Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

Sorry, No, That’s Not What You Mean At All

Your Highness: I’m not much of a writer but, like so many of your loyal subjects, I have a job that often requires me to write. I want to be professional—and avoid embarrassing mistakes. I need an on-call editor. Or at least a cheat sheet. Please help! My dear Subject, Ah, English! Constantly changing, constantly [...]

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The Art of Blurbing

They’re everywhere. Book jackets, of course, and ads for movies—but also, unlikely places, such as cereal boxes and sides of buses. Twitter is essentially built on them. Yes, we are surrounded by blurbs—short (usually), glowing reviews or micro-stories lauding this, that, or the other. When flooded with this many “inputs,” as a tech-y friend of [...]

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Managing a Massive, Multi-Asset Marcom Project? Be a Partner to Your Copywriting Agency for the Best Results

When clients hire the Content Bureau to manage their massive, multi-asset marcom projects, it’s their ongoing engagement that plays a key role in the project’s success. In this post, one of the Content Bureau’s beloved clients, Kerry Anne Rothe, Senior Manager of Communications at PayPal, shares tips for how clients should partner with their copywriting [...]

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How to Write a Concise and Complete (aka Great) 25-Word Product Description

What can you do with 25 words? Write a note to your kids about how to reheat dinner. Make a grocery list. How about tell a complete, compelling story? It’s possible to finesse about two dozen words into a product description that’s not so high-level it glosses over everything, but also not so detailed it [...]

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Edward Tufte: An Appreciation

What you business types have always secretly suspected about writers and designers is true: We sit around in cafés all day, peering into our laptops and muttering to ourselves. Sometimes we take breaks to play Words With Friends, or to drink coffee and mutter to each other. All that muttering? Sometimes it’s about the joys [...]

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How to Make Leap Day Last All Year

Happy Leap Day! As you’ve noticed, Leap Day happens but once every four years. It’s an “extra” day—a day we may very well forget until it’s nearly upon us. And when it arrives, it seems to throw off the rhythm of the week, and the month. Most of us are commemorating this special day by [...]

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Shades of Spam

Microsoft recently coined a new term that has put marketers on notice: graymail. Graymail is meant to describe the email that falls in that nebulous region between legitimate messages and outright spam: newsletters, updates, deals, invites, and the like. It’s basically all the things we as consumers (often unknowingly) subscribe to when buying or signing [...]

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Steve Jobs Planted Seeds for Great Marketing at Apple Inc.

When tech pioneer and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs died this week after a long fight with cancer, the marketing community lost a role model. Veteran marketing pro John Ellett, writing for Forbes, reflects on the legacy that Apple’s “unofficial” CMO leaves marketing pros. John Ellet on Steve Jobs’ Legacy for Marketers    

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Keywords Can Help Your Designer Choose the Perfect Imagery

When a marketing manager works with a designer, great communication is essential. Many of your designer’s questions are automatically answered if your company has clear branding guidelines—including logo, templates, and color schemes. But there’s always room for design creativity, and that often involves choosing the right imagery to tell your story. Let your designer know: [...]

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What to Include in Your Q1 Marketing Budget? Part II

In our last post, we asked a few of our clients in leading tech and financial services companies which assets they would insist on producing if their budgets were slashed. This week’s query:
What if you had a budget windfall? How would you direct that marketing spend?

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