Story-Building, Renovation & Design
Pop-up ads that aren’t annoying? Dream the impossible dream and it might come true…
Given the direction to cook up some “un-annoying” pop-ups, I overhauled our pop-ups and direct-response emails by turning to brand voice, persona, and personification, relying on character to reinforce brand identity, showcase products—and to be endearing about it.
It wasn’t easy, but in this piece I believe I was actually able to make it seem pretty cool that your pricey Ping-Pong Conference Table is probably chipping. And it’s all written in true brand voice. Score!
Back in Brooklyn, I had the good fortune of living just down the street from the gutted storefront that would become 826NYC and the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co., a non-profit writing center.
I first started helping out by writing mission statements, web copy, press releases, and fundraising appeals—and, of course, before long I was inventing Superhero products by the dozen, naming them, writing product descriptions, and spray mounting labels onto empty cardboard boxes, stocking the store until the wee hours to prove that, indeed, art had the power to invent a new world.
Collective effort went into most of the store signage; Scott Seeley and I concocted the original roster of Secret Identity Kits. I wish I had more pictures but somewhere in my parents’ basement, I have a prototype label for the never-released “product” Sticky Foot: For Better Shimmying and Climbing. Get me some of that, I say!
It’s just like mom always told you: If you really want to meet people, you’ve got to put yourself out there.
These Product Personal Ads went out every day of the week—riding shotgun on Poppin’s shipping boxes and cavorting across the internet to work the social media scene.
How better to support the brand’s “work-happy” slogan than slapping the happy on the outside of the box too? Not only does the UPS guy get a chuckle, but you further establish brand iconography and endearing product personification at the same time.
By tethering the wit to actual product characteristics, I was able incorporate trustworthiness, credibility, and workplace savvy into the straight-up sass of the brand voice, dimesionalizing it and priming it to take on the office expertise that Poppin then introduced into its storyline.
When you’re dealing with a company with a brand voice that’s absolutely crucial to its appeal, it’s often worth the effort to brand to the bone.
If you’ve bothered to cultivate an illusion of camaraderie between your brand and the consumer, bureaucratic-speak can come as an illusion-shattering jolt, forcing a sudden awareness that you are, indeed, just another business with a bottom line.
But by sustaining the beloved brand voice even through bureaucratic text, even the nitty-gritty logistics are fun to be around—and consumers may even come to trust the brand more if its character is consistent no matter what it’s talking about.
The ultimate bonus to all of this trust? Forgiveness. If a brand voice has established trust, the brand can more safely deliver the inevitable not-so-great news.
For example, the charm of the “disclaimer/apology” sent along with touch-up paint to all purchasers of the Ping-Pong Conference Table was successful because Poppin’s workplace savvy was already well established—as was its good nature. Both are apparent in the copy, and the brand is forgiven for this (and any) gaffe—because, after all, it’s only human.
Not only does voice consistency build trust, by engaging consumers in text blocks presumed boring (SEO-savvy product specs, error messages, and disclaimers, for example) shoppers may be inspired to cruise the site just to read around it, prompting impulse buys and repeat visits you just can’t prompt with pop-up ads.
I worked at BusinessWeek Magazine for just shy of a decade, proofreading articles under deadline pressure for grammar, style, and consistency of content.
Believe it or not, I was also the person who checked the math on BW’s corporate scoreboards, compiling and cross-checking data for quarterly rankings using Bloomberg terminals, a pocket calculator, and my own personal brain. I was also entrusted to compile data and copyedit the magazine’s monthly round-up of top-selling business books.
As you’d imagine, poring over BW for so many years rendered me fluent in biz-speak, equipped to write and edit business content—and to help brand a variety of financial institutions, products, and services (work I often took on as a consultant for Joe Viverito and BrandmakerExpress in New York).
That said, my business savvy is difficult to flog on my website because— even after nine years as a magazine proofreader/copyeditor—you don’t leave a copydesk with portfolio clips.
But here’s what my BusinessWeek boss, Larry Dark, had to say about me on LinkedIn:
Similarly, I’ve been deep in the trenches of editing in the sciences, but I never thought to hold onto the marked manuscripts for future use in a portfolio slideshow. Fortunately, Google has revealed that some of the ICIMOD scientists I’ve edited have credited me in their published research—Thanks, scientists!—and many of these articles engaged issues of economics and financial development.
The Development of REDD+ Safeguards in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Kathmandu, Nepal May 2017.
A Multi-dimensional Assessment of Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services at Inle Lake, Myanmar, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu, Nepal and Forest Department, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation, Myanmar, July 2017.
And, as far as presenting complex material in laymen’s terms, I wish everyone everywhere could come take my creative-writing workshop, The Mechanical Physics of Narrative. Physics for poets—for real!
There’s a whole lot of story behind the story of Juju Supply Co., which offers up a stunning jewelry collection—along with the galvanizing reminder that the objects we keep close have the power to harness our focus, transform our attitudes, and inspire us to keep going, no matter what we’re going through.
The company’s backstory spans decades and enough drama to convince anyone to keep a totem at the ready, so it was a challenge to boil down to a mission statement and quick copy sound bytes to beckon a new breed of jewelry shopper. I’m truly honored to have been a part of it!
I also loved helping come up with copy for Juju’s social media staple, 5 Questions—and there’s no better treat than reading a new set of answers.
You definitely must check out Juju Supply Co.
Here’s a story about targeted marketing:
Once upon a time, Poppin was about to host a breakfast event at its new showroom—a meet-n-greet with Kelly Hooey, founder of Women Innovate Mobile. I was asked to give the invitation copy a quick once-over before it was sent.
The draft I received was focused entirely on style, hot looks, and staying on trend.
At the time, I didn’t know anything about Women Innovate Mobile, but its name and the mere fact that guests were being baited to the gathering with the chance to meet its founder didn’t quite jibe with the Dress-Your-Desk copy, which seemed to have been repurposed from Fashion Week.
So I googled.
As it turns out, Women Innovate Mobile offers seed funding to women-founded mobile start-ups. Thus, the event was an opportunity for innovative and ambitious women to network and appeal for funding—while checking out Poppin’s equally innovative furnishings, should they wish to appropriately overhaul their office digs.
Stylish as any of these women may be, a fashion-centric invite was entirely beside the point. It had nothing to do with the way these women brand themselves.
So I gave the invite a complete overhaul, trumpeting innovation and accomplishment in lieu of the Dressy-Bessy approach.
Fortunately, I had already invested a good amount of time exploring various possible Poppin positionings and developing language specific to each target—from entrepreneurs to academics; from fashionistas to industrial architects; from start-up companies to stately institutions; from office managers to office Romeos; from students to CEOs hoping to boost employee morale.
If the tone and attitude—and the persona’s range of knowledge is consistent—skewing a piece of collateral toward a specific segment doesn’t mean that your brand’s character has suddenly gone spineless and pandering, like a teenage social chameleon.
With a good grip on the brand and its spectrum of positioning possibilities, I’ve been able to work vocabulary to suit the specific segment addressed while always maintaining the signature sass and savvy intrinsic to Poppin’s brand voice.
Anywears may not be the best-looking shoe in town, but at the end of the day, there’s only one place your feet want to be. Website reskinning including new and classic styles.
It’s no secret that we moved to Los Angeles so the dog could be discovered and made a star.
When the lovely people of Pasadena Advertising asked me to work on the team featured in the AMC series, The Pitch, my first thought was to do the work and dodge the cameras—but the PADV office is dog-friendly and the Beast said: This could be my big chance!
Suffice it to say that we both signed waivers, got blowouts, and went to work.
The Pitch is a reality show wherein two agencies are pitted against one another in competition for a hefty account. In reality, of course, blow-outs are for the weekends and comprehensive campaigns aren’t 8 days in the making. And in reality, it’s an hour-long commercial for the client, but who cares! It was a blast.
The client was Tommy Bahama, flogging their women’s sportswear line. The direction was basically as follows:
• No Jimmy Buffet
• No Margaritaville
• Maintain the spirit of their slogan “Make life one long weekend.”
I was partnered with the amazingly talented art director Janina Lovern. We both understood that whether or not we were targeting actual Women of Leisure, that the brand expresses a sort of roaming and tousled dock-side entitlement, less prim than Lily Pulitzer; more vineyard-touring and yacht-sunsetting than garden party; but a sort of Money-Not-Messy Fuck-All-I’m-Very-Comfortable vibe. Go-Ahead-and-Wonder-Where-I-Got-My-Money-and-How-Old-I-Actually-Am.
Janina and I did some major off-camera brainstorming; I went home and did my standard Sharpie wordplay brain dump and came up with a bunch of great language including the line: Where to next?
While I loved idea: Leisure looks good on you. or Doesn’t leisure look good on you?, leisure is such a crappy, awkward word, and so, on Real Live Actual Television, you can see me offer up: Where to next?, which ended up being the seed around which our campaign was built.
The campaign (chronicled by Pasadena Advertising here) was completely comprehensive and the team really went to town designing the web site, branded content catalog, display advertising, and a packing app—all of which brought dimension to the concept of Where to next?—really cultivating an aspirational appreciation of leisure, even if the next where is just a baby shower in your own backyard.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that the producers teased out the most reductive storyline possible: Aging Mom-n-Pop Pasadena Advertising v. (Get this…) The Neuron Syndicate! Suffice it to say, we did not win—but our work was definitely better. Even the web critics agree. Just google it! (The Pitch, Season 2; Episode 4, Tommy Bahama)
And, yes, the Beast made the final cut—though he was disappointed it wasn’t a speaking part.
In the office supply racket, fall works up its own froth over BTS, Back-to-School. And with a whole spectrum of super bright supplies to sling at students’ sagging spirits (and parents’ eager optimism), Poppin was plenty busy—producing the usual seasonal collateral along with a Lookbook and a food-truck-inspired, Boston-bound pop-up shop that would work the college circuit, serving up notebooks and gel pens to supply-starved students.
The writing challenges presented were twofold:
• Since featured products targeted students Kindergarten through college, the press copy often had to engage wallet-toting co-eds and their parents—as well as the parents of teens, tweens, and kid-kids.
• There was no name, no angle, not yet even a product menu when I was asked to cook up some fliers, door tags, and such for the junket. The products weren’t free and, in ramen-terms, they’re not cheap. So serving them up out of a truck? Were I still a student, I might say: Big whoop.
To create any social media buzz, I felt the language itself had to be engaging, to be both fun to say and ripe with innuendo—totally begging for repetition. I came up with personifying the products as “Study Buddies” and playing with the innuendo of “Hooking-Up.” Making the campaign copy flirtatious and keeping it tethered to actual workplace/studying conventions, kept it true to brand: Savvy and sassy. Plus, college radio could talk about heading down to the Hook-Up Truck!
I mean, who doesn’t want to hook-up with a new study buddy that’s totally revolutionary, super bright, gets the job done, and is so hubba-hubba that you actually get a little giddy about getting to work? You can serve me a hook-up any day of the week.
Spring ahead. Spring into action. Let the spring cleaning begin! Put a spring in your step. Get sprung!
There’s certainly no better season for wordplay, but when I began writing Poppin’s Spring Lookbook, I realized that the goal was to do more than produce punchy copy, it was to produce punchy copy with a purpose: To make the press feel that a Poppin story practically wrote itself.
Though it’s costumed as a catalog, the Lookbook has the power to alert the press to the story it should be writing.
Poppin’s Director of PR provided a list of the Lookbook’s featured categories, and I set out to write copy that wrote its own way into the press.
I wanted even the most jaded, harried, or totally inexperienced writers, editors, and producers to feel inspired to lift this copy and insert it directly into their stories, making it a no-brainer to include Poppin in any spring-themed feature.
I worked to anticipate the angles of potential media coverage and to craft attention-grabbing lines that would immediately conjure editorial possibilities. By asserting a series of compelling product-positionings, the Lookbook continually creates context for coverage—and the language is spun with enough charm that it brings its own energy to a story.
The Spring 2013 Lookbook was my first, so I’m particularly proud of it. While staying true to brand voice, I was able to write copy that’s punchy, primed within a context to inspire media interest, and finessed to press-readiness.
My former students would also find it hilarious that, after so much time policing plagiarism in the classroom, here I am doing my best to push for it!
Just when you think you might be running out of ideas for a corporate newsletter, you discover the tugboat captain is an artist too…
We were already running a traditional year-end category round-up of Best Poppin Products, when it was time to cook up another.
This one was to be based on our hottest sellers. Which among Poppin’s charmingly personified products were bringing consumers the greatest pleasure? Who were the favorite workmates?
Workmates of the Year were featured on the web and across social media and email streams. Indeed, I love a campaign that keeps you riffing.
Merrill Feitell 