Oh no, another New Year card!

10 advertising words to avoid in 2009

The economy, unemployment, companies folding, people losing their homes -- 2008 has left consumers wary of businesses. And that lack of consumer confidence requires straightforward, honest advertising messages to regain marketplace security. In 2009, perhaps more than ever, the words you use in your copywriting can determine whether you make a sale or lose a customer.

Here are 10 words to avoid in your 2009 copywriting.

1. Free. Ads that include messages about a free product or service promotions can work well during an economic downturn, but consumers need to see the products perform well. Email spam filters are tough on messages that include "free" in the subject line. While it might be tempting to use a subject line that says, "Open now to get your free widget," that's an email spam filter red flag that will send your message to most recipients' spam boxes.

When the economy is tough, you can't risk having your emails not make it to the intended recipients. Replace "free" with "complimentary" or "gratis" to sneak by spam filters without compromising the effectiveness of your message.

2. Guarantee. Few people believe in guarantees these days. Unless you can prove your guarantee is real, use the valuable real estate space in your ad for a more effective message that consumers are likely to believe and act on.

3. Really. If you want to waste space in your ads, include "really" in your copy. This word does nothing to help your messages. Instead, it slows consumers down, and they are not likely to wait around for the complete message. Don't risk losing them by loading your copy with useless filler words. Make sure every word in your copy is there for a reason.

4. Very. Does a message sound more compelling with "very" in it? Is "When you need very fresh flowers, call ABC Florist," more effective than "When you need fresh flowers, call ABC Florist"? If you answered, yes, reread the last paragraph.

5. That. Once you finish writing copy for your ad or marketing piece, reread it and make note of every time you use "that" in your copy. Chances are, you can delete 90% of them because "that" is a filler word that doesn't advance the consumer through the message. Instead, it slows down time-strapped consumers. Deliver the messages your audience is likely to respond to, and deliver them quickly.

6. A Lot. Don't use vague copy with words like "a lot" that do nothing to differentiate your business from your competitors. Instead, quantify your messages. If you offer 20 varieties of roses in your flower shop, say so. If you respond to customer service calls within five minutes, tell people. Which is more compelling: "You can choose from a lot of shoe styles at Sally's Shoe Boutique" or "You can choose from more than 100 shoe styles at Sally's Shoe Boutique"?

No doubt, "100 shoe styles" is more intriguing than "a lot of shoe styles." A lot can mean different things to different people. Don't leave room for guesswork in your copy. Make your messages extremely clear with no room for confusion.

7. Opportunity. You're not helping anyone when you offer "opportunities" in your copy. Consumers don't want opportunities. They want to feel confident handing over their hard-earned money. They want to know they'll get the results they want and need, not the opportunity to perhaps get those results. Don't let them wonder what they'll get when they pull out their wallets. Tell them.

8. To Be (or Not To Be, for that matter). Write your advertising and marketing messages in the active voice, not the passive voice. If any form of "to be," "has been" or anything similar appears in your copy, rewrite it. Writing in the passive voice doesn't command action. Writing in the active voice does.

9. Synergy. This overused piece of jargon has had a long life, but it's time to move on. Leave jargon and 10-dollar words out of your advertising messages. There's no room in copywriting for buzz words and words that consumers need a dictionary to understand.

Consumers don't care about your "unique value proposition." They care that when they pay for your product or service, it will deliver the results they expect. Naturally, there are some exceptions to this rule, such as B2B copywriting, where jargon might be expected. In most copywriting, however, keep it simple.

10. Drinkability. Budweiser is already using "drinkability" in its ads. Seriously though, the point is valid -- don't copy your competition. Instead, differentiate your product and business with unique copy and messages that your target audience is likely to respond to.

The rules of successful copywriting don't change from one year to the next, but as the marketplace and environment change, so must your messages. Use the list above as a guideline to writing great advertising copy in 2009.

(via The Street.com)

Charlie Brown's holiday card project

So true!

World's greatest business mind

After an exhaustive search spanning thousands of nominees from five continents, the International Collective Council of Excellence has announced this year’s World’s Greatest Business Mind to universal acclaim and fanfare.

The decision was unanimous despite the fact the world-class shortlist comprised such well-known names as Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Bruce Wayne, George Soros, and that kid who invented Facebook. Here's the award video.

Black Tulip: Bend over

The line in red reads: You are here. Black Tulip. Europe's most exciting gay hotel.

Japan to get rid of Google street view of its cities

Japanese lawyers and professors have banded together to ask Google to stop providing street-level images of the country's cities online.

Google Street View lets Google Maps users zoom directly to the ground floor of certain cities, providing a photographic view of the area from the perspective of a pedestrian or driver. 12 Japanese cities have been profiled this way, as well as 50 US cities and certain parts of Europe, reports Reuters (via MarketingVox).

"We strongly suspect that what Google has been doing deeply violates a basic right that humans have," stated professor Yasuhiko Tajima of constitutional law at Sophia University of Tokyo.

"It is necessary to warn society that an IT giant is openly violating privacy rights, which are important rights that the citizens have, through this service."

Tajima spearheads the Campaign Against Surveillance Society, which seeks to persuade Google to delete all images of Japanese cities on Street View.

Japanese privacy advocates join a list of other countries that recently raised voice against Street View. After discovering last month's terrorist situation in Mumbai was planned in part with use of Google Earth, legal reprsentatives in India demanded that the country's High Court implement a "blur" on sensitive images on the service. Prior to that, operators of an Australian nuclear reactor voiced a similar request.

In March, Google complied with a request by the Pentagon to refrain from photographing military bases.

But privacy issues surrounding Street View aren't entirely political ones. Civilians expressed distress upon finding their images incidentally recorded in Street View. Such incidents included a woman shown subathing, and a man leaving a strip club in San Francisco.

How to make your advertising copy more personal

No matter what your advertising medium, drive your message home by making your advertising copy personal. Because nobody wants to buy a product from someone who sounds stuffy and unfriendly.

Write in First Person

Let's say you're in real estate. You're running a print ad for an exclusive neighborhood. Tell your customer the benefits of living there as if you're having a one-on-one conversation.

For example, the body of your copy could read:

You won't have to mow the lawn ever again. All of our properties are right on the beach. A breathtaking view without the hassles of yard work make Alibaugh, India the place you'll want to call home.

Use Contractions

As you've probably noticed, all advertising articles here on the About network contain a lot of contractions. How many I ams and you ares, plus we wills would you like to read over and over?

It's all a part of making it personal. We're just having a friendly conversation about advertising.

Limit Your Commas

It's similar to the contractions rule. Commas everywhere really distract your eye.

Your message gets lost because your reader is trying to make sense out of your sentence. Keep your sentences short enough that you don't require a lot of commas.

And, But, Because

You probably learned back in elementary school that you can't use And, But or Because to start a sentence. Your teachers lied to you. It's perfectly all right to use them to begin a sentence.

Ask your old teacher. She'll probably confess. You were taught that because they didn't want you to make incomplete sentences by using And, But or Because to start a sentence.

And if she doesn't confess - just remember - it's advertising so anything goes!

Eliminate the Pressure

Just pretend you're talking to a friend. One way to make it easier on yourself might be to just forget it.

That's right. Forget that you're writing an ad, your company needs this ad to be successful, etc. Throw out all the pressures and sit down with your computer or legal pad and pen.

Now, write a letter to a friend. Tell your friend about your product. When you're finished, you'll have a lot of copy blocks you can extract and use in your ad. It's a great mental trick that can help in a pinch.

Radiohead: House of cards

Radiohead just released a new video for its song "House of Cards" from the album "In Rainbows".

No cameras or lights were used.

Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

Watch the making-of video to learn about how the video was made and the various technologies that were used to capture and render 3D data.

Angry monkeys beat cruel trainer with his own stick

Angry monkeys turn on their cruel trainer and beat him senseless with his own stick after he handed out a vicious beating to one of the trio during a performance riding mini bicycles in a market in Sizhou, China.

24 tech tips for the basic computer user

1. You can double-click a word to highlight it in any document, e-mail or Web page.

2. When you get an e-mail message from eBay or your bank, claiming that you have an account problem or a question from a buyer, it's probably a "phishing scam" intended to trick you into typing your password. Don't click the link in the message. If in doubt, go into your browser and type "www.ebay.com" (or whatever) manually.

3. Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80 million to help them liberate the funds of a deceased millionaire…from Nigeria or anywhere else.

4. You can hide all windows, revealing only what's on the computer desktop, with one keystroke: Windows key+D in Windows, F11 on Macs (or, on recent Mac laptops, Command+F3; Command is the key with the cloverleaf logo). That's great when you want examine or delete something you've just downloaded to the desktop, for example. Press the keystroke again to return to what you were doing.

5. You can enlarge the text on any Web page. In Windows, press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys (for bigger or smaller fonts); on the Mac, it's the Command key and plus or minus.

6. You can also enlarge the entire Web page or document by pressing the Control key as you turn the wheel on top of your mouse. On the Mac, this enlarges the entire screen image.

7. The number of megapixels does not determine a camera's picture quality; that's a marketing myth. The sensor size is far more important. (Use Google to find it. For example, search for "sensor size Nikon D90.")

8. On most cellphones, press the Send key to open up a list of recent calls. Instead of manually dialing, you can return a call by highlighting one of these calls and pressing Send again.

9. When someone sends you some shocking e-mail and suggests that you pass it on, don't. At least not until you've first confirmed its truth at snopes.com, the Internet's authority on e-mailed myths. This includes get-rich schemes, Microsoft/AOL cash giveaways, and--especially lately--nutty scare-tactic messages about our Presidential candidates.

10. You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.

11. When you're filling in the boxes on a Web page (like City, State, Zip), you can press the Tab key to jump from box to box, rather than clicking. Add the Shift key to jump through the boxes backwards.

12. You can adjust the size and position of any window on your computer. Drag the top strip to move it; drag the lower-right corner (Mac) or any edge (Windows) to resize it.

13. Forcing the camera's flash to go off prevents silhouetted, too-dark faces when you're outdoors.

14. When you're searching for something on the Web using, say, Google, put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. For example, if you put quotes around "electric curtains," Google won't waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word "electric" and another set containing the word "curtains."

15. You can use Google to do math for you. Just type the equation, like 23*7+15/3=, and hit Enter.

16. Oh, yeah: on the computer, * means "times" and / means "divided by."

17. If you can't find some obvious command, like Delete in a photo program, try clicking using the right-side mouse button. (On the Mac, you can Control-click instead.)

18. Google is also a units-of-measurement and currency converter. Type "teaspoons in 1.3 gallons," for example, or "euros in 17 dollars." Click Search to see the answer.

19. You can open the Start menu by tapping the key with the Windows logo on it.

20. You can switch from one open program to the next by pressing Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command-Tab (Mac).

21. You generally can't send someone more than a couple of full-size digital photos as an e-mail attachment; those files are too big, and they'll bounce back to you. (Instead, use iPhone or Picasa--photo-organizing programs that can automatically scale down photos in the process of e-mailing them.)

22. Whatever technology you buy today will be obsolete soon, but you can avoid heartache by learning the cycles. New iPods come out every September. New digital cameras come out in February and October.

23. Just putting something into the Trash or the Recycle Bin doesn't actually delete it. You then have to *empty* the Trash or Recycle Bin. (Once a year, I hear about somebody whose hard drive is full, despite having practically no files. It's because over the years, they've put 79 gigabytes' worth of stuff in the Recycle Bin and never emptied it.)

24. You don't have to type "http://www" into your Web browser. Just type the remainder: "nytimes.com" or "dilbert.com," for example. (In the Safari browser, you can even leave off the ".com" part.)

World's first timescuplture ad from Toshiba

• Toshiba debuts world’s first “timesculpture” commercial, an evolution of the “bullet time” technique made famous by The Matrix
• Groundbreaking £3million ad campaign manipulates “moving snapshots of time” using more than 200 Toshiba Gigashot camcorders
• Soundtrack is provided by Crystal Castles, whose singer, Alice Glass, topped NME’s 2008 Cool List last week
• Integrated campaign to promote Toshiba’s new range of upscaling products – TV, DVD and laptops - that convert standard definition TV and DVD images to near high-definition quality
• The TV ad was shot using 200 Toshiba Gigashot Cameras: the highest number of moving image cameras ever used in a film sequence
• This particular technique, viewing looping action in 360 degrees, has never been done before
• The rig was custom built weighing approximately half a tonne, including 200 cameras and electronics
  * The rig measures 14m diameter circle and 1.8m high
  * The 200 cameras were all triggered using a single remote control
  * Once the rig was built, four focus pullers spent three days focusing and aligning all 200 cameras
  * The time spent processing footage from 200 cameras was over four weeks - 24 hours a day seven days a week!
  * New offline and online editing software had to be specifically built for the job
  * In terms of data, this is one of the biggest jobs a post-production house has ever taken on - 20TB of data

Robot made of Legos solves Rubik's cube automatically

The Tilted Twister made of Legos solves Rubik’s cube fully automatically.
Just place the scrambled cube on Tilted Twister’s turntable. An ultrasonic sensor detects its presence and starts to read the colors of the cube faces using a light sensor. The robot turns and tilts the cube in order to read all the faces. It then calculates a solution and executes the moves by turning, tilting and twisting the cube.

Gatorade: Ball Girl

With viral videos, marketers try to create a pop culture buzz that eventually becomes associated with a brand.

In this viral ad for Gatorade, a ball girl takes an amazing catch. The brand subtly makes it presence felt.

Of course, Gatorade's whole pitch is to overestimate the power of situationally superior hydration, but in this context the puffery comes with the charming wink.

John Oliver's thoughtful analysis on Mumbai tragedy

John Oliver explains that when you're a bankrupt ideology pursuing a bankrupt strategy, the only move you've got is the dick one. Most Mumbaikars would agree.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mumbai Tragedy

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video