 Great photo by Grok. We recently saw what we’re about to describe, and it left us aghast.
Learn from the little tale we’re about to spin! What you’re reading—this article, these very words—is a blog entry. Here at Copel Communications, we’ve been posting articles like this, every two weeks, for more than ten years, now. Thank you. We knew you’d be impressed. But what is this horror-inducing tale? you’re surely asking. And what does that have to do with the title of this article? Okay. Maybe you’re not asking. We already knew you were smart. And likely figured it out already. But stay with us. So. We post blogs on a regular cadence. Twice a month. At the top of the month, each month, our blogs are more focused on our consultants audience. At mid-month—like this article—they’re more broadly geared toward our creatives audience. And yes, they certainly overlap. You don’t need to be running an ad agency to get a good takeaway, from this article, for your business. As we’d said. Every two weeks. Like clockwork. Now you don’t need to do them every two weeks. That’s our cadence. But man oh man. It is a cadence. Here’s the story: We were recently connected with a gentleman who was running his own creative agency; it specialized in web design. We’d been introduced by a mutual acquaintance, and had booked a Zoom call. Prior to the Zoom call, we did our due diligence. That is, we checked out this web designer’s website. And this is where we had our holy !@#$ moment. Just like our site—and almost everyone else’s—this designer’s website had a “Blog” section. (It could also be called “Recent Posts.” Same thing.) So we decided to check it out. And when we got there—we are not making this up—we saw—promise, we are not making this up: One blog. One. Just one. One. And—to make matters worse—it was date-stamped. From about two years ago. Oh-my-goodness. Put yourself in the shoes of a prospect searching for a web designer. You Google. You find this designer’s site. And you check it out, just as we did. And, out of curiosity, you decide to catch up on their latest thought leadership and/or musings. And you see one sole blog, time-stamped from two years ago. Quick: What’s your reaction? You got it: Are they still in business??? Our reaction precisely. Whoever you are, reading this article, do not repeat this suicidal mistake. Do not project to the world—and to your prospects, for goodness’ sake—that you, once, two years ago, had an idea, just one, and then went completely brain dead but somehow managed to keep paying your URL hosting fees. It is worse, far worse, than not having any blogs at all. Clearly! Now extrapolate from this story, this extreme example. Could you solve this by having two blogs? One from two years ago, and another from merely one year ago? Of course not. See where this is going? If you’re going to post, then post. And keep at it. But what if you’re not a content machine? That’s entirely possible. Then do this: Create at least, say, a half-dozen entries. And make sure they’re not date-stamped when you post them. Needless to say, make sure that the topics of these articles are evergreen, too; you don’t want to, say, comment on that morning’s big headline from the news. Of course, if you’re a web designer, you may want to show off that you’re good at building, and updating, websites. Starting with your own. Need help with a challenge like this? Or any other? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help.
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 Great photo by Andrea Piacquadio. 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.  Great photo by Andrea Piacquadio Here at Copel Communications, we’re proud to have a diverse clientele. Sometimes it’s so diverse, it can be challenging—to the point where successfully addressing these challenges generates some teachable moments. Hence, this article.
We recently worked on a social-campaign assignment for a very big global brand; while we can’t name them in this article, you certainly know who they are. To be more specific (about the assignment, and not the brand, LOL! we need to be delicate here), we were brought on by one of this brand’s multiple ad agencies. This agency specializes in addressing a certain ethnic market in the U.S. and overseas. And their specialization derives from the fact that they, themselves, belong to this same ethnic group. (It’s really hard to tell this story while protecting identities!) So. They handed us some creative, which they had developed, and the Big Brand had approved, for a social campaign touting one of the brand’s products. And the creative—the visuals, and the ideas—were really thoughtful and inspired. The campaign consisted of different little multi-panel vignettes that would tell the story of a certain person, depicted in them. It went something like this: Imagine there are five panels that will go by, almost like a little slide-show of memes. The first four establish this likeable person—whom the target audience can easily relate to—and their situation. Their situation, mind you, is aspirational-yet-flawed. They aim high, but there are constraints on their dreams. Guess where this is going? Of course. Panel Five introduces Big Brand’s Great Product, which, you guessed it, organically solves all of Hero’s problems in one fell swoop. We’ve over-simplified this a bit here, but you get the gist. Lost in translation Now why on earth, you may well be wondering, was Copel Communications brought in for this assignment? It certainly seems like it’s a wonderful campaign, neatly tied up with a bow. Well, almost. The problem here—and it was a big one—was the copy. Remember: Each “slide” in each of the campaign’s hero stories was effectively a meme: A photo with a quote, title, or caption. And while the ideas for all of these were great, the original copy had been written in Ethnic Audience’s Homeland Language, i.e., not English. Oh. So the Google-translated-to-English copy was clunky and needed help. On its surface, this seems like an easy, straightforward, and fun assignment. It was neither of the former, and hardly the latter. Why? Because, as easily as we could see where each of these panels (and there were tons of them, effectively five for each of the numerous “heroes” selected) needed to go, that didn’t make our client’s English any better. Example: One of the panels showed a young barista, working in a coffee shop. He’s our hero. Remember: aspirational-yet-flawed. So the input caption we were handed read: My job is hard. Gee. My job is hard. He’s a barista, right? So we came up with this version: Life can be a grind. Cute, huh? And so we got big pats on the back from the client, and we were happily endorsing a check five minutes later. Yeah right. Here’s the problem: The client didn’t understand “Life can be a grind.” So they kicked it back to us, instructing us to make it more like “My job is hard.” And, by extension, our job was hard! There’s not a huge lesson we can simply spout from this story. There were a zillion revisions and, not shockingly, for one of the “hero stories,” after they rejected Version 10, we used their suggestions for Version 11 to gently suggest that they re-visit Version 1 and, you guessed it, that was the one that flew. The takeaway? Assignments like this boil down to patience, and trust. The skill is just a subset. Need help with an outside-English-to-English assignment? Contact us. We’d be happy to help!  Great photo by Ketut Subiyanto. No that’s not a brand of beer. When we refer to “Draft Number 10,” we’re talking about Word docs.
Oh. Which begs the question: Why embrace that? Just by its moniker, “Number 10,” it’s daunting and annoying. Who in their right mind would ever enjoy, let alone embrace, the tenth draft of anything? Wouldn’t you be automatically burned out? Let’s answer that “in their right mind” question first. This is business, not art If you’re a painter or a poet, up in your garret, you can dream and wile away the hours, finessing your grand opus—“a hundred visions and revisions,” in the words of T.S. Eliot—and you’ve only yourself (and perhaps your muse) to answer to. But we’re not talking about art here, despite our decades of experience (not to mention lots of awards) in creative services. We’re talking about business. Money. Deadlines. ROI. Where, then, does a Draft Number 10 even come from? Quick oh-now-you’ll-get-it answer: A client who’s a perfectionist. Aha. Now everything should make sense for you. We have a client—we’ve actually had lots of clients like this—who’s a perfectionist. Who will revise and revise and revise a draft until it’s almost perfect… and then decide that it’s anything but, and then trash it, and start over, and then revise and revise and revise again, taking us along for the ride. As a creative resource, you could fight this. But you know that that would get you in trouble, and perhaps fired. You could just go with the flow: “Oh, this is the way they like to work. I’ll just… endure it, without complaining.” It’s possible that you could coast along like this indefinitely. But neither of the above approaches benefits anybody. Thus our advice to you in these situations: Embrace it. Heck, enjoy it. See it for the invaluable paid education that it is: Our fastidious client in this story—like most of the clients we’re lucky to work with, whether they’re fastidious or not—is quite brilliant. We would pay to learn their thought processes. To try and osmose just a tiny bit of that genius. Why do they toss Draft 5 and do a wholesale rework for Draft 6? Incidentally, the method behind the madness reveals—if you pay attention—that overall, these drafts get better as they go. It’s not a simple straight slope, were you to graph it. But the trend would be positive. Put it this way: Wouldn’t you love to see Einstein’s notes en route to e = mc2? We get paid for our services. It’s incumbent on us to remain profitable. So we don’t lose money on assignments like this—while, at the same time, we don’t take advantage of our clients’ generosity. And while we get paid in dollars, often the greater reward is the knowledge. The insight. And, frankly, the ability to help other clients like this in similar situations. As we’d said, we’re not along simply for the ride. We dive right in, on every single draft, seeing what’s changed and doing our best to make it better throughout. That’s why our clients entrust us on this journey. Need help with a client, or project, that feels unending? Contact us. We’d be happy—truly happy—to help.  Great photo by Andrea Piacquadio. It’s that time of year again: Time for the annual year-in-review of our top articles from Copel Communications. We do two of these each December: one for our “Creatives” audience, and another for our consultants audience.
This one is the former. (We’d published the other one recently.) Here are the top articles we’ve posted for creatives, chock full of tips and tricks that you can put to use ASAP. Enjoy!
That wraps up this year. And so… Happy New Year! Any topics you’d like to see us address in 2024? Contact us and let us know!  Great photo by Andrea Piacquadio. Collaboration is the hot buzzword these days, when it comes to creating documents. Put your doc in the cloud! Let everyone offer input, in real time! The latest technology makes it possible!
Isn’t that great? Not so fast. In this article, we’re going to weigh in on what you might not have considered a contentious topic. It’s not just “Word vs. Google Docs,” as the title of this article has implied. It’s more about “synchronous vs. asynchronous.” More importantly, it’s about creativity vs. chaos. Back in the old days We feel impelled to set up this story properly. Not very long ago, if you wanted to write something, you fired up Microsoft Word, and you wrote. When you were done, you had a document—a .doc, or later, a .docx—that contained your efforts, and was easy to share. It wasn’t just Word. There are a zillion other word processors out there, whose features are largely similar. You open them. You use them to write. You end up with a little document file when you’re done. We’ll lump all of these other apps together with Word—the 800-pound gorilla here—since they all operate in basically the same way. Working in this old-school manner, and knowing, in the business world, that documents are subject to input and revisions, it has always been incumbent on you to handle version control. That is, you wouldn’t take the doc you’d labored over, and then, while on the phone with your client, simply make all the changes that they suggest, into that original doc. Of course not. What would you do instead? Before taking down any of the client feedback, you’d do a “Save as...” and create a copy of your document, likely ending its filename with “v2” or something like that. We’re not losing you on any of this, are we? This certainly isn’t rocket science. But we’re describing this in detail to set up a point we’re going to make. Fast forward Google Docs is also like Word, in that, nowadays, there are lots of online/cloud-based word processors that act just like Google Docs. But like Word, Google Docs is the 800-pound gorilla in this space, so we’ll use it as our example here, representing all apps of its ilk. At first blush, Google Docs is identical to Word. It’s an app (web-based, vs. on-your-computer-based). You open it. You create a new document. And you save it to your Google Drive. So far, virtually no difference. But then things change. Since not only Google Docs but the documents you create with it are hosted in the cloud, it’s technically very simple to make documents share-able. Heck, you don’t even have to email them anymore. (Way too much work!) All you need to do is to grant someone else permission to edit your doc, and they can launch their Google Docs, open up your document, and make changes. So your client can type notes to you right in your doc. Or make their suggested changes, right in your doc. This can even happen while you’re working on it. In other words, you can actually have several people making changes to the same document, at the exact same time. And now, this is nothing like opening Word on your computer and sitting at your screen like a writer. It’s more like sitting in a committee meeting. Or maybe it’s more like a kids’ soccer game, with all the kids, of both teams, crowded chaotically around the ball. What’s better? (Or worse?) “Granting permission” is not some technological breakthrough. It’s been around for as long as there have been computer files. But the notion of making this available for a document that can be revised by multiple people in real time (“synchronous” editing) is relatively new: it coincides with the rise of cloud computing and storage. You can make a lot of arguments for how great this new technology is. You could say that it eliminates the laborious emailing of documents. It ensures a “single source of truth,” since the very latest version of the document is all that anyone sees. It makes sure that no one is working on an outdated version. And plus it creates unprecedented transparency: Everyone can see what everyone else is doing, in real time. Surely you’ve seen this: A little circle with someone else’s initials in it, showing them selecting text, or adding new verbiage, or whatever, like a multi-player online game. Now the big question: Does this make the document better? Follow-on question: Is this process better? We’d argue that the answer to both of these questions is “No.” Writing a document is not a democratic exercise. You’ll hear about a document’s “voice”—not its “crowd.” A good document has structure and logic. If various people are all tinkering with different parts of it at once, the final product will collapse like a house of cards. And what about all those worthless outdated versions that are now history? Well surprise: They’re not worthless. More often than not, you want to look at Version 2 when you’re working on Version 4, to see what was there before it changed: Not all movement is forward, and not all change is progress. Yes, there is a degree of “version tracking” baked into these web-based word processors. But it doesn’t offer the control or granularity of the iconic “Save as...” command. And not to sound too pretentious, but how many hands does it take to hold a paintbrush? We’d prefer to get client feedback on a doc, interpret it to the needs of the doc, and then implement it carefully, rather than seeing an anonymously-named editor (“Wombat,” anyone?) arbitrarily adding and cutting. What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you agree with us? Want to try and convince us otherwise? Contact us. We’d love to hear from you.  Great photo by Brett Sayles Whether you’re a creative professional, have creatives under you, or simply need to hire other creatives, you face a common challenge: You want to get the most creative bang for your buck.
Or your client’s buck. Same thing, here. This is easier said than done. Creative professionals know what they’re doing; that’s how they’ve managed to carve out a career in professional services. So shouldn’t you simply trust them to do the right thing? Of course you should. But if it were that simple, there would be no need for this article. Direction... give or take Every single creative assignment begins, necessarily, with direction. That creative person needs to know what to do. Where to go. How to proceed. They can’t work in a vacuum. And this—right at the first step—is where it gets tricky. Do it right, you get great stuff, and big bang for your buck. You can guess the other half of this equation. Or maybe not. It’s not just that you won’t get great creative out of your creative person(s), but you’ll waste time, energy, and effort. You’ll get frustrated, as you receive deliverables that don’t meet your expectations. Importantly, your creative person will get frustrated, too. And that’s not good. We hate to generalize, but we’ve been in this biz forever, so here goes: Creative people are higher-strung, and thinner-skinned, than most people. We like to say that “’creative professional’ is an oxymoron.” In other words, their fuses are shorter. They’re like professional athletes: They like to perform. But if you, as their coach, keep calling the wrong plays, they’ll not only fail, but they’ll burn out. And they’ll resent you, since they won’t respect your judgment. So the direction that you give is everything. Just as important, if not more important, than the direction you give... is the direction you don’t give. And this, by the way, was the impetus for this entire article. Setting the stage As we’d noted above, creative people like to perform. Which points up a convenient analogy, beyond, say, athletes. Know who else likes to perform? Yep. Performers. As in, actors. If you’ve never directed actors before, or even if you have, there’s a cardinal rule—or perhaps cardinal sin—when it comes to directing them, and that is: “Never give your actor a line-reading.” Huh? What’s that mean? And how does any of this translate to, say, getting a good layout or web page? A line-reading is when the director actually acts out a given line of dialogue, telling the actor, “Do it like that.” It’s an easy knee-jerk reaction for a director to make when he or she doesn’t hear the right phrasing or intonation, but doing it is the kiss of death. Why? Not only does a line-reading “talk down” to your actor (“You don’t know this as well as I do, so let me explain”), but it also “pollutes” their process by planting an impossible-to-ignore version in their head from the get-go which makes them utterly miserable. It short-circuits their own, internal creative process. They will hate-hate-hate you for it. Same thing goes for creative people who work for you. Never tell them: “Use this font” or “Add a six-point black border.” It’s tantamount to giving them a line reading. So what do you do? Do the opposite. Talk around what you want. Describe it aspirationally. “Here’s what we’re looking to accomplish, in broad strokes.” Stay out of the weeds. And challenge them: “Think you can figure out a creative way to solve this?” Thin-skinned though they may be, creative pros like to show off, in their own way, and tossing down the gauntlet, appropriately, plays to their sense of pride and entices them to rise to the challenge, to outdo themselves. To show off. All of this is hard to do, but boy is it ever worth the effort. You’ll get better results, and improve your working relationship with the talent at the same time. Need help with interpreting, and giving, the appropriate creative direction? Contact us. We surmount these kinds of challenges, for our clients, all the time.  Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s all about love.
Today, fittingly, that’s what we’re going to talk about. But we’re not talking about another person. We’re talking about the heavy lifting of doing creative work. You—or the creative person you task with this—got into this business because they love it. That’s one thing that all creatives have in common. They have an intense relationship with their work. But like any relationship, this one can grow cold. Do your assignments simply feel like, well, assignments? If so, what do you do, on this day of chocolate and flowers, to re-kindle that old flame? Take hope. There are ways to do this. We’re here to help. Find new inspiration in old sources As a creative professional, you’re required to keep up with the latest trends in design, advertising, music, pop culture, all of it. People depend on you to be dialed in. For the purposes of this article, we’ll assume that that’s the case. So take a break from what’s new, and indulge your senses in what’s eternal. We’re talking about nature. We’re talking about looking out the window. Or better yet, simply walking out the door. Take a breather. Take a nature break. Soak in the beauty, the tranquility, and the relaxation. This is more than mere therapy. It’s also hugely inspiring. Study the veins in a leaf, or the shapes of the clouds. We wrote an entire article on grabbing inspiration from nature; check it out. We can dive down even deeper into this same category, with one sub-category of nature which we find extra inspirational: Birds. Yep, we wrote another good one on this topic, too; here it is for your enjoyment. (And here’s one more: On other overlooked sources of creative inspiration.) Update your retreat You can picture an MBA’s office in your head. Not hard. Now picture, in your mind, the office of the ultimate creative director. Pretty neat, huh? Now ask yourself: How does that vision compare with your reality? It doesn’t matter if you have a corner office, a tiny cubicle, or work from home. Your space is your space. And it needs to be your safe, comfy, inspiring spot. So “spa it up.” You can indulge massively, on the cheap. Treat yourself to a new chair cushion. Get yourself a whole collection of fancy coffees or (as in our case) tea. A little aromatherapy goes a long way; there’s everything from candles to simple hand lotion that smells nice. Don’t forget music. Even as we’re writing this, we’ve got some beautiful, relaxing, spa-style music playing, and it’s sure helping. The point is, anything that puts you in a more relaxed state will help unclog those creative juices. It can also be tech: Something as simple as a new keyboard or pen tablet. Here’s one: We found an inexpensive seat heater on Amazon, and installed it on our desk chair. It’s heavenly in winter. Makes us write better. Dive into the details Our last bit of advice is perhaps the simplest. Lots of times, creative work loses its luster simply because there’s so much of it. It’s overwhelming. It feels more like work, and less like fun. The way around this is via a subtle attitude adjustment. For every assignment on your desk, it has scores of details that you must knock out. Remember the days, earlier in your career, when you would enjoy every one of those details? Now’s the time to re-discover that passion. It’s not “I need to knock out this headline layout”; it’s “Let me enjoy the process of kerning these two letters so that they breathe perfectly together.” It’s not: “Let me slog through this video”; it’s “How can I have the most fun with this particular lapped edit?” It's not a change in the work. It’s a change in the way you approach it. If it helps, think of this, too: For every person—like you—who’s toiling, and earning a living, in creative services, there’s likely a hundred others who dream of doing it. Or talk about doing it. Or plan on doing it. But they don’t. You do. That’s quite an accomplishment in itself. So pat yourself on the back. Show yourself—and your work—a little love. Why not? It’s Valentine’s Day. Have a story or tip to share? Contact us. We’d love to hear it.  We see it a lot. Younger people enter the creative-services workforce, and are invariably disappointed when they don’t get to express their full genius on every assignment. Look at their killer portfolio! Look at the awards they won in school! What gives with the real world?
In this article, we’re going to focus in on some of the (seemingly) most creative-crushing assignments, with an eye toward helping your client succeed. And our parenthetical comment above is spot-on, because if you believe there’s no room for creativity in that assignment, you’ve already painted yourself into a corner. SEO... as creative? We worked on an assignment recently, featuring a slew of social ads aimed at executives in a particular vertical; let’s say it’s “logistics.” And we were told—it was a mandatory—that we had to feature the word “logistics” in the headline. Mind you, these are social ads. As we’ve written before, they’re a lot like freeway billboards. In that there’s hardly any room for copy. You get a few words, max. And now you’re telling me that I have to use the word “logistics” in the headline? It’s enough to frustrate any creative pro. But there’s a sound method to this madness. And there is most certainly a creative solution to this challenge. First things first. If this ad, on a cluttered web page, is targeting logistics executives, it needs to cut the clutter of all the other ads that don't. Yes, you can show a picture of a long-haul tractor-trailer (and likely should), but nothing says "logistics” like, well, “logistics.” It gets worse. Or, depending on your perspective, better. We were also told—another mandatory—to get the word “exec” in there. We’re targeting logistics executives, right? Execs are a special, elite group. Again, think about it. You’ve got a genuine logistics exec, looking at some cluttered web page. He or she sees the word “Logistics” and takes notice. But there are tons of offerings in the world of logistics; it’s like manufacturing or insurance or any other huge vertical. But then you add the word “exec” to the ad, and it’s undeniably focused. This is what we might call “the SEO approach to creative.” It’s using the kinds of words that the audience would search on, to populate creative elements such as the headline. Which might read something like this: Logistic Execs: Boost LTL Throughput Now! Exciting, huh? Well, maybe not to you. And therein lies the rub. This is what so many of the new-to-the-workforce creatives fail to grasp. You’re not trying to score points for cleverness. You’re trying to help your client make money. Simple as that. Deeper geekery Notice the mention of “LTL” in that made-up headline above? It stands for “less-than-truckload,” which is an acronym that’s very specific to logistics. So while you would never use an obscure, and undefined, acronym in a headline to the general public, here, in this case, it slices through the clutter even more sharply. It tells that logistics exec, “We know what you’re up against.” It tells them that you speak their language, both literally and figuratively. Sounds crazy, but little ads like this work. We’ve jammed in some intense, industry-specific jargon, and whereas it would be death at, say a cocktail party, it works quite well when you need to cut through the clutter toward a very focused and time-constrained audience. So where on earth is the room for creativity here? If you’re in the tightly-constrained realm of a social ad, think of your remaining elements, besides the headline:
Not much, but it’s there. What if you did something like this: Logistic Execs: Boost LTL Throughput Now! ABC Enterprises Helps You Keep On Trucking [Button:] Accelerate Your Performance And what if there’s a totally outrageous, grabber image, such as a tractor-trailer... with a rocket engine and wings? The heat from the engine could even be scorching the call-to-action button. Well whaddya know. All of your college portfolio work paid off after all. The important thing—the discipline—is to know when and where to add the creative “spice” to an assignment, vs. letting the “untouched ingredient” stand on its own merit. The qualifier here, as always, is what the end-client/prospect/customer will respond to. Viewed through that lens, the decisions get much clearer. Need help with these kinds of assignments? Contact us. We’d love to answer the call.  Boy did this year ever fly past! We hope you’ve stayed productive and healthy.
In what’s become a big tradition here at Copel Communications, we’d like to offer you our annual wrap-up of creative skill-building articles for the entire year. If you missed any of these, here’s your chance to catch up; if you already enjoyed any of these, here’s an opportunity to re-hone your skills. Enjoy!
Have a creative topic you’d like us to weigh in on next year? Let us know. We’d love to hear from you. |