What Becomes a Copywriting Course Most [Part 1]
It all began with a queen olive. But first a little fanfare to get the story of one copywriter’s way of showing exactly how it’s done.
What Becomes a Copywriting Course Most [Part 2]
This ah-ha moment happened in the Spring of 2002. I was reading On Directing Film: a book version of a masterclass delivered by writer/director, David Mamet, to Columbia University’s film school students. How he brought film-making to life in the classroom was a real game changer.
CWiA Course Showcase: The 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
“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 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 1]
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 […]
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.
The EDM Whisperer
The eDM Whisperer. An interview with Megg@Bennetts Jazz Club. Just like love, the idea of Christmas has inspired many a song rejoicing in it, wishing upon it, rockin’ to it, and making merry about it. The fact that there are over a million Christmas songs tells us this is a special time of year. A […]
Over-riding the F Shape Pattern in Copywriting
In case you’re not familiar with the F-Shape study, heatmaps from Jakob Nielsen eyetracking studies showed areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer views, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Gray areas didn’t attract any fixations. As you can see from these heatmap images, there was a fair bit of browsing, and but very little of the copy was red, therefore read.