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(You Know Me) I’m Down with CBT

April 8, 2023

Psychology is what crazy people study in college, and it only took these geniuses a few decades to figure out that Sigmund Freud was a quack and remove his nonsense from the DSM. 

After so many years of trying to heal people by fixating on dreams, breastfeeding, and ancient mythology, the behavioral scientists finally came up with a kind of therapy that works better than the control group. It’s called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). 

Sigmund Freud Was a Major Wackjob

For several decades, psychiatrists focused on a bunch of irrelevant gobbledygook, like the id, the ego, the superego, the five psychosexual stages of development, and just about everything else that wacky old cigar-sucking fool ever conjured up in one of his cocaine induced frenzies. (I will concede that Freud was right about ego defense mechanisms…just like that proverbial broken clock.)

Another major source of 20th century American headshrinkery was B.F. Skinner, a crazy coot who stuck his own daughter inside a box designed to train pigeons. 

Avoid Stinking Thinking

CBT, which involves reflecting on how your thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes impact your behavior, is a lot more effective than the high-falutin snake oil that Freud was selling. We can all thank Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and others for rescuing psychotherapy from the nutjobs who were in charge for so long.

Ellis coined the phrase stinking thinking to describe the human tendency to engage in stupid and counterproductive forms of cognition. 

Examples of stinking thinking include:

  • Over-generalizing
  • Mind reading
  • Exaggerating
  • Catastrophizing
  • Jumping to conclusions
  • Unrealistic expectations
  • Dwelling on your mistakes
  • Comparing your life to other people’s lives 
  • Blaming yourself for things that are out of your control

So if you’re doing these things, just stop it! And everything in your life will get a lot better. Actually, it’s a little bit more complicated than that in practice. But the theory behind it is pretty simple.

What’s Happening Inside Your Head?

A lot of stinking thinking comes from obsessing about what other people are thinking and doing. So listen to yourself, and adjust your thinking accordingly. 

Here’s a key tip: Instead of worrying about what other people are doing, focus on your reaction to what other people are doing. And stop wasting time trying to figure out what people are thinking. They have the right to think whatever they want as long as their behavior isn’t hurting anybody. 

When somebody’s behavior puts you in a tizzy, ask yourself what it has to do with you. If someone is actively harming you, then by all means stick up for yourself and do what you can to avoid people like that. But remember: If you’re constantly getting in a huff about other people’s behavior, then you’re the one with a problem

Resentment is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die. You don’t forgive people because they deserve absolution – you forgive people because you deserve peace. Besides, you’re not God, so you could never grant someone absolution anyhow, even if they did something really shitty to you. 

There’s No Such Thing as Closure

Don’t expect the source of your hurt to be the source of your healing. Closure is an effective plot device in a lot of really lame movies. But there’s no such thing as closure in real life. Life is all about the flow. There aren’t any points where everything comes together and it all makes sense. Ob-la-di ob-la-do life goes on bra. 

You can’t take back the hurt you give. So try to be nice to people. 

The mistake is thinking that the people who hurt you can magically make the pain go away. They can’t. Even if the person who harmed you wrote out a full confession – signed, sealed, and notarized – accepting complete and total responsibility for everything that’s wrong with your life, you’re still going to have to find a way to process your own pain. 

Maybe you should try CBT.

by Richard W. Bray

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Tips for Editing Professional Website Content

June 21, 2021

Before you start editing website content, review the following:

  1. All the notes collected in the client interview process
  2. The client’s existing website(s)
  3. The client’s Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, Yelp reviews and any other any information you have about them

If you’re editing a page on a topic you’re not fully conversant in, take the time to do your own research before you start. Remember: As editor, you’re the last line of defense. 

Style Tips

Use contractions and a friendly tone to make the content flow as smoothly as possible. As Joseph Sugarman notes in The Copywriter’s Handbook, reading copy out loud is a great way to discover the version that sounds best.

For example:

That’s the way we like it. 

Flows better than:

That is the way we like to do things around here.

Never scold the reader. And don’t begin sentences with the words “you should.”

For example:

Brushing and flossing every day will protect your smile from tooth decay and gum disease.

Sounds a lot friendlier and less ominous than:

If you don’t brush your teeth, they’re gonna fall out. 

Don’t use highfalutin words. You don’t impress potential customers when you use words they don’t understand. In fact, it leads them to conclude that you just aren’t smart enough to say what you mean in plain English. And words like utilize, therefore and however make you sound snooty, putting distance between you and the reader, so use them sparingly.

Phrases like our goal is or we aim to should be omitted because they imply an incomplete action.

That’s why:

We’ll give you a smile you’ll want to share with friends.

Is more direct and convincing than:

Our aim is to give you a smile that you’ll want to share with friends. 

When describing the client’s services, use the active voice as much as you can. 

Instead of saying:

Clear images of your teeth and the hard and soft structures that support them will be generated using advanced diagnostic equipment.

Put your client in command by saying:

Using our advanced diagnostic equipment, Dr. Gonzales will generate clear images of your teeth and the hard and soft structures that support them.

Control/F Is Your Friend

When editing website content, you can use the Control/F keyboard shortcut to avoid the repetition of catch phrases that your writers like to use such as our veneers will make your smile shine like new.

You’ll also want to be careful about overusing common words and phrases. For example, there’s a limited number of ways to express cause and effect, such as since, therefore, this leads to, due to, consequently, that’s why, so, for this reason and because. The Control/F keyboard shortcut can be really helpful for prevent using one of these constructions too many times.

Consider the Connotations of the Words You Choose

Connotations are the feelings that a word evokes in addition to its official dictionary definition.

For example, the words cheap and inexpensive mean roughly the same thing, but they have very different connotations.

It’s more effective to say that Dr. Smith provides outstanding care than it is to say Dr. Smith provides outstanding treatment because the word care has all sorts of warm and fuzzy connotations. 

And don’t use words with negative connotations to assert a positive value. Legendary copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis used to get really annoyed whenever he read copy that suggested a product would “drastically improve your life.”

Drastic is full of negative connotations — Instead, say This product will dramatically improve your life?

Two Quick SEO Tips

For SEO purposes, look for opportunities to add internal links whenever you feel it will enhance the User Experience (UX). This gives Google a better understanding about the structure of your website.

We know that the Google bots reward good grammar with higher rankings. That’s why you’ll want to follow the writing standards that your organization adheres to, such as AP format or your in-house writing guide(s). 

Using Headlines, Bullets and Bold Text

A solid wall of text is intimidating. Make your writing more inviting by using bullets and headlines to break it up into more palatable bites. This is especially important for improving mobile optimization. Research shows that the overwhelming majority of readers will read the headlines, bullets and bolded text first, so you want to make them stand out.

It’s essential to take your time when editing headlines. Use them to clearly explain how you’re going to solve the reader’s problem. In other words, sell the benefit in the headlinesas much as you can.

Weak Headline — The Benefits of Veneers

Strong Headline — Veneers: Get a Beautiful New Smile in Just Two Visits

Remember to be specific. Tell the reader how you will make their life better by saving them time, saving them money, making them look better, making them feel better, or making other people want to be like them.

Bullet lists are extremely effective for highlighting the benefits that you’re trying to sell. But remember: the longer you make your bullets, the less effective they become.

You can also use bolding sparingly to highlight important points and for terms that will be new to the reader such as osseointegration.

Improving Workflow

If anything is unclear, or if you need additional information from the writer or the client, post a note in your Project Management Tool (i.e., Trello, ClickUp, Mondays). You’ll also want to @ the writer, the project manager and anyone else on your team who’s involved in the project.

Questions you might want to ask when editing content for a dentist’s website include:

  • When was the practice founded?
  • Is Dr. Yu the only dentist at the practice who performs implant surgery?
  • Is Dr. Swartz involved in any activities that benefit the local community?

Make Your Client the Star

The Meet Our Client page on websites that promote local professionals such as dentists, lawyers or contractors should be among the most highly ranked pages on the site.

When editing your client’s bio, put the most compelling or appealing information first. Don’t start off by writing about their credentials and educational background. You can save that for later. Begin with something more endearing, such as a personal story about why they chose their profession.

Effective CTAs

You don’t have to wait until the end of the document for your CTA. And it’s perfectly ok to have two or more CTAs on the same page. 

Always include a button with the CTA.

Put the client’s phone number in the CTA text, making it easier for mobile customers to call. 

If the client features any special offers such as a free consultation, make sure to mention it in the headline that introduces the CTA.

by Richard W. Bray

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Posted in Advertising and Marketing, Morsel | Leave a Comment »

This Mortal Coil

August 28, 2020

Adam and Eve by Edvard Munch

In Love Medicine, a novel by Louise Erdrich, young Albertine Johnson is tasked with protecting the pies by her grandmother, who leaves a family gathering before it descends into drunken mayhem:

“They can eat!” Grandma yelled once more. “But save them pies!”

During the melee that ensues, Albertine heroically manages to prevent her cousin King from drowning his wife Lynette in the sink. But she can’t save the pies:

All the pies were smashed. Torn open. Black juice bleeding through the crusts. Bits of jagged shells were stuck to the wall and some were turned completely upside down. Chunks of rhubarb were scraped across the floor. Merengue dripped from the towels.

Later when she wakes up, Albertine does what she can for the pies:

I spooned the fillings back into the crusts, married the slabs of dough, smoothed over the edges of crusts with a wetted finger, fit crimps to crimps and even fluff to fluff on top of berries or pudding. I worked carefully for over an hour. But once they smash there is no way to put them right.

With the possible exception of Ella Fitzgerald singing Blue Skies, there’s no perfection in this world. We’re all broken in some way, just like those pies.

Christians tell us we’re living in a fallen world as punishment for the sins of Adam and Eve. I don’t believe this, but it’s a useful metaphor for the human condition.

It’s important to accept Existence on its own terms. Everything in this world is flawed. There’s a lot you can do to make life better for yourself and others, but you can’t fix the world; you can’t fix your friends; you can’t even fix yourself.

Like Albertine Johnson, you can try to make things better. If you try really hard, you might be as heroic as Albertine — you might even make the world a little bit more beautiful. Making the world a little bit more beautiful is a monumental achievement.

The Past Is Not the Future

How do we make the world a little bit better when human beings are so full of greed, stupidity, pettiness and cruelty? Well, it ain’t easy. But trying is all we have.

For example, we can learn from the past, but don’t get stuck there.

Sheryl Crow was right: Every day is a winding road, a new opportunity to try to do better.

The past is not the future; don’t make it a prison.

As T.S. Eliot reminds us:

The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.
—East Coker

You’ll never fix the world, but there are some helpful strategies for facing this mortal coil with dignity. You can start by taking a deep breath and letting it out really slow.

by Richard W. Bray

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Posted in Ella Fitzgerald, Essay, Louise Erdrich, Morsel, William Shakespeare | Leave a Comment »

Selling Swedish Coffee in the Mail

February 9, 2020

Lester Wunderman

Brand storytelling is about standing for something and striving for excellence in everything your business does. It’s about framing your scarcity and dictating your value.
—Bernadette Jiwa, The Fortune Cookie Principle

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

The human mind tells itself stories to make sense out of this crazy old world. We think in narratives. For example, if I told you there were ten thousand orphans created by the latest war, that would upset you. But you would be much more moved by the details of the plight of a single orphan child.

The Father of Direct Marketing

Lester Wunderman was “the first direct marketer ever to be on the senior board of a major (advertising) agency.” He’s often referred to as the Father of Direct Marketing.

Decades before the internet existed, Wunderman envisioned a future where “a better, less time-consuming way of shopping would evolve, and the home would become the shopping center of the future.”

A New Way to Buy Coffee

In 1980, when he was working for Young & Rubicam, Wunderman was convinced he could sell premium Swedish Gevalia coffee by mail, but he faced three significant hurdles:

  1. Getting people to pay a premium price for a brand they’d never heard of
  2. Getting people to buy coffee through the mail
  3. Getting people to believe that great coffee comes from Sweden

Although Y&R’s research showed that Americans enjoyed the taste of Gevalia, Wunderman knew it wasn’t going to be an easy sell.

First of all, there are countries that we naturally associate with coffee – think Brazil, Kenya, Columbia, Italy, or Costa Rica. But Wunderman realized that “No one in America thought of Sweden as a source of great coffee.”

(Actually, the Swedes are crazy about their coffee! Only their Nordic neighbors in Finland drink more coffee than the Swedes. Maybe it’s those long, cold nights.)

Automatic Replenishment

Another problem was getting people to accept a brand new way to buy consumable products. In 1980, Americans weren’t used to receiving packaged goods in their mailboxes.

Wunderman decided he needed a come up with a “new word” to “describe the process of selling something people regularly consumed.” He settled on the phrase “automatic replenishment.” This would allow people to buy a coffee “subscription” so they “would never run out of Gevalia.” It was a very shrewd marketing strategy.

Automatic replenishment is an evocative phrase, and the word replenish contains some very pleasant connotations (refresh, restore, renew). In copywriting, it’s important to remember that the connotations of words trigger all sorts of emotional responses.

The Quest for the Perfect Cup of Coffee

When it came time to write the copy for Gevalia, Wunderman realized that he had to do more than simply choose the right adjectives. Clever advertisers had already sold a lot of coffee by convincing people that it would provide a rich, strong, aromatic, and satisfying experience. These are some wonderful words that convey a sense of wealth, power, comfort, and even a hint of sexual gratification.

It was time to try something else. So Wunderman used storytelling to convince Americans to buy expensive Swedish coffee through the mail. He decided to focus on the tale of Gevalia’s master coffee roaster Victor Engvall and his “obsession with the perfect cup of coffee.”

The Rest of the Story

How did Wunderman do it? To hear rest of the story, see Lester Wunderman’s exceptional memoir Being Direct, Chapter 22.

If you read the whole book, you’ll learn a whole bunch of fascinating stuff: Wunderman’s involvement in the early days of record clubs; how he used catalogues to sell millions of rosebushes; how he helped convince people not to leave home without the American Express Card; how he was courted by the legendary David Oglivy.

Spoiler alert: Wunderman was very impressed by Oglivy, “the best presenter of advertising I had ever seen,” but he decided to merge his firm WRK with Y&R instead.

 

by Richard W. Bray

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Posted in Advertising and Marketing, Essay, Morsel | Leave a Comment »

Some Copywriting Tips for Content Writers

July 16, 2019

Legendary Adman Herschell Gordon Lewis

To be successful, a copywriter has to do everything a good salesman does without the benefit of a live customer to react to — you can’t look into your customer’s eyes and you can’t hear the tenor of their voice as they respond to your words.

Instead, you have to anticipate any possible reservations your reader might have and address them in advance.

Don’t Use a Bunch of Highfalutin Words

You don’t impress potential customers when you use words they don’t understand. In fact, it leads them to conclude that you just aren’t smart enough to say what you mean in plain English.

Make Your Writing More Inviting

When your readers see a massive block of text, it’s intimidating.

So use headlines, bullet points, and bold text to break up your prose and make it more inviting.

Most readers don’t read the whole thing all at once. Instead, they peruse the copy, considering the headlines, bullets, and bold text first.

A word of warning about bold text: Just like swearing, the more you use it, the less potent it becomes.

And generally speaking, headlines should be no longer than 10 words.

Start With a Bang

As the great Elmer Wheeler used to say (no, I’m not making that name up) “The first ten words are more important than the next ten thousand.”

That’s why it’s often a good idea to begin with one or two provocative questions or a short, direct declarative sentence.

Sell the Benefit

Legendary adman David Oglivy used to say that good copywriting shouldn’t call attention to itself. Instead, you should “make the product the star.”

Tell the readers precisely how whatever you have to sell will make their life better by saving them time, saving them money, making them look better, making them feel better, or making other people envy them even more.

Don’t Overpromise

If you make one unbelievable assertion, readers will automatically question everything else you have to say.

Say Their Name, Say Their Name—A Lot

As Dale Carnegie used to say: “A person’s name is to that person, the sweetest, most important sound in any language.”

But you can’t address your customers by name. So use the words “you” and “your” as often as you can without sounding goofy.

We Think by Feeling

Modern brain research confirms that human beings “think by feeling,” just like the poet Theodore Roethke said.

Words evoke feelings. And buyers are overwhelmingly influenced by feelings. Legendary adman Joseph Sugarman reminds us:

You buy a Mercedes automobile emotionally but you then justify the purchase logically with its technology, safety and resale value.

Customers aren’t buying what you’re actually selling — they’re buying the way they hope it will make them feel.

The Right Connotations Are Crucial

Connotations are the feelings that a word evokes in addition to its official dictionary definition.

For example, the words cheap and inexpensive mean roughly the same thing, but they have very different connotations.

Which sentence sounds more warm and cuddly?

Dr. Smith provides outstanding treatment.

or

Dr. Smith provides outstanding care.

And don’t use words with negative connotations to assert a positive value. For example, legendary adman Herschell Gordon Lewis used to go bonkers whenever he read copy that suggested a product would “drastically improve your life.”

Drastic is full of negative connotations — so why not say “this product will dramatically improve your life,” instead?

Rhythm and Flow

Even though people will typically read your copy silently inside their own heads, the sound of the words you choose and how they flow together strongly influence the way your writing will be received.

Poetry and copywriting have a lot more in common than most people realize.

by Richard W. Bray

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Posted in Advertising and Marketing, Essay, Morsel | 2 Comments »

Sanity Hacks

April 28, 2018

Listen to Your Fixations

Actively listening to the words you tell yourself inside your head is called metacognition. It’s the first step in stilling your mind and figuring out who you really are. This can be very frightening and very painful, but it’s worth it.

It’s a lot more fun to think about other people’s problems than it is to think about our own. That’s why we do it all the time. But fixating on other people’s lives is a colossal waste of time and effort.

What’s going on inside our heads when we fixate on people? Usually, it’s one of these three things:

1) Jealousy
2) Something about their life or their behavior makes you feel insecure
3) They’re exhibiting some trait that you recognize in yourself and that makes you uncomfortable.

Listening to your fixations and looking inward for their causes can teach you more about yourself than you ever wanted to know. But it’s worth it if you want to live your own life.

Don’t Expect Life to be Fair

We are complex social organisms and our intense preoccupation with fairness is an essential aspect of our biological makeup. This trait is even observable in other social organisms.

Life isn’t fair. And you can drive yourself crazy fixating on how everybody else deserves to be punished for not being as righteous as you are. But it’s a colossal waste of time and effort and it won’t get you anywhere.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be held accountable for the things we do. We need to have rules and laws and courts and judges for society to function. And we need to be vigilant in our efforts to make these institutions function as fairly as humanely possible.

But don’t fritter away your precious time on Earth fixating on the great unfairness of it all. That will only make you miserable.

Live Your Own Life

When I hear myself thinking about what other people should or shouldn’t be doing, I try to quell my overactive mind by repeating this mantra:

Mind my own business. Live my own life.

This happens several times a day. Unfortunately, fixating on what other people are doing and assessing the rightness or wrongness of their behavior is a natural part of being human. But so are jealousy and hatred. That doesn’t mean they’re good for us.

We can’t prevent ourselves from wanting to regulate other people’s lives, but we can monitor our thinking and try to focus on our own behavior as much as possible.

Don’t Let Resentment Rule Your Life

Some clichés are really helpful and this bit of folk wisdom is invaluable:

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Even if you have a legitimate gripe with the person you resent, your resentment is your own issue. Unless magic and voodoo dolls actually work, there’s no way your resentment is going to change the world. It’s just going to make your spirit ill.

Work to make the world a better place and spread as much love as you can. You can also go to yoga class and try to breathe your resentment away. It helps.

by Richard W. Bray

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Posted in denial, Essay, Morsel | 1 Comment »

Listening to Yourself

January 14, 2018

Metacognition

Metacognition means thinking about thinking. You can do this by listening to the words you say aloud, and more importantly, by listening to the words you silently tell yourself. That’s where the real action is — inside your head.

Self-awareness begins by examining the words and phrases your mind creates and then asking yourself if it would make sense for someone in your position to say such a thing.

Phrases to Watch Out For

Any sentence that begins with the words “I don’t care” is probably a lie you’re telling yourself to protect your feelings. Here are some examples of the types of ego-preserving lies we tell ourselves and one another all the time:

“I don’t care that dad abandoned us when I was four.”

“I don’t care who she’s going out with.”

“I really don’t care if he ever loved me or not.”

Here’s another example: Whenever you hear yourself say, “He’s just_______,” “She’s just_________,” or “It’s just________,” it’s probably because someone or something has hurt you and made you feel bad about yourself. And now you want to diminish someone or something to make the hurt go away. It never works, but our brains are designed to do it anyway.

For example: Let’s say that Walter is bragging to the guys about his hot date with Gladys. Poor Alex secretly adores Gladys, but he never quite got up the nerve to ask her out. Now his brain is cascaded with defensive outrage and denial:

“Walter is just a stupid, arrogant, spoiled asshole.”

“She doesn’t really like him. She’s just going out with him because he’s tall, good-looking, and his parents are rich.”

“She’s just a dumb little bitch for going out with that guy”

We Think by Feeling

We often talk about thoughts and feelings as though they were in competition with one another. “Don’t let your feelings get in the way of your decision,” is a common refrain. But there is no such battle occurring in our souls between thinking and feeling. Thoughts and feelings are inseparable. Thoughts don’t exist in opposition to feelings — thoughts are better understood as the residue of feelings. “We think by feeling,” is how the great American poet Theodore Roethke put it. This observation has been confirmed by a whole body of modern brain research.

Scottish philosopher David Hume figured this all out over two hundred years ago without the benefit modern fMRI machines that tell us which parts of the brain are involved in the decision-making process. Hume was one seriously smart and reflective dude.

The Unexamined Life

Socrates said that the unexamined life isn’t worth living, but it’s also been noted that ignorance is bliss. So what should you do? Who knows? Metacognition is both painful and enlightening. The question is: Can you handle the truth?

By Richard W. Bray

 

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Clichés Don’t Make the World Go Round, but They Can Make Songs Better

September 4, 2017

Ira Gershwin

The Word Mavens Are Wrong

Style guides and writing teachers say we should avoid clichés like the plague. They’re bad, hackneyed, and trite. They say clichés are crutches, used by writers who are too lazy and stupid to think up new ways to say things.

But the experts wrong. Clichés have all sorts of wonderful uses.

Assisting Thought by Evoking a Visual Image

Many clichés are metaphors. According to George Orwell, an effective metaphor “assists thought by evoking a visual image.”

The anti-cliché crowd argues that no matter how strong or evocative a clichéd metaphor might be, its power dwindles with repeated use. But that ain’t necessarily so.

If you say, “Mary is burning the candle at both ends,”  a vivid picture comes to my mind which highlights the possible pitfalls of Mary’s behavior. This is an example of an outstanding metaphor that doesn’t diminish in fortitude no matter how many times you hear it.

The phrase “you’re just putting a band-aid on that problem” is another clichéd metaphor which remains evocative and effective despite repeated use.

These two clichéd metaphors are still effective because, even if we no longer light our houses with candles, candles and bandages are still part of our shared consciousness.

Metaphors—Dead, Alive, and Otherwise

But metaphorical clichés will lose vigor as words go out of fashion.  For example, the expression “hoisted by his own petard” packed a much greater rhetorical punch in an age when people commonly referred to bombs as petards.

Sometimes linguists employ the term “dead metaphor” to describe phrases like “hoisted by his own petard.” They reason that metaphors only remain “alive” as long as we can picture them in our mind’s eye.

But what if I tell you that Larry, who’s a very casual sports fan, just jumped on the Dodgers’ bandwagon? Even if you don’t know that there was a time when politicians actually hired wagons full of musicians to attract voters, it’s still easy to see what this expression means. So, is the bandwagon metaphor, alive, dead or somewhere in between?

Not All Clichés Are Created Equal

Not all clichés are created equal. And the better ones deserve respect.

Of course, many clichéd metaphors are duds. And a bad cliché is about as effective as a screen door on a submarine.

I tell students that the best way to judge the potency of a metaphor is to visualize it. For example, try to visualize yourself “throwing some shade on someone.”

The cliché “throwing shade on someone” means to deprecate a person. It’s a lousy metaphor and it sets my blood to boiling every time I hear it.

On the other hand, when Victor says, “Yo, man. I’d loved to hang out with you guys all day, but I gotta bounce,” he’s employing a marvelously robust metaphor. It tells me that Victor is so active he’s downright kinetic.

Ira Gershwin Defends Clichés

As Ira Gershwin explains in his book Lyrics on Several Occasions, “The literary cliché is an integral part of lyric-writing.”

Sometimes lyricists cleverly rework a familiar cliché into a song. Like when Smokey Robinson says “I’m a choosy beggar, and you’re my choice.” Or when the Temptations sing “Papa was a rolling stone/Wherever he laid his hat was his home.” Or when Paul McCartney asks: “Would you walk away from a fool and his money?” Or when the Who’s Rodger Daltry laments, “I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth.” Or when Ian Hunter complains that love has left him feeling “Once Bitten, Twice shy.”

Gershwin notes that clichés are an essential part of the songwriter’s toolkit because:

The phrase that is trite and worn-out when appearing in print usually becomes, when heard fitted to the appropriate musical turn, revitalized, and seems somehow to revert to its original provocativeness.

Putting Clichés to Good Use

Here are some examples of songwriters putting clichés to good use:

Irving Berlin—I’m Putting all my Eggs in One Basket

Phil Collins—Against All Odd

Gene Autry—Back in the Saddle

Ira Gershwin—Bidin’ my Time

Arthur Hamilton—Cry Me a River

Waldo Holmes—Don’t Rock the Boat

Cole Porter— I Get a Kick Out of You

Sammy Cahn—High Hopes

Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong—Heard it Through the Grapevine

Neil Diamond—Love On the Rocks— (Nice pun, Neil)

Robbie Robertson—The Weight (Take a Load off, Annie)

Stevie Wonder—Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours

Al Hoffman and Dick Manning—It Takes Two to Tango

Larry Blackmon and Tomi Jenkins–Word Up

Aaron Schroeder and Wally Gold–It’s Now or Never (Music by Eduardo di Capua)

by Richard W. Bray

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Posted in Ira Gershwin, Language, Lyrics, Morsel, Poetry | Leave a Comment »

Applying Joseph Sugarman’s Copywriting Tips to Content Writing

April 24, 2017

Copywriting usually means putting the right words together in the right order to get people to pay money for something.

But sometimes copywriting means saying the right things to get people to feel good about your client.

Content writing is copywriting designed specifically for professional websites.

Content writing shares these two major goals with copywriting:

a) getting people to pay money for something
b) getting people to like someone/something better

But medium affects message. In addition to selling the product and the client, content writers must regularly supply a substantial number of words on topics that are useful and interesting to the client’s audience. For example, if the client owns a fitness gym, engaging and informative blogs on health and nutrition should be of interest his customers.

Good content is important to SEO and good SEO brings more visitors and more visitors mean more money for the client. And when visitors stay longer, it’s good for SEO, which means more customers and more money. (Of course, this only applies if you’re selling a product or service people want; not even Don Draper could sell something people don’t want.)

Joseph Sugarman wrote extremely successful advertising copy for a long time. He specialized in direct mail and advertorials, advertisements disguised to look like articles in magazines. It’s not easy to get someone’s attention when she’s sorting through junk mail or reading articles in a good magazine. Sugarman needed to suck his readers into his copy and engage them to the point where they read the entire thing. And then many of them would pick up the phone and call the 800 number where operators are standing by.

Sugarman’s genius is to make his copy extremely compelling from beginning to end.  As any writer can tell you, that’s not an easy thing to do.

People voluntarily seek web content via a link or a search engine.  So content writers don’t need to grab their readers with the same intensity that Sugarman did. But content writers do need to be able to hold their readers, and Sugarman was great at that. Like copywriters, content writers want to hold the reader long enough to garner a sale or at least hold the reader long enough to get his contact information.

Tips from Joseph Sugarman for Content Writers

Here’s some tips from Joseph Sugarman’s Adweek Copywring Handbook which apply to content writers as well as copywriters:

You control the environment. Unlike a store where you spend thousands of dollars to create an environment, you can do it all simply in the copy of your ad or the look of your web site (38).

At the preliminary part of the sale, you must get the prospective reader to start saying yes. In order to do this, you should make statements that are honest and believable (40).

Emotion Principle (66)
a) Every word has an emotion associated with it and tells a story.
b) Every good ad is an emotional outpouring of words, feelings and impressions.
c) You sell on emotion, but you justify a purchase with logic.

You can create a warm and personal atmosphere when you use words like I, you and me. This will create the feel of a personal form of communication (88).

Use as few commas as you can get away with (106).

Break up your writing with paragraph headings because they make your writing look more inviting so your reader will start the reading process (114).

Never forget that just as a song has a rhythm, so does copy (120). Always listen to the words you write inside your head or even read them aloud if it helps.

by Richard W. Bray

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Eleven Opening Lines by Nathaniel Hawthorne Proffered Without Further Comment

April 2, 2017

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison

The House of the Seven Gables

Haflway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.

The Blithedale Romance

The evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my bachelor apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street.

Fanshawe

In an ancient though not very populous settlement, in a retired corner of one of the New England States, arise the walls of a seminary of learning, which, for the convenience of a name, shall be entitled “Harley College.”

Wakefield

In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth, of a man—let us call him Wakefield—who absented himself for a long time from his wife.

The Great Carbuncle

At nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle.

Lady Eleanore’s Mantle

Not long after Colonel Shute had assumed the government of Massachusetts Bay, now nearly a hundred and twenty years ago, a young lady of rank and fortune arrived from England, to claim his protection as her guardian.

Old Esther Dudley

The hour had come—the hour of defeat and humiliation—when Sir William Howe was to Passover the threshold of Providence House, and embark, with no such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised himself, on board the British fleet.

Peter Goldwaite’s Treasure

“And so, Peter, you won’t even consider of the business?” said Mr. John Brown, buttoning surtout over the snug rotundity of his person, and drawing on his gloves.

Endicott and the Red Cross

At noon of an autumnal day, more than two centuries ago, the English colors were displayed by the standard-bearer of the Salem trainband, which had mustered for martial exercise under the orders of John Endicott.

The Birthmark

In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one.

Compiled by Richard W. Bray

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