The Copywriter Underground

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Even a cursory reading of my blog should suggest strong support for small business blogs (medium and big biz blogs too).
And why not? As some one who plied the waters of interrupt marketing for so many years, I’ve come to realize the benefits of engagement marketing, especially in light of the new media channels opening […]

I’m a big advocate of pursuing companies you want to work with instead of blindly marketing and accepting whatever comes back. But turning a short, carefully vetted list of prospects into a roster of clients has never been easy.
Enter the Lumpy Mailer
It’s the digital age, I’m online, so my first contact would come via the […]

Communications giant Verizon just announced a company blog that promises a response to questions within 24 hours.
It’s interesting that a blog offers small and medium-sized businesses a channel where they can clearly out-compete their larger brethren (not that there are any small players left in this market), yet many are failing to embrace this new […]

The basis of engagement marketing is… engagement (not surprisingly).
So why do so many interactive, “two-way” blogs think their job is finished when their entry is posted?
Talking Back. It’s a Good Thing.
You can’t engage someone if they think you’re not listening. And in today’s Web 2.0 world, feedback (in the form of comments) is critical.
Otherwise - […]