Update your copy for Spring
Birds are chirping. Tulips are blooming. Spring is springing.
What a wonderful time to dust the cobwebs off the copy on your website, corporate brochure or other sales copy!
Sure, everyone talks about "spring cleaning" around the house...but what has that sort of spring cleaning ever gotten you? A happier spouse? A cleaner garage? More room? Let's run with that one for a minute...
More room. More space to be filled with new stuff. How are you going to afford that new stuff if your website and corporate brochure aren't pulling in business like they used to?
That's right, without money-making copy on your website and corporate brochure, all of your spring cleaning at home will be for naught. Who wants to spring clean in vain? Certainly not you.
One quick e-mail to yours truly for a copy tune-up and you can make sure that your house stays full of stuff.
Who can argue with that logic?
Bringing tech copy to life
During college I spent a good chunk of time finding exciting ways to describe hard drives. Since then, I've had a soft spot in my heart for tech. I did more than just write about hard drives during that gig, but at the time external hard drives were that company's bread and butter. Finding exciting ways to differentiate them -- and keep them entertaining -- was a challenge.
I received my first national exposure during that stint -- I wrote the copy for a double page spread for a new computer that ran in several national publications. I also learned quite a bit, not the least of which was that catalog and technology copy can be fun...and that if done right, "fun" can translate into big sales.
I went on to found Drinkspecials.com, a nightlife destination. A couple years later, I then co-founded VendingAuction.com, a business to business site that enabled vending companies to liquidate excess inventory. (As far as I know, it's defunct now -- but I cashed out before that happened.) Around that time, I co-founded BillMyClients.com, which currently processes half a billion dollars worth of invoices each year.
I've spent a great amount of time in consumer packaged goods and promotions, but I know what MTBF stands for. I also know how to set up and administer a web server, be it Windows/IIS or Linux/Apache based (Ubuntu, preferably). Couple my technology experience with my writing background and you've got a geek translator. Literally.
If you need a seasoned technology writer, drop me a line -- I'd love to discuss your project!
Spring: The Season. Not an NCAA trademark. Yet.
Ah, Spring. Birds, a greening lawn and plenty of trademark confusion.
Having worked for a number of clients who wanted to run promotions centered around the NFL's "big game" in February and the college basketball tournaments in March, it's always been a -- oh heck, let's call it "big dance" -- around trademarked terms for those clients who don't have rights to use those terms. (And much too easy for those that have "earned" the right to use those trademarked terms.)
Sure, "Super Bowl" and "Final Four" are trademarks. It wouldn't get past legal at most places, but I usually see at least one of these sneak into at least one local ad of some sort where they don't belong almost every year.
The Super Bowl is one thing, but what chaps my hide sometimes is that all of the fun March terms are also trademarked. The NCAA and its cohorts are all about generating as much revenue as possible off of every fun phrase you can think of.
If you're a professional writer reading this, you're already well aware. If you're not, well, try to steer clear of reusing anything you see or hear on CBS in any form. March Madness, the Big Dance, you name it -- they're trademarks. Well-protected trademarks.
Interested in some background on the cases surrounding some of this stuff? I was. Ever since I learned that Dumpster was a trademark for a mobile garbage collection bin, I started paying closer attention to these things. (Believe it or not, that's one of the most memorable nuggets of knowledge I took away from J-School). I still shed a tear when I see a cub reporter use the lowercase form of the word.
Learn the history of the Dumpster (Yes, it still garners capitalization per the AP, but you'll likely won't suffer the wrath of the legal gods for using or misusing it.)
In 2003, the trademark "March Madness" survived a genericness challenge. "The Big Dance" -- don't even think about it.
Here's a list of all currently trademarked NCAA terms. Here's a link to the NCAA trademark protection program page. (As of this posting, the link is to a page on their site with the file name "ambush.html" -- and you can probably expect to feel ambushed should you misuse one of their trademarks.)
Want to learn more about what you can expect after that first cease and desist?
This March, <insert trademarked NCAA term about playing like a team or following the dream> and don't use any of the NCAA's trademarked terms unless you or your client has the proper clearance!
A day in the life of a writer.
I've tried to make sure that my clients are diverse -- I'd go crazy if I wrote the same things day in and day out.
For example, today I wrote copy to be used in a client's proposal template, reviewed & researched a request from an agency to provide written promotion concepts for a popular snack cracker (which also happens to be my favorite snack cracker), edited copy for a landing page and carefully crafted a couple pages of drop-in flyer copy for an anti-hair loss product.
Diverse is good.
Let me Americanize Your Sales Copy!
These days it's fairly common for American companies to outsource overseas. What many people don't realize is that sometimes those foreign companies outsource here too.
The last couple of years, I've had an increase in requests from overseas companies who want to do business with American companies and need a little help making sure their sales copy reads the right way.
Take an India-based software company, for example. It's a top-notch development company doing business with quite a few Fortune 500 firms. They have their own writing staff -- and they're solid. The trouble is that as good as they are, English isn't their first language. When they write sales copy, it's pretty good. An American businessperson could read it and understand it just fine. However, the copy might strike them as a little awkward -- a few misused words here and some colloquial language there.
To present the best image companies like the one in the example above send their copy to an American writer like me. I'm able to take the copy that their writers have put together and give it a solid once over. If a paragraph wouldn't make sense to an American reader, I'll re-write it. If I find a colloquialism that an American reader wouldn't understand, I change it. The result: Clear, compelling copy that's ready for an American audience.
Do you need an American writer to edit and "Americanize" your copy? Don't take any chances -- contact me at john@johnlaing.com for a free analysis of your needs.
Greetings!
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- Update your copy for Spring
- Bringing tech copy to life
- Spring: The Season. Not an NCAA trademark. Yet.
