There's nothing wrong with being strange and offputting
It's been a week. I'm still taking pelters. Good.
A week ago, I tossed a throwaway comment onto LinkedIn.
It’s nothing you’ve not heard before.
Some generalities around customers not really giving a fuck about your passion for words, or your pedantry, and instead being interested in boring shit like “getting a return on their investment” and “selling more stuff.”
I’ll have been doing this job 17 years come August. In all that time, clients have always aked me boring questions like “will this help my business succeed?” or “can you make my products more attractive to buyers?”
Not one has asked me what my favourite word is (it’s rigmutton1) or what I think about Oxford commas (arsed, not), or what an adverb is (a common typo in proposals).
But saying that proclaiming your love for words over your talent with them is strange and offputting to clients has riled up loads of people on LinkedIn. Mostly Americans, and mostly copywriters.
Good.
I don’t care if Sara, Word Wonk and Unflubbifier from Colorado thinks I’m in a race to the bottom, or that Cooper, Executive Creative Lead from LA thinks I’m downright shitty, or even that James, ‘copy righter’ from Norfolk says I’m incredibly strange.
I’m not selling to them. I’m not writing for them. And I’m not interested in them, except if their irritation boosts my signal to the tune of 200,000 views.
I care when Kirsty, MD from Chorley says I write like I can read her mind, and when Verity, marketing manager from Surrey says my landing page is already driving enquiries after four days, and occasionally when Ben, overworked agency founder from Mossley tells me I’ve done a great job.
Because they’re who I’m talking to. Who I want to connect to. Who I’m interested in.
If my copy speaks directly to them in a way that means they’ll act like I want them to act, I don’t care how many gurus, editorial execs or marketing grads from Spud-u-like Idaho get het up about my tone.
Be strange.
Be offputting.
Alienate as many people as you’d like. As many as it takes.
As long as your message is coming through loud and clear for the right people.
You might even say that the job of good copy is as much to shoo away unsuitable prospects as it is to entice sutable ones.
Just don’t say that on LinkedIn. You’ll be dredging through the insults for a fortnight.
Something mint - this water
Water’s a boring product, isn’t it? Basically, marketing for premium water brands boils down to you need to drink this else you’ll die, it’s free out of your tap, but please pick this because it’s from an island or bubbled through some rocks or some other shit.
If you could make water not boring, you’d be onto a winner. But it’s risky. You’d put off loads of humourless bastards.
Fuck it, says Liquid Death. The humourless bastards can go to the tap. The rest of you, don’t be scared. It’s just water.
The CEO genuinely said that they picked the dumbest name possible. What a guy.
Fun, and unlike everything else on the market. But you can guarantee some people won’t be happy.
An archaic bit of Devonshire dialect meaning “a wanton wench that is ready to ride upon the men's backs, or else passively to be their rompstall.” It popped up in a word a day calendar and my co-worker Gemma and I laughed about it for weeks.