Like anyone invested in their craft, I can only handle so much stupidity before the mental elastic parts with a snap.
And frankly, no writer could be blamed for howling a little after repeated, long-term exposure to the following:
Bad Social Media Copywriting.
This morning I received an email promising me “a chance to win a t-shirt” if I managed to convince the sizable readership of my fly fishing blog to “like” an organization’s Facebook page.
Wow. A “chance” at a t-shirt. That’s real motivation for a top blogger, who invests a great deal of effort creating original content for his readers.
Clearly, the marketers share my pain.
Worse was this email (also aimed at my fly fishing blog), which – to spare you undue suffering – is only reprinted in part:
Hope your doing well. You’re getting this email because you blog about stuff real guys like. And [name withheld to keep their traffic to a minimum] Whiskey is as real as it gets. We’re betting your readers will want to know about damn good whiskey from the most award-winning distillery in the world. We are writing to invite to participate in a contest we call “Blogging for the Buffalo.”
Wow. Possessive fail in word #2, and it scarcely got any better. (Note my restraint with “most award-winning distillery” or the idea that they know what “real” guys like.)
The rest of the email is similarly challenged – as was the landing page (maybe a visit to one of Roberta Rosenberg’s Landing Page makeovers is in order).
Sadly, they caught me at the wrong moment, and this is what they got in return:
Wow. Goose bumps are rippling up and down my naughty bits.
I simply can’t wait to send my hard-earned blog readership to an anonymous, marketing-challenged distillery I’ve never heard of – and absolutely thrilled with the very real prospect of receiving little or nothing in return.
What thoughtful blogger – at least one capable of building a category-leading blog – could say “no” to a once-in-a-lifetime deal like that?
That I’m being asked to do your marketing heavy lifting for you via an error-ridden email only heightens the giddy anticipation; Social Media Experts know nothing screams “authenticity” like repeated grammar errors, caveman-esque syntax, and yes – Excessive Exclamation Syndrome!!
That your landing page continues the parade of errors only assures me that – as your email suggested – it was built by “real guys” (just like me).
Social media represents a large (and growing) target; the hype is often unconscionable, and the low-bid implementations regularly fall below the just-invented “Laughability Line.”
I once considered launching a “Social Media Hall of Shame” blog highlighting the worst examples of social media buffoonery, but I (thankfully) realized no marketer could long expose himself to that kind of radioactivity without quickly accumulating a lethal dose.
Unfortunately, the trend seems to be accelerating. Unintentionally hilarious spam subject lines used to provide the majority of the amusement, but social media gaffes are quickly displacing it. And as quickly as you delete/glass over/ignore it, more takes its place.
Keep writing (but please, try to do it well), Tom Chandler.
Do you yearn for a more romantic style of writing – one where you pounded out your award-winning novel on your trusty manual typewriter, then flew to Paris to start drinking your way through your next book?
Well, pine no more, Undergrounders. We bring you news of a product sure to make you shrug and go on with your day: The USB-enabled Manual Typewriter:
Frankly – given the world’s oversupply of unused manual typewriters and shortage of working iPhones – we’re amazed nobody thought of this before (after all, phone reception on one of these couldn’t be much worse than an iPhone 4).
Now all those tech bloggers – who struggle to write their never-critical-of-new-technology blog posts on their tiny iPhones and iPads – can take command of a full-sized, calorie-consuming and (dare I say it) man-sized keyboard, courtesy the USB Typewriter site:
The USBTypewriter™ is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence. Lovers of the look, feel, and quality of old fashioned manual typewriters can now use them as keyboards for any USB-capable computer, such as a PC, Mac, or even iPad! The modification is easy to install, it involves no messy wiring, and does not change the outward appearance of the typewriter (except for the usb adapter itself, which is mounted in the rear of the machine). So the end result is a retro-style USB keyboard that not only looks great, but feels great to use.
At this website, you can buy buy a USB Typewriter of your very own, or you can buy a kit to make one yourself. You can also send me your typewriter to customize.
If you’ve ever witnessed the birth of a really really bad marketing concept – one which somehow evades every attempt to kill it – then you’ll experience a familiar sensation while watching this “viral” video for an “ultra-thin” laptop (small children and sensitive copywriters may want to turn away):
It’s like a slow motion train wreck (with a PC enema added to make things that much more uncomfortable). I find myself too horrified to watch, but too fascinated to turn away.
Whether this nightmare – found via MSNBC’s “The Ten Most Uncool Moments In Tech” – actually helped MSI, ahem … crack their target market isn’t clear (though you can be sure I’d wash my hands after demoing on of their laptops).
The article also highlights nine other truly ugly moments in high-tech marketing, including the infamous Microsoft Songsmith video (which remains a powerful argument in support of government censorship).
Keep writing (but only stuff you’d show your mother), Tom Chandler
I can say with some honesty I’ve never asked myself that particular question (Oh, all right – Thomas McGuane). Fortunately (I guess), there’s a website willing to ask it for you.
With the possible exception of supermodels, nobody’s happier staring into a mirror than a writer, so there’s little point in pretending: just go there, cut and paste some recent work into the window, and let it fly.
Oddly, no matter what I posted (entries from my fly fishing blog, this blog, a recent commercial blog post, a book project chapter…) my analysis came back “Cory Doctorow.”
(Since he’s ten years younger than I am, I’d suggest he writes like me, but I might be quibbling here.)
If ever a video deserved to go viral, it’s this hilarious, desperate-sounding snippet that finally gives your television the voice it’s so sorely needed…
You can’t get a better guarantee of soft, formless mediocrity than to assign a creative project to a committee – especially those expressly designed to avoid controversy.
In this case, we’re confronted with the Power of The Group to Do The Wrong Thing in the form the 2012 Olympic Mascots (apparently, if you can’t create one good mascot, make two really, really bad ones).
Brilliant design move? Or shocking example of England’s Growing Drug Problem?
Reaction has not been positive; even AdAge opened fire with:
Graphic designers continue to weep openly in the streets. Schools have brought in crisis counselors to comfort frightened youngsters. Many Webkinz have reportedly formed suicide pacts as fears spread that — what were their names again? Warlock and Mandible? whatever — the monsters are part of a robot master race that has come from Planet Focus Group to stamp out cuddliness and cuteness on Earth.
Those in the fetish community are simply scratching their heads (as a commenter who goes by Murray Hewitt noted on the Deadspin blog, “The blue guy put his assless chaps on backwards”). And at Advertising Age headquarters in New York, those of us who didn’t go home sick yesterday ended up forming an impromptu prayer circle in the conference room — and that includes the atheists among us. Afterward, I manned the internet barricades, carefully recording reactions on Twitter to the attack of Warlord and Matlock. Click through the slide show below for the voice of the Tweeple.
What happened?
For those with little experience, committees often deliver results like the above; the unwanted byproduct of an illicit three-way love triangle featuring a drunken alien, a fetishist politician, and a foam pillow.
Welcome to the power of the committee.
Obviously, this is not the first time this has happened.
I once sat in a room filled with intelligent people brainstorming their company’s new tagline.
A truly spellbinding idea was circulating (not mine), and was within seconds of acceptance – when another writer (we all take the hit for this one) fired off an idea so convoluted and potentially damaging to the brand that I knew immediately it was destined for acceptance.
Later, the company happily “unleashed” (actual tagline verb [shudder]) their new tagline – which largely equated their product to the family pet – and I could only shake my head in wonder.
Six months later, it was quietly killed in a much smaller meeting.
To see such a thing happen before your eyes is like watching a train wreck, only in slow motion and slathered with the highly flammable, sickly syrup of good intentions.
Good creative work can die a painful a death a hundred different ways, yet the “committee” has to feature at the top of the list.
At least that’s what Wenlock and Mandeville keep telling me.
Satire remains one of the only truly effective methods for dealing with hype, and if it’s one thing that needs a healthy dose of satire, it’s corporate-and-guru-driven webspeak.
Of course, satire’s most effective when it’s only one step removed from reality, which is why the Web Economy Bullshit Generator (at dack.com) offers so much entertainment value for so little time invested (it’s a synergistic hyper-relateable entertainment technology):
It automatically generates gibberish corporate-speak phrases (the button actually says “make bullshit”), including doozies like:
disintermediate proactive technologies
matrix virtual infrastructures
strategize 24/365 web services
incentivize plug-and-play infomediaries
architect one-to-one infrastructures
synthesize impactful channels
grow cross-media infomediaries
Sadly, you could pack a corporate pitch/report with fertilizer like this and do just fine. But remember: That way lies madness.
In fact, the Undergrounders should feel free to add their own real-life corporatespeak phrases in the comments section (use fake names if you feel the need to protect yourself).
Me? I’m heading off to innovate enterprise functionalities so I can seize synergistic paradigms for my clients, who are currently incubating end-to-end user experiences.
One of the most painful aspects of working as a copywriter is seeing your painstakingly assembled sentences sliced and diced by a client with a fourth-grader’s grasp of syntax.
It’s painful (we’re writers after all, eager for the occasional morsel of praise), but hell, we’re getting paid.
So we suck it up and move on, trying not to let the client drive a stake through our response rate or dangle a modifier in the midst of our call to action.
Even literature’s giants can’t agree about what’s good and what’s not – so what chance do we have?
A few examples of the carnage:
3. John Keats, according to Lord Byron (1820)
Here are Johnny Keats’s p@# a-bed poetry…There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables, that I am ashamed to look at them.
4. Edgar Allen Poe, according to Henry James (1876)
An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.
5. John Updike, according to Gore Vidal (2008)
I can’t stand him. Nobody will think to ask because I’m supposedly jealous; but I out-sell him. I’m more popular than he is, and I don’t take him very seriously…oh, he comes on like the worker’s son, like a modern-day D.H. Lawrence, but he’s just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top if he can do it.
6. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, according to Samuel Pepys (1662)
…we saw ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.
Today’s moral? Nobody’s words gain universal acceptance, and neither will ours. You just do good work, feel good about it all, and move along.
