from KKF (Kamikaze Key Fact) through completion.

Keeping all this in mind, your first assignment is to write three advertising Haiku.  I’m sure most – if not all - of you are at least familiar with this form of Japanese poetry. I’m attaching a compilation of definitions, a few samples, etc., garnered from the internet.  (For my Circus Students, refer to the handout.  For everyone else, refer to the internet.)

This is not a throw-away assignment.  It will teach you about writing visually, writing short, writing with style and always, within the context of your prospects’ lives’.  You must match the five-seven-five syllable, three line format.  Be sure to include kiru, the most important technical/conceptual detail, the twist the turn the juxtaposition of thought.  The thing your prospect’s mind will bend to, forcing participation, attention, moving the prospect where you want him to go.  Just like a good concept.

©2013, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

HAPPY NEW YEAR, MAY 2013 BE KAMIKAZE

Thanks so much for reading, contributing last year.  2013 should see more reader/student participation, delving into concept, more esoteric aspects of writing ad copy and hopefully, Kamikaze success - however we define it - for us all.

If there's something I haven't covered, you'd like expanded, you disagree with, yadda yadda - that's what the comment section is for, please let me know.  If you'd rather contact me directly, the best eddress for me is kamikazecreative@gmail.com.

May 2013 be happy.  And if anyone wants a very cute, but very energetic Jack Russell pup, I may know one who wants to be the only pet of an athletic owner. Ask about her. Approved homes, I'm serious this time. Stella (and I) are too set in our ways for a dog with this much energy and original thinking!

BI-CREATIVE? THE TRUTH EVERY KAMIKAZE AD, GD, WD, JOURNALIST, LAWYER AND ASPIRING NOVELIST NEEDS TO KNOW BEFORE THEY SWITCH TO COPYWRITING.

There’s a rumor it’s easier to be a Copywriter than an Art Director, Graphic Designer, Web Designer/Developer. Before you make a big mistake and switch disciplines, the Copy Diva is here to tell you it ain’t so.

I ran into a friend in the Circus Web program recently. He was thinking of switching to copywriting. We didn’t have much time, but my reply was “It’s hard. Copywriting is hard.”

Several students in my class(es) made the switch – started as ADs, GDs, WDs, then switched to Copy. Not one of them thinks Copy’s easier. Other students have mentioned they’re thinking of it. I’m all for it – for the right reasons.  

Copywriters don’t moon over words all day. We’re the ones who go to the meetings, get the input, have lunch with the client (those meetings), spend endless hours listening to voice over after voice over after another boring voice, then try to keep the client out of the production booth. In between, we get bugged to bug you about jobs trending late.  Look over your shoulder, say the way you stacked the headline doesn’t make sense, wish this was just a tiny bit lower and wouldn’t a light screen of color behind all that reverse type make it easier to read? 

We do exciting things too.  Interview engineers and bus drivers, for instance.  All of that – so the AD GD WD can direct photographers, direct directors, production, color. OK – you have to know more software. We, however, must be familiar w/ever-changing Google thoughts, SEO, SEM, Content Marketing, Content Strategy, print writing, visual concepts AND television/video/radio/voice over writing/production.

 

We must write War and Peace in two pages. No typos. Nothing left out. Art Directors may have to know the rudiments of how a product works, but knowing how it looks in/out of context is more important. They play with type and space – something most clients, AEs and such don’t mess with. Writers, are the product/client/AE detail people. We fight to keep creative vision, strategy in the face of too many “guest” editors and wannabes without buying into their shtick.

Copywriters get to learn how the product’s made, what the legal fellas will/won’t allow. We're the ones who stay awake through testing and focus groups, hear stories about the company founder. Still, everyone’s a Copywriter – Mom always loved our spelling word stories, some clients married English teachers. 

You try cramming all those features and benefits into two paragraphs – or two lines – so they’re motivating, engaging, interesting. On strategy. True to prospect. True to product. Memorable. True to concept/language of concept. You get the whole screen/page. We get two lines. Short ones.

I realize leafing through stock photos and Director reels gets tedious. At least you’re looking at pictures. Copywriters struggle to find the perfect word, split semantic hairs, rely on structure, syntax and Creative Strategy. We have to know what they all are, how to push them. All within the context of someone else’s layout. Someone else's product. And everyone’s thoughts how we should have said it. When we think it’s perfect, better shave off another twenty  fifty  three hundred words to comply with your layout, leaving no product detail, style, concept or prospect motivation behind.

While you’re moving logos and images around, we’re sifting through research, piles of product data, prospect profiles. Then joy! Another meeting – no need for AD to attend, the writer is here! All those meetings, the client still doesn’t want to pay for us to go on photo shoots.

Writing copy is harder than you think – harder than most lifelong writers who try (journalists, PR folks, wannabe novelists, poets) ever dream. You think talking to programmers and suppliers is hard? Try writing a thousand headlines on the same subject, no two alike. Even if they mean the same darn thing. It’s nit-picky work and you must constantly reinvent yourself in prospect speak.

Writing Copy is not easier than learning software that’s constantly upgrading, knowing a bit of math, if you’re at the Creative Circus, getting through Sylvia’s courses. I know it seems like it – all we need to know is Microsoft® Word®, right?  And where all those ®s  ™s  ©s go.*

 

Before you make the switch, think about these:  

Do you love to write? Better still, do you love to edit? Are you a Problem Solver by nature? Can your ego stand clients changing your copy because – well, for reasons a professional copywriter would never imagine, let alone have? I once had to change a word because the client had never “seen it in an ad before.” Another client, with two dueling consultants, would have to let the other consultant change a word for every word first guy killed. I’ve debated revisions with twelve engineers at once, written copy-while-U-wait in meetings, gone toe-to-toe with CEOs over articles  pronouns  commas and Copy Sins.  

After you’ve spent a week concepting, a week writing, done eight edits, gotten internal approvals all the way up - can you let your stuff go to whomever wants to do whatever because – heck! – writing copy’s so easy?

Knowing some of you will no doubt doubt, I gladly admit you visual/codable types have more details to sign off on, vendors to deal with, program updates to master. Enviable skills, but there are project managers, art buyers, production types and others to help. After the AD signs off on final production details suppliers don’t tell you no, change this visual because they’ve never seen it in an ad before. No, you get kudos for creativity!

 

One more thing, Creative Circus students (and others) considering the switch.  You think Sylvia made you work hard? Wait’ll you go over your work word for word with Doreen. (Sylvia and I taught a class together once – a Teams class on Long Copy.  Maybe that’s the solution!  Thinking of making the switch?  Maybe Sylvia and I should design a class just for you!)

If you really really want to be a copywriter, if, as some of my ex-AD students tell me, you care more about the words than the graphics, don’t be afraid, go for it. Here are a few quick reasons to give it a shot:

More CDs and ECDs are CWs than ADs. Agencies look to CWs as the problem solvers, which can give us more influence. Clients can become very attached to their writers, but their relationships with ADs are usually more distant, so they’re often not as proprietary about them. Everyone says there’s a shortage of writers. (Not true – there’s a shortage of great writers’ writers.) Google has made everyone aware of the value of original, prospect-centered content.  Now writers aren’t seen as dispensable/changeable on e-projects.

The decision boils down to this:  You like writing, but do you love the edit?  Making it better in fewer words (sometimes 50%+ fewer words)? Putting up with an AD, GD, WD like you? Would you like sitting in on all the meetings you miss as an AD? Spending enough time in Client Ville so they not only like you, they respect you, trust you and what you do?

As the line between many AD/CWs blurs in this age of hacking your cell, sophisticated (and not so) apps, smart phones  gps  Facebook  tablets  and who knows where else it’s going, one more thought:  being a successful hybrid CW/AD isn’t that easy, either. Small agencies and freelance clients may appreciate the combo, big agencies don’t. Master of All is Master of None kind of thing.

The real question:  What do you want? Why? Copy isn’t easy. If it’s truly what you’re meant to do, it’s not that hard, either.  

*Here's where one of those (c)s go:

(c)2012, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

WHY, ALL KAMIKAZE COPYWRITERS, ART DIRECTORS, DESIGNERS OF ALL ILK , SHOULD ABSOLUTELY EXPERIENCE GOING OVER 200+ PIECES OF COPY EVERY WEEK THAT YOU CONVEINTLY WROTE FOR ME TO GO OVER, ALL OF IT, TO, FOR KAMIKAZE COPY SINS, OF COURSE. When you see them, regardless you should know that you need to send it back to the writer of it, and, with a list of there Kamikaze Copy Sins.

You’re on your way home when it hits you.  All this Prospect rules!This and Prospect rules that.  For once, you decide that you’d decide and you decide that if your gonna decide, that you should just do  it, right their on they yard if, that is, yore gonna do it.  And so you’re gonna speak directly to your prospect and tell him that’s why you understand him you are him.  So this is the ad that too many of you experience that is him standing they're.  So, in place of that next post then this is like the ad you write…

Your as tired of all

this advertising than

we are.  And you know

are right.

Unfortunately, you wake up everyday and day and when you get home from work you know yore just going to repeat you’re day everyday and there’s no thing unique that you can do about it there in charge, first, too.  Of course ewe knew you yoreself, you’d just do it.  So you drive right in and because its so conveniently located you drive right up and you say to yore saleman, even in this economy, you want that red Porsche in the showroom in time to provide a proven drive home and say you’re the man know, really.  Regardless, you know that’s why the beautiful, amazing, and shining example has stuff like surround sound their just going to love experiencing …next, you buy something of the type of attire that every one who attains a Porsche is designed to where.

At Doreen's class in the Creative Circus, we believe, that in today’s economy,  you just allow lazy writing and bad editing because, after all, people, like the ones, who actually read ads, you will know what that means.  But that said are you quite, certain, that you found all the Copy Sins, or are you, unfortunately, totally and convincingly and without a doubt up to the task only because you took Doreen’s class so that’s why you should provide a better ending than this.

Therefore, I offer to all of you a challenge that, you won't want to pass by.  Figure out what Product this copy is figure out what the Objective is.  Then, I want all of you to post your edit of the copy in the comments section.  For at least eleven of you, you have no option.  It's your upcoming homework.  For the rest of you... I double dog dare you to give it a shot (copy only is fine, no need to get fancy)

Whew.  Maybe the shortest blog post I’ve written but for the life of me, I just can’t seem to always keep those Copy Sins coming.

How many’d you find?  How many do you, right?

Retrograde Mercury (what – again?) KAMIKAZE TIMING for Copywriters, Art Directors, Designers and otherwise normal folk.

If you haven’t noticed, Mercury is Retrograde. If you haven’t been to Kathryn’s site, go. (www.planetaryperceptions.com, Retrograde Mercury button on left.)  Once you get your head around it, you may want to book an appointment.  Kathryn and I have been friends through 4-5 Presidential Elections.  She has yet to miss, including Gore/Bush and his last one, which she called before the Grand Old White Guy Party even had a candidate.  Tell her I sent you and how you’re a poor starving student and all.  No promises, but it may be good for a discount.

If you’ve done this long ago, or are familiar with the art of astrology, you know I’ve been trying to post for several weeks and well, Mercury's been going Retrograde.  Basically it means sit still, hang on, if it’s headed for a breakdown, it will, what you hear is seldom what people are saying, back up everything.   I’ll have my next post up as soon as one of the 5-6 I’ve been playing with submits. Hopefully before it heads Direct the 26^th.