Kate Waddon Copywriting

I have just become aware of how I’ve naughtily neglected this blog over the last month. I have been letting down my readers, all three of them. Facebook keeps sending me messages about how my followers haven’t heard from me for a while. I’m sure they’ll cope; however, I still feel rather guilty.

I now have to explain this hiatus without sounding passive aggressive. Simply, I’ve had lots of work on, and what with Christmas and all that, something had to give.

All is calmer now. Work is still happily busy; but the pressure of being Father Christmas for two expectant littlies with near-impossible riders has gone, and I don’t have as much as a Christmas cake to inject anymore. Life is simpler. However four weeks ago, I was sitting at this very laptop, as yet another email requesting “completion before Christmas” pinged over, thinking “Why on earth do people need copy for Christmas???”

If I sold crackers for a living, it would make sense. Indeed, if I sold anything more tangible than words it would not be surprising. But why do people urgently need copy for Christmas?

Then, of course, I realised. It’s called New Year. New year, new business plan, new direction, new website, new copy. And as the site has to be populated with lots of lovely words prior to its January launch, the text is written in December. It all seemed very sensible when I thought about it.

It may be – gasp – the first week of 2015 already, but it’s hardly too late to get a nice, New(ish) Year launch for that fresh website or brochure. If you work in any form of tourism-related industry in particular, you’ll know that this is the time of year when people start browsing in search of cheering holiday plans. In other fields such as catering and retail, you may be having a quick post-festive breather – the perfect time to step back and look at your promotional material.

So, if you make any business-focussed New Year’s resolutions, cast your eyes over your website, leaflets, posters etc. Looked at in the cold, clear, mildly hung-over light of January, it’s easier to see what needs refreshing.

And a very happy 2015 to you all.

Well, following on from Black Friday, here’s a lovely cop-out of a blog post. We are heading towards the close of Cyber Monday, another retail marketing term that seems to be passing me by, but has caused a whole load of media excitement and spending frenzies.

“Cyber Monday” has no ambiguous or remotely interesting origin. It’s simply a marketing invention, and is a relatively young term, still being under ten. Unlike Black Friday, Cyber Monday encourages us to spend our hard-earned from the comfort of our homes, rather than going out and trampling fellow shoppers underfoot.

I realised how insane and insidious the whole naming shopping days has become when a friend said to me, “Sorry, I can’t come on the girls’ night out as it’s Crazy Tuesday”. Naturally in the current climate I genuinely assumed that Crazy Tuesday was a thing. A thing involving Christmas and spending, probably. Of course, it’s not a thing at all; she’s just having a really busy day.

Tomorrow I gather it will actually be Giving Tuesday (yes, really), which is meant to kick-start the generous spirit of Christmas by encouraging charitable donations. Having kicked our neighbours out of the way to grab the last cut-price HDTV, we shall now in a moment of guilty clarity donate said TV to our local homeless shelter. Or not.

I’m just looking forward to Back-to-Normal Wednesday.

A few days ago, I started to receive some rather apocalyptic-sounding emails. Usually friendly types like Amazon and Argos were warning me that “Black Friday” was approaching. How menacing. Or maybe it’s something more benign, like dress-down-Friday for Goths?

“Black Friday” was until (surprisingly very) recently an American Thing. Full of turkey and goodwill following Thanksgiving, the US population make the most of their second day off, and flock en masse to the mall. The shops respond by offering seemingly incredible discounts. But by now, we all know this.

What naturally interested me (apart from any reduced Lego or Frozen dresses) is the term. “Black Friday” – doesn’t sound very jolly or make me think of merry shopping sprees. Wikipedia offers a few different origins. The day after Thanksgiving marked the start of the festive shopping season – we’re all familiar with the concept of “One festival is over, let’s start pushing the next one!” One explanation of the term is that it was coined by the Philadelphia police in 1969 – a description of the chaos caused by an entire city all trying to shop at once.  The term spread across the States and more recently, worldwide.

In the 1980s (when else?) the term was given a more positive commercial derivation – the day when retailers go “into the black”, i.e., make a profit. Can’t argue with that.

But a new derivation caused controversy yesterday when basketball player J R Smith stated “’Black Friday’ stemmed from slavery. It was the day after Thanksgiving when slave traders would sell slaves for a discount to assist plantation owners with chores for the upcoming winter (cutting and stacking fire wood, winter-proofing).” He was met with howls of derision and indignation for historical inaccuracy. He removed the post.

I’m now off to prune the many emails I’ve received offering “Black Friday Deals”. The term that originally referred to the congestion caused by vast volumes of consumers hitting the shops is now clogging up my inbox, not the streets. As Christmas shopping becomes an increasingly remote activity, “Black Friday” will become an even more esoteric – and completely inappropriate – phrase.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25110953

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/smith-links-black-friday-slavery-instagram-article-1.2024498

It has been a week of distractions. Distraction is part of life for the freelancer. It can be one of the pleasures of working from home – but also one of the pitfalls. If I said I was never distracted while writing, I’d be lying, and everyone would know that I’m lying.

But – I have a job to do, deadlines to meet and clients to work for, so faffing about is not an option. I am lucky to have a job I enjoy, so I am genuinely motivated, but sometimes I need a few simple tricks to help me avoid distractions. They won’t work for every writer, but they do for me. Here’s how I get from A to B without visiting the rest of the alphabet on the way.

I switch off WiFi

Otherwise, that evil time-sink, Facebook, will take over. Few people have the iron will and capability to ignore the wonders of the internet. Do what you need to do, then switch it off.

I get my ducks in a row

I gather everything I need together at the start of my working session, so I’m not sending myself off on unnecessary errands every few minutes. Charged laptop, mobile, scrap paper and pen, bucket of coffee, diary… All here ready for me. (I may have written this post simply so I can use this phrase…)

I have breaks

It’s the “little of what you fancy” theory. If I have one biscuit, I will stick to one biscuit. If I deny myself biscuits, I will fantasise about them until my craving reaches a critical level. I will hunt them out and eat every man jack of them. It’s the same with time out from work. Ten minutes of sanctioned cat-wrangling, Amazon shopping, pootling in the garden – clears the head marvellously for the next procrastination-free work session.

I try not to do any housework

Harder than it sounds. When you work from home, it is very easy to go “Ooh, a cobweb!” and head off down a path of merry domesticity. I diarise cleaning the same way as I do work projects, and try not to hop too much between paid work and housework – with the end goal that if I work very hard, I may be able to buy a vacuum cleaner that actually sucks. Or a team of Downton-style footmen.

I will move into the attic

This is true, not just a creative’s hissy fit. In January, my desk is moving into the roof. Away from the phone, Homes Under the Hammer, hungry cats, the tyranny of family and the background squealing of My Little Pony, I shall be free to type away happily, free from all diversions. It will also be a long climb down to the fridge, which will help in other ways. If my style becomes a little Byronic as I embrace my new role as Mad Writer in the Attic, I’m sure it’ll calm down after a while.

The serious point here is, if you can, remove yourself to a space away from the distractions.

If I really have to, I embrace distraction

It doesn’t necessarily get the job done, but an interesting distraction provides plenty of writing material to store up. This week’s distractions have included a runaway cow being corralled by the police in my (ordinary, domestic) garden for ten long hours. That was pretty distracting – but one day I’ll probably get some mileage from it. I guess distractions come in different categories: useless (daytime telly) and potentially useful (bovine escapees).

Blogging of course, does not count…

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the dos and don’ts of writing.  This week we have a new way of making sure our words don’t run away with us – The Parklife Test, aka The Brand Check.

Russell Brand’s extravagant language has always divided people. Now he’s reinvented himself as a revolutionary, it’s still not so much what he says as how he says it that’s attracting comments. @danbarker tweeted that “Russell Brand’s writing feels like somebody is about to shout PARKLIFE! at the end of every sentence.”

If this makes no sense to you, cast your minds back to 1994. Blur’s single Parklife featured actor Phil Daniels reciting long-worded lines, followed by singer Damon chirruping “Parklife!” There is great entertainment to be had by reading a long-winded sentence and warbling “Parklife!” at the end; and this tweet had me giggling away to myself with its pin-point perfect accuracy.

Russell Brand’s language can be seen as rather crowded and exhausting. However, I admit that I’m enjoying seeing the injection of a new lexicon into politics. It’s all got rather depressing and doomy recently, as more and more politicians adopt the language of the apocalypse (we’re “swamped” and “plagued” most days apparently, by something or other). Any way of refreshing that is welcome.

But as ever, the criticism Russell Brand has received is a reminder to all of us to keep it simple. I know I’ve banged on about this before, but if people can’t understand what you’re saying (or can’t be bothered trying to decipher it), what’s the point?  I am much too old to remember most of the red-penned comments I received in my school essays, but the line “You seem to have swallowed a thesaurus” has stayed with me. OK, so I didn’t have much to say about the role of Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra – but padding it out with an insane amount of adjectives was clearly not the way forward. Lesson learned.

So, thank you Dan Barker – we now have a new useful check for verbosity. If I ever worry that a sentence feels a bit overblown, I’ll shout Parklife! at myself, and see if it fits. If it does, the sentence goes.

Life is imitating Facebook. The shortlist for the gorgeously geeky Chambers Dictionary Word of the Year comes from the lexicon of social media. The winning word “oversharing” (un)covers everything from naked selfies to newborn nappy-related updates from proudly blinkered parents.

“Oversharing” is defined by Chambers as “unacceptably forthcoming…about one’s personal life”. Chambers’ editorial director David Swarbrick described the word as “subtle yet devastating; a put-down few would want laid at their door”, and that these qualities make it “beautifully British”. American dictionary Webster’s had it as their top word back in 2008; however I agree with David Swarbrick that it has a restrained Britishness about it. It’s how a population with a tradition of understated language going back to the Anglo Saxons* deals with the explosion of self-revelation that social media has caused – we use a gently insinuating word that carries a huge weight of implied criticism.

Collins Dictionary preferred “photobomb”, which was also a close runner-up for Chambers. Since I misguidedly taught my six-year-old this word, no photo is unscathed. Six-year-old boys don’t just learn new words – they have to live them. (Is the same true of eighty-something monarchs?) Thanks to our handy little smartphones, Oxford Dictionaries’ 2013 winner “selfie” also did well.

Also in the running were “bashtag” (a lovely portmanteau word for a horrible trait) and “hipster”, redefined from its 1950s jazzy meaning  to “a member of the generation born in the 1980-90s who look down on their native middle-class culture, and self-consciously adopt a bohemian lifestyle “. That’s overdefining it – I’d go for “young bloke with big beard.”

The fact that many of the shortlisted words are interrelated in some way shows how a wide network has narrowed our focus. Compose a sentence from the following: overshare; selfie; photobomb; bashtag. Not difficult.

But hey, maybe I’m just “overthinking” – something done only by introspective types who would never, ever overshare.

To find out more, and for David Swarbrick’s quotation, see The Guardian’s article.

*”Litotes” in Anglo Saxon poetry – deliberate understatement. See, Professor Bradley, I did listen…

In all my recent portmanteau and pun-based ramblings, I can’t believe I left out one of the writing words-of-the-moment, “listicle”. As portmanteau words go, it’s a pretty rubbish one (come on, combining just one letter is a bit unchallenging) but it’s certainly popular.

The best way to define a listicle is “what Buzzfeed does”. List-based articles with titles such as “The 22 strangest things that have been banned around the world” and “17 perfectly passive-aggressive cakes” (two of today’s offerings on Buzzfeed) are pinging onto our Facebook pages faster than the 14 fastest rollerblading ducks (not yet on Buzzfeed).

Easy to read, and to be honest, pretty damn easy to write, the listicle is a mainstay of blogging and other internet-based writing. It’s been around a lot longer than that – women’s magazines for example have been offering us “Six ways to be a stereotypical-caricature-in-great-shoes” certainly since I was old enough to sneak a look at my mum’s Cosmo.

It was inevitable. Here’s my listicle about the benefits of writing a listicle.

1. It’s a great way to communicate. It’s not lazy journalism: serving up information in easy-to-digest chunks is a time-honoured method of capturing and keeping your reader. Short, often pithy one-liners are of-the-moment, integrate very well with social media, and work well with our busy/shallow/overloaded/thinking-in-tweets twenty-first century brains.

2. There is something for everyone. In a list, say, “10 things everybody hates about Christmas”, there will be at least one comment, one little truism, that everybody thinks “Ooh, that’s just how I feel!” Reader engaged.

3. Don’t tie yourself in knots putting your points in order. The listicle also differs from the old “Top Ten” approach by being non-hierarchical. Yes, have a killer opening item if you want people to read on, but you don’t have to worry about ranking things. It’s pleasingly democratic.

4. You don’t have to think of a title. For writers like me, who are pretty fast on the whole but can spend the rest of their natural lives trying to come up with a title, the listicle can be a godsend. The titles are eye-catching enough (I mean, 15 facts, about celebrity donkeys, all in one place? I’m in…) We all love a cop-out when it can be dressed up as a convention.

5. Who’s counting? A listicle stops when you run out of things to say, which is another difference to the countdown approach. For example Buzzfeed’s homepage today includes lists of 12, 15, 24, 43 and 19. Beautifully random, and not subject to the tyranny of editing your article by rounding up or down, just because 20 looks “more finished” than 19. Say what you need to say then stop.

Even if you don’t want to sit at your desk and compose “5 witty facts about my cat” this morning, the listicle produces a way of thinking that can be very useful. A list organises your thoughts and helps you focus on the key issues. Imagine you are compiling a listicle called “The five most amazingly fantastic gorgeous things about my business/product/services”. Write a bullet-pointed list with a sentence covering each of those five facts. There’s your basic starting point for marketing copy.

Embrace the listicle, despite its clunky name. It’s too fashionable to be around forever, then we’ll probably have to start reading in proper paragraphs again. And I can give you several reasons why that would be a pity.

Tonight I shall be sitting on my sofa ready for a good old rant at the screen. Yes, The Apprentice is back. As a copywriter in Cornwall I get to work with lots of fantastic start-up and established businesses, and know that being an entrepreneur does not have to be about black suits and backstabbing.

When I first set up as a copywriter in Cornwall, I was surprised and pleased by the entrepreneurial attitude. Self-employment was a cultural norm here (see my earlier post, Controlling Remote).  Cornwall’s largest industry these days is tourism; and hospitality and tourism businesses by their very nature tend to be run as small, independent concerns.  I’ve written copy for Cornish guesthouses, hotels, restaurants and holiday lets.

But we’re doing more down here than feeding, watering and making beds for our visitors. At the school gates, I get a daily snapshot of this. Most of the parents seem to be self-employed or freelance. Artists, farmers, graphic designers, retailers, beauticians, musicians… (Some people must have “normal” jobs, surely?) I’m copywriting for two young Cornish companies at the moment (more about them in a later blog) who make me feel humble with their talents, business brains and their sheer bonkers amount of energy.

A while ago, I was lucky to have a project on Scilly (as I quickly learned to call those beautiful isles), and met some incredibly motivated and switched-on entrepreneurs. Everybody I met seemed to run their own businesses, some in their early twenties, others managing small companies while juggling multiple kids and school runs involving boats. When I expressed my delight in this buoyant business community, everyone shrugged. “It’s what you have to do here. It’s not as if there’s lots of big employers.”  Necessity meets creativity, and that’s a factor across Cornwall, not just on Scilly.

Being an entrepreneur does not mean you have to carry a briefcase and stalk around London overusing “going forward”.  Remote locations breed their own brand of business folk. In flip-flops.

*In Cornwall in 2011, 25% of workers were employed in tourism and tourism-related businesses. In far west Cornwall where I live and write, it’s 31%. For those of you who like stats, have a look at Visit Cornwall’s report on the value of tourism to the Duchy.

Following on from my last copywriting blog post about portmanteau puns, here are some thoughts on puns in general. Why are some clever and some just cringey? Which ones fall into the so-bad-they’re-good category? Should we even go there? Here are my tips for successful punning.

Know your pun-ters

Punning is like making a joke at a wake – you really, really have to know how your audience will take it. A pun can be hideously inappropriate and change the tone of your writing completely.

I’m currently writing copy that will be translated into four languages – puns don’t translate. Plus, when a lot of your clients don’t necessarily read UK English, any UK-specific idiom is best avoided, including wordplay.

I permit myself some gentle punning for catalogue copy. After all, the client and I would look pretty po-faced if we had absolutely straight copy for novelty socks (the quaver ones “strike the right note” for musicians, by the way).

Don’t feel that you have to pun. Hair salons – please take note.

Hairdressing puns are never good. Cutting Room, Cutting Edge, Cutting Crew, Get Ahead, Just a Snip, and my favourite, eighties’ sitcom-inspired Hair Flicks are all well, hair-raisingly bad. Sweep them up, and bin them. It is not compulsory.

If you’re working on a strapline or headline, it doesn’t have to have clever wordplay to be eye-catching. Maybe try a bit of alliteration (but again, don’t overuse it), or perhaps just have confidence that your words and message are so good that they don’t need any gimmicks.

So, don’t be a hair salon. Don’t feel that you have to use a pun. Don’t pun-ish yourself (ho ho ho).

Read The Sun

Or maybe just take a quick glance at its headline. Whatever you feel about their editorial, politics or the fact they think that breasts are news, the good old Pun has the clever wordplay headline nailed. Sometimes, if I hear of a news event (the shallow-end of news, obviously. Royal pregnancies or politicians falling over) I search out The Sun’s take on it just for the joy of the groany-yet-genius headline.  Read and learn.

What are pun seekers looking for these days?

What’s the pun zeitgeist (I can’t even begin to think of a pun for that word…)? While writing my previous post on portmanteau puns, it seems that these frankenwords are the way forward at the moment, possibly because they suit the brevity of the pithy tweet. Recent examples include affluenza, netiquette and bromance.

Despite The Sun’s efforts, some puns just feel a bit dated. We Brits love a double entrendre – but watch out for those innuendoes. Times have changed since the Carry On days; and the contemporary naughty pun either has to be laden with irony or stunningly clever.

And if punning online, the usual internet rule applies: if your wordplay can be illustrated by a picture of a kitten, it’s purrfect (sorry).

Enough already…

Just know when to stop.I love an extended metaphor as much as the next person, but easy now – a whole web page or newsletter that has you creasing up over the sheer amount of clever puns you can fit in may just be plain irritating to most of your readers. For a blog post about punning, aside from the appalling title, I have used remarkably few (which has taken super-human effort).

Take a pun(t) and just go for it

If you feel that a pun would be appropriate, don’t be shy. Have fun playing with language, stay on the right side of flippant, and just enjoy imagining all those groans your finely-crafted wisecrack will set off.

As nineteenth-century essayist Charles Lamb wrote in “The Worst Puns are the Best”:

“A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.”

Bang.

This blog post is dedicated to my friend and fellow paronomasiac, writer and pun-mistress Vashti Zarach, originator of Punday back in our schooldays.

‘Tis the season of portmanteau puns. As we embrace Stoptober and prepare for Movember, I’ve been reflecting upon the current popularity of this quaintly-named construction.

A portmanteau word is simply a word made from two existing words coupled together. Also called “blend words” in linguistics, the term “portmanteau” was coined by Lewis Carroll from the two-compartmented suitcase of that name (he also created some splendid portmanteau words, including the lovely “galumph”, a triumphant gallop). Handily, portmanteau itself is a French blended word, from “carry” and “coat”.

The English language has a ginormous (see?) range of these words. There are plenty of old favourites about – motel, smog, brunch, biopic, moped. Here in Cornwall, we see a lot of mizzle. Animal crossbreeds provide an obvious source: the queen keeps dorgis; my cousin has a labradoodle. My own favourite portmanteau word is spork. I liked the word so much, I even bought one. You are currently (I hope) reading a blog (web plus log minus we).

Recently, celebrity “supercouples” have created a whole new lexicon of mash-ups. In the beginning there was Bennifer, and since then Brangelina and Kimye – and, gulp, Jedward.  Naturally, there are fashions. “Bro” is a current favourite in the world of portmanteau puns (“My Little Bronies” is a stand-out one…). I was pleased to see a Facebook page dedicated to “Making Bro Puns” – the brofficial page.

Like the bronies, if a portmanteau involves a bit of clever wordplay as well as a simple squishing together, it packs a greater pun(ch). Unsurprisingly, this is Good Stuff for slogans, and is currently being used to great effect by awareness-raising campaigns. We are currently in Stoptober, the NHS campaign to get smokers to quit for 28 days (erm, hello NHS? “Thirty days hath September” etc etc?).  As I don’t smoke, I am currently “Going Sober for October” (Macmillan) – a clever little rhyme, but I’d much rather have a portmanteau pun to live by for a month. I like the idea of “Choctober”, giving up all things biscuity (copyright S Brown, Penzance).

Likewise, I can’t take part in November’s biggest awareness-raiser. The global Movember campaign has been extremely successful, with 4 million moustaches grown since 2003 and £346m dollars raised, together with getting people talking about men’s health issues. I am not sure how Fanuary went, mainly because I’m too scared to Google it.

The above campaigns have chosen their words wisely. We like portmanteau words because they are funny, memorable, and seem to be that bit more sophisticated than your average bit of wordplay. For more lovely portmanteau words, have a look through the list from the Wiki-elves, and embrace this most pleasing of puns.