​Do not get us wrong. We are not luddites here at Copel Communications! We love shiny new tech. 
 
We use AI a lot, too. 
 
So don’t think that this article—about yanking the plug on Apple Intelligence—is about some kind of irrational fear of technology. 
 
Nope. It’s far simpler than that. 
 
It’s about helping our clients to make money. 
 
Wait, what?? Apple Intelligence stands in the way of that?
 
A solution in search of a problem
 
The comedian John Mulaney once compared his aging body to the iPhone: each year it looks the same, but it just gets worse. LOL! 
 
We’ve been on Apple tech since the very first generation of Macs, so we have a well-entrenched more-love-than-hate relationship with the folks in Cupertino. But Apple Intelligence crossed a new threshold for us. 
 
Sure, you’ve seen all of the “ingenious” new features that Apple will foist on you, every single year, with every new OS update, whether it’s for your Mac, your iPhone, whatever. Each one purports to be the greatest thing ever—which is a tacit admission that the very thing it’s replacing, which had been identically hyped at its outset… wasn’t. 
 
Fine. It’s easy for us to throw stones, and we’re well aware of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the arena” quote (the important part: “It’s not the critic who counts”). And besides, every time Apple rolls out a controversial feature, it typically back-pedals with a new slider whereby you can disable it. Liquid Glass, anyone? 
 
You certainly remember--remember? it’s still ongoing—all the hype around Apple’s version of AI. It was so special that it wasn’t just AI, i.e., artificial intelligence. Oh no. The “A” now stood for “Apple.” Apple Intelligence. Capitalized. 
 
It would solve everything in your life. 
 
Until it didn’t. 
 
The last straw
 
As we’ve taken pains to make clear: We’re not afraid of technology. When Apple Intelligence rolled out, and even as it got updates and bug fixes, we stuck with it, waiting (and wondering) for it to help us in our daily lives. 
 
Until it tried to answer emails and text messages on our behalf.
 
Woah. Stop the presses. It’s one thing to suggest some verbiage. It’s another to insert it into a reply by default, whereby our accidentally depressing the spacebar would constitute “Send.” 
 
A client asked us a question. We were about to give them a well-considered and nuanced answer, with a few factors to consider. 
 
And there’s Apple Intelligence, replying to our client with “Sounds great! I agree!” 
 
Fortunately, we caught this before any damage was done. 
 
Here at Copel Communications, clients pay us for our intelligence. The real kind. Not the over-hyped artificial kind. 
 
Hence the illustration for this article. We effectively rocketed our way to System Prefs to disable this hallucinogenic digital sidekick. 
 
Should you? Your choice. 
 
But now you know where we stand. And should you contact us, you also know that you’ll get a real reply, from a real sentient human. 

If you’re an aspiring business book writer, this article is for you. And if you know someone who is, this article is for them. Share it with them. 
 
Our topic: How to get the most from your ghost copy-editor. 
 
We feel pretty qualified to weigh in on this topic, having ghost-copy-edited numerous books for various authors, some of whose works have gone on to become Amazon bestsellers. 
 
First things first: Credit where it’s due. Those aforementioned bestsellers did not become bestsellers because of us. It was due to the authors’ vision, as well as the complete marketing team that guided the book through its gestation. 
 
Still. We were along for the process from concept to completion. 
 
Interested in penning a business book? Let’s dive in. 
 
Division of labor
 
When you hear phrases like “ghost writer” or “ghost copy-editor,” you likely think of some celebrity, sitting back and sipping martinis, while some poor hack does all the work of actually writing the celebrity’s so-called “memoir,” or whatever. 
 
And that may well be true, in that instance. 
 
But that is not what we’re talking about here. 
 
Here, we’re talking about you, as a thought-leader in your business area of interest. You want to share your wisdom and experience with others. Done right, everyone benefits: Your readers elevate their knowledge. And you elevate your status as an authority. Heck, a published authority. 
 
So this is, clearly, not about sipping martinis and letting someone else come up with the ideas. The ideas here are yours. All of them. 
 
After that, however, it gets fuzzier. 
 
And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, the opposite is true. When this process is done right, it’s custom tailored to you, and no one else. We’ve worked with authors who are detail freaks. We’ve worked with authors who are bulls-in-China-shops. And in every case, it’s our job to accommodate their style of working. 
 
Ta-dah. If you take nothing else away from this article, it should be this: Your preferred and most comfortable style of working is the one that is best for you, when working with a ghost copy-editor. Period.
 
It’s hard enough for you to get these ideas out of your head and down on paper. And then to pay someone to lubricate that process can feel like adding insult to injury. 
 
But if it’s a good fit, it will be the opposite. It will be intuitive, stress-relieving, and rewarding. You’ll get to see pages appear that make you say, “Dang! I never realized I was that good!”
 
And that’s just when it comes to the finished product: the pages. In consultant-speak, that’s the “destination.” Which is certainly crucial. But equally important is the “journey.” How do you like to work? In person? Via Zoom? Transactionally and asynchronously, via email? Or some crazy hybrid of all of the above? Are you serious? Are you playful? Do you work in marathons? Or sprints? 
 
Again, it doesn’t matter. Whatever works best for you is what’s best. Period. 
 
So we’ve done brainstorming sessions to help authors tease out ideas. And we’ve worked with others who have simply “thrown stuff over the wall” at us, nearly completely baked. 
 
And what’s our reward? Sure, we get paid. But the far bigger reward is seeing the happiness that our authors derive from both the journey and the destination. 
 
Remember: “Ghost.” Our name does not appear, anywhere, on any of the books we’ve helped shepherd to press. So it’s got to be a good relationship—on both sides—for it to work. 
 
Writing a book is a big project. It takes a long time, typically measured in months. So be sure you choose a ghost you can live with. 
 
Have a book project you’d like to discuss? Contact us, and let’s see if it’s a good fit. 

​There’s a hint in the headline to this article. Read it again. 
 
We’ll circle back to it in a minute. But the topic is important: You want to fill that room for your upcoming webinar! Otherwise, all of that prep work is for naught. 
 
Here, we’ll give you some pointers, based on actual client experiences, to help you boost your odds. 
 
To webinar or not to webinar
 
This entire article, and the recommendations herein, predicate on some pretty big assumptions: 
 
1) You think a webinar is an optimal marketing tactic for your business, and 
 
2) You’ve done a stellar job creating the presentation you’ll deliver during the webinar itself. 
 
Those are huge assumptions. 
 
A webinar is, as we’d noted above, a big commitment. They’re hard to do. It’s much easier, say, to be a guest on someone else’s well-established podcast (we have an article on that topic, too), but that isn’t necessarily easy to get, either. 
 
To have a successful webinar—and by “successful,” we mean “one that brings in prospects and leads to future business-generating conversations with them individually”—you need to choose a ripe topic that will attract your desired audience. You need to craft a really great presentation for them. You need to hone it and rehearse it. You need to publicize the event before it happens, in order to “fill the room.” You need to manage attendee lists and email sequencing thereto. You need to nail the presentation when you do it live. And you need to crush the follow-up, because that’s the impetus for the entire webinar in the first place: building new business. 
 
Phew. 
 
If that checklist sounds daunting, good. It should. But the upside can well be worth it; we’ve helped numerous clients with webinars that they’ve used to build business. 
 
While we’ve worked on various facets of webinar development and production, we’d like to focus on just one aspect here. It’s the “teaser” that we’d teased in the headline. 
 
Building unbearable suspense
 
Marketing a webinar is like marketing a Hollywood movie that’s slated for theatrical release: It’s all about driving the maximum traffic for one specific date. For a movie studio, it’s opening weekend. For you, it’s your webinar date and time. 
 
So your marketing—let’s say, your social ads—for this webinar is exactly like what you see—say, on TV—for a movie. You may not have noticed this, but you’ll almost never see a TV commercial for a movie that’s already opened. That window has closed. Ditto for your webinar. 
 
So you can learn—and borrow a page—from Hollywood here. Think about a movie ad or a trailer: It gives you glimpses of the very best moments of the movie. Because the (untrue) assumption you have, as a viewer, is that the rest of the movie will be that good. But it isn’t. It never is. It can’t be. 
 
Still, you can tease snippets and factoids from your webinar, since you already know all of its content, and can gauge, pretty easily, what you think are some of its juiciest tidbits. 
 
And here’s the last bit of inspiration we’ll give you. It’s the one we’d teased in the headline of this article. And it’s one you’ve seen in several places. Here’s one: 
 
You’ve seen it on the TV news. Just as they’re about to head into a commercial. They’ll never tell you, for example: 
 
“The U.S. Olympic committee just chose Los Angeles as its next host city! We’ll give you all the details after the break.” 
 
That never happens! You know that. It’s always something more like this: 
 
“The U.S. Olympic committee just chose its next host city, and you won’t believe where it is! Get all the details after the break.” 
 
It’s a teaser. Reading about it, here, makes you groan, but you’ve got to admit that it’s effective. 
 
And here’s the lowest form of teaser, but we still love them, in a perverse way; and it’s what inspired our headline for this article: 
 
Clickbait! 
 
Yep, all of those “stories” you’ll see at the bottom of a news article’s page, with headlines like “You won’t believe how so-and-so looks today” or “My jaw dropped when I saw her dress” or whatever. 
 
Now look at your webinar content. Think of what, in it, is exciting. And then tease the heck out of it.
 
Need help with a webinar challenge, or any other marketing challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

This is a true story. As usual, we’ll blur the details for privacy, but you’ll get the important take-aways for your business. 
 
We were on a Zoom call recently with a client, brainstorming ideas for updating their tagline. The tagline was basically a message to prospects, saying, “Use this service, and you’ll be better at doing XYZ.” 
 
During the call, the client asked, “Hey, why don’t we use the word ‘turbocharge’?” 
 
“Sure. Try it.” 
 
And so: 
 
“Use this service to turbocharge your ability to XYZ.”
 
Hmmm. 
 
Here’s the thing. This service has nothing to do with turbocharging. It’s a B2B play, not an automotive one. In the land of taglines, where you typically only have less than a dozen words to get your point across, you can’t be off one bit. 
 
And now comes the lesson of this article. Ready? 
 
At this point, our instinct was to start brainstorming other ways to update this tagline. Starting with the customers’ needs, and layering in what this company really specialized at, and how they did it. 
 
That should seem straightforward to you, especially if you’ve ever read any of our other articles here at Copel Communications. 
 
But remember: We were on a Zoom call with the client at the time. And so that client said, “Let’s ask ChatGPT.” And they brought up a screen-share, and plugged the “turbocharge” tagline into it, asking ChatGPT for other versions. 
 
(If you see where this story is going already, give yourself some extra points.) 
 
And so ChatGPT dutifully delivered. It spat out a bunch of other options, all with variations on the word “turbocharge.” Things like “energize.” “Electrify.” “Invigorate.” “Supercharge.” Et cetera, et cetera. 
 
Guess what? None of these was any better than the original version. 
 
Of course you know why. Although it wasn’t immediately apparent to our client during the call. It was a classic case of GIGO: the old software programmers’ acronym for “garbage in, garbage out.” ChatGPT assumed that “turbocharge” was a perfectly good prompt, so it ran with it. 
 
Client: “Let’s try ‘amplify.’” 
 
They did. And ChatGPT spat out more of the same. 
 
Having waited patiently during this exercise, we then asked the client specifically what we’d mentioned, in this article, just a few paragraphs ago: 
 
Why don’t we take a different tack? Why don’t we start with the target customers’ needs, and layer in what your company specializes at, and how it does it? 
 
Guess what? And, no—it’s not a case of “Ta-dah! We got something brilliant, instantly.”
 
The “Guess what?” answer is this then took a lot of work.
 
ChatGPT is easy. But in cases like this, it’s just a GIGO vacuum. At least our client could see that it wasn’t delivering useful output. 
 
And so we worked on answering those questions above, because we both knew the answers. At that point, it was a matter of narrowing it down to just a few bullet points and words, and assembling them into a tagline-like sequence that would have a strong cadence and impact. 
 
It went something like this: 
 
Master the art—and science—of performing XYZ to achieve ABC benefit. 
 
Look! “Mastery”! And the subtle art-like touch that comes with this company’s services… not to mention the grounded-in-science methodology. Plus specific business benefits that the company delivers to its clients! Honestly. Do you think that ChatGPT would have figured out any of that on its own? 
 
Of course it couldn’t. That’s not fair to ChatGPT. 
 
Now you can (in fact, we did) feed “Master the art—and science—of performing XYZ to achieve ABC benefit” into ChatGPT and let it try and polish that. But again, it just didn’t come through as well as good old-fashioned elbow grease. 
 
Don’t get us wrong. ChatGPT is a cool tool, and it can be quite useful. But you need to apply it appropriately, and recognize its limitations. It’s like that old adage that if you’re a hammer, you tend to perceive everything in your world as a nail. 
 
Need help with a creative challenge that AI can’t handle? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​You may know—if you don’t, here it comes—that we’ve been writing these blogs, twice a month, for more than ten years, here at Copel Communications. 
 
How do we always have something new to talk about? 
 
More important for you and your business: How can you always have something new to talk about? 
 
And when we say “talk about,” we’re, well, talking about things like blog entries. Videos. Social posts. Stuff that keeps you out there, in the eyes of your target audience, as a thought leader. 
 
Interesting note: This becomes all the more challenging in the age of generative AI. How can you possibly stand out amid the overwhelming tsunami of auto-generated material? 
 
Fast forward
 
We recently gave a presentation on this exact topic. We won’t dive into the details here, but AI—tools like ChatGPT—are amazing at effectively ingesting and then memorizing (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?) the entire internet. Just as easily, they can spit out (first half of previous metaphor) content at will, using said input. 
 
But they have one massive limitation that you don’t. It’s why their “intelligence” is artificial, and yours is quite real. 
 
We’ll circle back to their weakness—and your strength—in just a second. But first, let’s just talk about the mundane challenge of populating your marketing editorial calendar. 
 
You do have a marketing editorial calendar, don’t you? 
 
Oh, don’t be embarrassed. Lots of companies lack them. But it’s never too late to start. 
 
Think of it this way: Why break into a flop sweat every time you need to push out new material on a pre-determined cadence? If that’s an hour of stress, say, twice a month, why not eliminate it?
 
The solution is easy: Dedicate one big chunk of time, typically around year-end, to simply jot down a list of every month of the year, and then brainstorm the topic you’ll develop content for, for each month. It’s hard, but it’s a one-shot effort, and you’ll end up with a year’s worth of topics. 
 
Yes, it’s hard. But there’s a neat trick to it, as the headline of this article has not-so-subtly implied. 
 
Back to that ChatGPT weakness. 
 
Hindsight is overrated
 
ChatGPT seems brilliant because it can memorize the entire internet. That’s some feat. But here’s a feat you accomplish every day, which it can’t do: 
 
You look forward.
 
The internet is a repository of stuff from the past.
 
If you can spot trends among your clients, guess what? You’re already smarter than ChatGPT.
 
This dovetails with our populate-the-calendar challenge rather nicely. 
 
While you may be doing this at year-end (or right now, no one cares), you’ll be using information that ChatGPT has zero access to: Your thoughts, and your files. 
 
So here—finally!—is the trick we’d teased at the outset: 
 
Looking for topics for marketing material for your business? Look no further than your recent invoices.
 
Yep. You read right. Your invoices are magic fodder for this assignment. 
 
Look at any given one. It shows how you earned your keep, and how you delivered unique value, for any given client. And therein lies a story. Think back on what you’d billed for. There was, invariably, a challenge to solve. And you solved it. (And your client was happy to pay you for that expertise.) 
 
That’s a story. It’s a cool story. It’s a story that showcases your uniqueness and thought leadership. It’s also a story that ChatGPT couldn’t write in a million years. 
 
Here at Copel Communications, we practice what we preach. We build our editorial blog-post calendar, and stick to it. And we routinely open up our own billing files for cool stories that we can anonymize and share with you for handy tips and lessons learned. 
 
Need help with that next marketing challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help! 

​“Blend word”?? What the heck is that? 
 
More importantly, how can you make money off of one of these things?
 
Let’s dive in. 
 
As is the case with lots of our articles here at Copel Communications, this one is based on a real client story. And as is the case with all of the real client stories we use as inspiration for articles, this one, like the others, has been anonymized for privacy purposes. But you’ll still get the gist. And the takeaways. 
 
Here’s the story: 
 
Recently, a client of ours wanted us to develop some pitch materials for a new business they were developing. Excitedly, they told that they’d already come up with a name for this new business, and were looking forward to registering a domain for it. 
 
The name of this new business (we’re modifying/anonymizing/making this up) was “Asset Protect.” 
 
“Asset Protect.” Hmmm. 
 
Well, you can guess, pretty accurately, what they do. So that’s good. 
 
But boy is that name ever generic. Which is not good. 
 
Can you guess where this story goes? Of course: Our client had one tough time registering that “unique” domain. “Asset Protect” had long been taken, by someone else, in an equally straightforward/uncreative foray. 
 
Portmanteau to the rescue
 
To us, the solution to this problem was super simple. Employ a portmanteau or blend word. 
 
“Portmanteau” is about as funny a term as “blend word,” and you may not have heard of either. 
 
Not a problem. Because you know zillions of examples of these things, and you’ll say “Ohhh!” as soon as you read ones like: 

• Breakfast + lunch = brunch 

 

• Smoke + fog = smog

 

• iPod + broadcast = podcast 

 

• Web + log = blog 

 
We could go on forever. 
 
Applying this mashup concept to branding is equally well established and, we think, effective. Consider: 

• FedEx

 

• PetSmart 

 

• Microsoft 

 

• PayPal 

 

• Pinterest

 

• YouTube

 

• Snapchat 

 

• Facebook 

 

• DoorDash 

 
Need we go on? 
 
One of the reasons we mention this is because our frustrated client had considered inventing a totally new made-up name. That certainly comes with benefits: For example, if you invent something completely new, there won’t be any competition for it when it comes to registering your domain, and you’ll have rock-solid IP protection in the potential case of infringement. 
 
Still. The drawback is that that’s hard to do, for a basic small-to-midsized business. It takes a ton of (expensive) impressions for the whole world to know what you do. 
 
Consider: 

• Apple 

 

• Amazon 

 

• Zillow 

 
Honestly. Would you have any idea what those companies do without their having invested zillions of dollars to inform you? 
 
So. The portmanteau/blend-word is a nice middle ground between the uninspired “Asset Protect” and the what-the-heck-is-that “Wazzibobo” or whatever. 
 
It’s not perfect. Because great minds think alike. If you’re launching a new brand and come up with what you think is the perfect portmanteau word for it, brace yourself. There’s a decent chance that someone else already came up with that one, and registered it, too. 
 
Not to worry. Keep on plugging. 
 
Or get help. Like us. Contact us for that next marketing assignment. We do things like this all the time, and would be delighted to help. 

​We don’t know a company in the world that enjoys the prospect of exhibiting at a trade show. It’s often the epitome of stress. 
 
But you can alleviate a good chunk of it. Hence this article. 
 
Grab the lowest-hanging fruit
 
Sure, you’ll want to promote your presence at the upcoming show. That means creating ads and memes for social sites such as LinkedIn. 
 
But what if that were already done for you? 
 
Duh. It is, in most cases. The hosting company will typically create artwork that you can use for your own purposes. It’s in the “Exhibitor Kit” you got when you signed up, and/or it’s available for download on their website. 
 
These will be pre-created ads that say “Hey [Industry]! [Our company] will be at [Name of Trade Show] in [Location] on [Dates]! Look for us in Booth [Number]!” 
 
Granted, these won’t be stunning. Often, they’re stunningly generic. But they are there and you’re effectively getting them for free (with your paid entrance fee). So download ‘em, populate ‘em, and post ‘em. 
 
And if you belong to multiple LinkedIn groups—you do belong to multiple LinkedIn groups, don’t you?—be sure to post these things in every group you belong to, at regular intervals. 
 
That’s one little bit of pre-trade-show stress reduced. 
 
By the way, be sure to take advantage of all the stuff that the exhibiting venue gives you in advance. Submit all the information about your company to help populate, say, the mobile app that visitors will use to navigate the venue. You certainly don’t want to be left out of that. 
 
Update what you bring
 
Is your booth or stand-up display skin still showing that outdated version of your company’s logo? Or artwork featuring people wearing Covid-era masks? Now’s the time to re-visit those materials, and update them as needed. 
 
This also applies to things like handouts, leaflets, flyers, brochures, and even business cards (you have them ready for that new sales rep you hired, right?). 
 
Note that all of the above-mentioned materials are fairly production-heavy, as in turnaround time. So prioritize those first. Get the input out the door and into the vendors’ hands, allowing ample time for both revisions and delays. 
 
Also consider the promotional items you’ll bring. We had a client who would prioritize what kinds of goodies to give away at their booth based on whether or not they would fit into a carry-on bag, LOL! It’s true. Whatever works for you. 
 
Speaking of updating your materials: You’ll want to tweak your slide deck, for whether you’ll be showing it at your booth, presenting in a conference room, or entertaining prospects in a hospitality suite. Fortunately, unlike those printed materials such as booth skins and brochures, you can update your slide deck with just a few clicks, no vendors or turnaround time required. 
 
This is similar to your website. You do have a big tile on your home page advertising your upcoming presence at the show, don’t you? 
 
Don’t reinvent the wheel
 
Here’s a classic question: “How do we get more prospects to visit our booth and give us their contact info?”
 
It’s a valid question. It’s also one that’s been brainstormed, and answered, a zillion times. So don’t reinvent that wheel. Use the latest iteration of Google, a.k.a. ChatGPT. Simply ask it that exact question. It will effectively search the entire internet, and give you a list of suggestions, from giveaways and contests to customized swag bags. 
 
Speaking of not reinventing the wheel: We had a client employ a little desktop carnival-wheel game, wherein visitors could spin for prizes. Again: Ask ChatGPT: What are some good prizes? Obvious answers are discounts on your services, loss-leader free services, Amazon gift cards, “Spin Again” slots, and so on. 
 
Speaking of Amazon: these little wheels are easily found there. They’re inexpensive. And they’re made of dry-erase/white-board material, so they’re easy to customize—and re-customize, say, when you run out of a certain prize. 
 
And be sure to pre-write the “Congratulations!” emails you’ll be sending to all the prize winners, since you’ll have their email addresses—and will have input them into your CRM. 
 
For the love of QR codes
 
How can you not love QR codes? They apply to almost everything we’d mentioned in this article. Put them on your flyers. On your swag. Business cards. Everywhere. Link them to the most appropriate page on your website—which, in this case, might be a special landing page for trade-show attendees, replete with some kind of promotion/savings for visiting that page (and providing their contact info, booking a call, or other similar call-to-action). 
 
Everything we’d mentioned above is stuff that you can, and should, do well in advance. The sooner you do it, the more pre-show stress you alleviate. 
 
Need help? Contact us. We’d love to pitch in. 

​Zoom! And another year goes screaming past. Are we really ready for our year-end round-up of best-practice articles, written for our beloved creatives audience, here at Copel Communications? 
 
The calendar doesn’t lie. Here’s your chance to catch those ones you’d missed, and/or revisit those that helped: 

• Why headlines are hard to write. We recently had a non-writer join us on a creative assignment, and they were shocked by how hard headline-writing is. If you don’t know why, find out. And if you do, get some killer tips right here. 

 

• How to direct creatives you’re not allowed to talk to. Boy does that ever sound dystopian, but it’s the case with gig-economy platforms like Upwork and Fiverr. Learn how to get the best results, and forge satisfying relationships, too. 

 

• Why we embrace Draft Number 10. Some creative types go bonkers when a client tosses them this many revisions, but we have reason to be thankful. Find out why you should, too. 

 

• What’s the best creative approach for portraying job-threatening technology? Even if you’ve never faced this challenge, you’ll enjoy this article. It illuminates some of the darker corners of this issue. 

 

• Is your best prospect… boring? Creative people love creative challenges. So why would you embrace a target audience like this? The answers may surprise you. 

 

• How to bring your website wireframe to life. There’s more than one way to do this; which is best for you and the specific challenge you face? Get some cool pointers, based on an interesting recent client gig. 

 

• How do you work with great creative input… and not-great English? Sometimes the last link in the creative chain consists of words in English. But how do you sell them when your client’s first language is different? 

 

• How do you pitch your business in six minutes? You mean there’s more to life than the 30-second elevator pitch? Sure is. Be prepared. Get the tips you need, right here. 

 

• Why we present without PowerPoint. Should you, too, shun this go-to slide-deck platform? Sometimes. Find out when. And why. And how. 

 

• Goofy gadgets to help you be more productive. In the “real world,” toys like these could get you fired. As a creative, you’re smarter than that. Get inspired—and by all means, chime in! 

 

• What we’re thankful for: 2024 Edition. This November article has become an annual tradition at Copel Communications. See what made the list this year. 

 
Have suggestions for an upcoming post? Contact us. We’d love to hear from you! 

​We’ve worked in marketing long enough to know our bounds. Note the careful phrasing of the name of this article: “Goofy gadgets to help you be more productive.” We never said “guaranteed to make you more productive.” 
 
That said, let’s dive into the challenge, and how it affects you in your daily work life, and, of course, all the neat stuff. 
 
Why is this needed?
 
That’s a great question. Let’s consider the answer before we move on. 
 
Put it this way: You wouldn’t need any of the stuff we’re about to describe—and we wouldn’t need to write this article about it—if you, and we, were all naturally super productive and creative, all day long, without any dips in our performance, energy, or creativity levels. 
 
Of course we aren’t. We’re human. 
 
(Now there is an entire sub-topic of this discussion, which we’ve pet-named the “Best Energy Theory,” revolving around the intentional pairing of your daily peak energy periods to the daily tasks which are hardest to perform, and vice versa, but that goes beyond the scope of this article. Reach out to us if you’d like us to write an article devoted solely to that topic.) 
 
So. There are little gadgets, toys, food, furniture, you name it, which can help you get through the day, and have more/better work to show for it, too. Here, we’ll rattle through some oddball (and not-so-oddball) items from our daily inventory here at Copel Communications. 
 
Some of these may overlap stuff that you already use. Some, we hope, will be new and useful to you. 
 
And of course this is a two-way street. We would love to hear about the stuff you use, that’s novel to us. Reach out or simply post a comment so everyone gets edified equally. 
 
Paging Dr. Maslow
 
Let’s start with the bottom of the Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. If you’re in the knowledge-work biz, you’re sitting at a desk for the bulk of your day. 
 
Don’t go hungry. In the movie business, this is what’s known as “craft service”: a setup of all kinds of goodies (think of a mini convenience store) with sweet and salty snacks, bottled water, you name it. 
 
Pick fun stuff. Keep it in arm’s reach. Think of it as a “caloric heads-up display”: You can keep working, keep reading, keep typing, etc., without so much as taking your eyes off the screen, and not get distracted by hunger. 
 
Or thirst. And of course, yes, there’s caffeine. As in, duh. You didn’t turn to this article to learn about that.
 
Crank up the comfort
 
Where are you sitting, right now? We don’t mean “in your office.” We mean, “what kind of chair?” Again, you want to be comfortable. You want to want to sit in that awesome chair—and only get to do so if you’ll be getting work done while sitting in it. 
 
Some easy tricks: You can (we did) dress up an old leather office chair with a plush sheepskin cover, like the airline pilots use. So it’s never too cold in winter nor too hot in summer. And you can (we did) add a plug-in seat heater, too, for those chilly mornings. Again, you want to love sitting there, so you can be totally relaxed and focused on the work at hand. Put another way: We once heard an expert on airline seating say (and we love this quote): “Comfort is the absence of discomfort.” Brilliant, no? 
 
Dial down the stress
 
Stress, at work, is unavoidable. But you can fight back. We’ve got a whole slew of spring-loaded and sponge-rubber finger squeezers. Stress balls. A neck/shoulder heater. Numerous massaging gadgets, including a lumbar massager and even a pneumatic/electronic eye massager. (As you might’ve guessed, you can’t work while wearing that eye massager; it blocks your vision. But sometimes a ten-minute session helps to regain your focus.) 
 
Reduce the distractions
 
As we sit here typing this, our office window is behind us. Would be nice to peek outside and see how the weather is looking, right? That’s why we added a remote-sensing weather station to our desk. We can see the outside temperature and humidity trends at a glance, and return to our real work, having scratched that itch. 
 
Similarly, we just have some neat artwork in our office to look at and be inspired by: Posters, drawings, cards, miniature sculptures, models. They provide just the right amount of eye candy to keep us sated. 
 
Don’t work in a bare office. Dress it to your liking. Make it a happy space. You’ll be more productive. 
 
Allow for goofiness
 
We participate in more than our share of Zoom calls these days. And sometimes these are flat-out brainstorming sessions, which actually require a degree of hair-let-down goofiness not just from us, but from the other participants on the calls. To that end, we’re fans of all the baked-in video effects that now come with the Mac operating system that let us, on occasion, toss confetti or light fireworks during a meeting. 
 
Heck, we even have a little rubber hand puppet of a great white shark which we keep handy. We can’t tell you how many times he’s bombed into Zoom meetings, often as “our attorney,” to add his opinion. 
 
Have the meetings gone better? More productively? You bet they have. 
 
What are your favorite tricks and tips? Contact us. We’d love to learn them. 

We recently worked on a project, for an ad agency, in which they gave us a 22-page PDF wireframe of a new, in-progress website for a client of theirs. Sometimes we create website wireframes for our clients; other times, like this, we’re tasked with helping to populate others' wireframes. 
 
While we could simply tell you about what we did for this client, we want to broaden this article to make it more useful for you. A website—your website—is a big deal. It’s your face to the internet world. You want to get it right. 
 
Question everything
 
When we create wireframes for our own clients, we create them as easy-to-follow Word docs, written in outline form. We have a nice article on how you can easily make one of those, too; be sure to check it out here.
 
When we create wireframes for our clients, we always take a customer-back approach: Who is the website trying to reach? What are their needs? What do we want them to do, i.e., what is the call-to-action? More often than not, for our clients who happen to be consultants, the call-to-action or CTA is “book a demo.” 
 
So all of this will be well thought-out. You need to think this out, in detail, before you craft your wireframe. 
 
We can’t assume that everyone is so diligent. 
 
Fortunately, our ad-agency client, in this story, was. That said, we still had questions. Poring through the 22 pages of boxes and arrows and dashed lines, we wanted to know what their client was trying to accomplish, who their audiences were, the tone they wanted to convey, and what the CTA was for each audience. 
 
Nicely, they’d created what we’d call a “three-door” website. Their client serves three different audiences, and so there was a clickable tile (“door”) for each, right on the home page. 
 
As it turns out, these three audiences were largely different, but still had some traits—and needs—in common. This helped us to develop a unified tone for the overall business, while still addressing the needs of each target audience. 
 
Now think of your website and its audiences: Of course they’re different. But how are they similar? What might they have in common? Asking these kinds of questions can help you elevate the entire site and make it more effective. 
 
The brain dump
 
Our ad-agency client didn’t want the typical “fill in the spaces” type of web-writing project from us. Rather, they wanted us to brainstorm lots of ideas for each high-level section of the site, so they could pick, choose, and mix-and-match at their will. 
 
This was, for us, fun. It was a headline and body-copy free-thought zone, and we came up with tons of stuff for them… which we then selectively edited down, so that they’d actually get 100-percent usable stuff to choose from. 
 
In the end, we delivered a 34-page document, consisting primarily of headlines, subheads, and intro body-copy teasers. Fast-forward to the conclusion of this site’s gestation, and we were happy to see lots of our stuff employed in the finished product. 
 
So the takeaway is that there’s more than one way to do this. Our ad-agency client gave us a super-structured document, but then told us to freewheel when we got it. Conversely, we’ve worked on other website projects where there are actual slugs of approved copy baked right into the wireframe itself, and we’ll be given very strict input to create very strict output. We can work either way. 
 
Have a website challenge on your plate? Contact us. We’d be happy to help!