That’s a teaser headline for you. Our esteemed client, here at Copel Communications, did not explicitly tell us: 
 
“Hey, Copel Communications. Go invent the wheel for us.”
 
But what did they ask us? What’s it got to do with wheels? And as ever, most importantly, how can this help you be more productive and make more money? 
 
Here’s what actually happened: 
 
A client of ours wanted us to get them booked for speaking engagements. They weren’t a big A-List celebrity who could simply choose from a passel of drooling speakers-bureau agencies. No, they needed to post their services on a speakers’ exchange platform: effectively a two-door website, with one door for “Speakers Who Want To Get Bookings,” and another for “Event Planners Who Need Speakers.” Get it? 
 
We’ve done a lot of different things here at Copel Communications over the years, but creating the proper package for a speaker on an exchange platform was new to us. Undaunted, we plunged in. 
 
But how? 
 
You could certainly Google this. And you can ChatGPT it, too. But those would effectively give you summaries and to-do lists, which are fine, but not what we wanted. 
 
So we reverse-engineered the process. We pretended to be an Event Planner, seeking a speaker just like our client. 
 
Ta-dah! What we got was a manageable number—a few dozen—hits on this exchange platform. And then we were free to see the promotional packages that those speakers had uploaded to the site. 
 
That is, “the wheel.”
 
Here’s the thing. Don’t assume—we sure didn’t—that those other speakers’ materials would be stellar. Most weren’t. Many, in fact, sucked. Which was actually great for us, for two reasons: 
 
1) If they suck, they’ll be weak competitors, and make our client look even better. 
 
2) We could easily see the weaknesses in their materials—as well as the less-egregious weaknesses of their stronger competitors—and effectively outdo them at every turn. 
 
Which is exactly what we did. In fairly short order, we were able to create a package for our client (including bio, sizzle reel, programs catalog, on-stage headshot, technical presentation rider, etc.) that blew away every one of those few-dozen competitors. Just like that. Best-practice. Best-in-class. Zero Googling. 
 
The lesson here is that this “wheel” had already been invented. Lucky for us—and our client—that competitors’ “wheels” were burdened with flat tires, to play out the analogy. 
 
At its heart, this is a lesson in creative reverse-engineering. There are others. For example, if you’ve got a client you’d like to clone, look at their LinkedIn profile. See what groups they belong to, and join them. You’ll quickly find peers who are worth engaging. 
 
Need help with a creative marketing challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

You might wonder what we here at Copel Communications—who daily toil in the trenches of executive-focused B2B messaging on behalf of our august clientele—have in common with those purveyors of click-bait ads that crowd your screen when you’re invariably trying to read something else.
 
You know what we’re talking about. Headlines, photos, and clickable tiles all doing their best to tempt you with teasers such as: 

• The Five Places Where Mold Is Hiding Inside Your Home
• Why Pediatricians Say Your Children Should Never Touch This 
• Her Red Carpet Dress Was A Little Too Revealing 

 
Admit it. You’ve clicked on some. Despite your deepest-held belief that it wasn’t worth your time. And you were always right. You swore them off, just as you’d had back in college on a bleary Sunday morning: “I’ll never have another drink again in my life.”
 
Yet there they are. Thriving on with virus-like invulnerability, despite the evolution of ad blockers, AI, and your own conviction to avoid them. 
 
Because they’re so juicy. They promise so much to your can’t-hold-it-back lizard brain. 
 
Okay. Let’s pivot back to B2B. This story actually has, believe it or not, a point. 
 
Marketing and advertising--any marketing and advertising, regardless of how buttoned-down and high-end—has a simple goal: Make that target audience sit up and take action. 
 
Oooh. How do we get them to “sit up”? No, we’re not espousing the use of salacious images or language (want to have fun? scroll through a page of click-bait ads and count the instances of cleavage leaping out at you, LOL!). 
 
But there is a lesson—a valuable lesson—that can be applied, from click-bait, directly to the C-suite. 
 
Those click-bait ads persist, despite all the obstacles we’d listed above, for one simple reason: They work. 
 
They generate clicks. And eyeballs. And revenue. They’re as American as apple pie. 
 
What then, is this “valuable lesson”? 
 
It’s simple. Learn from the power of click-bait. Leverage it. You needn’t dumb it down; for goodness’ sake, it’s already at rock-bottom. 
 
But you can smarten it up.
 
Aha. 
 
Each click-bait ad is tempting because of the secret it hides, and the promise it dangles. Those are universal truths. Consider this headline which we just made up: 
 
Logistics executives are rapidly implementing this new automated reporting solution
 
What’s the secret? The solution. 
 
What’s the promise? Learn what it is. 
 
What’s the lizard-brain button being pushed: Good ol’ FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out. 
 
It doesn’t really look like a click-bait headline… until you parse it the way we just did. 
 
Whaddya know? Lesson learned. Lesson applied. 
 
Need help with your next marketing challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​If you’re reading this, you’re targeting executives as part of your business. Read on. And learn. 
 
We were once directing a young video editor, in a Zoom call, about how to approach a project we’d handed him: a script for an exec-focused video. Our client wanted to be on this call, too, and kept mentioning that we wanted to be at “C-level.” 
 
We saw the look on this kid’s face. And quickly realized: 
 
Oh my goodness. He thinks our client is saying “sea-level.”
 
We were right. He couldn’t figure out what the video had to do with being submerged in the ocean. 
 
Once we explained it to him--“C”-level and not “sea”-level—he understood his marching orders better, and went on to deliver a perfectly good video for us. 
 
But back to your challenge: Marketing to executives with purchasing power. 
 
Sure, we can embrace some basic tenets here. This isn’t about flashy images or breathless claims. The tone should befit the audience. 
 
And of course you want to convey the value of what you’re offering, whether it’s a product or a service. Those are fairly given. 
 
But here’s what isn’t: 
 
We recently produced a marketing piece for a client of ours which was showcased on a global media platform (can you tell we’re being cagey here? we need to be). This piece we created was exposed to literally billions of people. 
 
Checking the metrics on it after it had been published a while, we saw that it had garnered just 300 views. 
 
Failure? 
 
Nope. Success. Deeper diving showed that it had reached exactly whom we’d wanted it to. Execs. 
 
In other words: This is a small audience.
 
Remember the quote “Speak to the target. Let the others listen”? It certainly applies here. 
 
Unlike mass-market approaches, this is not a quantity game. It’s a quality game. And here we’ve learned, from some of our incredibly astute clients, some interesting, if counterintuitive, tips: 

• Call ‘em out directly. We’ve penned YouTube descriptions, for example, which start out with: “Attention: C-suite executives. In this video…” Why bury the lead? Why make them wait to see if this is for them? Help them along. 

 

• Speak their language. This certainly isn’t counterintuitive, but it requires good research and attention to detail. Take verbatim notes (or record the call) when you treat with other executives. Pick up, and use, the exact words they use. This is where we’ve learned phrases such as “operating leverage” and “scalable capacity.” 

 
So if that executive leader is looking to advance their strategic roadmap via automated decisioning, you’d better 1) know it, and 2) say it. 
 
This is a very subtle and nuanced challenge, that you shouldn’t entrust to a junior writer or AI. The stakes are high, and you’ve only got one chance to get it right. 
 
Need help? Contact us. We work on these kinds of projects—sorry, “initiatives”—all the time. 

​Here at Copel Communications, we recently completed the sixth revision of a project we were working on for a client. And boy was it fun!
 
No. We are not being sarcastic. We’re serious as a heart attack here. 
 
So what gives? And how can this be the basis for an article? More to the point, what can you take away from this story? How can it make you more productive? Happier? 
 
Once the bones are in place…
 
We can’t tell you too many details about the project itself, because it’s confidential/protected by NDA. But we can say that it was an internal written piece, very important, that would be shared across the organization, and eventually re-jiggered into a prospect-facing piece, to help drive sales. 
 
So it was a very important document. And our client was understandably maniacal about the thing, sending us change after change after change. It was a real revisions hamster-wheel. 
 
But by the fifth round, the client had run out of new ideas and tweaks. The ideas, the tenets of the piece, were fixed. The bones were in place. 
 
And so it was our turn to create Draft Six. 
 
And yes, it was actually fun.
 
Why? 
 
In praise of polishing
 
At this point, since the facts of the content were locked, Draft Six became an entirely stylistic challenge. It was 100-percent “polish this document.” We didn’t have to worry about getting new material tossed out wholesale by the client because new quirks and features had crept in. In other words, we could happily roll up our sleeves, and dive into making the English better.
 
(Did you know that Google will ding your website if you use AI-generated copy? As a prime purveyor of AI, Google can recognize it better than anyone, and since their goal is to serve their users with trustworthy content, they seek out human-written material, vs. stuff that had been created by clicking the “Generate” button.) 
 
As you might’ve guessed by now, we certainly didn’t use ChatGPT to “polish” this document. We had the luxury of reading passages aloud, consulting a thesaurus, testing out different sentence structures and phrasing, and getting to the point where it was so tight that it squeaked. 
 
It wasn’t hard. It was gratifying. It was like scratching an itch. And the piece just got better and better, the more we polished it. 
 
Mind you, we didn’t spend a week on what we just described. Creating Draft Six only took us an hour or two. But boy did it come out great, and the client was delighted, and to this day, that piece is doing its job, ably. 
 
The reason we tell this story is that it doesn’t just apply to this arcane document that we were working on, here at Copel Communications. It pertains to everything that you create, in your business, too. 
 
There’s always going to be the ideation phase. Then the creation phase, based on the vetted ideas. 
 
But too many people overlook the final polishing phase, which is when that piece really comes to life and shines. This is true for web pages, for product designs, for graphical layouts, for sales plans, you name it. 
 
The key here is recognizing the inflection point when the initial creation ends, and the polishing begins. Once you can spot it, you’ll be liberated to apply the best possible polish to whatever it is you’ve been working on, without that looming dread of “Oh, this will just get tossed because new input for Version 7 is on its way.” 
 
So enjoy your time in the black hole, with your email and text notifications disabled, as you polish away, knowing that you’ll emerge with a gem in your hand. 
 
Need some help ideating, creating, or polishing that next project? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help.