The Copywriter Underground

It’s pure viral marketing fun; Office Max invites you to upload your picture and become a dancing elf.
You don’t want to be an elf? Look at it as an easy way to lose a few pounds.
It’s a creative viral marketing technique - the kind I wish I’d envisioned and pitched to my clients.
Still, maybe this [...]

NPR posted a list of famous writers and their preferred alcoholic beverages from the Hemingway and Bailey’s Bartending Guide. A quick glance suggests I’m way behind on the “colorful drinking story” front.
In fact, I’m looking a the boring cup of hot tea sitting by my keyboard and realizing I need to develop some quirky drinking [...]

The Inklings blog is aimed squarely at copywriters, and in this post, asks “How Good a Copywriter Are You?”
Fortunately, the answers go far beyond the question, and include a lot of tips that might help a young copywriter gain a foothold. Only takes a minute…
[tags]inklings, copy, copywriter, marketing, advertising[/tags]

My intention for Fifteen Minute Friday is simple: it’s a tool which forces me to invest a few minutes each week looking for new opportunities with existing clients.
I’d find ideas during the week, make a note, and then invest fifteen minutes of my Friday pitching them to clients.
This week, I’m way ahead of the game.
Success! [...]

I’ve been distracted with deadlines lately, and missed out on an interesting discussion on Deborah Ng’s Freelance Writing site about writing for free - the genesis of which Deborah ably dissects in an insightful Accepting the Blame post on her Finding the Right Words blog.
Driving the discussion is Lifetips, a site that publishes content and [...]

I posted a pair of stories on my Engagement Principles blog about the FTC’s newly released regulatory stance on Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing.
Right now I’m on a pair of tough deadlines, but I wanted to move the highlights before it slipped off too many radar screens.
First, this Advertising Age story (my [...]

Today, a writer’s ability to quickly connect with readers is critical. What allies do you have in your fight to engage readers? (Stick around and I’ll show you.)
Meet Left and Right: the Parentheses Twins.
My English teacher said parentheses were the tools of lazy writers. Wikipedia says “In most writing, overuse of parentheses is usually a [...]

I just posted a short profile of BzzAgent on my Engagement Principles blog, and telling you is my way of saving myself the trouble of copying and pasting the whole thing over here.
Instead, I’ll point out that BzzAgent is a word-of-mouth marketing company who has already dispensed with the “traditional” blog format. What are they [...]

Speed posting is never a good idea.
And since I’m currently halfway out the door (check my Trout Underground blog to see why, though you can probably guess from the title), I’ll keep this short and minimize the chance for embarassment.
Detective Carson
Carson at Content Done Better unravels the weird dual “original content needed” post story, which [...]

Any writer who has ever been yanked around by a publisher or treated rudely an editor will find the following irresistible.
Norman MacLean was the author of A River Runs Throught It - a brilliant short story that became an excellent movie. This letter was written in 1981 to Charles Elliott of Alfred A. Knopf publishers.
Knopf [...]