I know how to solve the devastating apostrophe addiction that’s destroying Western civilization as we know it.
Advertising
As entrepreneurs, many of us are gun shy about telling our customers what to do. We believe in letting them make their own purchasing decisions when they are good and ready.
It may sound egotistical, but if you’re confident in your ability to deliver a high-quality product or service, why let your competitors beat you to the bargaining table? Many businesses leave the decision-making entirely up to the prospective customer, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
When I was in journalism school, we students always posed the same question upon receiving a writing assignment: How long should the piece be? One professor – whose sauciness seemed charming back then – put it memorably:
“The right length for a story is also the right length for a woman’s skirt: Long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting.” (I learned later that he apparently was paraphrasing Lord Arthur James Balfour, a Scottish statesman and philosopher of the early 20th century.)
A sell sheet is a high-impact, single-page presentation of your core capabilities, customer benefits, and contact information. It is a smart way to get your brand into the customer’s hands without the bulk or expense of a brochure.
When you think about it, sell sheets are a lot like superheroes.
Superheroes build their reputations around one or two specific qualities – strength, speed, ability to climb walls – and sell sheets highlight one or two specific services.
The Buzz
Many professionals today are fond of hyping-up the term “video marketing”. This hype has resulted in both good and bad results. On the good, more companies are taking advantage of impressive interactive web based tools that save them money and improve sales. On the bad, the term video marketing has been slung around so much it’s difficult to know what it really is or how to use it. As a long time developer of interactive web based content, I see video marketing as much more than just “video”. As return on investment goes, this is an important fact.
Shot from the top of the Centre Point Building (36 stories high) in central London over three days last summer, photographer Jeffrey Martin stitched together 7,886 individual photos into an amazing 80-gigapixel panorama that can be zoomed in and out for a view of London that captures, not only its overall grandeur, but intimate details like license plate numbers, faces, and wallpaper inside people’s apartments.
“Ink-making is a science… ink-making is my life.”
– Peter Welfare, President, The Printing Inc Co.
Canadian Ink manufacturer, The Printing Ink Company has put out this engrossing, lyrical corporate video about how they produce Pantone quality Ink for Printers.
Sit back, relax and enjoy How Ink Is Made
Directed & Edited by Tate Young | Written & Produced by Ian Daffern | Photographed by Tony Edgar | Narration by Company president Peter Welfare
Music: Alfred Brendel’s Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat major
Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Everyone lives by selling something.” You sell yourself with a resume or portfolio. You sell your company news with a press release. You sell your ideas and expertise with promotional materials, website content and corporate communications.
In business communications, the power of words lies in their capacity to change behavior. Whatever your objectives, you can achieve more by choosing words that sell. How?
Writing for the web is the same as any other type of writing, except that it’s different.
