Yey! Validation! Copywriters have a purpose! My parents received this little gem on their doorstep recently. Why so many periods? Why is sprinkler spelled incorrectly in the heading, but correctly in the description of services? Ditto for “repair.” What’s with the random capitalization? Why don’t people ever leave cool stuff like this on my front porch? 
April, 2009
Copywriters Untie!
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009Putting the “NO” in innovation
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009Pair a completely boring, tasteless cereal with a great branding concept and suddenly you’ve got a delicious ad. The copy feels like it’s read a bit too rushed and you really have to watch it a couple times to get it all, but it’s totally worth it. In other news, this guy could just as well have been played by Mr. Bookman, the library cop from Seinfeld.
Paper Writing Music
Monday, April 27th, 2009There are times when the gloves come off, the headphones go on and the only words you need filling your head are your own. And like rainy days and Mondays, these times call for a well-crafted playlist. Enter Paper Writing Music, my personal archive of super-focused, late night playlist to end all playlists for your favorite copywriter. The qualifications to gain entrance into this esteemed group are as follows:
1) Track must be full-on instrumental
OR
2) include only lyrics in a foreign language
OR
3) contain lyrics that are inconsequential to the overall effect (see Mylo – In My Arms)
(bonus points for being loud enough to drown out any surrounding noise and peppy enough to ward of sleep and/or boredom)
As with any quality playlist in this digital age, it’s work in progress. Here’s the latest track to gain entre into the playlist: from the Amelie Soundtrack (and on the recommendation of MeFi via This American Life) J’y suis jamais alle by Yann Tiersen.
Cover Me Impressed
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009Oh, Internet! You’re always bringing together dorks who would thought they were all alone in their nerdy obsessions. It’s one of the things you’re so good at. When people tell me you’re destroying modern communication like letter writing and talking, I always stand up for you. I tell them that post offices have terrible hours and how talking is super overrated, and about how you brought me together with those awesome book cover sites. Remember, when I was trying to put together that mood board and you and your bestie Google took me to the book cover design sites and I got all distracted? I rested my chin on my hands and stared all dreamy-like into the computer screen and sighed a lot. Those were the days. To think there are others out there just like me! People who worry that if they ever did, in fact, manage to write a novel would be RUINED by the corporate powers that be dictating pedestrian cover art the likes of which would shame even Danielle Steele. Or they wouldn’t let you print your book on that nice paper where the edges are all frayed ever so slightly. The horror.
via The Book Design Review and Covers respectively.
The blog post in which Netflix meets its match
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009So apparently, the library actually has a pretty good list of movies you can rent for free. Crazy how all those things people would say about the library being a great resource back when we were living it up like it was Q1 2008 turned out to be true now that we’re mumbling incoherently and rocking back and forth in Q2 2009.
I rented The Ben Stiller Show from the library of all places and was stunned at how good it was and also that the library would even carry such a thing. I was all set to blame my parents for me never having seen it before, what with them depriving me of cable my entire childhood, a decision that cripples me socially to this day, but apparently it aired on Fox and I must have been too young to catch it the one season it aired. It could not have been more 90s if it dressed up in flannel and complained about AOL 2.0, but the concepts for the sketches were amazing. Comedy as art masquerading as information. Yey libraries!
To Infinity and Beyond
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009Pixar owns the animation category at the Oscars. They should really just have the Pixar team present the “Pixar Runner-Up Award” to whoever was second best that year. I read The Pixar Touch earlier this year and found it weirdly inspirational. As it turns out, the Pixar crew got together long before there was a market for computer animation films. They basically had to invent the majority of the software they used to make their films and then lie to everyone to either a) trick them into letting them make films b) make them think they were doing the job they’d been asked to do while actually working on getting all the pieces in place to make films. And after many, many years it worked, it totally worked. These guys knew what they wanted to do before there was a market for computer animation, before the technology existed and when everyone (George Lucas, Steve Jobs etc) was telling them it was a stupid idea. And they went ahead and did it anyway. Fight the power!
The other fascinating bit was Pixar’s devotion to the storyline. It’s as important if not more so than all the technology they created. Turns out they were schooled in the Disney way of storytelling thanks to some animators they stole. Fascinating stuff. It put me in mind of this article I read back in the day…essentially a paraphrasing of a speech Pixar gave at some conference. It’s an inside look at the storytelling/story-crafting process. Branding and copywriting is all about storytelling, so like a dork I bookmarked because if you’re gonna steal ideas from someone it might as well be somebody with an Oscar.
Little Red Bird Watching
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009Good news, my mother now has a new place to stalk me on the Internet! My former (and favorite) Creative Director, the mustachioed Ron Randle and his pal Karen Bennetts started a brand development agency, Little Red Bird, a while back and it finally, FINALLY has a real live Web site. Jason Gammon (my favorite art director and Klondike cohort) also gets to hang out there in their office enjoying the abundance of natural light while doing aaaamaazzing work. Like winning Best in Show at the regional Addy’s this year for their Boats for Goats posters. Sigh. I was fortunate enough to get a VIP invite to hang out at LRB headquarters for two months, and thusly, some of the writing on their site comes from yours truly (as does a fair amount of the work I did with Ron and Jason in a past life). In any event, the site is in depth enough to account for at minimum 10 minutes of web surfing time, just in case you’re looking to add a bit of Internet adventure to your life.
I’m there when you’re sad…
Monday, April 20th, 2009In addition to being an excellent source of semi-exotic food for the middle-class set, Trader Joe’s is the leading purveyor of fine copywriting among grocers. Their Fearless Flyer (store circular) is always a great read and their packaging is equally enchanting. I almost bought this box of tissues just for the wonderful copy, but decided that camera phones were invented for just this very situation. Talley ho!
"I'm there when you run out of toilet paper. You're welcome, Tissue"
"I'm there when you're sad. Love, Tissue"
"I'm there when you need to pick up icky things. Kindly, Tissue"
"I'm there when you're sick. Feel better, Tissue"
"Please don't leave me in your pocket when you do laundry!"
Is there an Echo in here?
Friday, April 17th, 2009There’s the Super Bowl and then there’s the really super bowl, the Puppy Bowl! Not only is the action waaaaay more interesting, but the commercials aren’t half bad either. I rediscovered this one while I was cleaning out my inbox and remembered it instantly from a few years ago. The music is wonderfully Friday Night Lights-esque and that dog is perfect. You can practically hear the monologue in his head. I love how simple and subdued it is, it’s such a different approach from the typical “aww, cute, happy happy fun fun!!!!!!!!!!!EXCLAMATIONS POINTS!!” attitude of most dog-focused ads. Maybe that’s why it’s so powerful.
Caged Wisdom
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009What is the point of a two-minute podcast? Seriously, it shouldn’t take me longer to find the podcast than it does to listen to it. Sorry, Grammar girl, you’re gonna need about 22 additional minutes of your dirty tricks to get past my playlist bouncer and into the cool kids club.
In a desperate search for some storytelling/interviewing that was of a suitable length and ranked high on the entertainment factor, I came across The Sound of Young America. Well hey, I’m young (comparatively), American, and I have ears. Sweet! Turns out, not only are the interviews as long as your average sitcom, but they actually book genuinely cool people who talk about their craft and their career trajectory in really interesting ways. The Jeffrey Tambor interview in particular was quite good and spawned a Hulu.com-hosted Arrested Development marathon at casa de Fisher.
Jeffrey Tambor is a veteran actor best known for his role as Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show and as the patriarch of the Bluth family on Arrested Development.
Mp3 download available via iTunes or The Sound of Young America.
In related news, season one of The Larry Sanders show is available via Netflix. It’s old, but not a bad way to relive the 90s, if for no other reason than to appreciate how much better the picture quality is today. It’s also fascinating to see how much the show influenced the more groundbreaking stuff that’s on now (Curb Your Enthusiasm, anyone?).