The b2b agency for better business
27
Jan
2011
Anyone who’s been involved with creating global campaigns has had his or her share of headaches as they wade through feedback from local sales organizations. ‘The Chinese hate it, the Indians don’t understand the headline, the Germans have no word for future-proof, the Italians would like to use another model, the Brazilians are doing their own stuff … and the Americans, well, if we don’t make the necessary changes, they’ve threatened to send in the Marines.’
25
Jan
2011
When I was growing up in England (many moons ago), advertising was liberally sprinkled with all manner of grammatical transgressions.
These ranged from the tantalisingly tautological ‘Domestos – kills all known germs dead’ (they’re already dead if you’ve killed them, right?) to the British Egg Industry’s admonition that we all ‘go smash an egg.’
18
Nov
2010
Mark Twain once said ”I didn’t have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one instead.”
There is, of course, something in what he said. But how do you write briefly and succinctly? Here are some useful tips.
3
Nov
2010
Don’t be fooled by the ready smile and the polite, friendly manner. Like a bird of prey, she hovers over our printouts, swooping down with her red marker to eliminate stray umlauts, greengrocer’s apostrophes and a thousand other illiteracies. For sensitive American audiences, she happily removes taps and installs faucets, while never straying from the sidewalk to the pavement. In fact, very few words in any language or medium leave the building before she’s cast a critical eye over them – carefully weighing linguistic and cultural subtleties. The people who wrote or translated them wouldn’t have it any other way. And neither would the clients. Thank you, Barbara, for not only being a patient sounding board, but also our ultimate quality insurance policy.
PS. If you have any questions of your own about English copy, by all means get in touch with Barbara at
7
Oct
2010
Depends on who you ask. Many in the ad business would say Art Director and Copy Writer. But they aren’t the only answers. That’s why we’d like to tip you off about a website that explains loads of acronyms and abbreviations.
1
Jan
2010
No, it’s not a typo in the headline. Happy New Year to all of you celebrating according to the Gregorian calendar. To all others: Happy New Year in advance! Time is, as famously said, relative and so is chronology.
25
Nov
2009
Most of us learnt in school that you should not begin a sentence with “And”. But many copywriters seem to have a preference for starting a sentence with exactly that word.
Who is right, the English teacher or the copywriter?
18
Nov
2009
You have no doubt seen the dummy text lorem ipsum many times. But do you know where it comes from?
Contrary to popular belief lorem ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC – De finibus bonorum et malorum. The book is about ethics and is written by Cicero, the Roman politician and author.
Lorem ipsum has been used as dummy text in the printing business since the 16th century. In the ‘60s it was popularised when Letraset released sheets with this dummy text. The text also survived the arrival of computers and appears in several software design programs.
To find our more, visit lipsum.com and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum