Pop Art Blog

When I write, I use em dashes. A lot. At one point in my career, my creative director returned an article to me in which I'd used an em dash in EVERY SINGLE PARAGRAPH of a 700-word article. Clearly, I had a problem. Em dashes (or the long dash, like this: — ) are remarkable little devices that allow you to stop the flow of a sentence and redirect it elsewhere.They also can let you set off a thought in the middle of a sentence, not unlike how you'd use parentheses. Only, with an em dash, it's... Read More...

Probably one of the best things clients get from typical brand pyramid exercises is the "who would your brand be?" But how do you use that information for copywriting? One of our interns this summer loved theater, and she simplified it well: Branding means writing in character. I love this copywriting short-hand because our culture's weird fascination with celebrity makes it easy for writers and clients to mimic a person in the culture, and to act out that personality when they're... Read More...

Search engine marketing and copywriting make uneasy allies. SEM means writing for a machine, for an equation, for a filter. Copywriting means expressing human desire, passion, creativity for people. Yet when you can combine the basics of search engine marketing with creative copywriting, your clients win. Big time. And I’ll address this at the end. But first, to illustrate this, I did a little experiment this last weekend with the beer making blog that’s updated by a few folks here at Pop Art. We... Read More...

Our Director of Making Money and Being Smart, Chris Tacy , sent around a link to this summary of a BBDO research study about daily rituals and the emotions they reflect . You really ought to read it, then come back here. It’s frickin’ awesome. For one, it’s a reminder that when consumers choose things, they tend to choose first on emotional reasons, then later rationalize those choices with product features and benefits. So as marketers, we have to appeal to the emotion of the benefit or feature... Read More...

I call Pay Per Click (PPC) writing “Haiku for Dollars.” Mostly becuase I think it’s funny, and people laugh so I assume they agree. But PPC isn’t much of a creative strain — unlike most creative endeavors in which a broad base of life experience helps you connect concepts in bizarre ways, PPC tends to be as surprising a corn-fed blonde making the finals of American Idol. Or so I thought. And then realized, as usual, I was right the first time. I’ll explain in a very long-winded fashion. So with PPC... Read More...

Have you ever had this experience. You rent a DVD, maybe one you’ve been waiting for. You are so excited to view the movie and you throw it in the DVD player. After the player adjusts itself, recognizes the disc, you wait through a series of warnings and previews. You fast forward or skip past all this content only to end up on the DVD menu. You wait as various scenes of the movie fade in and out, lines from the movie are played, maybe some snippet from a theme song is played, and you wait… and wait... Read More...

Here’s a checklist you may find useful when judging writing. It’s not really in any particular order, except maybe the first two or three items. And there’s probably a million exceptions to each of these, which I’m sure you’ll helpfully point out in the comments section.The real benefit of using this checklist: you’ll polish not just the words, but also “the big idea.” 1. Will the audience get it? Use words and phrases you’ve heard the customer say. Avoid, when possible, the industry jargon of the... Read More...