Sadly, the underlying drive, meaning and purpose, sometimes remains as true today as when it was made back then. We at christopher copywriter, thank your happy heavens, choose to see the satire contained within as shedding some bright light on what not to do.

Please ENJOY this little film.

WARNING: christopher copywriter holds no responsibility if you shat your pants laughing, watching this. All apologies are ours, but the truth must be told.

Much love, happy advertising campaigns and great client sales – your friendly neighbourhood, Sydney advertising copywriter, christopher copywriter.

>>;-P  xs …have a great weekend!! enjoy.

In a world where so many companies are looking after their bottom lines, they know they need to market or else they are missing massive opportunities to share their wares but…

How to choose the right provider, what can they do and how much is it worth?

A truly talented marketeer, creative director and copywriter first and foremost has an abundance of fresh and innovative ideas which they can put into action. Ideas which will help your business grow! There is and has been thousands of ways to make this happen over the years..

Copywriting and marketing services including public relations, fit the above graphic design visual model like a glove. We all need to live, we all need time to perfect higher standards and thus, much more effective work. The difference is noticed on the bottom line.

In the immortal but oft overlooked words of Sir James Michael “Jimmy” Goldsmith -

“If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.”

Have a think about it. If you a have a limited budget for your marketing, copywriting and public relations or haven’t even taken the plunge yet, you’re missing out on huge opportunities to increase sales. There’s so much to know but ultimately -  quality and/or speed costs more – it’s only right. It only stands to perfect reason.

Ask yourself… How much can you make on top of your current earnings from top quality marketing, copywriting and public relations? You might not even know.. It can be anywhere from 10% to 300% – the skys the limit really. It depends on your business model, service and particular product. Call us..

christopher copywriter

We do the thinking, which writes the words, that makes your business shine.

We know some stuff sells like wildfire. More than being a mere commodity, some things, some services and cultural practices are entrenched into our personality and psyche. We need to be involved with them. They are an emotional part of us. Part of our dreams. Our vision for our future. Our self-identity is formed by certain products, services, fads, styles, TV shows, computers games, films, music and art. By what we understand as culture. We might not be consciously aware of it, but we’re doing something because someone somewhere else started doing something first.

The best marketers often see this as the early adopters, those who get stuck into something first, before anyone else, before it feels safe to like it, before everybody likes it…

Written and Directed by PAUL ROJANATHARA & DAVIS JOHNSON, Produced by R+I FILM from An Original Concept by R+I CREATIVE, a brand new 13 minute film released yesterday titled “INFLUENCERS – How trends & Creativity Become Contagious” attempts to explore the outline of where culture develops, new things innovated and how we come to like the things we like. We hope you enjoy this fresh and entertaining study into our cultural influencers.

In 1962, Everett Rogers published Diffusion of Innovations for the Glencoe: Free Press. Rogers the first cultural theorist to propose the following model of innovation uptake. The following chart outlines the general population of consumer societies – it’s named Rogers Adoption / Innovation Curve.

Adopter categories

Rogers defines an adopter category as a classification of individuals within a social system on the basis of innovativeness. In the book Diffusion of Innovations, Rogers suggests a total of five categories of adopters in order to standardise the usage of adopter categories in diffusion research. The adoption of an innovation follows an S curve when plotted over a length of time. The categories of adopters are: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

Innovators

Innovators are the first individuals to adopt an innovation. Innovators are willing to take risks, youngest in age, have the highest social class, have great financial lucidity, very social and have closest contact to scientific sources and interaction with other innovators. Risk tolerance has them adopting technologies which may ultimately fail. Financial resources help absorb these failures.

Early Adopters

This is the second fastest category of individuals who adopt an innovation. These individuals have the highest degree of opinion leadership among the other adopter categories. Early adopters are typically younger in age, have a higher social status, have more financial lucidity, advanced education, and are more socially forward than late adopters. More discrete in adoption choices than innovators. Realise judicious choice of adoption will help them maintain central communication position.

Early Majority

Individuals in this category adopt an innovation after a varying degree of time. This time of adoption is significantly longer than the innovators and early adopters. Early Majority tend to be slower in the adoption process, have above average social status, contact with early adopters, and seldom hold positions of opinion leadership in a system.

Late Majority

Individuals in this category will adopt an innovation after the average member of the society. These individuals approach an innovation with a high degree of skepticism and after the majority of society has adopted the innovation. Late Majority are typically skeptical about an innovation, have below average social status, very little financial lucidity, in contact with others in late majority and early majority, very little opinion leadership.

Laggards

Individuals in this category are the last to adopt an innovation. Unlike some of the previous categories, individuals in this category show little to no opinion leadership. These individuals typically have an aversion to change-agents and tend to be advanced in age. Laggards typically tend to be focused on “traditions”, have lowest social status, lowest financial fluidity, oldest of all other adopters, in contact with only family and close friends, very little to no opinion leadership.

Five stages of the adoption process

Knowledge

In this stage the individual is first exposed to an innovation but lacks information about the innovation. During this stage of the process the individual has not been inspired to find more information about the innovation.

Persuasion

In this stage the individual is interested in the innovation and actively seeks information/detail about the innovation.

Decision

In this stage the individual takes the concept of the innovation and weighs the advantages/disadvantages of using the innovation and decides whether to adopt or reject the innovation. Due to the individualistic nature of this stage Rogers notes that it is the most difficult stage to acquire empirical evidence.

Implementation

In this stage the individual employs the innovation to a varying degree depending on the situation. During this stage the individual determines the usefulness of the innovation and may search for further information about it.

Confirmation

Although the name of this stage may be misleading, in this stage the individual finalises their decision to continue using the innovation and may use the innovation to its fullest potential.

Diffusion of innovation theory seeks to explain the spread of new ideas. First developed in the early 1950s using research in rural sociology, it continues to be widely used. Rogers proposed 4 main elements that influence the spread of a new idea: the innovation, communication channels, time, and a social system. That is, diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system. Individuals progress through 5 stages: awareness, persuasion, decision, implementation, and adoption.

Elements of diffusion of innovation.

The key elements in diffusion research are:

Innovation

Rogers defines an innovation as “an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption.”

Communication channels

A communication channel is “the means by which messages get from one individual to another.”

Time

“The innovation-decision period is the length of time required to pass through the innovation-decision process.” “Rate of adoption is the relative speed with which an innovation is adopted by members of a social system.”

Social system

“A social system is defined as a set of interrelated units that are engaged in joint problem solving to accomplish a common goal.”

I hope thinking about this stuff doesn’t take all the fun out of your life. We know it’s the big picture view of kicking some arse to make hot sales..

Presented by christopher copywriter
We do the thinking, which writes the words, that makes your business shine.

5 Possible Ways To Avoid Your Business From Failing – The Failure Rate of Start-up Companies

1. Change Your Attitude

First of all, you need to take a closer look at yourself and the reason as to why you wanted to have your own business so much and why you wanted to be your own boss. The high failure rate of start-up companies is, in my opinion, because of the owner’s attitude. Running your own business is hard work. Avoid your business from failing! Never forget why you wanted to be in charge of your own life, income and working hours. Shape up and go live that dream! Stop sitting on the fence… Take action!

2. Become an Expert – Marketing Training

The failure rate of start-up companies is high because many business entrepreneurs enter a business arena without the knowledge of the industry or how to market. Avoid your business from failing. They have not got a clue about branding, promoting and advertising a business, whether that be online or off-line. Whatever business you choose to own and manage, ongoing marketing trainings are absolutely critical in case you wish to succeed. Decrease the failure rate of start-up companies and avoid your business from failing now and enroll yourself into an online marketing course teaching you proven and effective marketing methods to brand, promote, market and sell your products, whether that be online or offline.

3. Take Massive Action

Another reason why the failure rate of start-up companies is high because people are not putting in enough time and effort. Owning your own business is not about sitting on the fence and waiting for your customers to arrive into your (online) store or warehouse. Avoid your business from failing. Making any business succeed requires massive action! This means advertising and promoting your business effectively, repetitively and continuously. Make it attractive for your prospective customers to come and visit you. Organise in-store promotions, give out free stuff. Giving away things that add extra added value to the buyer, has proven to increase sales. Another thing you can do is producing videos about your business and put them on YouTube. Write articles and put them online. Whatever your marketing efforts are, think MASSIVE ACTION.

4. Follow Up With Your Prospects

One of the biggest reasons why the failure rate of startup companies is so high, is because they don’t follow up with their customers or leads. Whether that be a customer in your store requesting certain information, or a lead you scored online. Call them, follow up with them. Be helpful, be kind, they are the ones who eventually will be paying for the bread and butter on your table. Avoid your business from failing and start getting in touch with the list of people you have at hand now. They will like you for it!

5. Don’t Quit. You quit, you loose.

Quitting is not an option. Many people do. No wonder the failure rate of startup companies is on the increase. The darkest hours are before dawn. Starting a business and making it profitable takes time. Be patient. Remember the reasons why you wanted to start for yourself. If you give up now, you will also give up your next attempt, and the one thereafter and thereafter…. and so on.

I’m certainly not claiming that the above 5 aspects are enough to decrease the failure rate of startup companies and will avoid your business from failing. There are many other aspects of your business that you can take under the loop for investigation in order to make improvements. Succeeding with a business means hard work, dedication and commitment. But also serious marketing knowledge and ongoing training. It doesn’t matter if you own an online business or a traditional off line business.

By Mike Heesen

Presented for you by christopher copywriter

Back here in Sydney’s creative marketing universe – as copywriters fighting our marketing battles for all our clients, did we have any choice but to share this little gem with you? No Way!!

christopher copywriter hopes with all our life, you enjoy this fantastic take on advertising creativity which cuts deep and hard into the bone for us. We’ve watched this now 15 times and we’re still laughing!! We’re pretty sure that you will too…

christopher copywriter

“We write ads, or people die.”

Jacks of All Trades or Masters of One?

There can be misconceptions regarding various roles and strategies available in marketing communications and advertising. When trying to understand how marketing or advertising works, the old adage  “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” unfortunately applies. Sometimes what seems to be a logical thought is actually a huge liability. There is often a thought or understanding even more logical.

Think of all the businesses that never get past being a time consuming series of many little  tasks for the owner. The business growth structure simply isn’t set up correctly. Or it could be corrected – nothing wrong with correcting towards perfection!! While it’s often natural for clients and employers to try and understand the processes, experience, skills and strategies required in marketing strategy and copywriting – there’s years of gathered knowledge, experience and continued learning required which, no matter how hard we try – can’t easily be imparted in a couple of weeks of working together.

For example, there is often very little knowledge of the benefits and liabilities of Generalist and Specialist practitioners in the various fields available to sell your goods and services. There are even many different theories on best possible sales methods. You may not of even thought about this idea – christopher copywriter – as your marketing consultants are simply operating on this experience in the background to our work for you. There’s a great discrepancy, of the available participants, in the value and quality of usable skills matching the best possible outcome – that is, providing ultimately the greatest ROI (Return On Investment).

“Strong creative content is king. (or queen.)”

Marketing is as much a science as it is an art. There are words and strategies that sell much more than other words or media. Done well – it depends greatly on the various particulars and how they are created and reasoned to work. There is a huge range of facets which all contribute to the end game successful sales equation. In public relations and in gaining publicity there is different possible strategies to implement beyond just doing the work – it really is a highly creative process – when conducted well.

In Australia, the unwritten system we live within attempts to simplify roles into specific job descriptions. Often a singular marketing task involves knowledge of another role to be  implemented most effectively – this is slightly more generalist in approach. Copywriter’s need to write for specific media, demographics and products or services – there is brand considerations and consistencies to take into account. It’s true that in reality many copywriters and designers working for large multinational advertising agencies – writing retail sales catalogues all day long. It’s usually about as thoughtful and creative as taking out the rubbish or wiping down the kitchen bench. (Having said that – THERE IS POTENTIALLY MANY different ways to take out the rubbish or wipe down your kitchen bench..)

“You’ll get more bang for your buck if you engage a smart agency who knows in great depth various methods of sales techniques, not just how to best flog them to you.” ~ christopher copywriter

It really does help to explore these things in some depth and incorporate strategy, understanding and empathy – marketing communications done most effectively – isn’t merely an exercise in spelling and grammar or proofreading. Marketing really concerns the semiotics of the whole company communications system and the people who are potentially making the purchase and knowledge of how these things have worked before and the psychology of human nature. There is a structural science to the art form.

We hope this slide show presentation helps clarify the situation a little more.

A greatly admired example of a brilliant Generalist or a man of many talents is - Leonardo da Vinci (The Generalist – A Jack of Many Trades) (də vĭn`chē, Ital. lāōnär`dō dä vēn`chē), 1452–1519, was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, and scientist, b. near Vinci, a hill village in Tuscany. The versatility and creative power of Leonardo mark him as a supreme example of Renaissance genius. He depicted in his drawings, with scientific precision and consummate artistry, subjects ranging from flying machines to caricatures; he also executed intricate anatomical studies of people, animals, and plants. The richness and originality of intellect expressed in his notebooks reveal one of the greatest minds of all time.

Slide show presented by christophercopywriter on behalf of M. Jackson Wilkinson, Design Lead and Senior Product Designer at LinkedIn.

christopher copywriter

Marketing communications which really sells.

company-voices-for-your-business-copywriter

Copy writing the story of your business.

If your brand could speak, what would it say and how would it say it?

Perhaps your company isn’t quite yet a well known brand. You probably have some loyal customers and clients and enjoy working every day.

Your company is a type of living entity. You and your employees keep it alive. There are things that happen within it – in certain ways – day in day out. Your company might always be looking to improve and expand itself.

How do we make things better?

For me, for my employees, for everybody?

There’s things that your business provides in ways that nobody or nothing else does. These things and how you do it, how people feel about what you do, is where we can start to provide a voice for you which becomes unmistakably you.

When we deliver this to people they can feel the difference. They feel good about what you offer.

You might want to take some time now to ask yourself -

1/ What message are you sending to your customers?
2/ Do they understand your brand?
3/ Have you thought about the personality of your product?
4/ If your product could speak, what would it say?

Companies need to write creatively in strategic places to remain competitive and to expand.

You can keep your customers coming back for more by personalising your marketing techniques, your advertising strategy, your copywriting and your media releases.

Your media releases in themselves can run miles for you in helping people feel and think about what you do. About what you can do for them. How you can make their life better.

The Story of Your Business concerns the following crucial story elements -

1. Your Genre
2. Your Viewpoint
3. Your Voice
4. Your Setting
5. Your Scene
6. Your Character
7. Your Market

Using creative writing exercises, and tried and tested copywriting techniques, christopher copywriter provides for you, your unique business voice for various mediums.

The effect is a stronger brand affinity for potential clients, greater trust and ultimately a firm desire for what you offer.

You can be in the forefront of customers minds. Customers can talk happily about what you did for them, your referral ratio can grow, your public awareness multiply.

“We can show you the way.”

~ christopher copywriter

If you want to get an idea across, wrap it up in a person.
~ Ralph Bunche

Page view tracking is a well-established technology, but it’s no longer meeting the needs of many of the most well-known companies in social media. Companies like Facebook (), Zynga, Slide, and RockYou are spending tons of resources building their own internal analytics tools.

There’s a reason for this: Social media is highly competitive, and the biggest advantage you can have is data. To improve and grow, these companies need to gather as much information as they can, and they need more than simple page view tracking.

In the following sections I will cover three of the most important things to measure for social applications.

1. Funnel Analysis: Measuring Conversion Rates

One critical kind of analysis that social apps require is called Funnel Analysis. This is a way of measuring conversion rates, which is the lifeblood of all applications. The term “conversion rate” refers to the total number of visitors who came to a site, compared to the number of visitors who did a desired action (such as creating an account or purchasing an item).

What Funnel Analysis gives you is a more granular way of analyzing conversion rates. Instead of simply looking at signups divided by total visitors, you figure out the steps that have to be taken to get a user to sign up and measure the individual conversion rates between steps. As you can see from the image above, there’s often a pretty steep dropoff between each step, giving you the namesake funnel shape. (Note: the image uses made up stats and is for illustration purposes only.)

This more granular look at conversion rates can have surprising results. Let’s take a look at Twitter’s () signup funnel:

1. Hit homepage
2. Go to signup page, fill out registration form
3. Browse suggested topics
4. Add e-mail friends
5. Search for someone

As you can see, the signup process is pretty complicated, and will benefit from detailed analysis. We might find, for example, that there’s a huge dropoff rate (a “dropoff” occurs when many of the people who made it to one step don’t make it to the next) at the “Add e-mail friends” step. Once we’ve discovered a dropoff rate like this, we have to figure out the root cause. The dropoff rate at the “Add e-mail friends” step could mean that users are unsure how to continue, causing them to leave, or they might not want to add their e-mail information. We would have to test to make sure.

Ultimately, Funnel Analysis is about finding and improving trouble spots in a website. With continual analysis, changes can be measured and ideas can be tested over time.

2. Engagement Tracking: Measuring What People Do

As I mentioned earlier, pageview tracking is becoming less and less relevant for many web companies. Instead of the basic unit of measurement being the pageview, they are starting to track more directly relevant things, like the actions people are taking. Twitter, for example, may want to know how many tweets the average person sends and what they are searching for, not how many pages they viewed. Pageviews are just a way of approximating the information we really want, and as the web grows more interactive, they become less and less relevant.

Think about this: Sites exist today on which you never actually change the page. These are highly interactive sites, but they are impossible to track with pageviews, so traditional analytics tools are useless.

This will only become more common as time goes on and more companies develop highly interactive applications and adopt AJAX loading techniques.

3. Visitor Retention: How Many People Come Back?

This next technique measures a fairly complex but extremely valuable metric for successful web applications.

You can think of Visitor Retention as a measure of how “sticky” your site is. What we’re really measuring is the percentage of people who come back again and again. The most common way of approaching this is to look at a group of users from a single time period (a week, for example) and track their behavior over time.

Here’s an example of a retention table that should help clarify things:

Each row shows the weekly retention rates for a single group of users (sometimes known as a “cohort”). The first row, for example, is the cohort seen between December 7 and December 13, 2009. We can see that 15.15% of the users in that group came back after 1 week, 13.4% after 2 weeks, and so on.

This is crucial information, particularly for social applications, because most of the value lies in the size of the community. An application with low retention is like an empty shell — many installs but few active users — and you don’t want to build an empty shell. You want a thriving, vibrant community.

Retention is a huge factor in building a strong community for a few reasons: You don’t have much of a community if everyone is a newcomer (so more old users is a good thing), and the nature of retention is such that you get disproportionate returns on any increases you make. Without going into too much detail, an example would be that increasing retention by 33% might give you 50% more users in the long run.

Twitter is again a good example for us, as the network has been plagued by low retention rates. Twitter may seem successful now, but their low retention rate is troubling. In the past, companies that seemed to be extremely successful (think early Facebook apps) ultimately lost their edge because they couldn’t retain their users.

It’s entirely possible that Twitter itself could be a fad. With such low retention, I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised — but it is still too early to tell.

Conclusion.

There’s a lot to learn about analytics from the frontrunners in social media. The intense competition has resulted in many new and innovative ways to track and analyze visitor data.

We covered three such concepts in detail today: Funnel analysis, which lets you track conversion rates across whole parts of your site, engagement tracking, which is becoming more relevant than pageviews, and visitor retention analysis, which helps you understand and optimize the number of repeat visitors you get.

Written by Tim Trefren. One of the founders of Mixpanel, Inc. a real-time analytics service that helps companies understand how users behave with web applications.

Presented by christopher copywriter.

Kermit the Frog gives away a creative’s secret. It takes a little more practice than 3 minutes and 48 seconds to get all those random, seemingly magic, targeted and purposeful creative juices flowing in a way that does something that hasn’t been done yet or achieves something old in a new way. Or simply targets new clients through a practiced formula to a new business marketing medium. Nice one Kermy, we get your drrrriiifffft maaannn and we love you, all the same! Now time for us to go send off our accounting.

Presented by christopher copywriter

orsonwelles

With our society’s extensive use of the internet, viral marketing has become an invaluable tool for movie marketing.

In recent years I think it’s safe to say The Dark Knight is the reigning champion for best viral marketing campaign which inspired activity from people all over the world. However, the greatest publicity stunt ever achieved goes all the way back to 1938, when Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of H.G. Wells novel War of the Worlds created unparalleled panic and fear of a real alien invasion. Now, exactly 71 years later, the broadcast will return as a live stream brought to you by the upcoming film Me and Orson Wells.

The original broadcast aired as an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air as part of their Halloween show. The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated news bulletins, which suggested to many listeners that an actual Martian invasion was in progress. Adding to the illusion of an invasion was that the program was a “sustaining show” which means it ran without commercial breaks, and thus created a certain amount of urgency and realism. Though many people were scared, there is still dissension amongst historians as to exactly how much panic and chaos resulted from the broadcast.

You can hear the original broadcast in its entirety right here or at waroftheworldstribute.com exactly 71 years later, to the minute, on Friday, October 30th at 8pm EST. So get some popcorn, gather up your family and friends, and see if Orson Welles’ famed broadcast still holds the weight and spook that came with it back in 1938. And despite using the broadcast for its own publicity, I really have to give credit to the Me and Orson Wells marketing team for incorporating such a timely, and clever use of Orson Welles historical influence on entertainment to do so. If you haven’t seen the trailer for that film yet, then check it out here.

Thank you to Ethan Anderton for writing this story on Oct 30th, 2009.