Sustainability Reporting on a Global Scale
Posted: August 29, 2011 Filed under: Copywriting & Creative | Tags: Buckman, business writing, green marketing, GRI, sustainability Leave a comment »
Here is Buckman’s new sustainability report which adheres to the strict guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative. Just one of many sustainability projects I have written over the past few years. When companies use the same global standards of reporting, it is much easier to see just how good they are at being corporate citizens. Here are a few pages. For the entire 48-page report (bless your heart), just click on the cover shot above.
A new look for FedEx
Posted: August 24, 2011 Filed under: Copywriting & Creative, signage | Tags: Arena marketing, FedEx, hockey, Oden, Pittsburgh Penguins, sports marketing Leave a comment »
This is just one of the big and bold walls you’ll see at the CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh, home of the Penguins. I worked with designer Spencer King at Oden on these. This is the look of things to come for FedEx.
Wordnut makes contribution to this year’s Judges’ Choice Award winner
Posted: February 22, 2011 Filed under: Copywriting & Creative | Tags: Advertising, advertising strategy, creative, FedExFamily House, video Leave a comment »The marketing firm Oden sent out a holiday card this year featuring a large QR code. Recipients scanned the code with their smart phones or simply visited the website provided and they were treated to this unique video, which won three awards at this year’s Memphis Addy Awards, including the Judges’ Choice Award. I helped with the script and the messaging. The real genius is in the painstaking stop-action animation and whimsical props, a collaboration of Bret Terwilleger and photographer Jerry Plunk.
Wordcracker: Copywriter
Posted: January 4, 2011 Filed under: Copywriting & Creative, Wordcracker, writing | Tags: Advertising, business writing, Copywriting & Creative, creative, freelance writing, marketing, Origin of copywriter, writing 1 Comment »An advertising writer is called a copywriter. But why? Why “copy?” The story starts a long time ago, even before advertising as we know it. While “copy” can mean an imitation or facsimile, it can also refer–according my trusty Oxford English Dictionary–to the thing being copied. A copy, then, can be “the original writing, work of art, etc., from which a copy is made.” We can find this usage as far back as 1481.
So what does this have to do with advertising writing? Plenty. Fast forward to the moveable type printing press and the printed newspapers it spawned. The manuscript written (and later typed) by the news writer was called a copy because, we can now deduce, it would soon be copied by the typesetter and printer. In fact, a “copy boy” was often employed to run the manuscript from writer to editor to typesetter. Eventually, the “a” was dropped, so a copy became simply “copy,” used in much the same way we use the word “text.”
So, you keep asking, what does this have to do with advertising writing? Everything! To pay the journalists and the pressmen and make a profit, newspapers sold advertising (why do you think advertising courses are so often buried in our colleges’ schools of journalism?). Someone had to write the verbiage–the copy–for the ads they sold. And the copywriter–and a title that differentiated him from the journalist or news writer–was born.
The unfortunate similarity of “copywriter” and “copyright” causes consternation for many. You’ve got to be a lawyer to deal with copyright issues, and that I am certainly not. In fact, I have a hard enough time just coming up with a company name or a snappy slogan that has the potential to be copyrighted. Try coming up with an original website domain, for example. It isn’t easy. Because of this confusion and because not that many people know where the word “copy” comes from in the first place, I prefer to say I am an advertising writer or a marketing writer. And when I am feeling particularly smug, I simply say that I’m a writer, knowing that it will evoke all sorts of romantic notions in people’s heads. That, of course, often backfires, and they ask, “Oh, anything I might have read?”
Probably not. Not yet, anyway.
When typos get hairy
Posted: September 22, 2010 Filed under: Copywriting & Creative | Tags: billboard, outdoor board, South Bend, typos 1 Comment »
Photo by Lee MacMillan
Apparently, the curriculum in South Bend is just a little more progressive than most. (To read more about it, click on the photo.)
Wordcracker: Ground Zero Mosque
Posted: August 24, 2010 Filed under: Dysphemism, Ethics, Euphemism, Language, Publishing, Wordcracker | Tags: ground zero, journalism, media, mosque, writing 8 Comments »
What do you call a phrase like “Ground Zero Mosque?” Loaded language, for sure. Actually, there is a word for it: dysphemism. Dysphemism is roughly the opposite of euphemism. While euphemism is the softening of language or ideas to make them less offensive, dysphemism is all about making the language or idea more offensive. That, of course, has been the motive of “journalists” who have used the phrase “Ground Zero Mosque” in their headlines. You can read (and listen to) more about that here at OnTheMedia.org.
What makes it dysphemism? For starters, when you put those three words together, it sounds as if the mosque is going to be right at Ground Zero. There is nothing separating the word “Mosque” from the words “Ground Zero.” In reality, however, there are two New York City blocks separating Ground Zero from the mosque building site. A word like “near” would certainly have helped preserve the truth: “Mosque Near Ground Zero.” But the news writers chose to be less precise and more sensational.
This is no basic form of dysphemism, however. An example of regular, run-of-the-mill dysphemism would be calling a printed paper edition of a periodical the “dead tree edition.” There’s nothing untrue about it. It merely seeks to create a negative reaction in the reader by focusing on what might be seen as a drawback of printed publications when compared to their online counterparts. But “Ground Zero Mosque” is more diabolical because it also makes use of hyperbole. It exaggerates the truth. It dispenses with those two blocks and puts Ground Zero and the Mosque within one typed space of each other.
This is much the same sort of dysphemism as “snail mail.” Compared to email, the postal service is slower. But is it really as slow as a snail? Of course not. Exaggeration. The difference here, however, is that nobody really believes mail is delivered by snail or that it is really that slow. “Snail mail” is dysphemism in search of humor. “Ground Zero Mosque” is dysphemism in search of division and fear.
Whether you are for or against a mosque being built two blocks from Ground Zero, I hope we can all agree that it is irresponsible for news agencies such as the Associated Press and Fox News to use “Ground Zero Mosque” in a headline. Both did. And it is equally irresponsible for the public to allow itself to be manipulated by such headlines. You may say that sticks and stones will break your bones, and that words will never harm you. But it is most often words that start the sticks and stones to flying.
I am afraid that “Ground Zero Mosque” just may be ground zero for something that threatens this free country even more than terrorism. The slow death of objective journalism and, even scarier, our ability to recognize it when we see it.
For another great example of dysphemism check this out, which chronicles the transformation of the “estate tax” to the “death tax.”
Unsettling
Posted: July 26, 2010 Filed under: signage 3 Comments »
Just back from Cape Cod, I thought I might share what I found to be an interesting sign in the little hamlet of Sandwich. In fact, these signs are scattered throughout Massachusetts wherever the speed limits are reduced to 30 and even 25 miles per hour.
Interesting because, if I were writing the sign, I would use DENSELY POPULATED AREA or something similar. THICKLY SETTLED sounds like residue in the bottom of a bucket. Or it sounds like maybe the whole town suffers from a low IQ. Or perhaps a high Body Mass Index number. It makes me want to exercise.
Fact is, history and geography books often describe a locale as “thickly settled,” rather than highly populated or densely populated, but on a sign in a small town, it just seems strange, as if the people there are stepping all over each other, or lying head to toe like elephant seals on the beach, sweating but just too lazy to get up and find a breeze. A sort of peanut butter of humanity spread on a cracker of earth.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The density of Sandwich is really very low–houses and shops built in the 1600s and 1700s tucked back in the trees or on hilltops. It is quaint and archaic, just like the phrase on the sign. Sandwich was incorporated in 1639. That’s about as settled as a place can get on this side of the Atlantic, thick or not.
Attractive marketing? The ubiquitous refrigerator magnet
Posted: May 13, 2010 Filed under: Copywriting & Creative, signage, writing | Tags: Advertising, Books for Kids, Copywriting & Creative, Homewood Suites, public relations, Refrigerator magnets 4 Comments »
What’s the attraction of refrigerator magnets? They clutter. They allow you to attach more clutter. They fall off and break, which makes your clutter just that much more junky looking. Yet, we have quite a few at my house, mostly souvenirs from family trips, including a beheaded soldier from Williamsburg. We never keep the ones from the pest control people, real estate agents, or other commercial enterprises. Usually they are ugly, what with their phone numbers and lousy slogans and faces, and who needs ugly clutter?
Other people I know have the whole alphabet, plastic letters that let you spell words, even bad ones–which is a fun thing to do when you are at their house and you’ve gone into the kitchen for that third glass of Chardonnay. Still other people have magnetic poetry, words you can arrange and rearrange to create all kinds of poems, especially bad ones. And then there are the magnets that act like frames for photos or kiddy art. We had one that said “My Kid Did This.” That, of course, invites a parent to post a cute art project or good report card. Or, it can become a kind of Frame of Shame. A bad report card. A photo of a messy room. A suspension notice from school. It depends, I suppose, on what kind of parent you are. And what kind of kid you’ve got. I think we just took down that magnet altogether.
I have the chance to write everything from annual reports to internet ads. Recently, believe it or not, I wrote a refrigerator magnet. Which got me to thinking about the whole genre. I found out that the average number of views a single household refrigerator magnet garners in a year is around 14,600. That’s pretty good. Create an especially nice one and there are plenty of people who will add it to their collections. People like Louise J. Greenfarb (doesn’t that just sound like the name of a magnet collector?). She has more than 40,000, and her cars (and everything else made of metal, I’m sure) are covered up with them. You can read about her collection here.
Interestingly (or not) there’s no official name for a magnet collector in the way there is for a coin collector (numismatist) or a stamp collector (philatelist) or even a collector of teddy bears (arctophillist). Magnut, maybe.
Although I may sometimes question the wisdom of commercial magnets, the one I worked on is an exception. It was commissioned by Homewood Suites to promote their partnership with the Books for Kids Foundation. Unlike other companies that might turn to the refrigerator magnet for marketing or public relations, Homewood actually has the refrigerators to put them on, which makes the whole strategy a stroke of genius. Think about it. Every suite has a fridge, the perfect place to exhibit a magnetic message and reach a captive audience. At the same time magnets just make the kitchen that much more like home, which is the whole idea behind Homewood Suites, anyway.
Naming your shade of green
Posted: April 8, 2010 Filed under: Copywriting & Creative, writing | Tags: Advertising, advertising strategy, business writing, Copywriting & Creative, creative, green marketing, marketing, sustainability, writing Leave a comment »
When a person is born, the first thing we do is give her a name. A name formalizes the baby’s existence, gives us an easy way to make reference to her and provides a gateway to understanding and communication. Proper names are often given to inanimate objects, as well. It’s a way of humanizing them and making them seem more “knowable.” Give your third-quarter sales initiative a name, and people know you mean business. Suddenly, everyone has a name to rally around, a cause to champion, an identity to share.
The name of the game lately has been sustainability. Companies have been establishing their green initiatives and then formalizing them with a name or at least a theme.
That means some good, yet challenging, work for writers like me. Here are three such projects for high-profile companies.
1.
The first one is is for FedExCup and their effort to bring more sustainability to the game of golf, which by its very nature (or lack of it) isn’t particularly eco-friendly. Basically a golf course is a vast monoculture of grass and a lot of fertilizer. However, through this program, FedEx is working with an organization called The First Tee whose mission is to “impact the lives of young people by providing learning facilities and educational programs that promote character development and life-enhancing values through the game of golf.” It’s a noble goal. Even if a golf course can’t necessarily create a full-fledged sustainable ecosystem, it can help sustain something at least as valuable. Successful children. So how do you combine golf and the future in a name? Like this.
FedExCup Fore!Ever
2.
This next one is for the chemistry company Buckman. It is, no doubt, a challenge for a chemical company to go green. But Buckman is doing a lot to reduce its own environmental footprint and to help their clients do the same, reducing energy usage, water usage and waste in a variety of industries through advanced technologies. Buckman’s corporate color has always been green, so the name and theme for their sustainability initiative was a natural. Here’s the cover line and first page of copy from their just-published Sustainability Report.
3.
This last one is for International Paper. They just released a whole website based on this idea to showcase their sustainability efforts. Three of the sections there were written by yours truly: Carbon Footprint, Paper Sourcing and Recycled Paper.
There’s nothing unique or proprietary about “Down to Earth”. But it fits the general objective well, which is to provide straight talk on environmental issues and set straight some commonly held myths about pulp and paper. As I have said before, finding a unique name for your green campaign gets increasingly hard as more and more companies stake their claims. Better hurry.
