Last week I had the privilege of attending MarketingProfs’ Digital Mixer in Chicago. For two solid days I enjoyed sessions and keynotes from some of the brightest stars in the digital marketing universe. Just Google the conference and you can quickly see that there’s been no shortage of excellent summary posts. For mine, I’d like to add a take from our unique perspective. First, we are an advertising agency as opposed to an in-house marketer. Plus, while we work with businesses of all sizes, we counsel several small businesses that are very interested in how new media can grow their business. Thus my post will look at some of the best conference takeaways by area (social media, search, blogging, email marketing) through the prism of agency and small business. (more…)

… are hard to write. Just sit down and try sometime. In many forms of writing, including blogging, whittling your big idea into that perfect small package is often the hardest task of all. Take this short post on short posts. It’s already ended up much longer than intended. Funny, I have no trouble tweeting …

Now is the winter of our discontent … Those opening lines from Richard III crossed my mind earlier today while driving past our local Shakespeare Festival stage in Iowa City, where the Bard’s tale of a physically and mentally disfigured king is set to open. I love the play for many reasons but the wordsmith in me loves that opening most of all. Now. There aren’t a whole lot of other words in the English language that command that much power on their own. This is why we so often see now as a lead in advertising copy. (Were you starting to wonder how I was gonna tie this back?) I personally am guilty of doing it almost constantly but in my defense it’s hard not to paint with that powerful, imperative brush. Now at Westergaard Advertisng we’re giving you … Now you can take advantage of these special savings … Always a more striking lead than a lost bit of punctuation at the end of a sentence, it’s hard to write weak copy that contains this bold salvo. Perhaps it is because it demands or commands action in an immediate sense thus making it useful to results-oriented marketers everywhere. Yes, this is a lighter post than most. Think of it as a Valentine to one of our favorites in the copywriter’s toolbox.

This morning on my way to may favorite local coffee shop, I found myself practicing my order. Let me back up … I was practicing because more often than not I get coffee from my favorite non-local shop, the Starbucks drive-thru a few blocks from my home. Because of the linguistic feats of Howard Schultz and co. Starbucks now controls how I talk about coffee. You see I am, like most human animals, a creature of habit and I almost always order the same thing at Starbucks — grande brewed coffee black. In generic, non-branded terms this translates to a dark roasted coffee in a medium-sized to-go cup with sleeve. So this brings me back to my initial observation — I have to rehearse my order when going elsewhere because Starbucks controls how I talk about coffee.

This is an awesome semantic power Starbucks has over me and — I am just guessing , here— a few others. This power is second only to those select few marketers who have managed to elevate their brand names to encompass their entire category — think Xerox, Kleenex, and now Google and the iPod. Words matter. One of my favorite lines ever from The West Wing (a word-lover’s delight!) is the proclamation from communications director Toby Ziegler that “the world can move, or not, by changing some words.”

Great brands are made of great words.

Aaron Sorkin gets it. Howard Schultz and the marketers at Starbucks get it. Do you get it? Do you exert as much control as you can over how your brand is talked about and the very words that are used? Better still — have you created a special set of words that will help them do so?

Photo credit doobybrain via Flickr

The above scene from The Muppets Take Manhattan is one that Dean and I both hold near and dear for obvious reasons. But there is a very simple truth exposed by Kermit as he helps an all-frog ad agency struggle with the perfect campaign slogan for a soap. “Ocean Breeze Soap Will Get You Clean,” he offers. “Why not just say what the product does?!” the agency frogs marvel. What’s really funny is how often this happens — especially in writing copy or describing your business.  Just say what it does. Tom Peters once said if you can’t say what you do in 10 seconds or less you shouldn’t be in business. And most of all, remember to keep it simple like Kermit.