My wife and I have a puppy.
A lovely little fellow, but he can be a bit of a challenge sometimes.
So my wife joined a few support groups, most of them on Facebook.
She goes there to share her experiences, to ask for help, and also to give help to other puppy owners facing similar training challenges. These are vibrant, active communities.
When you meet someone new, you have a conversation. Maybe starting with, “Hi, I’m Nick. Good to meet you.”
These first conversations take place at work, at a coffee shop, at your local gym, at a friend’s backyard BBQ. And so on.
However trivial their content, conversations lay the foundations for our relationships.
What we say to people creates a first impression. Good or bad.
This is a great story, from my hometown of Montreal.
Feigang Fei is the owner of a Chinese restaurant called Aunt Dai. It has all the usual dishes you’d expect… from Imperial Rolls, to Orange Beef, and General Tao Chicken.
Going by the choices on the menu, there’s nothing particularly special about either the restaurant or its menu.
What is different is that when you open the menu, you’ll find not only the names, pictures and prices of the dishes, but also some thoughts from Feigang Fei.
Here is what he says about their Orange Beef…
People have different takes on what it means to be a “copywriter”.
Back when I started, long before the web came along, the definition was pretty simple.
We were the writers who wrote print ads, TV commercials, radio spots, billboards, and point-of-sale materials.
That was pretty much it.
In the online world, things are a little more complicated.
I hate reading articles and posts written by experts.
Well… maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.
But I do hate reading articles where it feels like the writer is looking down his nose at me.
Writers like that remind me of the kind of teacher who barely even acknowledges students in his classroom. He just talks and instructs… expecting his students to remain quiet, and soak up his infinite wisdom.
We’re exposed to this kind of writing all the time.
I don’t imagine there’s a company on the planet that had a contingency plan for the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nobody was fully prepared. No government. No business.
We were all caught by surprise.
This is uncharted territory.
I’ve been trying to figure this out for my own business.
And one of the tasks I set myself was to watch what’s going on in the world of marketing and promotion.
In particular, I’ve been watching the kind of messaging companies have been putting out.