ArchivesI loved the programme, and I loved the cartoon so much that I bought the original from cartoonist Jonathan Pugh ( www.pughcartoons.co.uk ), then at the start of his brilliant career.
Party on, Floyd, wherever you are.
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( 3 / 254 )"This editorial's a bit flat," says the client. "Can you do anything with it?"
Yes, yes, definitely yes. Writers are a bit like hairdressers. We just love to run our fingers through other people's text, snipping off surplus adverbs, slicing into clunky phrases and trimming up sloppy proofreading.
The piece of editorial text in question was over-long and terminally dull but I suspect the original writer was not at fault. Some editorial copy gets trailed around committees and legal teams. Each adds their own changes. The result can become little more than word soup. The copy is no longer fit for purpose.
Useful as Microsoft Word's multi-person review/tracking facility is, it doesn't think. It doesn't take a holistic approach. And it absolutely doesn't care about creative communications. So please, if you're going to mess with the text, think about giving a writer the last word - or as close to it as the legal team will allow.
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( 3 / 252 )There's no doubt that years spent working in PR remove a lot of life's mysteries. I learned how to 'bury bad news' many years before 9/11 made it sound like bad practice; I can spot a pharmaceutical 'disease awareness' campaign a mile off and am still amazed at how often a really duff story makes headlines because of a few questionable statistics.
But then, occasionally, a PR somewhere pulls off a stunt of improbable brilliance, reminding us that creativity is fun.
Today's case in point comes from York (so no prejudice there then!) York Castle Museum, where Dick Turpin spent his last night before execution in 1739, has worked with police e-fit specialists to draw up a "realistic" picture of the infamous highway man. They used descriptions published in an 18th century newspaper.
Does it look like him? Who knows. Do they ever?
But what a brilliant stunt. Look out for the idea-clones in a newspaper near you.
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( 2.9 / 258 )It's the big question with the 140 character answer. I know Stephen Fry does it, half of Iran does it, s'lebs do it, but do I have to do it too?
What's the real communications value is all this stuff? If 1000 people join a FaceBook group in the name of a dead/missing person, how many of them know that person and how many are e-ghouls, attaching themselves to anything with a profile?
And who's monitoring all this apparently anarchic stuff? There are some tweets out there right now, giving Iranians a link for sending safe 'anonymous' emails. But suppose it's not safe at all? How will they find out? Via a not-so-virtual knock on the door?
What am I doing? I'm fretting, a bit.
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( 2.9 / 287 )And before you go back to check how often I’m writing this free newsletter advice series, I know its frequency is fairly erratic. Other things are allowed to get in the way. I might have been at choir practice (another story, of which there will be more later), baking a cake, or doing client work. I might have been writing a restaurant review or preparing a teaching session.
The point is, I didn’t make a commitment about how often these blogs on my favourite aspect of marketing communications would appear. So I just tap one out when the muse calls me.
But if I had made a commitment, if I had said that new blogs would appear daily, or weekly, or when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, that’s exactly when it would happen. Because it’s important to keep the communications promise.
So whether yours is an internal or a customer newsletter, there’s a lot to discuss if you’re going to get the frequency right. There’s a balance to be struck between how much you have to say and how much people want to know, between what’s desirable and what’s affordable. And just because e-marketing lets you reach customers cheaply, that doesn’t mean you should be contacting them all the time. Less can be so much more if you get it right.
You know how it feels when someone you like and admire waves at you from across a crowded room? That’s the feeling you want your communication to create.
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