Chill out, already.

Another for the Lessons Learned file.

I got a lead on a healthcare copywriting project via LinkedIn ProFinder and applied; they responded asking me to bid the job. They provided most of the details, but not all; one item stipulated "some" sections to be written, but not how many.

I'd already mentioned that I might have questions, so I sent an email. But I couldn't just ask for clarification around the specific things I needed to know to finish the bid—no, no, that would be too easy. Instead, to show that I had experience in the industry and that I'd given the project a lot of thought (and because I simply wanted to know), I went ahead and fired off seven...SEVEN...additional questions. Including, to my chagrin, "would I have direct access to the client" for even more questions, once I was on the job.

Nice work, dumbass. Followed up today and, of course, they've "already got it taken care of." Because who wants an overeager show-off on their job, let alone asking for access to their client? Pro tip: Don't do that.

Could indenting make subject lines stand out?

I spent part of this morning working on an article about best practices for responsive emails in the pharmaceutical industry, a sort of 101 for pharma marketers. One section dealt with optimizing headlines. Then I saw this in my inbox:

The indented subject line really stood out in the list of emails, and I thought, how clever! But then I clicked on the email and realized that it wasn't a clever indent, it was emojis from which Gmail was apparently saving me. After having "read" the email, the emojis appeared in the subject line.

My spam folder shows me that emails with emoji in the subject line are usually screened, but I must have told Gmail that Ads of the World mail isn't junk. It made me wonder, though, about actually just using spaces in the subject line to indent it and make it stand out. As soon as I get my MailChimp account set up, I'm going to give it a try.

"The flame beneath the pot"

Beautiful language can reach right off the page and startle you into a wide-awake, pleased wonderment, like a sudden kiss from someone you have a huge crush on. I read poetry in the hopes that I'll get that shivery rush.

Yesterday's Writer's Almanac poem, "Lobsters," by Howard Nemerov, did it. Even though the lovely turns of phrase are mostly morbid, I was enchanted with the powerful simplicity of the language.

By GrammarFascist (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

These lines in the second stanza made me want to applaud: "Their velvet colors / Mud red, bruise purple, cadaver green." The perfection of the phrase "mud red": it simultaneously brings to mind "blood red" and also that absolutely correct muddy ochre color of lobsters. "Cadaver green" is a horribly delicious (sorry) irony, describing creatures whose bodies won't last long enough to be called cadavers.

The ending of the poem is very Yeats-ian, very "what rough beast," to me, but maybe that's because I just finished reading The Stand for perhaps the tenth time. (King seems to have turned this poem of 22 lines into a novel of over 1,000 pages). I won't spoil it; go read the poem.

The old-fashioned way

I just wrote an inquiry letter to the creative director of a 118-year-old brand on this:

I bought this at an antique store last week. Surprisingly, ribbons are available on Amazon and, apparently, also at Staples. Guess I'm not the only one.

I wanted to say, "This is not just some email I'm dashing off, or InMail, or a tweet...I really thought about this." I didn't want to say "enough to retype it twice," but that may have come through.) For a brand that cares about quality and heritage, I thought this might be a good approach.

I'll keep you posted.

Lesson Learned: It's no good if you don't capture it.

I recently did a workshop with a client to define some key elements of the brand. We talked and brainstormed for about three hours, doing some great work, delving deep and coming up with a lot of insights.

At the end of the workshop, I blithely snapped a few pics of the whiteboard over which I'd just been presiding. The client was waiting for me for another activity, so I was hustling to gather all my gear and get on with the agenda. Someone even asked me if I wanted them to record the stuff on the whiteboard. "That's OK," I said. "I took pictures." I felt capable and prepared.

When I got back to my office, here's what I found on my iPhone:



Not terribly useful, huh?

Lesson learned: Take your time with recording valuable data and insights. You risk wasting the entire experience—not to mention embarrassing yourself in front of your client—by failing to do so.

Fortunately, with some time spent in Photoshop, zooming in and changing the contrast on the hard-to-read Post-Its in my terrible photo, I was able to save the information. Needless to say, I chalked those hours up to tough lessons learned.

Documentation!

In an internal review yesterday, someone mentioned that we need to make sure to make the logos at the top of the email clickable ("hot"). We don't have a good system for recording this decision or making sure this gets done in the build. I'm getting on the documentation bandwagon, big time. Be forewarned.

How to Write an Ad Like an Idiot

What happy horseshit is this?

I saw this ad in National Geographic (from this year, no less) while waiting in the dentist's chair. Naturally, I was appalled.

The ad left me filled with burning questions: Do men tell time differently than others? What split-personality dunderhead needs a watch with both a digital and an analog readout? How can that watch be as sturdy as they say it is for only $59?

And, who the hell puts that much copy in a print ad? 

The ad is written in the first person, like a letter to you, Dear Reader. It's filled with action ("swinging a hammer"! "changing a tire"!) and description ("chromed," "heavy-duty," "bright green" [WTF?], and both "luminous" and "electroluminescent" [whatever that means]).

Who, aside from the occasional dumbfounded copywriter, is going to read this stuff?

I'd like to know the answers to all of these questions, but most of all, I'd like to know whether they sold any of these watches.