The Copywriter Underground

Thanks to the Copywriter’s Crucible for alerting us to this one — a short video created by Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions (of all people).

It satirizes the master/slave relationship many advertisers still wish existed — and is a pointed (if symbolic) reminder of the changing role of the copywriter.

Plus it’s fun. Time to engage, baby. Coupons are not enough…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZDXfB0Rd4Q[/youtube]

[tags]copywriting, copywriter, marketing, advertising[/tags]

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 up to?

They’re pursuing the “next big thing” in blogging.

For example, their first blog was set to run for 90 days… and then expire.

Bento Box is BzzAgent’s newest effort – a non-linear blog.

In conventional terms they were shooting themselves in the foot. Building traffic and then killing the blog defies common sense. Still, I liked the idea of a deadline – it told readers they’d better not wait to get into the conversation.

After the 90 days were up, BzzAgent fired up another blog that may yet set the standard for the next-generation blog; a non-linear, graphically oriented blog that included contributions from both a writer and an artist.

Called Bento Box, it’s far easier to visit than describe.

Meet The Writer.

The writer for both blogs is John Butman. In an interesting twist to standard corporate blogging, Butman’s assignment on the 90 Days of BzzAgent blog wasn’t to act as cheerleader for the company, but instead write from the perspective of an embedded reporter.

While BzzAgent called the 90 days blog “an experiment in organizational transparency,” I’d suggest Butman didn’t truly act as neutral reporter, though he did bring a perceptive eye and inviting writing style to the assignment.

Butman’s a well known writer with a long list of fiction and non-fiction credits to his name, but you don’t need a strong pedigree to innovate new ideas for your clients.

After reading Inc. Magazine’s profile of the BzzAgent blogs, I scribbled a pair of ideas in my notebook for future reference.

Someday, I’ll find a perfect fit for those ideas. My client will think I’m a genius. My wife will think I’m not as dumb as a stalk of celery. And I’ll have added value to my relationship with the client – by appearing smarter than the next guy.

So what do you think the next-generation blog looks like? And how will you harness that vision to add value to your copywriting brand?

[tags]bzzagent, bento box, blog, marketing, buzz, 90 days of bzzagent, engagement, marketing, pr[/tags]

My presentation last night went gangbusters. They always do. But I always stress about them.

In this case, the group of small business owners were sharp. And what’s gratifying – given my constant harping on the subject on my Engagement Principles blog – was their quick grasp of the concept of engagement.

Indeed, the Copywriter’s Crucible offers some reinforcement for the idea of online engagement marketing with this nicely researched post. I’m bringing it along on my trip.

Engagement – especially in the areas of shared passions and values – offers the small business (and those who write for them) a potentially significant online advantage over their larger competitors.

The Crucible’s post concerned research suggesting online marketing was having just as strong (if not stronger) influence over the buying decisions across several demographics – not simply the younger crowd commonly assumed to be “Internet influenced.”

It’s an excellent read. I’m taking it on the road to my parent’s house, where my lovely wife and I are heading for Thanksgiving.

So no posts until next week. But a Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! And I leave you with one of the many things I’m thankful for – the beautiful place I live (14,162′ Mount Shasta).

Take care!

[tags]marketing, online marketing, Internet marketing, engagement, copywriter’s crucible[/tags]

If I convince my readers of anything, it’s that the copywriters who add value beyond the words set themselves apart from the herd.

Part of adding value means staying current, and intelligently applying new marketing developments to your clients’ situation.

For example, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing posted a note about a hosted “click-to-call” service for small business from Jaduka.

“Click to call” has been a staple contact point on the Web sites of larger companies for some time.

A customer clicks, their phone rings, and they’re talking to a service representative.

It’s an impressively seamless customer engagement point, and – until now – it’s been the province of larger companies.

Now anyone can add “click-to-call” to their Web site or other online contact point – even Google listings.

Jaduka even offers a free account.

I don’t know if it’s a useful tool for sole proprietors. But for a business of any size, it’s a great example of the Internet leveling the playing field.

And an excellent demonstration of yet another way to add value to your copywriting relationships.

[tags]duct tape marketing, click-to-call, click-and-connect, jaduka, copywriter, [/tags]

Chief Marketer magazine just published an article predicting the hottest trends in brand marketing for 2007 . (I blogged it on my Engagement Principles marketing blog.)

The #1 trend? The growth of Engagement Marketing. That’s great news for smart, value-added copywriters.

What’s engagement marketing? The current definition is “…turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context.”

It’s an awkward way to describe engaging with customers rather than pummelling them with traditional sales techniques.

An excellent small-business example is Tim Jackson’s Masiguy blog. It engages road cyclists in the day-to-day life of a true cycling geek working at Masi bicycles.

Little product information. No features. No benefits. Just connection.

Does engagement work? It’s credited with helping double the company’s sales each of the last two years.

Why Is That Good For Writers?

While engagement marketing takes many forms, small and medium sized business will likely test the waters with a blog. And those blogs will need content.

Which is where you come in.

The strongest engagement occurs when a company demonstrates that its passions align with those of their customers. So a bike company blog would be written by a cyclist.

And a book publisher’s blog would be written by an avid reader.

What do you love to do? Where does your expertise and passion lie?

Make Your Passions Pay.

Here’s a plan: Pick a dozen companies you want to work for – companies whose products and services are near and dear to your heart.

Contact them, get to their marketing director, and ask if they’re planning a blog. If not, use the information you find here, on The Engagement Principles and elsewhere on the Internet to pitch them one.

Another option is to locate PR firms serving markets that interest you (PR firms often specialize).

It’s likely that PR firms will be among the first to offer blogs to their clients. Yet they won’t have the bandwidth to populate them with content.

Engagement marketing requires a steady of flow of relevant, passionate content. Unlike so many other marketing projects, blogs generate steady revenues for copywriters willing to make the commitment.

I’ll post more on this in the near future.

In the meantime, build your engagement marketing credentials. It’s a part of the industry destined to grow quickly. And it represents the kind of better-paying, long-term projects that boost your revenues and smooth out your revenue highs and lows.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

[tags]marketing, engagement, chief marketer, blog, blogging, copy, copywriter, masiguy, engagement principles, copywriter underground[/tags]

Blog schizophrenia. It’s nasty business, and I’m just saying no.

The Copywriter Underground was orginally fashioned to be my contact with other copywriters (none of whom live in my particular chunk of nowhere – 14,162′ Mt. Shasta).

But my interest in Engagement Marketing kept cropping up. Half the time I was talking to copywriters. The other half I was writing posts better suited to businesses looking to succeed online.

I know better.

Announcing The Engagement Principles – my new marketing blog. Engagement marketing is destined for big things, and it’s a natural extension of my interest in blogging, social media and the value-added copywriter’s role in it.

Intelligently practiced, I believe engagement marketing offers small and medium-sized businesses the ability to out-compete much larger companies online.

It taps into the passion that’s far more evident at small companies than big organizations.

It’s cost-effective. It’s nimble. And – unlike those expensive print ads so many companies buy – your customers can talk back to your blog. (A community based on shared passions and values is a hell of a competitive advantage.)

I could rant on for a long time. But I won’t. But give The Engagement Principles blog a visit. Add it to your RSS feed. Read the short white paper referenced in the sidebar.

And don’t be afraid to comment. Write well, Tom Chandler.

The outdoor clothing market is crowded and competitive. How does a new company build a space for itself in a very tough market?

Welcome nau. Enter the Engagement Principles.

A key tenet of The Engagement Principles stipulate that true engagement occurs when customers and organizations share values and passions. Nau (Maori for welcome) is a brand-new outdoor clothing manufacturer who is doing exactly that.

They emphasize green manufacturing, organic products (cotton mostly), and sustainability. Their Web site is a study in green and friendly text.

To whit:

“By celebrating positive change and the people who make it possible, by helping redefine what it means to do business responsibly and by using the power of design to create more sustainable clothing, we’re trying to do things differently. While our business is outdoor apparel, our passions are much larger, and the stories we want to tell much broader.”

They’re suggesting the clothes themselves are objects of sustainability. Whoa.

A deeper read of their site reveals an even more audacious idea; that everyone in the process – from fiber producer to designer to manufacturer to customer – are part of their “kollective,” all of whom share the responsibility (and the warm glow of success).

It’s an aggressive position, and a brilliant engagement marketing stance. If we’re all part of the same sustainable team, then those wearing the nau label aren’t practicing brand loyalty.

They’re wearing environmental awareness.

Brilliant.

This sets them apart from other manufacturers who are still seen to be tacking green promises onto less environmentally friendly products.

We’ll see how their position holds up when their clothes are released (January 2007).

Begin the Engagement.

Even better (I’m getting a little misty here), they have a corporate blog. It’s called The Thought Kitchen (dedicated to stirring the pot).

More an artistic and lifestyle statement than standard business blog, it revels in subjects that nau’s target market might find interesting – and leaves the sales pitch, corporatespeak and hype behind.

Indeed, it’s more lifestyle site than corporate blog. And you won’t find a mention of pants or jackets.

The holy grail, of course, is an engaged community of uber-customers multiplying their collective appreciation for nau’s values and products, leading to a critical mass of buzz, loyalty and referrals.

The blog is young and still seeks a voice, but I’d like to see it deliver information that reinforces nau’s message, including profiles of sustainable/organic suppliers and other stakeholders.

This information would personalize the company from the frontline workers through their entire supply chain, demonstrating nau’s commitment to its values and involving their customers in the fight for sustainability.

The Marketing Path Less Traveled.

Nau’s approach to outdoor clothing isn’t one of extreme environments and lethal stunts.

Instead, they appeal to those who aren’t going to risk their lives on Everest, but still want outdoor gear that fits an active lifestyle.

They emphasize their design ethic (clothes designed for fashion and sustainability), and in fact, their clothes are only part of the story – the company’s values occupy center stage:

Three ingredients inspire our product design: beauty, performance and sustainability. Come learn more about our mantra, and its influence on everything we make.

A brand new company, nau’s gambling their target market will be so enthralled with their message of sustainability that the clothes will prove irresistible.

They’re also betting that engaging those customers via a blog will lead to the two-way flow of thoughts, words, vibes and information (and – oh yes – revenues).

My marketing dislikes? Their Web site is overdesigned, slow and somewhat difficult to navigate, and their message sometimes veers dangerously close to the narcissistic (as evidenced in this video about their design philosophy).

And frankly, there’s a lot to be done on buzz front (going “viral” to use a badly worn term), but the building blocks are in place.

Stand or fall, nau’s approach will no doubt be closely watched by the rest of outdoor clothing industry – an industry surprisingly devoid of engagement marketing.

Wake up, fellas.

[tags]engagement principles, passion marketing, business blog, corporate blog, blog, outdoor clothing, marketing, engagement marketing, nau[/tags]

I’d love to sit and blog more today, but the skies are clouding over, rain is coming, and it’s a perfect day to go fishing.

So I’m going fishing. But I’ll leave you with this…

In the wake of the YouTube acquisition, the thoughtful-but-wordy Communities Dominate Brands (CDB) blog wrestles with the concept of building an online community versus buying one.

Of course, buying a community is currently an option for only the biggest organizations. Or is it?

As the idea of online community filters down the business food chain, it’s possible we’ll see individual blog communities being acquired by companies looking to jump start the blogging process.

A nearby example would be my Trout Underground Fly Fishing blog. It’s a classic “passion” blog and one of the top content blogs in the industry.

And it’s possible that an outdoor company that’s lagging in the online arms race would someday want to acquire it – with its community, goodwill and “voice” intact – as opposed to building their own.

CDB’s Take? Don’t Do It.

The CDB blog comes down against acquisition with a couple of thoughtful statements:

The question is however, can you buy communities? And I believe that in fact many companies can build their future, not by buying, but by building.

And:

What we should be saying is – This is who we are, this is what we do, how can we create something that will ATTRACT our stakeholders, our audiences, that creates genuine value that we can develop over time.

The gist of their argument is this: just because a online community exists doesn’t mean the goals and values of the community align with the company’s.

As a copywriter, I’m just as happy with a “build instead of buy” concept. Somebody’s going to build those communities (whether blog or other format). It might as well be forward-thinking copywriters.

I still believe blogs (or whatever they morph into) will represent an enormous opportunity for copywriters willing to pitch the entire project to clients (instead of providing content at $10 a post), though most businesses are taking a “wait and see” approach.

Still, make a list. Sharpen your pitch. And see what happens.

[tags]communities dominate brands, blog, business blog, business blogging, corporate blog, community[/tags]

A post on the Brian Clark’s Copyblogger site got me thinking. His warning was that so much in marketing today is hype. And that copywriting hasn’t changed.

I agreed. To a point.

I think the craft of copywriting hasn’t changed – but its goals have. The technology surrounding “Web 2.0″ has opened doors that were formerly closed to marketers, and copywriters had better be aware of the effects.

The Good News

The good news is that today’s copywriter often has a chance to sit down and chat with his audience – assuming he’s done his job well enough to attract attention in the first place.

I believe engagement marketing is very real. And that one of the holy grails of marketing is finally sailing into view – the ability to truly engage customers instead of simply marketing at them.

The Difference

As copywriters, we invest most of our energy acquiring customers. That hasn’t changed (though the media channels have).

What’s new is what happens post-acquisition. Instead of throwing away the momentum we’d built up acquiring the customers, we can afford to keep it.

Blogs, communities, and new media channels have made it possible (and cost-effective).

Suddenly, good companies – those that truly share the passions of their customers – can connect with their customers as much as several times a day.

In the past, that level of contact simply cost too much. Now the barriers are gone.

What’s this mean to you?

Newer media channels offer us the promised land. Because now your conversation with your customers can last weeks, months – even years (assuming you’re doing it right).

In that time, killer headlines and great bullet lists will be just as important as they used to be – provided your readers believe you’re being authentic. And the copy you write can flow to a connection-hungry audience as quickly as it comes off the keyboard.

Are we witness to the rise of the copywriter as serial commercial novelist? Possibly.

So yeah, Buzzwords and hype are still buzzwords and hype. And the basic craft of copywriting hasn’t really changed.

But it has. Or at least the goals seem to be.

[tags]copy, copyblogger, blogs, communities[/tags]

Mickey Khan at DM News wrote an excellent editorial piece where he dubbed the social networking revolution the “Age of Expression.”

It’s a good phrase and he asks the same questions of the business world I’ve been asking: why aren’t you truly engaging your customers with interactive media like blogs and social networking?

The technology barriers are gone. The customers are clearly ready (hell, they’re engaging each other without any help). The costs are insignificant. What’s the barrier?

A failure of imagination? Fear? Money??

In the absence of even marketing-savvy companies like Lands’ End and Harley-Davidson – who fiddle on the sidelines – customers (and soon-to-be-customers) are burning up the Internet in MySpace, YouTube and others.

They’re connecting with each other, forming online communities, and sharing their brand/product preferences with everyone in the group.

From business? Crickets. Dead silence.

I can see why a business wouldn’t want to launch an unmoderated blog for every employee in the company, but c’mon – where are the barriers to launching a simple blog? Why sell widgets one at a time when you can connect with customers and sell them widgets for the rest of their lives?

Why not reclaim the online brand from those not in your employ who’d gladly control it for you?

Worse yet, this is a golden opportunity for smaller businesses to wrap up their share of the market from bigger competitors, protecting their most valuable asset (customers).

Why so few takers?

[tags]business blogging, corporate blogging, age of expression, copywriting, marketing, blog, business blog[/tags]