Most valuable writing lesson ever. Or so says Steven Pressfield in this blog post on how his first professional job as an advertising copywriter indelibly carved this truth on his psyche:

“Nobody wants to read your shit.

Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and…

...continue to read "Nobody wants to read your sh**!"

Perhaps I haven’t had enough coffee this morning…you know us Seattleites…

But I just felt I had to call out an example of how poor copywriting and writing for search engine robots can ruin a decent Unique Value Proposition.

I was referred to a site to look at their homepage design (see screenshot, highlighting is mine), and immediately noticed that they had a prominent Unique Value Proposition (UVP) statement, which was promising.

The UVP statement wasn’t the best I’ve read, but at least it…

...continue to read "When We-We and SEO Copy Attack"

Phony & Plastic! Are you that company? The one that claims they are the… #1!, leading!, premiere!, fastest!, greatest!, smartest!, most dynamic!… blah blah blah. All that chest-pounding translates into some anemic saccharine sweet copy. The tone is in sharp contrast to today’s customer demands for greater transparency and authenticity.

Customers want the real deal. Your customers want to to know “what is in it for me?” HOW DOES YOUR COPY MEASURE UP? Care to find out?

Let’s take a look at…

...continue to read "How to Measure Your We We"

You wind up writing a lot of articles in six years! Yep … six info-packed years of Future Now, Inc., in GrokDotCom, ClickZ and other places! Of course, every one of these articles is special, but which are the specialest of the special? Which have truly, madly and deeply inspired our readers? You’ll find the answer in this issue.

This December, I’m featuring my Top Ten Countdown. These are the articles Future Now, Inc. has published, here and elsewhere, that have…

...continue to read "The Grok’s Top Ten Countdown"

A drive through downtown Manhattan places you in a dense stew of outdoor advertising. Whenever I drive downtown with my staff, we play a game: we grade the relevance of each billboard we pass.

A few weeks ago, we saw this outdoor disaster: “Martinis Shaken and Stirred you are not. Continental Airlines.” Another, for dog food, featured an adorable canine. But I had to take notes to recall the billboard was for Pedigree.

The other 32-plus billboards we graded didn’t fare much…

...continue to read "The Search for Relevant Messaging, Online and Off-"