Copy that works, a copywriting masterclass with Vikki Ross

0:06Welcome back to Uncensored CMO. Now in this episode we're going to talk about words. Now I know I'm usually talking, but actually we're going to talk about the importance of words and getting them right. What makes great copy? So in this episode, I'm joined by the wonder woman of words herself, Vicky Ross, who is an expert at brand tone of voice and how to deliver great copy. It's a great conversation and we really get into it. Here it is. Vicky Ross, welcome to the show. Thank you. That's so unfair because I thought that we were off mic and camera and we were just joking around as to what you were going to introduce me as.

0:40Well, I've had this thing going on. I probably shouldn't reveal this on the podcast, but James and I often say the best conversations happen just before you press record. So I said, can we just press record a bit early every now and then and just see what happens? Oh, right, where the magic happens. The magic happens off camera, you see, so try and bring it in. But the Wonder Woman of words, I like that. Maybe that'll stick. But tell me how you got into the job of copywriting that you have today. Like most copywriters, I think, of my age and generation anyway, by accident, I didn't know what copywriting was.

1:12I knew that I liked magazines and the adverts in magazines. I didn't know that you had to follow a path necessarily to get to write those things. I got a job as a secretary and a PA and an office admin assistant in various places and in that run of jobs I ended up as an office assistant at a tiny direct marketing agency that doesn't exist anymore and I after a while realized they wrote well I didn't know they were called reader offers in the national press I thought they were adverts to me that's what that looked like and I was confident in my ability to write and so I asked the creative director if I could write an offer and he said yes and because it was direct marketing they could measure it and it performed well and so I went on to write many more.

2:02I thought that that was me now calling myself a copywriter. I was there for two and a half years I think. I left, I went traveling. When I came back, put myself out as a copywriter applied to creative recruitment agencies hoping to get work in ad agencies no one had ever heard of me they hadn't heard of the agency that I worked at they didn't care that I'd written reader offers because direct marketing isn't as sexy as you know above the line advertising I didn't know ad school existed I didn't know I needed a portfolio I didn't know anything so I ended up as a PA at the body shop where eventually after messing up my boss's diary quite a lot she said what is it you actually want to do because this isn't it and I said well I've been writing reader offers I really like writing so she gave me uh some copy to rewrite and straight away said oh yeah you're in the wrong department and there's more to it I won't bore you with the rest of it but I ended up in the creative studio at the body shop for six years how brilliant well that's a wonderful story isn't it if you keep on doing what you're good at eventually you know you're gonna you're gonna get your break yeah well I think I just told people what I wanted to do I didn't know that there was maybe a way of getting there.

3:13I mentioned going to ad school, but also, I mean, I don't have a university degree, for example. I didn't do any internships or placements or anything like that. I just told anybody that I met that I wanted to be a copywriter. And some people listened and made me one. That's a great bit of advice, isn't it? And often it's one of those things that sometimes you don't realise there are jobs out there doing what you love doing. And they don't often teach you that at school, do they? No, it's a bit, yeah, if you don't ask, you don't get. But I think that's good advice for anything, especially in a job.

3:43You know, when people say, I hope they promote me or I hope they give me a pay rise. Well, they aren't lying in bed thinking about you. So you need to tell them and then it might happen. That's what I think. So for someone listening now that wants a career that you've had and wants to get into copywriting, what would your advice to them be? Well, I think it's a tiny bit different now. So I would probably work harder at getting a portfolio together. And coming up with spec work is quite difficult if you don't have a brief and you haven't got any experience. So I don't know how much D &AD like me doing this, but I always tell people to download the new blood briefs and use those, even if you're not going to enter the competition.

4:23or think about who you want to write for so if it's Nike for example take their last tv ad and extend it into a direct mail or a social media post and then that becomes your you know a bit of work to go in your portfolio and then write to someone at Wyden or someone at Nike and say look what I did because this is what I really want to do for you and then hopefully they'll come back to you obviously that sounds very simple and like a quick easy road to success you might not get a reply from someone at Nike, but going back to if you don't ask, you don't get, you've got to be in it to win it, right?

4:58You do, you do. Which actually ties nicely into one of my favourite copywriters full-time, Paul Arden, who wrote the incredible book, It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be, the world's best-selling book by Paul Arden. And I just, I shamelessly borrowed that for the podcast, the world's number one podcast by John Evans sort of thing. But that book, he's amazing, isn't he? at really simplifying ideas and dramatising them. But this is the kind of advice he would say, wouldn't it, in his book about, you know, you don't get it if you don't ask. Yeah. And I think there's something in being creative about the whole thing too.

5:32So, you know, proving what you've got. And I don't think there's enough stories like this anymore in the advertising industry. But when Graham Fink and his partner at the time wanted, they were junior creatives and they wanted to work. Actually, was it Versace? Or maybe he went there later. I don't want to mis-tell the story, but whichever agency it was, I'll remember as soon as we stopped recording, they said, oh no, appreciate your work and it was nice to meet you, but we're looking for senior creatives at the moment. Do you know this story? No, I don't. So they left and they went to a charity shop and they bought a walking stick and a hat and an old man coat and they went back in dressed as senior creatives and said, we're here for that job.

6:13And the creative director couldn't resist them. And the creative director was famous. So it's really annoying me that I can't remember who it was. And I'll kick myself if it was Paul Lardin. We will check it out. We'll put it in the show notes. Don't worry, listener and reader. We'll make sure it's covered. That's brilliant. I remember when I did a degree in finance and then decided at the end of my degree in finance, I wanted to go into marketing, which is a bit of a pivot. And more than this, we'll come back to cars as well. I loved cars, right? I was a real car geek. And so I thought, I want to be a marketer for the car industry, right?

6:42So, and I narrowed it down. and I think I had my top three brands and top of the list was Mercedes. So I got the latest E-Class press ad and I photocopied, this is a long time ago, so I was in the photocopier and I was using kind of, what's the white thing you had to tip X? You know, you had to kind of cross that. So I rewrote the ad as me. So basically talking about the features of the car, I wrote it about why I was good for the job and then photocopied it, reproduced the ad and sent it to them. This is what I'm talking about. Yeah, exactly. It's this kind of stuff, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

7:15Did I hear back? Oh, at least you tried. So anyway, my very short-lived career in car marketing, which is probably why I've got a bit of a beef with them, actually. Well, I was going to say it's a shame because... They could have used even my 21-year-old's attempt at a copyright to help, couldn't they? I think the car industry needs some help with their advertising. Why are car ads so bad? I don't know. I could ask the same question right back at you. I have no idea. Is it because there's not much that they can say that's different between models and brands? Or is it that the people that work there are uninspired?

7:53Because I don't know what, it drives me mad. It drives. So unintentional. Drives me around the bend. I'm annoyed at that, yeah. Up the wall. Yeah, it does drive me mad. because and this is the same for any big brand with a big product all these brands have something really interesting to say they're just not investing the time and energy into finding that finding that thing to say and I think that's such a shame and I'm paying more attention to small startups now please don't ask me to name any because I won't be able to off the top of my head because I've only just started to pay attention because it always used to be about the big sexy brands for me but now I think the smaller brands and the startups they've got far less people involved in the whole thing they know who they are they know what they want to say and they just go out and say it but maybe there's too many people in all these bigger brands and they're talking their way into something and then right back out of it again because what they're coming up with is not interesting some of it doesn't even make sense you know find your tomorrow today or something like that that a car brand future is an attitude future is an attitude unlimit the more yes get the fuck out of here who knew design was this it was the other one oh yeah who said design can't excite you oh yeah as well yeah i noticed you tweeting on that i did tweet that um because it was a banner ad that came up and every time i saw it i was like no one fucking said that maybe you did in your meetings but no one on the street is going well i can't even is it nissan yes yeah yes no one's going nissan you your design can excite us thank goodness you've come i can't even make up a conversation that a consumer would have about that line because it doesn't exist well this is probably we'll come to i'd love to come to your tips about this because um part of the reason i'd love to talk to you is i i find copy quite intimidating and i i mean this is why obviously so many people probably employ you is that but i mean english used to terrify me at school i mean honestly if i had to confess to cheating anything it would be in my english exams or english well i cheated in maths so well there we go yeah whereas i did maths in like two seconds flat 100 it was like easy peasy but english always scared me because i was like i was always terrified about how to write how to properly express how i felt was i found really difficult and um it's been a really hard journey for me i remember a couple of years ago i decided i'm I'm going to have a real go at LinkedIn because I need to build my own profile.

10:23So I committed to doing a post every single day. I found it so difficult to sit down and go, right, I've got to say something interesting to the world. I'm like, oh, I can't think of anything. Or I'd start to write in, go, oh, that doesn't sound quite right. And eventually I kind of, I suppose, found my own tone of voice a little bit. And then someone amazing on LinkedIn just did this summary of like people to follow who've got great tones of voice. And she had me as an example. I'm like, oh, this is a bit weird. But she called me the leading, leading the marketing conversation with muted sarcasm and authority.

10:56Lovely. So there we go. So that was quite a proud moment. So you're better than you think you are. Apparently. Yeah. Although I don't quite believe it yet. And then, of course, the next thing that happened, I got a call from Russell Parsons and said, I think you should write a regular column for Marketing Week. So part of me was flattered. The other part of me was terrified. I'm like, okay, Russell, how many words? Like 1 ,200 words, John, on a topic that I was talking about. But honestly, it was terrifying. I can stand and speak in front of 2 ,000 people and talk about anything. Write 1 ,200 words for Russell for Marketing Week and I'd go into a panic.

11:27I wouldn't be able to do that either. But I think everything that you've just said is evidence of why copywriters need a good brief and they also need time in the process because you can't just come up with something on the spot. I mean, you can, but it'll be better if you've had more time to think about it. So you setting yourself the challenge to write something every day. if you don't have something in you that you're you know bursting with that you want to get it out and you can't wait it's going to be a struggle and if you're setting yourself a brief that's also really difficult write anything well where do you start yeah yeah no it is it's the old there's nothing like the freedom of a tight brief as they say which is which is very true um i mean actually one of the things one of the ways i got around that was actually using the podcast as stimulus for ideas so what i do is every week i'd listen back to the episode have with the guest and go right what three things did i learn and what and how can i express what i learned in a simple way sort of thing and so i kind of train myself to do that i guess like anything that you know when you put time and effort into it yeah and then try and find different ways of telling it like a quote and then a fact and then you know try and sort of vary a little bit yeah i think lots of people look for a formula in writing and there are techniques and there are things that we've learned but there isn't one really if if I had to give you a formula based on what you've just said I always say to people write at length first it's very hard to write succinctly straight off the bat so write at length what is it that you want to say almost write a brief to yourself or even like a letter to yourself so dear John today I'm going to write about blah blah blah and then go back through that paragraph and pull out all the key bits that you want to include put them in a list this is just what might work for me everyone's different and then go back over that list and see in terms of hierarchy what you want to say first second last and then tick it off like a shopping list and then that becomes your brief to yourself if you don't have one that's really good i like that no that's and it makes it kind of makes it less terrifying as well doesn't it because you can kind of get something down and then use that and then refine it almost experiment a bit and then go well what did i like and what didn't i like but i think people think well i write all day every day so how hard can it be I can just put myself in front of a piece of paper or a blank screen and come up with something but if you lay it all out like that then you've sort of given yourself like an instruction or a paint by numbers situation and maybe it doesn't feel very creative but sometimes that's what we need yeah definitely to be creative well the only place I've found to write my marketing articles are on long-haul flights with a glass of wine as I turned out that's that's been my trick well uh like a steady flow or stream of consciousness aided by wine i would hate to read what i might write if i also i write i write it put the laptop down give it an hour watch a movie read a book and then open it back up and read it again it's usually like oh i didn't mean that and then i can't change it again but that is also an issue with writing copy so like i said copywriters can write quickly but we're better if we have more time also the overnight test such a luxury but it's really important.

14:36I could write a good ad in an afternoon and then send it off because the client needs it by the end of the day and they've given you three hours and that's it. And then go to bed and then wake up with a much better line, but it's too late. So I have to save it for something else. Now, talking about the overnight test, I'd love to ask you, are there any examples where copies gone a bit wrong that have kind of caught your eye recently so you know are there any fact i remember reading the the book eat shoots and leaves which i thought was a brilliant you know illustration of where you know get your grammar wrong can can lead to unintended kind of interpretations but anything you've seen where you've thought oh i didn't quite get that right just on the grammar book by the way there's the elements of fucking style is a really good book on punctuation and grammar because it's so memorable because it's funny because remembering all where your commas and colons should go is quite difficult although in copywriting you don't need a huge amount of punctuation um I can't think I'm sure there have been some like real clangers and probably in the world of social media somebody would have put that all over it the only thing that comes to mind right now on the spot is I saw a Pepsi ad earlier this week a TV ad unfortunately I can't remember what it's for or what else was going on in it other than the line that said we got zero right or pepsi got zero right which i don't think is saying what they think it is if i had to guess they're probably because obviously pepsi are competing with coke zero so i imagine they're kind of claiming that they because there's the pepsi test challenge and their whole campaign is around seven out of ten people prefer a Pepsi to Coke.

16:16I imagine they're thinking, oh, we actually got that one right, not realising that by saying it, they got it completely wrong. Yeah, which is clever, but you need to know that that's what they're saying. And I suppose the line wouldn't be as tight and fun if it was, we got Coke zero. It doesn't quite make sense. So I think it's an intentional play, but it's not doing what they want it to do. It's probably one of the traps as well, where they're writing for themselves as opposed to writing for the people they want to talk to. Yeah. I've got a bit of a beef with brands like Pepsi and Burger King.

16:53Just stop having a go at your competition or bringing your competition into your advertising. You're just advertising them, not you. And when you're a big leading brand like that, you have so much to say, so much really interesting stuff to say. Back yourself. I can't stand it when I work with a lot of really big category leaders and when they say oh competitor did blah blah blah so we want to do that i mean you're bigger than them why are you even looking at what they're doing i mean obviously we have to be aware of what others are doing but we don't then do what they're doing that's for us to then go right well we'll leave them in the dust away we go with something much bigger and better and thing i think people people forget is is most people drink most things occasionally right so chances are that anyone that they're talking to probably drinks coke and pepsi right at different times on different occasions so it's not as if the customer's going i have to make a choice between these two which is it going to be oh right now they've just proven that theirs is the best i'm going to go for that one yeah but wouldn't we want uh if we were pepsi wouldn't we want people to only drink pepsi though i mean i get what you'd like that to be the case yeah i'm not sure whether that's actually how people you're not going to walk out of a restaurant when they go we've only got i'm not i'm not gonna dine here because they got the wrong wrong drink or the famous line is pepsi okay which is okay yeah yeah yeah that's clever yeah that is a very clever one so you said and um i think recently that writing copy is easy now i think it's really hard so break down for me how how what are the principles of great copy so writing copy is easy if you know how i thought so yeah it's not just writing copy is easy but also I like people to think that it is easy once they know how so that they invest time and energy into doing it and doing it well.

18:42The first thing I think to remember before we do anything is to remember that copywriting is a conversation with the consumer so this isn't formal writing that we were taught to learn at school for some reason and I do it as well when we get to work we sit in front of our computer and our shoulders go up and we go all formal and we say words that we would never really say because we're trying to be professional but when we're talking to real people in the real world and this obviously depends on tone of voice and types of brands but in the main we should be talking as if we're having a conversation with them and if it's right for the brand we should even be entertaining them so yeah conversational copy it's not easy for people to do but once they know how which is you write like you talk although sorry I'm going to get myself all caught up there's a narrative that all brands should write how we talk but it's how the brand talks not how the copywriter talks you don't want to hear the copywriter's voice in the copy and to get to conversational copy whatever that tone of voice is is to I say get real get personal and get active and get real is using the real words that people really use um get personal is to talk directly and only to your audience, preferably as if you're talking to one person, and to talk more about them than yourself, because no one cares about you, the brand, they want to know what's in it for them.

20:01And then get active is the horrible active voice. Sorry, the active voice isn't horrible. The active voice is excellent. I hate talking about it. It's horrible to talk about because it sounds like I'm an English teacher, and I'm not. But the active voice makes everything quicker more lively more in the present the opposite is the passive voice and it makes it copy feel like whatever you're talking about has already happened so your audience is going to switch off or think i can't get involved in this um so they're the basics on being conversational and with conversation i mean it seems like we've had this trend ever since innocent said hi i'm a bottle with eight and a half raspberries in you know we're all trying to create you know try and turn our whatever we sell in into a person so where are the limits of that kind of approach because sometimes it can it can be a bit forced can't it where everything has suddenly got its own personality i think it depends on the brand i personally don't like it when um objects become people so if you're in the asda supermarket at the checkout till and the till isn't working there's a sign on it that says I'm broken like that's too personal for me but the innocent example it's funny that you mentioned them because they haven't come up for so long in this sort of a conversation that I would have I think we all accept who they are now and as brands are maybe we're savvier to go on and find other ways of being our own version of an innocent without copying them.

21:32Like Barclays, I remember, did try to copy them. I don't know if it was, we're going to copy Innocent, but it was around the same time that Innocent was so popular. In the window of a Barclays branch, they put a poster on one side that said, through these doors walk the loveliest people in the world, which I didn't like. You're a bank, don't talk to your audience like that, in my opinion. And at the time, Barclays was much more corporate and formal than it is now. And then on the other side, it said, as voted for by their mums. Don't bring people's mums into it. This is far too personal. You haven't spoken to people.

22:08What's going on here? And so, yeah, Innocent has a lot to answer for in terms of any type of brand thinking, I can get away with this. It's got to be built in. Like, at least with Innocent, it comes from within and it goes everywhere. I don't know if you've been to their head office. They've got fake grass and picnic benches. And even when you go to the toilet, there's a chart to show how hydrated your wee might be. And then you need a smoothie if it's a certain colour. So it's in everything. And I love that you turn it upside down and it says stop looking at my bottom. But that's right for innocent.

22:45It is, totally. And they employ quite a few copywriters, I think, don't they? It's a full-time job in Fruit Tower. And across all their markets as well. So they've got the translators there who aren't just direct translating their copywriters too. That's the difference. You need a trans creator, not a translator if you're trying to replicate a tone of voice. Good advice there. One of the things I've heard you refer to as well, really, really helpful when trying to think about copy is this sentence has five words by Gabby Provost. So explain that a little bit because I think it's a really, this is something actually I've learned myself through my kind of LinkedIn kind of writing.

23:24is to kind of vary how I say it and what I say to create more drama. But yeah, describe that because I think that's good advice, isn't it? It's a piece of writing that loads of writers have seen. It gets shared a lot. I share it in all my workshops. I always say that everyone should have it printed off and in their notebook or saved on their desktop. I think it's just evidence of how a long piece of writing can flow. so the first two paragraphs are made up of sentences of five words and as you read them they become really monotonous so you can see that you need to vary things up and then later he adds in a two-word sentence and a one-word sentence and then the last paragraph is 25 words in one sentence which you would think is not going to work but because of the way he adds in other techniques like alliteration and the rule of three it makes all the copy flow and all of these things add up to putting rhythm into your writing and rhythm makes your message memorable.

24:25I think that's one of the biggest things I've learned actually in attempting this myself is that you sort of start writing in similar length sentences and writing in a consistent sort of flow and just by kind of shortening things, asking a question, just put it like you say, just having one or two words to dramatize something or then putting a space in or starting a new paragraph, all those things suddenly just break it up and make it you know create the drama yeah well we can be as copywriters i often say we could be um did i say as copywriters i did as copywriters we can be art directors is what i was trying to get at with our words so yeah it doesn't have to just be again like what we were taught at school sentences across a page we can break them up i love a one-word sentence i think they can be really impactful not everyone gets them i did write some copy for a client once and I put a one word sentence in and they asked if it was meant to be there.

25:19I thought I'd just forgotten to not put a full stop or something. We didn't get our money's worth. I'd made a point. It was something that they did quickly. So I wrote the sentence and then I did a one word sentence that was fast. So it was like, and we do it fast. But yeah, she said, I don't think that word's meant to be there. And I thought every copywriter's every word is meant to be there. They know what they're doing. Yeah, yeah. That's one bit of feedback not to give to a copywriter. But I took it out because sometimes you know which battles you're going to win and which you're going to lose.

25:48Well, I know exactly. You've got to follow the money sometimes. Another one actually, Colin, my Colin, always refers to is the power of a six-word story. And the one that gets me every time was the baby shoes for sale, never worn. I know. Oh, sus. Never been worn. Never been worn, yeah. It's just amazing. And there's a real power in being choiceful, isn't there, about the words you use. and sometimes working really hard to make less mean more. You know, the power of a short sentence over a long one, isn't it? Yeah. Well, I love to edit. I always think the shorter the better. You know, we need to be respectful of people's time and interest in us.

26:27Yes, people will read for as long as they're interested. Yes, people have signed up to brand newsletters or follow them on social media. So they are looking to see what brands are saying. but that doesn't mean we've got their attention for an hour or that we're going to write something long and convoluted and they're going to take the time to work out what it was so I'm all for short sweet to the point and a bit of fun. Now talking of this we set each other some homework didn't we? Yeah. So you came up with this concept of a copy safari so explain what it is and then let's jump into how you and I did on the exercise.

26:59Copy safari is when I take industry friends out on the streets and we look at work in the wild and I started it because in all the creative studios I've worked in you do the work it goes up on the wall you all walk around you stand back you take a good look at it you're not looking at looking at it on the screen and when I then started working for myself I'm not doing that at home on my own so I started going out and doing as I said taking people with me and and we tweet our findings as we go and I didn't expect people to join in but so many people join in I saw that oh I thought this or what do you think I've seen this one or people go on their own copy safaris I now take clients and agencies out on copy safaris it's a different way to learn about branding marketing writing I think it's really important to see things in situ to consider the environment around where the work is and to see if anyone's paying any attention when you're standing there staring at it are people walking by quite often when i'm taking a photo of something someone is always looking what is she taking a bit there's nothing interesting over here no it's just the poster um but it's uh it's i think it's really important i have to confess having done this this morning on the way in that there was a little bit of a stalkery vibe going on when i did this so i'm going through liverpool street station in the middle everyone's rushing to get where they're going and i'm trying to like snapshot the revolving poster above the train times and no one knows what the hell you're doing and getting some funny looks yeah yeah which i guess lesson number one is most people are not watching your ad looking at your ads which is the sad truth so which makes it even more important of course that when you do get their attention they do something with it but i've even been over to a bus stop and asked someone to move out of the way i've said sorry i know this is weird but could you just move out of the way so i can take a picture of that poster and he went it is a bit weird um and so i thought even explaining that i wanted to take i mean he didn't know why but he thought that why would you take a photo of a poster but then i mean we could then uh veer off into uh when posters used to be like advertising posters used to be something you did actually want up on your wall on your wall yeah yeah well the other the other frustrating thing is how many ads are now in digital posters because of course back in the day you'd have one poster per site right and you'd see the same spec savers out or whatever it was now that i glimpsed an ad that thought was interesting i had to wait about five minutes for it's come round again so i had all the other ads going on and then you've got to like you know be concerned with the lighting because on the digital ones sometimes they don't you know photograph right well which is really annoying it is isn't it there's more to this copy safari than might yeah i always say to people you've got to bring a full uh fully charged phone wear trainers uh don't carry a bag like we're out for two hours this is not be prepared to wait for the cycle yeah this is a proper exercise that we're doing now it's okay so talking about exercise you set the homework i've taken this very seriously so i've graded the uh the posters i love that you've done that that's so on brand for system one i know right exactly well i was going to do a system one five star scale but i thought i should go even more english and go i've done it on a a to a to e with pluses and minuses as well right because it's giving me like rubbish at school i know it's got real school vibes let's start with you then so what do you see on your way in this morning i saw and i've seen it a number of times prime's bus ad that shows um images of entertainment on the platform and the line is it's right here and i don't like it and i know we shouldn't say if we like something or we don't like something we need to be more objective than that of course so speaking objectively as somebody who specializes in branding and tone of voice and who has worked predominantly with entertainment brands for the last 12 years I think they have far more that they could say it's right here doesn't tell me anything it definitely won't tell a consumer who who if they even notice it on a moving bus I know it's only three words so that's good because it's quick they'll they'll read it or they'll see it if they see it.

31:05But what do they take from that? I think it would be much more compelling to say something about the types of shows that are available or how many shows maybe. Or if I really overthink it, do they mean, and I don't think they do, by the way, do they mean it's right here on the bus with you, the entertainment is right here on the bus with you? That's what confused me. Because you can watch it on your phone. If it was it's right here and it's in your feed and you literally click it and it's right here, I'd go, oh, get it, right? It's the call to action. On a moving bus, I'm left a little bit unsure as to what's right here.

31:37Yeah, yeah. And now that I'm really overthinking it, because you said moving bus, I'm thinking the bus turning right. It's not that at all. Oh, wow, I didn't even think that. You're right. You only just gave me that. But, yeah, it's not that. Okay, so we're going to grade this as a… Well, like all my school reports used to say, could do better. Okay, could do better. Very good. All right, what do you see next? I thought it was Nurofen, but we discussed this before recording. Now, this is interesting because we both saw the same poster on the way in this morning. Yeah. But there were two different brands.

32:08Yeah. So, yeah, which did you see? Well, I thought it was Nurofen, but you've told me it's Neuermol. Well, I saw both in the same rotation. Which I've never heard of, by the way. Yeah, yeah. So I saw a Nurofen and a Neuermol ad in the same – they were a couple of posters between them, but they were in the same rotation. Looked the same as well. They're both silver packets. Yeah. Same kind of lockups. Similar kind of frame. I, in fact, I saw the Neuromol ad, waited for a bit, saw Neurofen and thought, oh, there's two versions of the campaign. This is a different execution. So I photographed it thinking it's part of the same campaign, waited a bit, saw it again, went, oh, they're different brands.

32:46Different brands, but they must be from the same master brand. Also, I've only just realized Neuromol is Neurofen and Paracetamol? Producer James has got the answer. Yeah, it's a Nurofen brand. Yeah. And it is Paracetamol Nurofen. There we go. So same company advertising complimentary brands on the same poster size. Interesting. So I saw the name looks slightly different. I was like, is that like a rip off? Yeah, it does look like what you get in Audi. It looks like the Audi version of Nurofen. But we haven't even talked about the line. What was it? Oh, stronger than yours? There's one new customer system that's not going to win off the back of this podcast.

33:25Right, let's get to the lines then. You don't know, actually, because often if I criticise something on social media, for example, a brand might come to me and say, we saw you say this about blah, blah, blah. Would you mind? Oh, that's a cunning plan, isn't it? Can we have you come in and do a talk? So do you pick the people you're going to work for and then just dial up the sort of critique? Do you know what? I wish it was that strategic. You know what? My whole career and life has been no plan. Nothing. I don't plan anything. I do what I'm told by a client, but there's no strategy behind anything that I do.

33:58It's probably true for most of us, actually. Yeah, but I think people maybe try and retrofit a plan. But yes, my tweeting about brands and ads, for some reason, I didn't think that anyone would then contact me. If anything, I thought it'd be the opposite. They'd be like, she could shut up. Blacklist her, yeah. Anyway, what did it say? Well, we had two. We had two, didn't we? So we had Neuromol, stronger than your builder's tea, versus Neurofen starts to get to work in eight minutes, lasts up to eight hours. Okay. What do you think? So stronger than your builder's tea, I really like, but I don't think it's a good line for the product.

34:37Because while we can relate to builder's tea and the strength of it, we're now only thinking about the benefits of a cup of tea. So are we saying that Neuromol makes you feel like you've had a strong cup of tea? so it's not a pain reliever then the other one there's some numbers the other the other one the other one starts to get to work in eight minutes last up to eight hours now the problem i have with this one is there was so much copy i couldn't read it in the two seconds before the poster rotated that was the thing i struggled with but there's something about eight minutes is quite quick and eight hours is quite long so i thought the juxtaposition between those two things kind of worked but it felt too lengthy it is too lengthy i would be tempted to go with something and this is me making it up on the spot but works within eight minutes lasts for eight hours that's still quite long but at least it's a bit quicker yeah the starts to get to work in eight minutes now i can hear a lawyer at some point i i think there's some like they submitted it and then had a big letter back going you can't say that was like everything in eight minutes i bet it was about three sentences longer actually probably this ain't gone in eight minutes and the L 'Oreal's gone, hang on a minute.

35:46We can't be saying that or anything like that. I worked in beauty. As I said, I ended up at the body shop and I worked with, so L 'Oreal bought the body shop in my last two years of working there. And in those two years, I worked with L 'Oreal's legal council and I loved it. I learned so much. So he was amazing because he understood what I needed to do but I understood why he was there and a lot of marketing people don't understand what a legal team is capable of when it comes to marketing and are scared of them so they don't bring them into the process they just go with oh we can't say that legal and will never let us and I always say if you ask them yeah no there's no point they won't let us and that's just not the case it's top advice bring legal in early get close to make sure that they're involved you know otherwise there's nothing worse than right at the end of the process and suddenly talk to the legal team yeah there's no way you're saying that and then you get a line like that and everyone goes oh legal got hold of it at the last minute yeah we had we had that with lucas say we were going energy beats everything and then and and then we then got the challenge world does it well well no we mean generally you know like kind of thing and then we had to put a clarifying statement on it we mean the universe and we had this really ridiculous clarifying sentence underneath it.

37:07That's crazy because in my experience of working with lawyers, I think that they would have allowed that under the term marketing puffery, which is… Oh, that's a good get out of jail, isn't it? It can be upheld in a court of law, from what I understand. Is this a thing? Oh, yeah. Marketing puffery is a legal term. This is so going to come back on me, isn't it? Breaking news, ladies and gentlemen. of marketing puffery. The lawyer I worked with said if it's marketing puffery, then a court of law is going to know that you're making a claim that can't possibly be proven either way and you're doing it for marketing sake and you're not claiming for one minute that this is true.

37:45That actually makes sense of our... Because I think, if I remember, energy beats everything, the universe is yours. And so by almost making that extra exaggerated claim, we were making sure that people knew that we're talking so... Yes, exactly. We were exaggerating so much. much that you know we couldn't possibly say that drinking this means you can beat your opponent exactly whatever yeah yeah but having said all of that if you do need a disclaimer that should be in your tone of voice too drives me mad when i see all these terms and conditions that are you know suddenly it's like a lawyer wrote them rather than a copywriter and it's completely off brand like there is there is ways of making everything on brand so then you should get your your lawyers involved in marketing and your marketers involved in law let's start an agency really mix things up Marketing and law.