Protean

The jargon of fear; it’s a riot.

This blog has been hijacked by copywriters recently. But, when you look at recent events, it’s easy to see why. It’s our job to paint the world in word pictures as Steve mentioned in his last post regarding the US national debt. But as copywriters, we also notice when people paint abstracts with their words. In the aftermath of the recent UK riots, these abstracts are being painted by the jargon of fear.

Why do we use jargon? Often, it’s to make something appear more palatable. More specifically, we use it to fit an agenda. It’s shared by those with a common interest or profession but can often alienate those outside it. When developing copy for promotional materials, we tell our clients that their customers are not interested in their corporate agenda. Their customers want truthful language that resonates with them.

When we talk about word pictures, the jargon of fear has altered our present canvas here in the UK. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen people lazily regurgitate the term “feral rats” to talk about looters. Prime Minister David Cameron is using military rhetoric since we’ve now started a “fight back”. Each and every one of these terms is dramatising the situation to make it more palatable to a specific agenda.

And I’m not giving one agenda greater credence than another. But the thing is, we’re not actually dealing with feral rats; these are boys and girls and men and women. And this is not a war-zone; a government like ours cannot go to war on its own people. And the photo that accompanies this blog depicting the Sony warehouse in Enfield burning is not just a warehouse on fire, it’s the altered landscape of Account Manager Helena’s route in to work.

Clearly, something has gone horribly wrong and just as it’s tempting to simplify it with language, I suspect the issue is more complex than the jargon of fear suggests. The aftermath of the riots has seen plenty of copycat activity, not least from the thousands of armchair commentators quoting the jargon of fear.

As a copywriter and honorary member of the jargon police, I’m saying let’s not let the left or the right limit our vocabulary. Paint your own colourful word picture to deliver a message that is truly yours. Debate is always useful and it’s rarely black and white. 

Amy Willmer, Protean Marketing Copywriter amy@protean.co.uk, @proteanamy

Painting word pictures; visualising the National Debt

As marketers, we spend a lot of time creating communications initiatives that help people to visualise an intangible concept (like quality or value) in order to get across the real benefits of our clients’ propositions. Those of us in the Protean camp who are copywriters often have to do this using words alone. We call it ‘painting a word picture’. So I was fascinated to catch a programme on BBC Radio 4 called the “More or Less” show this Sunday evening past. Radio presenters can’t use images, so for me it was exactly about painting a word picture to ‘unpick’ large numbers being bandied around the news. So not necessarily intangible but often difficult to imagine.

An engaging challenge for the team was to find a way to visualise the US National Debt, currently standing at $14.3 trillion. The solution was to have listeners compare debt to altitude, starting with a crisp, fresh $100 bill and then imagining these pretty-thin banknotes (each just 0.004 inches thick) stacked up. It went something like this:

When the stack reaches the relatively modest height of 3 feet 4 inches, you already have one million dollars. Construct a stack the same height as The Empire State Building and you’ll have $375 million dollars. So it takes just over 2½ Empire State Buildings for the stack to reach $1 billion. At the top of Mount Everest (about 5½ miles) the pile is worth $8 billion. So it needs a height of 12½ Mount Everests to make $100 billion. That’s a stack of $100 bills nearly 69 miles high – a place where meteors are active! The stack has to shoot much further into space to an altitude of 9,030 miles before we reach $14.3 trillion.

How’s that for a fascinating word picture? But there’s more…

If some lucky family had a personal net worth of $14.3 trillion, and they spent it at a rate of $1 million per day, they (or rather their heirs) would take over 38,500 years to get through it all. If we go back in history that many years, we’d find Neanderthals roaming the earth.

UK residents can catch the programme online via the BBC iPlayer for the next few days and hear other newsworthy numbers picked apart, including a comparison of UK National debt using £50 notes (just over 1,560 miles), the budget of the UK National Health Service and the ’27 Club’ – the statistical likelihood of pop stars (e.g. Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix) dying at just 27 years of age. Enjoy.

Steve Chapman, Protean Technical Director steve@protean.co.uk

Poor Spelling Impacts on Web Sales

At last! Another professional who believes that good spelling is imperative in communications. And he has empirical proof to show how poor spelling allegedly costs UK internet businesses millions of pounds per year in lost revenue.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14130854

I feel vindicated. Let’s see if anyone dares to call me a pedant now. Or ‘The Grammar Gestapo’.

When I helped found Protean almost 20 years ago, written ‘content’ was at the very heart of our value proposition to clients. Though I don’t think we called it ‘content’ back then; before the Internet and email marketing, they were just words – usually for press releases, brochures and good old direct mail.

Words remain at the core of Protean’s deliverables today, only now there are many more channels to showcase your poor spelling or grammar – and most of them are instant. It’s nigh-on impossible to retract a tweet or email because you used the wrong ‘there, their or they’re’; or more commonly ‘it’s and its’. I could go on.

Sure, anyone can write, can’t they? Until, that is, you sit them in front of a blank screen and ask them to produce the content for your new corporate website. Or some engaging copy for a new eDM initiative or press release.

Hmm. While I’m on my “anyone can do it” soapbox, let me digress a little and point out that I believe it’s the same with email marketing. Anyone can put together a promotional email and send it to a list of prospects, right? Really?! Then why have we invested a very substantial (an understatement, by the way) sum of Protean’s money over the past six years in a sophisticated and bespoke intelligent email marketing system? Because anyone can create and send an email shot, just like anyone can write great copy. That’s why.

I’m sure you get my point.

Back to the BBC News story on poor spelling. Irrespective of the outcome of a debate on the basic literacy of today’s school leavers, it’s simply a fact that not everyone has the skill to write well. Just like not everyone has the talent to be a creative graphic designer (fortunately, we have several of those at Protean).

Outside of any Protean agenda that supports good writing, I agree wholeheartedly with the BBC News report. As Mr Duncombe says, 99% of Internet communication is via the written word. So good spelling is as imperative in the digital world as it has always been in conventional printed communications tools. What would you think of a multinational corporation or plc that had spelling or grammar errors in its glossy annual report? I’ve seen it, believe me.

I used the term ‘value proposition’ earlier. That’s what effective creative writing is all about. It delivers real value and safeguards you from undeserved negative perceptions. You can’t afford that in a competitive landscape where the customer has so many other options to get what they want.

There’s no doubt in my mind that poor spelling (and grammar) damages a business’s credibility. It does for me, but then I’m a pedant, apparently. I even spell and punctuate my text messages properly, which infuriates my teenage daughter. And that’s as good a reason as any to keep on doing so!

In the same boat as poor spelling is ineffective copy that fails to articulate your message accurately, engagingly and without ambiguity. That must surely contribute another huge wedge of disinterest to a reader or web visitor. Clarity is king. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Or, my personal mantra: “do it once, and do it well”.

If you need great words, or ‘content’, you know where to turn.

- Steve Chapman, Protean Technical Director

New guide to e-marketing shows why email is young at heart.

As email hits 40, it’s clearly done an awful lot of growing up. Although it’s been somewhat flippantly labelled as a middle-aged technology, it’s still yielding exciting and cost-effective opportunities for today’s B2B brands.

When used effectively, email marketing is one of the most powerful and cost-efficient prospecting and CRM tools for companies of all sizes. And, thanks to the rise of social media, it’s more relevant than ever. To help you make the most of it, we’ve produced a free guide to email marketing.

It’s called The Middle-Aged Guide to Email Marketing. But you don’t have to be middle-aged to read it. You just have to be interested in how email could help you realise your business’ brand potential.

Download your copy of The Middle-Aged Guide to Email Marketing.

Read it and learn how to:

• Take your marketing message further than ever before
• Substantially enhance your email marketing ROI
• Harness the potential of social sharing & mobile marketing

If you’d like to find out more, please do get in touch.

 

It’s official; we’re now a Recommended Marketing Agency!

We’ve always said that one of our key competitive differentiators is the longstanding client relationships we’ve built up over the years. We’re lucky to have such a positive working relationship with all of our clients and get some great feedback from them. But now, it’s official. We’re an approved member of the Recommended Agency Register.

Also known as the RAR, the register provides businesses looking for a marketing agency with a definitive list of quality assured suppliers. But – and this is an important 'but' – selection for the register is based solely on the strength of client reviews.

We can’t bribe our clients with sweets either; ratings are left in confidence through the RAR website in order to make sure clients can be as open and honest as possible.

RAR research saw us recommended by our clients in key disciplines including advertising, brand strategy, corporate communications, design, digital, direct marketing and PR. Our key skills, according to our clients, consist of branding, campaign planning, corporate communications, e-commerce, e-marketing, media relations, online marketing and web development. Plus, we scored an advocacy rating of 94%.

Here are a few of the testimonials our clients gave to the RAR:

“These guys stand out from the crowd with sound marketing advice and prompt delivery every time.”

“I cannot fault their service and value the relationship immensely.”

“A good and valued extension of our business."

“A true partner.”

Our sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to rate us.

For more information about our Recommended Agency status, contact greg@protean.co.uk.

 

Hitch a ride to social media success.

As a business, you need to understand that people like to talk.

They want to talk to you. They want to talk to your competitors. They want to talk to each other; sometimes about you. Social media tools and networks are facilitating this conversation.

As social media tools and networks develop, brands are increasingly hitching a lift on the back of this success. Some do it well; they end up exactly where they hoped they would. But others end up somewhere else entirely.

We don’t want this to be you, which is why we’ve launched The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Social Media.

Download your free copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Social Media here.

Read it and learn how to:

• Deliver an additional channel of customer communication
• Generate brand awareness among your target audience
• Enhance existing customer relations

Think of our guide as your social media navigator. It’s free, so you’re already heading in the right direction.

Any questions? Please do get in touch.

SEO Bot vs. Beagle. FIGHT!!!

Ever wondered who would win in a fight between an SEO bot and a Beagle? Probably not. But the question is, would you like to know now? Of course you would!

You may remember we told you recently about Louie, the rogue (he prefers maverick) Beagle who’s just moved in to our UK office. He resents every minute we spend on marketing campaigns for our clients and doesn’t understand why the Protean world can’t revolve around his treats and walks.

What’s all this got to do with SEO? Well, Louie recently sent an email to the followers of what he likes to term his ‘revolution’ to promote our free download, The Honest Guide to SEO. We bribed him, of course.

In the download, we claim rather flippantly that humans are better than robots. What we mean by this is, don’t focus so much on making your website ideal for SEO bots that it becomes worse than useless for actual human visitors.

Louie took this a step further. He thought, if humans are better than robots and Beagles are better than humans, a fight between a robot and a Beagle could be interesting.

Here is the result:

 

Social Media and the Industrial Sector

A question that will be on many of your minds is whether or not you should engage in Social media? Here at Protean we feel that you should embrace it by adopting an integrated approach to marketing, incorporating social media within your strategy. After all it is definitely a business asset that can help your organisation get found by and engage with your target audiences online.

GlobalSpec recently carried out a survey on social media in the industrial sector. Respondents were their registered user base of engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial professionals. This showed that 52% of respondents indicated that they use social media to network and reach additional contacts, showing that the buzz around social media cannot go unnoticed or completely ignored. If your audiences are active on these mediums you should be too, so why not embrace it?

Other findings showed that this sector still values online resources, such as search engines and directories like Google and Yahoo. So, results point to the fact that social media will increase the likelihood of you appearing in searches, along with building your credibility among clients and prospects alike. Properly managed, these inexpensive tools can quickly get your marketing messages out through interactive discussion. But – and this is an important but - you have to be involved in the conversation to allow these benefits to take shape.

For the best results, remember that integration with your overall marketing strategy is essential. Social media shouldn’t be used instead of other marketing activities, just in addition to them. This way it can offer your organisation different opportunities to engage in conversations with your target audiences.

Ultimately people prefer to buy from people they like. Fostering positive relationships online can create conversation around your business and help to boost your brand’s identity and positioning, so why not give it a go!

If you need a hand to work out your social media strategy, you may be interested to know we are launching a social media guide soon, if you would like to be on the mailing list to receive it, e-mail amy@protean.co.uk.

We have a rogue Beagle in the office. He’s started a revolution.

It’s true. It may sound slightly bizarre but, if you knew Louie, you’d know that he’s more than capable of causing a little trouble. Or a lot of trouble, come to that.

Louie is a Beagle who’s just moved in with us here at Protean. Trouble is, he’s fairly demanding. While we walk him several times a day, feed him tasty meals and supply him with snacks, he feels it’s just not good enough.

To put no too finer point on it, he thinks marketing “sucks” and resents the amount of time our team spend working on developing dynamic marketing materials for our clients. This is why he’s started his own revolution. He’s taking back the limelight. Apparently.

To keep him quiet, we said we’d give him a mention on the blog. So, you can visit his website at www.louiethebeagle.com.

He’s also made a video, featuring some Oscar-worthy performances from some of our team, you can watch it here:

Worryingly, his empire is fairly extensive; you can follow @louiethebeagle on twitter and even, ‘like’ him on Facebook. But you do so at your peril!

The Honest Guide to SEO

Here at Protean, we deliver search engine optimisation services for clients of all sizes. And, we’ve had some great results.

However, we’ve found that the problem with SEO is that too many people invest a lot of time and energy into making it more complicated than it needs to be. And it was pretty complicated in the first place! 

So, we’ve launched a free download, The Honest Guide to SEO. In this guide, we outline the basic principles of SEO, and hopefully, dispel a few myths along the way.

Why should you download The Honest Guide to SEO?

1. It’s free.
2. It shows you how to get started with SEO – without overcomplicating the issue.
3. It outlines why good SEO is never an excuse for poor content.
4. It explains that humans are better than robots.

Download your copy here. And let us know what you think!