ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

xp yeah Puffin otm. Bullets work really well for screen-based, task-driven, fuck-i-just-have-to-do-this stuff (like literally passports, that's a chunk of my world), but that gets turned into "let's make a huge long list", rather than "here's what you need, arranged clearly" in the wrong hands.

and I also like being able to come here to post tangled over-compressed upside-down sentences with typos and adjectival pile-ups when I spend my days thinking "Can I make this simpler and clearer? What's my blinding move that renders this fucking thicket of legislation & over-explanation redundant and just tells someone what they have to do?"

bless you

lots of enjoyable/useful otm here. so many emails I get are basically just
- sentences broken up
- into bullets
- for no apparent reason
- or a mentality overwhelmed by powerpoint

particularly enjoyable are the ones where someone has started bulleting relatively concisely, but with the bullets gradually unspooling into long, caveated responses. if i put bullet points here my thoughts will appeared *ordered*.

Must admit that over the years my ilx style has rather more taken over my email etc protocol

Hasnt hurt a bit tbh

email and ilx style both equally atrocious tbh, part of the ongoing slide from a decade ago when i used to be meticulous about brevity and picking the right word, to now where i resemble an incontinent hippo bashing at a computer.

I wont have that said nor ungainsaid no matter how ungainly yr saying

Unfortunate headline

http://i.imgur.com/vW36Zko.jpg?1

anyone ever done much commercial copy?

i've started doing the odd bit of this as a sort of moonlighting evening thing, the money is decent and it's good for tax reasons to have more than one client besides my day job.

but it is also kinda hilarious. i'm working on the brand bible for a hotel in dubai - i came in drunk last night and the crazier the shit i put in the more they seem to like it. i wrote "a retreat for modern-minded guests that seek a rich mix of thought and action" and the client is like "love this, brilliant!"

seems like a sort of hilarious career - it feels like i'm writing false scripture or something.

I do a little of that. Always feel a little dirty afterward.

Our office has publications that report actual news, but the sales staff also sells these little supplements that are very much geared toward the advertiser. Since the real reporters can't ethically write those, and I'm not a real reporter, I get stuck with them every so often.

I wrote 750 words on how wonderful the power company is for putting colored lights on our river bridges. A few months later, there's the CEO and the mayor holding up a framed copy of my story on Facebook. Made me want to jump off one of those bridges.

lol, ugh.

yeah this is weird, it's like a global hotel brand that's starting in dubai, which is sketchy enough as it is. the client's demands are hilarious though, it's like it has to be "lively" and "in motion" and guests are meant to be "leaders" (i filled it full of "influencers/game changers/today and tomorrow's ideas wizards" and they loved it) who work hard and want a place that's connected digitally, but it also has to be a place to switch off their phones and i dunno, have sex with each other? maybe not have sex, maybe meet another tech visionary and create an app.

so contradictory.

a rich mix of thought and action

lol

a place for ppl who work hard and play hard amirite

yeah you can't imply partying too much, it's like as if it has to seem like somewhere you check in to and then invent facebook while reclining in the lobby with a vitamin water.

it sounds awful but i am kind of enjoying the utter madness of the language i can use, compared to my day-to-day frugal government plain english.

hosts understand their guests, welcoming them to the best global locations, where satisfaction, independence and choice are shared experiences.

they loved that.

I freelanced as an ad copywriter for a couple of years. The thing I learned about ad copy is that no one knows on sight what will actually work. The copy writer, the boss of the copy writer and the client all have different opinions about what is good copy and they could easily all be wrong.

I was brought in by a local agency on a job updating the menu copy for a local restaurant that specialized in German food. The owner had wangled himself onto a local television channel's morning show as their "chef" who did live cooking demos. In real life he was a foul-mouthed asshole who had nothing but contempt for his customers. He kept saying things like "just say 'rich' and 'creamy' a lot; they love shit that's rich and creamy". To be sure, my copy had a ton of "rich" and "creamy" and it was very crappy copy. He approved it. I got paid.

^^ would book

I sometimes do commercial writing as well. I really understand the dirty feeling pplains describes, but Ronan's "utter madness of the language I can use" mostly trumps the awfulness, and it can actually be fun to do.

xxp

i guess i find in my day job working for the state i have a moral sense of what i should be doing and who my audience is, and i care about it as a result of that. with this i just think there's no real end user i am worrying about.

Ha, I have thought about doing this. Always worried I would get stuck if I was trying to write copy for something I didn't actually approve of but for some reason I never actually thought about doing it drunk and letting myself get carried away.

I once saw a mockup ad for guess-which-musical leading with "Come back to the days of Nazi Germany..." with a "NO" scrawled over it.

LG, in my working world, the reader that matters is the person who signs the check (or, perhaps, the one who approves the invoice).

Of course, in an ideal situation those are people who respect my judgment about the audience, and approves of my wish to write clearly and persuasively. But I personally don't feel bad or dirty if I get paid lavishly for not-very-good work. Paid work allows me to feed and clothe and house my children, for example. It allows me to give to charity and generally participate in the economic life of my community. These are not bad or dirty or immoral things.

I agree that in pure ad copy writing, no one knows what will work. There's a famous old thing about "half the money you spend on advertising is wasted, you just don't know which half."

In my peculiar subspecialty - proposal writing - we sometimes do know what worked with a customer and what didn't. It is almost never the words. Most customers decide on price, then work backwards to justify that decision.

John Cho: Actor Who Plays Hikaru Sulu Will be Revealed as Gay in Upcoming 'Star Trek Beyond'

yeah I think if it was like promoting a band or something I couldn't do it, but this is just a hotel - i prob will never stay there and it doesn't feel immoral for them to have a brand bible, it's just tying the bullshit together and keeping it coherent. weirdly i can tell exactly the kind of words they want, but equally it's hilarious, i changed "guests" to "leaders" and the two clients were both commenting on it like "LOVE THIS :)"

i've used:

influencers
leaders
thought-leaders
wizards
thinkers
dreamers
creatives

it's not even that it feels immoral, more decadent.

i should try these but i won't, not on the first job anyway:

idea tyrants
thought tsars
innovation brigands
disruption prophets

Something about this feels right and inevitable

Have u tried special snowflake or is that too on point

it's not even that it feels immoral, more decadent.

totally florid
time to let it rip, get comfortable in your new role as jargon innovator

maybe bring in some words or phonemes from other languages, see how many other languages they would tolerate

influencenik, idea guerilla

oops guerrilla

i prefer "heatnik" because you use your poetry to make a brand hot, maaaaaaan

much better

la lechera otm - it is hilarious and fun. i wouldn't want to do it all day every day, i like that i have a job that ties me to the frugality of functional plain english and one where i feel instinctively proud and concerned about what i do, but it is so much fun to just wield words in this crazy way.

Something about this feels right and inevitable

kind of true, i've always said i wanted to do advertising - i am extremely uncompromising in my state job, but equally i go home every evening and write fiction or wildly let myself off the hook that way, so it's not too big a stretch to d this.

Have u tried special snowflake or is that too on point

no snowflakes in dubai?

i used the word "sanctum" in my drunken first draft and it set off all sorts of alarm bells. it is kind of tempting even within a "serious" draft to just use something totally wrong and lol at the reaction. like today i looked up a thesaurus to find synonyms for "relax" and one of them was "knock off".

i was really tempted to put in "connect with fellow thought leaders, enjoy new digital vistas, or just sit back, turn off the notifications and knock off in the lobby"

or also just throw in some antonyms. like "guests at x hotel can expect a sluggish, gloomy welcome. wherever your location, hotel x promises grim lethargy from your first dispirited interaction to your sad, sleepy departure."

Lobby as a verb but not in that way

Knock off and lobby

they asked me to change "hosts" to "dream makers" and "guests" to "visonaries" and now it is hard to tell that this is a hotel imo, but on the other hand i am almost done $$

I'm a radio ad copywriter. I really love it, most of the time.

Radio ads were the worst for me, especially when the client wanted to end the spot with "Call 1-800-264-5518. That's 1-800-264-5518." at the end of a :30.

I think I've heard as many as four repeats of a contact number at the end of a radio spot.

Radio ads were the worst for me, especially when the client wanted to end the spot with "Call 1-800-264-5518. That's 1-800-264-5518." at the end of a :30.

― pplains, Friday, 8 July 2016 14:43 (51 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah that's annoying but luckily most clients use web addresses instead of phone numbers these days.

There are still issues though:

- client can't get their head around the difference between aural and text media, insisting you base the radio campaign on the phrasing in their marketing dept's hardcopy ad. this always ends up sounding stiff and unnatural.
- they are addicted to adding words and phrases where they aren't necessary, taking up precious airtime and making the actor rush through sentences.
- they want you to use a script they've written themselves which is ALWAYS based around a conversation in a cafe with two people, one of whom seems to know an inordinate amount of information about the product on offer - 'I'm looking for a new car' / 'Well, did you know that Mazda Swindon are offering 0% finance on brand new Mazdas for as little as £20,000?' / 'That's amazing!' / 'Yes - they come with power steering and airbags fitted as standard' / 'How can I book a test drive?' / 'There website is 'Mazda dash dealership dash Swindon dot co dot uk' etc....

Often a client can't get their head around the fact there's a difference between an ad being read like a print ad, and an ad being read out loud over the radio. Turning your carefully-crafted clauses into sentences that are three-times longer is one thing.

Clients will also insist you base your copy on their hardcopy print advert from their marketing department, which always ends up sounding stiff and natural.

Sometimes they'll send you their own idea for an advert and it's ALWAYS two people sitting in a cafe discussing the product, saying lines that no one would ever say in real life. One of the people

oops, that post came out a bit weird. no wonder i work in radio ads... i'll never be a proper copy writer.

Record your posts as audio and post them to Soundcloud, we won't mind.

i have a special love for local radio ads because they are usually so bad and cheesy. my favorite radio station only has local advertisers and it's 20% "do you or someone you love have a problem with addiction?" (this ad is pretty effective), 20% treatment for ED (erectile, not eating disorders) and that one focuses on men whose "performance suffers" and at least 40% varicose vein treatment, in which an exasperated woman asks listeners if they have "embarrassing, ugly varicose or spider veins" and whether or not this has affected their ability to wear shorts and skirts. there are also ads for local frozen pizza purveyors and casinos :-/

the ED ad promises that this medicine is free to the first 75 people who take advantage of this special offer and has been running for at least 5 months
lol

Jesus itd want to be very good to encourage me to run for five months first

no the ad has been running for 5 months, not the candidates for treatment -- they will accept ED patients who are obese, diabetic, depressed, or have a host of other maladies. they say so right in the ad!

I know it was a lazy pun (and worst of all itt it was grammatically licentious)

Meanwhile I can't quite get this headline out of my mind:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/woman-charged-with-luring-children-for-sex-with-ice-cream-popcorn/2016/07/07/a637fb6e-444f-11e6-88d0-6adee48be8bc_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-moreheds_abuse-1240pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

I know it's an actually horrible human child abuse story but all I can see is "sex with ice cream."

LG how did u get this gig where you get paid for linguistic filigree? is it an upwork type deal or do you have ~connections~?

i have a special love for local radio ads because they are usually so bad and cheesy. my favorite radio station only has local advertisers and it's 20% "do you or someone you love have a problem with addiction?" (this ad is pretty effective), 20% treatment for ED (erectile, not eating disorders) and that one focuses on men whose "performance suffers" and at least 40% varicose vein treatment, in which an exasperated woman asks listeners if they have "embarrassing, ugly varicose or spider veins" and whether or not this has affected their ability to wear shorts and skirts. there are also ads for local frozen pizza purveyors and casinos :-/

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Friday, 8 July 2016 15:40 (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's interesting because we can't really advertise cosmetic treatments without a heap of Ts & Cs and some serious scrutiny from the Radiocentre regulator here in the UK. Also we consider it bad form to start a radio ad with a closed question such as 'do you suffer from varicose veins?' because listeners will immediately respond with a 'no' and stop listening. I get the impression UK commercial radio is a bit different to how it works in the US though.

yeah apparently! i'll have to listen more closely to see if they lead with that question or if it's the special prize somewhere in the middle. it's possible that she starts off with "I used to LOVE wearing shorts and summer skirts, but …."

my point was that the language used in the vein commercial was overtly shame-based and the ED commercial was just matter of fact, like "got this problem? got these other problems too? don't sweat it, we can help" and there was no "ugly, embarrassing loss of erectile function" whatsoever.

my life would be more complete if the ED ad started that way -- "I used to love [florid but radio-friendly description of passionate sex], but then…"

In one of my many past professional lives I wrote pharma ad copy - not for the drugs themselves, but to recruit clinical trial participants.

Dog latin is right that "do you suffer from x" is a really lazy start, but sometimes you do want to reach just that slice of population and no one else. Sometimes we had to find very specific populations (older African Americans at risk for shingles, women in Pittsburgh with Crohn's disease, left-handed diabetic dentists from Sweden, etc.).

You can cast the widest possible net, hoping to screen out the candidates you _don't_ want later. Or you can delve down into the mysterious world of hyper-targeted advertising where you're trying to find out what television shows might be popular among younger Latinos with toe fungus.