This week I bought a jacket – some outdoor wear so that I can make the most of the glorious British summer without catching cold. I read the label of course, and marvelled at the quality of the copywriting without actually understanding the words. It wasn’t really written in plain English – it was more about concepts – but it certainly reassured me that I’d got value for money. › Continue reading
There’s no doubt about it, someone, somewhere is laughing at editorial staff. It is probably more than one person – probably a group of people working in league, a network of the well-connected, the rich and powerful. And their objective? › Continue reading
I’ve been using Google Analytics to measure visits to my blog. Every week I discover that new users are checking the site, but are they coming back? Then I found out about this thing called Blogpulse.com which tells you ‘what’s hot and what’s not’ in the blogosphere. I was surprised to see that editorial issues are not hot – positively frigid, don’t even come up in the search facility. › Continue reading
Life just gets more and more terrifying, doesn’t it? If you thought swine flu and climate change were scary, then gird yourself for the terror of a bank holiday weekend. If you’re planning to leave home, you’d better think again. Statistics show that you’re more than likely to “face delays” as you “brave the chaos”.
Of course, if you’re travelling by train, tannoy announcements apologising and offering pathetic excuses will only add to your misery › Continue reading
Yes, it’s a pun. Brilliant isn’t it? Clearly the word ‘plane’ here is used to mean ‘plain’ but conjures up images and the suggestion of aeroplanes. At least, that is, for those who know how to spell – and of course, only in writing – not in broadcast or other forms of verbal communication.
I don’t think those anti-aeroplane people hired a marketing professional. I don’t think a single one of them even did a copywriting course. And for once in my life, I think that’s a pity. › Continue reading
I went on a course this week – ‘Effective copywriting’ – all part of my plan to transform myself from grubby B2B sub to highly-paid marketing professional. It was a pretty good course and I think I may have picked up some useful tricks about lateral thinking. But, the tutor would insist that we should avoid using the same word twice. He called this ‘elegant variation’. › Continue reading
I went to a workshop on web 2.0 the other day, at my local library. I thought it might help me manage my blog. And I may have picked up a few useful tips (possibly). Time will tell.
In some ways it was a belittling experience. Of course it was run by geeks – self-proclaimed geeks who were incredibly proud of how geeky they were. They talked about web 2.0 as if they had invented all of what they insisted on calling ‘tools’. They spoke through self-satisfied grins and talked about going on a “social media journey”.
As I’ve been advised to ‘engage with the blogosphere’ I’m thinking of leaving a comment on this webpage. Trouble is it’s so hard to think of anything positive to say.
Digital-Marketing Series: 9 Ways to Reach Digital Natives (and the Rest of Us, Too)
Even if I did like extremely long headings (that one’s the length of a short sentence, for goodness sake) I definitely take exception to the cutesy tone of the first paragraph.
Obviously we all like to share our personal lives online. I know I have shared some of my bitterest and darkest thoughts on this blog, and may be it’s saved me. But really! If my 11-year-old progeny was attending the “Digital Marketing Mixer”, I think I’d keep it to myself.
The recession is here. Even now Barack Obama is president of the United States, our jobs aren’t safe.
So I’ve been looking to the marketing profession for inspiration. After all, if I’m going to have to fight other editors for work, I need to know how to market myself. I decided to find out more about marketing. I even thought I might learn that ancient profession. I could write copy, couldn’t I? Professional marketers earn a lot more (a lot more) than professional editors, and seeing as I can’t understand the words I edit any way, it might be a good career move.
I decided to find out whether there was some sort of professional marketing body I could turn to. So I typed “marketing profession” into google, and – testament to how skilled these people are – the Chartered Institute of Marketing came up at the bottom of page 2.
Their courses are ‘groundbreaking’ apparently.
Which reminds me of something else I saw – it could only have been days or hours later when I happened to see the Royal Town Planning Institute website. Everybody’s at this marketing malarkey, I thought, as I read their strapline:
“Mediation of space, making of place.”
It sounded really good. I turned the words over, rolled them round my tongue and repeated them. Gosh that sounds so good, I thought to myself. I wonder what it means.
“Mediation of space, making of place”.
I wanted to linger a moment longer, but then realised that it reminded me of something I’d heard before – something that the government came up with. Yes that was it: ‘place-shaping’. I remember now – what the ‘Sun’ newspaper once took to mean “making a nice office”.
But back to this strapline: how do those clever town planners mediate space?
A friend of mine once trained in professional mediation. She worked for a while with couples who were seeking divorce. She said it was about finding common ground between people.
This couldn’t be the same thing, could it? Do town planners sit between opposing walls, hostile plots of land, listening to their grievances. Could they be the answer to the problems in the Middle East?
I was excited to think I might have discovered something important. Something that perhaps Barack Obama might want to know.
But I thought I’d better check – so I turned to the Oxford English Dictionary and looked up ‘mediation’. It said:
“1. intervene in a dispute to bring about an agreement or reconciliation.”
I started to get excited but then this caught my eye:
“2. (technical) be a medium for.”
So, it turns out the RTPI is ‘a medium for’ space, and of course, I don’t mean in the sense of getting in touch with the space that’s passed over to the other side. That would be ridiculous. I mean, ‘an agency or means of doing something’.
The town planners are a means of doing space.
May be when I know more about marketing, I’ll be able to understand big concepts like that.