CWiA Course Showcase: The Scammer

Copywriting Course Showcase_Scammer

I don’t care who you are, as long as I know your weakness I will find my way into your hard-drive and your accounts and come away with your identity. And … you’re going to hate this bit … you won’t know a thing about it. Unless, of course, you read this article from start to finish. There’s no skimming and scanning if you don’t want to get scammed …

Copywriting and the First Impressions

Copywriting & Introductions

“Friends, Romans, Copywriters! Lend me your ears …”

Copywriting those opening words is a finely crafted art of the first impression. The reader’s snap decision of that impression —”ho hum” or “oh wow!”— is crucial to the whole story. Writers call it “the opening hook”. To me, a great opening hook is like an elegantly designed door: it makes you want to have your picture taken in front of it. In other words, you want it to be in your story.

Copywriting and the hypnotics of prose rhythm

Copywriting Rhythm

COPYWRITING IN ACTION COURSE INSIGHT #14 The Hypnotics of Prose Rhythm Co-py-wri-ting. Rhy-thm-n-beats. Hyp-no-ti-sm. Four syllables = four beats. Say it aloud and you can feel the rhythm. Quite musical really. Probably because it has embedded in it that universally appealing rhythm of four (tetracolon). Composing a sentence is made up of the following three […]

The 6 Genres of Copy Writing for Selling and Telling [Part 2]

copywriting

To inform, to instruct, to persuade and to entertain: these are the four purposes of copywriting. Any other writing can be one or a combination of those, but in copywriting it’s all four. Why? Because copywriters have the most disinterested audience of all. Once you’re clear about that and the six genres of writing, you’re ready to craft sentences that suspend disinterest all the way to the final full stop.

The 6 Genres of Copy Writing for Selling and Telling [Part 1]

copywriting

COPYWRITING IN ACTION COURSE INSIGHT #15 The 6 Genres of Copy Writing for Selling and Telling [Part1] There are four purposes of copywriting (and all types of writing for that matter): to inform, to instruct, to persuade, to entertain or a combination of these. But how do we make sure that our purpose is properly […]

Hugh Mackay on the ten desires that make your target audience tick.

hugh mackay

COPYWRITING IN ACTION COURSE INSIGHT #17 Hugh Mackay on the Ten Desires That Make Us Tick Since introducing Hugh Mackay’s Ten Desires that Drive Us into my copywriting course in 2011, hundreds of students have been declaring it a revelation. These ten desires revealed to them a target audience beyond postcodes, wants and “pain points”. So […]

In the craft of copywriting, empathy is all.

It’s a fine line between creative writing (self-expression) and strategic writing (other-regarding). In this job called “copywriting”, we are having a dialogue with a particular person. Our aim — turning a scanner into a reader. As social researcher Hugh Mackay says, “you’ve got to put yourself in their shoes”. And to paraphrase singer/ songwriter, Joe South, walk a mile in them shoes.

CWiA Course Showcase: Gender Neutral World

COPYWRITING COURSE SHOWCASE: GENDER

Love is ungendered. Beauty is ungendered. Humanity is ungendered. But the challenges of breaking down concepts of gender and its stereotypes can make us wonder, “where is the love, the beauty, the humanity?” Answers to this question can now be found in our series of two-minute articles …

CWiA Course Showcase: DJ Kill It

Copywriting Course Showcase: The Vibe

Whether it’s three people or 30,000, the crowd feedback you get while playing a set can be the sweetest reward or the most bitter reality for a DJ. Smiles, swaying and hands-in-the-air are all indicators of the level of enjoyment in the room, more commonly referred to (both ironically and otherwise) as “the vibe”.

CWiA Course Showcase: Girls Choose Maths

It’s 2023. Seventy-five percent of the fastest growing jobs require maths. The Gender ratio in STEM occupations is at an all time high — 60/40. And there’s now 48.6% more women in leadership roles compared to 23.5% back in 2022…