On discovering content strategy

January 11, 2010


I know – and, I assume, every copywriter worth his or her weight in legal pads knows – that the days of living solely on print copy and television scripts are waning.

And while there may be a few that can continue spitting out inspired old-media copy for 40 hours a week, whether because the agency they work for is large enough to supply the work or because they possess an exceptional niche talent for it, I suspect the idea of a dedicated copywriter in a smaller agency is going to slowly fade away.

Not for the bad, though. For the good.

For the best, actually. Especially if you know where the future is.

Enter the field of Web Content Strategy.

My Discovery

Here’s a big stupid secret: I like the Web. I like Web sites.

In 1997, I created a Web site for a local hardcore band, Floodplain. It wasn’t very good, but let’s face it – compared to today’s standards, no one’s Web sites were very good in 1997.

In 1998, I began what would turn out to be an early-stage blog. I had no idea what CSS was (though, in my defense, few did) but I still hand-coded and archived daily entries into a journal of my navel-gazing, Get Up Kids-fueled sophomore year.

And then, I stopped. I worked toward a bio ed degree, unconvinced that either writing nor Web could bring anything of substance.

Oops.

That was then. Now, I work with words, and often those words end up on the Internet, and when they do, I’m often surprised how little care is taken for other peoples’ Internet words. Words don’t matter on the Internet, it seemed.

“Gross,” I thought. Doesn’t anyone care?

And that’s when I learned about content strategy. Not the idea, but the practice. That there are people who care about it, and it’s their job to care about it, and I thought to myself, OH MY GOD NOW I HAVE SOMETHING TO DO THAT ISN’T WRITING A PRINT AD.

It felt like an awakening.

Spreading the Word

Understanding the impact of this discovery is akin to hearing about a great underground album for the first time. You LOVE it. It’s a bit quirky, and it’s certainly never going to get major radio time, but it’s quickly becoming one of your favorite albums.

But no one else has heard of it. You can’t talk to anyone about it. They just don’t get it, and here it is, this beautiful, amazing suite of music, absolutely changing your life, but it’s only sold 10,000 nationwide and you’re pretty sure not one of those copies has landed anywhere within a 100-mile radius of your home.

And then you go online and find a message board for the band. You find the band’s Web site. You read reviews in college newspapers, and you discover an intense following among a subset of people that really aren’t any different from you. You know these people. YOU CAN FINALLY TALK TO SOMEONE!

You discover new music, you dye your hair orange, you move to San Francisco and start your own band. Or something like that.

That’s me with this content strategy business.

And Now…

All of this is leading somewhere. Which is why, much to the chagrin of the established Web community in Sioux Falls – and probably to some of my co-workers – this subtle shift has led to a new tag-along mentality, in which I seek out more information, more contact, more firepower. Like the young punker who strives to hang out with the established bands, gradually weaseling his way into acceptance, I stalk content strategy and its followers.

Because, really, I’ve got this deep-seated longing to be a crafty Web designer or coder. To enter with the collective language of Web coding, a language as necessary to today’s global market as anything you’d learn from Rosetta Stone, and leave with something both usable and beautiful is an unachievable dream.

But I know I’ll never be a star Web designer or a developer. However, I now see that I – and writers in general – can at least participate in the game, fostering change within my current position and growing as both a professional and as a Web aficionado.

There is life after print. There is life after radio.

Adapting as a writer in today’s Web-centric world has little to do with becoming better at old media. Instead, it has everything to do with reaching wider, not becoming more skilled at what we already know, but branching into the fields we’ll be asked to work with.

Web content strategy takes what we as writers already cherish – the written word, the communication of themes and concepts through language – and combines it with higher level skills; strategy, organization, architecture, big picture stuff that goes beyond a link or headline.

It’s not just the future, you guys. It’s happening now.

The death of the 30-second spot? The decline of newspaper advertising? The fracturing of viewership and the iPod’s savage destruction of traditional radio?

When it comes to the Web, those scares are only words. Only content. Which, in turn, is the only thing passed from person to person: content, searched for and archived and tweeted and e-mailed and read and remembered.

If content is still king, Web content strategy is how kings are made.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Career, Content Strategy, Technology, Writing |

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What I’ve Been Reading - The Cheese Monkeys

September 9, 2009


What I’ve read:
The Cheese Monkeys - Chip Kidd

Chip Kidd - The Cheese Monkeys

Until finishing The Cheese Monkeys, I hadn’t finished a book since before Isaac was born.

I mean, whoa. Right?

To be honest, I didn’t think I’d finish this one either. I wanted to hate The Cheese Monkeys from the moment I picked it up. Without even reaching the actual writing, I could see that the book was packed with design-for-the-sake-of-design.

Blurbs were chopped from one page to the next, quips about blank pages and challenges to the reader’s assumptions, and an overall feeling of “look at how clever I am!” threatened to bog down the entire crusade.

But I got over all of that. Despite the fact that the writing was a little too Special Topics in Calamity Physics for my taste – by which I mean it was a little too cute; a little too unrealistic in that real people have never spoken like this in the history of language – I found myself forgetting all of the design cleverness that plagued the preface.

My reasons for enjoying the book:

1. I find the philosophy of design really interesting. At times, I find it long-winded and falsely anti-authoritarian, but it’s still really interesting. And this book, written by a graphic designer who is posing as a writer, deals with that philosophy in spades.

2. It reminded me of college. Not of the person I was, but of the traditions that reside therein. It reminded me of registration day, and the musty smell of lecture halls, and of studying late in the night, and of neighborhood bars.

3. There’s mystery. Despite the cuteness, there’s a mystery behind Winter Sorbeck, the Commercial Art/Graphic Design professor who attempts to make his students’ lives hell. It’s gripping.

Okay. Stop. Let’s amend that last one. While the mystery is gripping, the conclusion is maddening. I’ll add this:

3a. However, the answer to said mystery is a bunch of deus ex machina bullshit.

Yeah. I just went there.

The mystery behind W. Sorbeck is that he’s mysterious. You don’t really know his deal, despite attempts to crack the facade.

But then – boom! – a random outburst (our protagonist throws a wrapper on the ground; W. Sorbeck challenges our protagonist to discover the person who designed it; lo and behold! It’s W. Sorbeck! See? Deus Ex Machina Bullshit) and a drunken conversation at the bar lead to everything spilling out into the open.

So the Big Bad Professor suddenly has a soft spot because his work wasn’t appreciated? Unlikely he would care, given what we had learned about him previously. But it worked to move the plot along, I guess, and it was quickly forgotten. Mystery solved. And now what?

Well, from there, things get weird. Not plot advancing weird, but weird for its own sake, as if Kidd was eschewing plot for the sake of art.

The same art that he seems to both ridicule and embrace throughout The Cheese Monkeys, depending on the form.

The same art that he uses to muddy the final chapter into an impossible to understand mess.

In literature, if you want your final point to be interpreted freely, using the powers of deductive reasoning or scientific method or art theory or any of those other open-ended concepts, you need to at least first give some guidelines. You need to steer your reader in the right direction, then set him or her free to discover what he or she wants to discover WITHIN THE REALM OF YOUR STORY.

Chip Kidd doesn’t do that. Instead, he introduces some kind of confusing high art that he’s attempting to pass off as introspective literature. And he has the protagonist’s not-so-secret-crush do the deed, despite the reader knowing that she’s off kilter and nothing she does makes any sense within the solid structure of graphic design.

In this way, the book ends in the same way that the preface begins – each half separated from the other, impossible to understand as a whole, unconnected to previous events, unwilling to lead the reader in the right direction.

And in this way, 200 pages of fun design talk and college memories were smashed by an incomprehensible series of events that never manage to fit together and don’t even make sense in the end. Simply put, the book tried to be lofty, but simply couldn’t find the right propulsion to get it there.

Other than that, though, I totally liked it.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Books, Literature, What I've Been Reading, Writers |

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Mission: accomplished

April 21, 2009


It’s 11 o’clock. I’ve just worked late to meet two deadlines. Two projects – one a comprehensive plan, the other a recap of a series of focus groups.

I drank coffee. I isolated myself. I kept my distractions to a minimum.

I finished both projects. And now, here, at 11 o’clock at night on a Tuesday, I feel completely and utterly satisfied.

To me, there’s little that’s as exhilarating as finish a project I feel confident about. Not some small random job, but a late-nighter – something important, with an inflexible deadline. There’s a rush, my adrenaline confused as to why I’m not running scared, the night’s coffee still surging through my bloodstream and wreaking havoc on my sleep cycle.

In college, when I’d stay up late finishing some monstrous narrative on child psychology, I’d often find myself with a mild case of insomnia. Coffee was no excuse in those days – just the pure rush of completion. Of conquering 4,000 words. Of feeling pretty damned awesome about whatever it was I just did.

For me, it happened again a few months ago. I wrote a proposal for a non-fiction book based on Ween’s Chocolate and Cheese (through Continuum’s 33 1/3 series). When I was finished, I sat astounded. I couldn’t believe I had just done it. My first proposal. I knew at the time that I probably wouldn’t get it – after all, with no experience writing non-fiction or music, I was a long shot – and, let’s be honest, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to take the project on. I mean, writing on this blog is difficult at times – I can’t imagine tackling a book while still working full-time as a writer with two children under three. Seems like an impossible feat.

But that proposal was good. Damned good. And I knew that even if I didn’t get the chance to write the book, I still knocked that proposal out of the park.

Tomorrow, after five or so hours of sleep, I’ll hit the office and put the finishing touches on these two projects. I’ll present my plan to the rest of the staff. I’ll wait for feedback on the focus group summary. I’ll get a handful of jobs dumped on me and I’ll make revisions and I’ll fight to stay out of the copywriting rut. I’ll come home exhausted from doing what seems like simple work.

Right now, though, I think I’ll enjoy this feeling just a little longer.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Career, Writing |

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It’s berry good news!

March 9, 2009


I’ve got a few posts in the pipeline, but life is pretty busy with the house and the kid and the work and what not.

So instead, you’ll have to make do with this: The Greatest Cereal Commercial Ever.

It’s for Nintendo Cereal, complete with a theme song that I still surprisingly remember word for word despite not seeing it since the mid 1980s. I can’t remember my own name, half of the time, but I can remember this.

The commercial skips the first 3 seconds (”Nintendo - it’s for breakfast now!”) which explains the sudden switch in music and lack of rhyme.

Also, if I remember correctly, this cereal was awful.

Found at A Tribute to Discontinued Cereal, via brandflakesforbreakfast.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Random YouTube, Television |

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10 Years Ago

February 13, 2009


There’s no significance to this day ten years ago.

I sat at St. Cloud State University, in the lobby of Hill-Case Hall, after transferring just a few months earlier from the barren, small town culture at Southwest State University in Marshall, MN. I might have been reading Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War, a surprisingly interesting book prescribed in my History of the World: Antiquity to 1700’s class. I had probably just eaten at Atwood, the student commons; a Rice Krispy bar, maybe a bagel with cream cheese.

I was studying to be a teacher. A science teacher. That was the only thing I had mapped out for my future - I would teach science to middle school kids.

I had absolutely no idea that, in ten years, I’d be sitting at a desk with no kids around me. No classroom. No school. Just a desk at an advertising agency.

That I’d be a writer.

That, on this day, ten years from now, I’d be sitting down to write an ad.

About varicose veins.

Think about that. The future really is pretty hazy, isn’t it?

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Writing |

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Proceeding without caution

December 8, 2008


It snowed today.

It wasn’t the first snow of the year, but it came after a few weeks of snow-free roads. The snow started in the evening and was slowly blanketing the roads with a slightly slushy yet still maneuverable layer of mush. It was dark, and the snow came down quickly - nothing dangerous, just different.

Still, given the conditions, it seemed as though everyone had suddenly become too afraid to drive.

These are South Dakotans I’m talking about. Their license plates gave them away. These are people who are used to snow – used to maneuvering through slush much more dangerous than this, through ice and snow and whipping wind of a velocity that brings to mind the onslaught of a hurricane, crashing into the windshield and obliterating all available sight lines.

In other words, the snow – and the driving conditions that accompanied the snow – were familiar to nearly every driver on the road. Yet, everyone was driving as if they had never seen snow in their lives.

In other news, I sat down to write a radio script today. It might not seem related, but hear me out.

I stared at the piece of paper, struggled to come to terms with the job. I found myself easily distracted, forcing myself to turn away from the Internet, wondering how I could possibly make it through the project, utterly and completely unsure of my abilities to write what should be the simplest thing I had done that day.

I’ve always found radio scripts to be my Achilles heel. It’s not that they’re difficult. They can be really easy. It’s just that they are written in a style that my mind isn’t wired to understand. They’re more work for me than for other people.

Though I know how to do it - could write them in my sleep and, it seems, often do – I became shy. Unsure of myself. My confidence was shaken, and my words came out dripping with insecurity.

All of those people on the roads? Those South Dakotans who forgot how to drive?

They’re in the same boat.

When it comes to a new situation – even a new situation we’ve been through hundreds of times before – most of us shy away from the challenge. We know what we should do, but our mind looks for something easier – something less creative, slower, more cautious. In driving, this leads to slower traffic that is often more dangerous than it should be. In writing, this leads to an uninspired script.

It’s difficult to let go of.

But that’s the only solution. You act like nothing is wrong. You take the snow as it comes, being smart enough to realize when there is an actual danger and wily enough to steer your way around the frightened traffic.

And you stop staring at the paper. You act like nothing is wrong. You take the script as it comes, doing what you’ve done before, writing things that you think work together and finding the flaws. Getting started is the hardest part – just like driving in snow, once you’re used to the way your car moves you can proceed without the caution you’re so dearly clinging to.

Living with caution isn’t easy.

That’s the point.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Sioux Falls, Writing |

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1984

November 24, 2008


From the 30th Anniversary Issue of Adweek, by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners co-chairman Jeff Goodby, regarding the best commercial of the 1980s:

No one writing about the ’80s could skip the Apple “1984″ commercial. It changed the way we’ve approached not just the Super Bowl but all big-event advertising. It also showed that you could use a fairly obscure story from a book only English majors had read to make spectacular advertising. But although it was influential, it only ran once.

(Emphasis mine)

Really? George Orwell’s 1984 is a “fairly obscure story” that “only English majors” have read?

I mean, I know advertisers don’t read anything but books by other advertisers, but come on.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Books, Literature |

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