Some Things I Realized About Communications While Riding Around On My Bike

“Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.”

Bill Bernbach*

Virtually every day for the vast majority of my adult life I have written something.
In the beginning, most of it didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. I was experimenting with allegory and my writing was, let’s call it, highly decorative.
This is a necessary stage that every writer needs to go through in order to understand the outer limits of his imagination. Mine was pretty far out there, at least that’s what people told me.
Over the years, however, you start to reel it in and develop a pretty distinct impression of the kind of writing you want to do.
Because not every writer does every kind of writing.
A few weeks ago, the wife of a friend and friend of mine on Facebook asked me to give her some advice about becoming a writer, the kind who actually gets paid.
This is what I said back to her.
"Before I give you any advice you need to think about 3 things.
1. What kind of writing would you be happy doing?
2. What kind of writing do you think you’d be good at?
3. Where do 1 and 2. intersect?
Once you have the answers to those questions you will know what kind of writing you would like to do, and I will know whether or not I have any advice to give you."

It’s Complicated. But It’s Simple.

At my core, I am a copywriter, because that’s primarily what I get paid to do. Everything else either supports that in terms of marketing (like this blogging) or is a hobby (like my poetry, lyric writing, and my screenwriting)
So this is the first thing that I figured out today.

1. Everything About Commercial Writing Starts With Copywriting.
Me

This includes ads, brochures, business letters, direct mailers, emailers, broadcast commercials and longer format video and all forms of digital writing etc.
If you haven’t mastered this stuff. If you haven’t put in at least ten years figuring out how this all works, then you are missing a critical part of the learning process.
I can see the eyes rolling back and the smirky grin. I can. You don’t believe it because you are so immersed in the digital world of web sites and PPC and blogs that you don’t realize this stuff basically doesn’t work unless it adheres to a lot of the basic rules of copywriting.
This is a big part of the reason why digital marketing is a 1% ROI game at best.
The people who achieve more than that are not concerned with the soft approach to anything. They are aiming right between the eyes and firing 50 caliber bullets.
The triggers are being pulled by copywriters. They’re not called that anymore, They are more like hybrids. They didn’t start off writing web content and blogs and landing pages. They started off writing ads and brochures and direct mailers and commercials. They are the second distinct generation removed from the pioneers of modern advertising.
As the world changed and digital marketing came into being, they changed with it.
But they have two distinct advantages.
1. They know how to create selling messages within the context of the digital marketing process, and 2. They don’t buy into the bullshit that most digital marketers are selling. Because they know that it’s all advertising. It always has been. It always will be.

2. Your Content Probably Sucks
Me again

The world is drowning in useless content. The 80/20 Differential (shortened down from the bulkier 80/20 Rule of Almost Everything) clearly states that 80% of digital content is crap and useless mainly because it doesn’t get read. Some would argue that percentage is even higher.
Crappy web sites that don’t say anything. Pointless blogs that are more self-indulgent than informative. PPC ads that don’t attract business. Etc.
And why do you suppose that is?
Well, my theory is that there is a fundamental lack of creativity out there. Not a lack of creative people but a lack of people with the requisite skills to be able to build selling messages and real persuasiveness into the so-called creative work they do.
It’s not their fault. They have had it beat into their heads by digital marketers who tell them that the people out there don’t want to be ‘sold’, but want instead to be ‘engaged’.
This, of course, is bullshit that is only in the best interest of these digital marketers, who have created the world where you have to spend a lot of time & money to keep a soft program going.
Oh, and by the way, if you’re paying them to manage all this for you, frankly you’re getting hosed. if you don't believe me, check out this vid.
https://www.slideshare.net/dougkessler/crap-the-content-marketing-deluge

3. The Thing Nobody Can Predict Is The Next Big Thing
Yep, me again.

The last thing I figured out has to do with the future.
And while I will be the first to admit that I can’t predict it, my best advice is to keep your eyes peeled for and your mind open to new ideas. Even if they somehow feel like they could be old ideas.
Like a web site that doesn’t look like some fucking WordPress template and that actually, tells people what you do and what you can do for them.
Like a business card that has a little story on the back about what you can do for your customers or clients instead of being some graphic designer’s wet dream.
A series of blogs or videos where the story actually has something to do with your business and the people you do business with.
You know, shit like that.
Will it rock your world and make you or your clients superstars? Probably not. At least not right away, Because the digital world moves like a three-toed sloth.
But what it will do is tell the people on the other end of your communication that you’ve got some serious chops and that they should definitely keep their eye on you.

Post Script

As I said at the outset, these are only insights. But they are insights based on a hell of a lot of experience on both sides of the Digital Divide.
Use them or lose them. That’s not my decision, it’s yours.
All I do know is that the difference between those who communicate professionally and build strong selling messages into their content at going to do a lot better than those who don’t or can’t.
It’s all advertising folks. No matter how you gussy it up. If you need some help with it, hiring a professional you could be one of the best investment you can make these days.
*Bill Bernbach is a copywriter writer and one of the principals of an agency called Doyle Dane Bernbach, which was the very first ad agencies to realize that creativity was the key to brand building in advertising. He is most famous for the original Volkswagon ads he created with German Art Director Helmut Krone.

If your business has reached the point where talking to an experienced  communication professional would be the preferred option to banging your head against the wall or whatever, lets talk.

Download my free ebook Small Business Communication For The Real World here:
 https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/
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All content Copyright 2017 Jim Murray Onwords & Upwords Inc.

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