Bugger Off
on Jan 06 in Digital, Strategy tagged by Peter BlackmanBugger off. I just read that on a company website. The company is called Linebreak. Here’s the page. Here’s the quote. Here’s a picture of their ‘compression shorts’
“Bio this, techno that, ion whatever… blah blah blahhdy blah blah. Honestly who buys that crap? If you’re someone that does, go back to our home page, have another read, then give yourself an uppercut – you shouldn’t still be on our site, you don’t belong here and you’ve been told. Now bugger off.”
Now I love a bit of aggressive, non-conformist copy. I love the way that Brewdog talk about themselves, and denigrate the mainstream competition.
No, my issue with Linebreak is that if you are going to write copy that says….”We’re damn good at what we do, which is developing and making the stuff. What we’re not great at is marketing (and we’re kinda proud of that). We’ve played the game, we got sucked in. Sucked in to thinking we needed the slickest marketing….”
Then you shouldn’t let the multinational marketing agency that probably wrote it for you have a little graphic at the bottom of the page which tells you that they did.
Kind of undermines the brand positioning somewhat.
26 Stories of Christmas
on Dec 13 in Projects, Writing tagged by Peter BlackmanI wrote a (very) short story for the writing organisation 26 Characters.
Click on the illustration by my project partner Tobey Brown to read it. Thanks to Rowena Roberts for editing support and help.
To find out more about 26 Stories of Christmas, click here.
Tender parts
on Dec 13 in Projects, Strategy, Writing tagged by Peter BlackmanRecently I wrote part of a tender document for my agency Goram & Vincent. It was fun to do - I think that comes through in the writing - but it was unsuccessful. Perhaps because the new business prospect asked for something, and we said….”Really? Are you sure? Maybe you don’t….”
People generally don’t like that. Ho hum. Anyway, here it is.
Dear XXXX,
Your brand made its mark on me at an early age. On the back of my head to be precise. I was overexcited and showing off to my brother Tom when I jumped off a flight of stairs and landed on my head. I was in hospital for days. My Mother says I nearly died. So it was a memorable visit for her.
Another one of my memories is of Tom (him again) being bitten by a goose. Happy days.