heartharmony.com.au

As a kid, did you ever play cowboys/cowgirls?

I confess I lived in my little red cowgirl outfit, riding on our horse shaped see-saw, and playing with non-politically correct guns (… and yes they did progress to bigger things – I used to spend hours sitting on the back step next to the cement pond, shooting the pegs off mum’s clothesline in suburban Campbelltown … but I digress).

Even back then, I only ever wanted to be a white hat cowgirl. I always wanted to be the good-guy – the one chasing the bad dudes into the sunset.

Not much has changed. In the world of SEO, the people that help websites appear well in search engines by honorable means such as darn brilliant content and loads of it, are called White Hats. So it seemed normal that when I went into the world of SEO copy, that I would logically follow the approach of being a White Hat SEO copywriter.

But over the holidays I had a huge aha.

White Hats can also apply to other forms of marketing. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I am tired of copy that makes me feel afraid, bad about myself and the world we live in. I am tired of copy that pushes endless consumerism of stuff that we don’t really need. I am tired of copy that pushes false scarcity in order to make us buy now. And I am tired of copy that puts people down or is so beige that you have no idea what the person is really standing for.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not taking my six-shooter and galloping off into the sunset. I just think there has to be a better way.

Over much of last year I noticed a subtle change in my business. I was more choosy of my clients – I only took on people where I could see their spark of uniqueness and passion. Where they had a gift they were called to share with the world … but they just were stumbling over how to put their uniqueness into words.

In the past year I started only working with businesses that offered an honest service or product, that cared deeply about making their customers lives better (sometimes even at a cost to their own business). And I started only working with people who wanted to make people feel good about themselves – and not resort to fear mongering, dirty tricks or mind games to manipulate people to buy or sign up for stuff.

I think I have always been drawn to that approach. In my decades in Human Resources, my greatest joy was seeing the uniqueness or spark in someone, and helping to fan the spark into something brilliant through coaching, mentoring, leadership development, and helping to systematise things that were getting in the way of them being all they could be. I loved watching people realise that honest conversations were more powerful and created more sustainable change than manipulation, back-biting or politicking anyday.

I believe there is a way to share people’s stories and messages in a positive, ethical and sustainable way – so that the people they need to make a difference to can actually find them.

And my aha?  I want to wear my white hat all the time!

So, who else wants to play? Who else is a dreamer and wants marketing and leadership to be white hat all the time? What would that look like to you?

I would love to hear your thoughts partner.

Ingrid Cliff

Freelance Copywriter & White Hat Cowgirl

Heart Harmony – We put your business into words

I love the online world … My kids joke that my PC is hot-wired into my veins. There’s loads of places where the online world is revolutionising retail, but there is one situation where online struggles to compete with offline retail. Where? When there are problems with a product.

Over the past few months I have indulged in some online retail therapy. I picked up some clothes from the US (as most Australian stores don’t stock clothes for tall women). I religiously checked the measurements, but when they arrived they were 2 sizes too large. Unless the US has different tape measures than Australia does, this was a bit of a worry. So I had to return them for a refund. Cost of clothes $120 – cost to return them via post $75 = One lost customer.

I also picked up some smoke alarms online in Australia. One was faulty and had an annoying habit of going on a beeping rampage every few weeks (with no smoke or fire around). Usually replacing the battery every fortnight quietened the racket, but last week nothing worked. The problem was the alarm was about $85 to buy online plus postage. Then I had to pay for the electrician to install it (it was hardwired in). To return it would mean getting the electrician back out to remove it and seal the wires. Posting it off. Then paying for the electrician to come back and install the replacement. It wasn’t worth the hassle, so I threw the faulty one away and went to Bunnings.

Online sales of products are fine when things go well, but they can’t compete with local bricks and mortar businesses in fixing problems when things go wrong.

Smart businesses who are competing with online retailers should pay heed. One of the greatest sales strategies is fear.  Combine fear with guilt or regret, and you are more likely to get action. Martin Lindstrom in his book “Brandwashed”, highlights that studies have shown that women are more prone to fear and guilt than men are. Remember, more online purchases are made by women than by men.

If you are a bricks and mortar business, competing with online retailers, then perhaps one of the strategies you could choose to adopt is the fear of what happens if there is a problem if you bought the product online. How will you deal with the hassle, inconvenience and cost of fixing it.

“Safer than buying online” could be one strategy you adopt – particularly if you add in the increasing hacking of major company websites and leaking of credit card information (Stratfor is just the latest example of a hack causing major problems for online purchasers).

I have started seeing some smart travel agents adopting this strategy. The line they are taking is, “Sure you may get cheaper flights online, but what happens if there are airline strikes, flight cancellations or natural disasters – booking through a travel agent makes getting you out in those situations much easier, faster and safer”. A very convincing argument.

And if you are an online retailer, you need to be conscious of these fears. Make sure you encrypt all payments and data in your system (and tell your clients about it). Publicise your easy return policy – pay for postage of returns and refunds.  Unless you take direct action, bricks and mortar retailers will begin to regain ground.

Where else do you see that traditional retailers have it all over the online retailers?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Talk with anyone who has been around the internet for any period of time, and you will hear them quietly commenting amongst close friends that conversation on their blogs/ Facebook pages has slowly been drying up. A few years back, a good post could get a few hundred comments. Now even the news reports are lucky to get that many on a really controversial story.

Why is that? I have a theory…

When Facebook changed it’s approach from people having to be a “fan” to just having to “like” something, it removed a fair bit of psychological pressure. After all, the word “fan”  has very different connotations, with words such as devotee or fanatic springing to mind – along with images of people converting rooms in their homes to shrines venerating particular football teams or rock gods. Being a fan takes work … liking something, well I like my cats but I am unlikely to go out and get their photos plastered on my t-shirts.

Then Facebook added the “like” button to their comments stream. People could just click the “like” button rather than add in their two cents into the conversation – sort of like an electronic version of a smile when someone is talking. Again, it takes the pressure off. We can just click “like” rather than think and write a response. And it is manna from heaven for introverts – we can let people know we are listening without having to put ourselves out there and say something – woot!

So what has happened? “Likes” have increased and comments decreased across the board. We are becoming a society of silent onlookers – less willing to enter into debate or speak our truth, which is great if this is a conscious move, less great if it is happening by default.

Now, I am not sure if the net started the trend, or just reflected what was happening in wider society, and I am sure statisticians will happily discuss whether the issue is purely a correlation or causation, but whatever the order of the events it is certainly a trend to be aware of.

You know things are moving in a particular direction when Google gets into the act. This week Google has weighed into the act with its +1. Rolling out this week in Australia, if you like something in the search engine results, you can just click +1 to let other people know you like it. Go on … try it … put in heartharmony into Google and click the +1 button just after the result to see what happens The roll out is a gradual thing, so you may not see the +1 field in your Google for a few days.

And what am I doing about it? Personally, I am deliberately trying to increase my comments on blogs of writers I like and increase my debate with colleagues, while not falling into the sweet seduction of just clicking “like” … but I understand the siren call of one click simplicity.

So what do you think? Has the “like” button killed conversation? Will we be taking our personal “like” buttons with us to dinner parties in the future?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Brisbane Copywriter

Staying with our theme of no blood and gore road safety campaigns, Vic Roads has just released a series of ads with the tagline “Don’t be a Dickhead”.  The tagline has copped a fair amount of flak, but the ads themselves are also gaining few friends.

Ad lines include “If you don’t wear your seatsbelt we will turn off Facebook” shown with a man smashing a computer with a hammer.  “Every time you talk on your mobile phone while driving, a redhead gets his wings”,and this one.

Yes, these ads get a laugh (when they are not offending people), but will they change driving behaviour – my guess is they won’t. There is not enough social influence in there to dramatically change how people think or act.

If you want to have a look at the full series of ads check out the VicRoads You Tube Channel.

What do you think?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

In all countries, people are grappling with how to bring down the road toll. Most countries go for the “blood and gore” shock ads, but they are now losing their shock value. People gloss over them and no longer see them.

What is being found to be more effective, are ads that challenge the norm that it is OK to speed (or do anti-social behaviour). That it isn’t cool – and cool people don’t do it.

My favourite Aussie example comes from NSW, where teen hoons were a real problem. The RTA heard the anti-gore message and adopted a very different approach.

So how has it gone since it was released in June 2007?According to the RTA

• 53 per cent of the general population and 53 per cent of young males (17-25 years) said that they would be more likely to comment on someone’s driving as a result of seeing the ‘Pinkie’ campaign.
• 64 per cent of the general population, and 63 per cent of young male drivers, believed the campaign to have some effect in encouraging young male drivers to obey the speed limit.
• 74 per cent of the general population and 75 per cent of young males revealed strong recognition of the anti-speeding message, aimed at making speeding socially unacceptable and at undermining the perceived pay off for speeding.
• 60 per cent of the general population and 59 per cent of young males recognised the meaning behind the message, that speeding is not cool, does not impress, or is stupid.

According to the NSW Minister for Roads

“The 2008 fatality rate of 5.7 deaths per 100,000 population is the lowest since records began in 1908 and the NSW fatality rate is now the lowest amongst all the Australian States. ” However 2009 saw an increase of 86 deaths on the NSW roads.

Unfortunately there have been no publicly reported stats on the incidence of the target group (male drivers 18-25) involved in accidents and traffic infringements, to work out the true results of the campaign.

Personally, I love the campaign and would like to see it trialled in other locations (with proper statistical studies to track outcomes). What do you think?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Not all geeks are boring people who live in cubicles communicating with pixels. The team from Neurofocus have put together this brilliant rap to help explain the concept of neuromarketing.  Warning … it’s like peanut butter. It sticks and you will find yourself humming the lead line hours later.

After you have done,  you may want to check out the rest of the videos by the Neurofocus team – lots of great food for thought about ways to boost your marketing through the power of the brain.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

If every you have been through a company merger, acquisition or buy-out, there comes a time when you need to talk with your staff. Most letters sent to team members are quite stilted, formal and written in heaps of legalise.

Today when Amazon bought out Zappos,  the Zappo CEO (Tony Hsieh) sent the most extraordinary & brilliant letter to his team. It is a very long letter so you may want to follow this link to read it in full.

What made it brilliant?

1. It is written from the heart. Period.
2. It is very funny in places – who else would describe the acquisition as “I personally would prefer the headline “Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree…”
3. It answers the burning questions for employees about their jobs, the management team & the culture in very clear, unambiguous, non-spin language.
4. It introduces the Amazon CEO in a very personable way – via a You Tube Clip.
5. It is very clear about who will be doing what and when.
6. It has sections for finance types and legal types to read (these are right at the bottom of the letter and are clearly marked so “regular” people don’t have to read them).
7. It doesn’t look like a professional copywriter, HR team or lawyer had their fingers all over it – but something that well crafted would have had a whole team of professionals adding in their thoughts.
   

I have been through more mergers than I care to mention over the years, and I have to say that this is definitely a letter to go into your swipe file as the best example of an acquisition letter you will see.  Take the time to read it – I’d love to hear what you think.

Exuberantly yours

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriter

All copywriters and marketers worth their money talk about creating persuasive copy. After all it makes logical sense that you want to persuade people to buy your product or service … right?

Well hold your horses. Another psychology study report in New Scientist suggests that people may be becoming immune to persuasion, and in fact the more you try to persuade people the more you may be turning them against you.

Specifically – one study showed that if you remind people they vulnerable to manipulation by showing them ads with celebrities or models endorsing products they clearly know nothing about, then they are more likely to be difficult to persuade.

The study went on to show that people who successfully resist persuasive arguments then become more entrenched in their viewpoints; and the stronger, more credible or authoritative they perceive the attempt at persuasion to be, the more certain of their opinions they become.

Phew! Translating it into plain speak – if someone reads some long copy about a product or service such as internet marketing and as a result thinks that all internet marketers are shonks, then they will read all future copy by internet marketers with those goggles on. This means they are harder to convince to buy your product or service, and will be more and more righteous about why they are not buying it. People become more cynical and jaded and less likely to buy your product or service.

So as a business owner what can you do about it? I mean – the vast majority of businesses are run by decent people, trying to genuinely share solutions to people’s problems.  If people are cynical and jaded about your product – how can you convince them to buy?

Well to start with – be 100% honest and ethical in your dealings and your marketing so all your claims are valid and justifiable. That’s a given.

You will also want to rethink the celebrity endorsements and bikini clad models draped across your equipment. These are likely to give you more harm than good.

Then there’s the technique called so flatteringly “chunking” – where you start by presenting positions that are closer to people’s viewpoints and then gradually bring them up to your view. You have to do this carefully as if you actually label their belief that “all internet marketers are shonks” before countering it in your copy, you are likely to just reinforce their opinion rather than move their thinking.

You could also remember that when people feel good about themselves that they are more open to messages that challenge their current mindset. So no starting your copy with doom and gloom, or negative stories if you have encountered persuasive resistance. Start by building self esteem and confidence and you will be more successful.

Finally you could decide that you will only focus on attracting clients who do not already have those blinkers in place, and work on good old fashioned persuasive copy.  This works best if you are in an industry that does not already carry wide societal negative stereotypes about the people in the industry (eg: don’t try this approach if you are a multi-level marketer, telemarketer, real estate sales person, used car salesperson). In those cases, you need to work hard on removing the resistance to persuasion before you can even begin to share your message.

One last thing – you may want to remember this study the next time you try and convince your kids about the need to eat their greens or to tidy their rooms, or you could be entrenching some pretty strong viewpoints.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Words have power. They are a copywriters bread and butter – so we know that the words we choose for our clients can make or break their campaigns. But – many people may not realise that the everyday metaphors we use create actual physiological responses in people.

A study at the University of Toronto in Canada reported in New Scientist asked 30 people to think about a time when they had been socially excluded from a group and the same number to think about a time when they were socially included. The 60 people were then asked to estimate the temperature of the room. The group who had recently thought about the social exclusion estimated the room to be 3 degrees colder on average, while the inclusive group correctly estimated the temperature.

This means there is physiological truth in the metaphor to be given “the cold shoulder” or being “frozen out”. It makes you think about the other metaphors we use – “pain in the neck”, “weight of the world on his shoulders” and so on.

Perhaps copywriters need to issue health cautions along with their metaphors.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriters

I have been going back through Christmas history (thanks Horrible Christmas by Terry Deary and Martin Brown, Wikipedia and Snopes) and discovered that Christmas as we know it had almost died out in the early 1800s. People thought it was a silly old-fashioned custom and didn’t celebrate it

… that is until a freelance writer by the name of Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol.

Charles was a very fast writer and wrote A Christmas Carol in less than two months as a way to try and make money as he was nearly bankrupt from his failed novel Martin Chuzzlewit. It was published on 19 December 1843 and the first run of 6000 copies sold out in one week at the very high price of 5 shillings a copy.

The book was so popular he was asked to read from it to audiences around the world (one of the first major successful speakers tours) where he made as much from speaking as he did from writing the book.

A Christmas Carol is credited for reviving our celebration of Christmas and their characters of Scrooge and Tiny Tim have entered Western folklore.

But that’s not all!

Another copywriter – Robert L.May was asked to come up with a Christmas story to give away to shoppers at Montgomery Ward department store in Chicago in 1939. Robert based his story of Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer on the Ugly Duckling and tried the names of Rollo and Reginald for the reindeer before settling on the name Rudolph.

He wrote the story in rhyme, testing it on his 4 year old daughter (very early product testing). May’s boss was worried that the red nose may not be appropriate for a family store – after all red noses were associated with alcoholism and drunks (political correctness is not a modern invention).

So May had his friend Denver Gillen sketch some reindeer from the local zoo with red noses.  These drawings won over the boss and the book went to print. 2.4 million books were handed out by the end of 1939 – thanks to word of mouth viral marketing.

As the work had been created while May was an employee of the store, they owned the copyright and he received nothing for his work.  With his wife with terminal cancer and deeply in debt, May finally convinced the store to turn the copyright over to him in January 1947. His financial future was then assured as he carefully managed the intellectual property in Rudolph through his company the Rudolph Company L.P.

May’s brother-in-law, singer Johnny Marks, took his poem and turned it into a song which was recorded by Gene Autry (after many people turned it down as not being commercial enough). The song is now the second top selling song of all time, second only to “White Christmas“.

Have a wonderful, safe and fun-filled Christmas – and whenever you hear A Christmas Carol or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, think of the difference copywriters make to your life.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter and Christmas nut