(found via the interesting Brain Pickings blog)

UPDATE: After watching this three times, I realize I had no real idea how powerful a storyteller he is. His movies had always moved me, but listen to the rhythms and intonations of his speech. He’s always in story mode…

For a time, you try to emulate them, though the gap is mammoth. Eventually you find our own voice. But you never forget your first.

When I was learning the craft, my copywriting hero was Tom McElligott, a copywriter and creative director who won awards by the truckload, especially after he hit his stride at the Fallon-McElligot agency. The agency so dominated the awards competitions that his retirement became fodder for the next year’s call for entries.

McElligot's agency dominated the awards shows

Under his direction, Fallon McElligott created the famous “Perception/Reality” ad campaign for Rolling Stone, and McElligott was credited with brilliance like the “The Daily Diary Of The American Dream” tagline for the Wall Street Journal. They challenged the creative conventions of the time, and successfully.

In fact, I’m temped to say McElligott was largely responsible for the rise of the famous “Minnesota School” style of hard-hitting print advertising, but that’s a fanboy’s perspective.

But I’ll say it anyway.

Unlike today’s consumer advertising, where visuals dominate and copy is considered an impediment to an ad’s global effectiveness, McElligott’s print ads featured witty, aggressive, sometimes-provocative headlines pinging off equally witty visuals.

A playful fear appeal? Hard to do, but brilliantly executed.

The whole of his campaigns always exceeded the sum of their parts. And the reader was invited along for the ride.

Fallon McElligott also became famous for their aggressive new business campaigns; in one memorable pitch, Fallon McElligot parked a Sherman tank in front the Scott’s (lawn care) headquarters. The banner said they’d do whatever necessary to “protect Scott’s turf.”

The creative new business pitch; risky, but worth it (they won the account)

Given the simultaneous appearance of McElligott and legendary creative shops like Chiat/Day, Wieden & Kennedy, GB&S and others, it’s hard not to suggest the 1980s were the Golden Age of Print Advertising.

(This was before the Internet tried to strangle the big idea and copywriters reduced themselves to sweatshop status by labeling what they did as “content.”)

Another McElligott ad

Right now, marketing is as much in the hands of programmers as creatives, though eventually the pendulum will swing back towards the kind of creative insurgency which sprouted in the 80s, when McElligott, Lee Clow and others headed out into largely unexplored space.

When that happens, copywriters could do a lot worse than use McElligott’s print work — which displayed an uncanny mix of personable humor and head-butting impact — as a starting point.

Keep creating, Tom Chandler.

The famous (and hugely insightful) Rolling Stone "Perception vs. Reality" ads

Literary fun at the New Yorker's "Page Turner" blog

The New Yorker launches its new Page-Turner book blog with a bang — and a slide show of literary cartoons.

Occasionally I come across people who claim to be writers, yet don’t subscribe to The New Yorker. Look folks, Us Weakly isn’t going to get it done.

Keep reading the good stuff, Tom Chandler.

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I’m fascinated by the work habits of writers.

I’m addicted to the “The Setup” site, and have consumed all of John August’s “Workspace” screenwriter interviews.

Sadly, copywriters are poorly represented in the writer’s universe (there are some real and imagined biases that account for that), and I thought it was time to shine a spotlight on a handful of working copywriters. And by “working” copywriters, I mean writers who rarely get to enjoy the luxuries of writer’s block, sloppy work or a byline.

Good copywriters play in a merciless arena of ideas and tight writing, and writers who thrive in that space are probably worth a little study.

First up in my Working Writer’s series is Bad Language’s Matthew Stibbe — author of what is probably the only copywriting blog from the mid-aughts still in my RSS reader. Copywriting blogs tend towards transparent self promotion, yet Bad Language has remained a sometimes funny, always authentic look at copywriting and marketing.

The umbrella site for all Matthew Stibbe's sites (not a bad idea)

Stibbe’s English (so he sounds funny but writes well), and works with blue-chip clients like Microsoft and HP.

Not a bad place to start. Welcome to Working Writers.

Tell Us Who You Are and What You Do (briefly)

My name is Matthew Stibbe. I’m CEO of Articulate Marketing where most of my work is business-to-business copywriting for large tech companies, including Microsoft, Symantec, HP and LinkedIn.

My background, hopping on one leg, is: history at Oxford, a decade making computer games and a few years as a freelance journalist. When I’m not writing, I’m flying, learning Dutch or running my other business, Turbine.

I have a writing blog and a flying blog and I’m a contributor to Forbes.com.
 

What Hardware & Software Do You Use?

My main day-to-day writing machine is a bit of a frankenputer made up of bits of other computers glued together. It has a five year-old motherboard but 16GB of RAM and a new SSD plus two huge 1920×1280 screens of hinged arms.

Why I like it and why I keep nursing it long after it’s sell-by date is that it is completely silent. It has a double-walled aluminium felt-lined case, an enormous but silent fan and a graphics card with a huge brass heat sink. Silence is the best working environment for me.

It runs Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (hey, I work for Microsoft, what did you expect?) I do almost all my writing in Word, after nearly two decades of hard wired habit. I use an Apple USB keyboard after I wore out two Microsoft ergonomic keyboards in as many years. It’s not so much the durability or the feel of it (though both are good) but it’s just really quiet when I’m typing so that works really well when I’m taking notes during a phone interview.

I have recently swapped my trusty HP notebook for a MacBook Air. The HP is okay (and their new Folio 13 is very good indeed) but the Air is the most beautiful laptop I have ever owned. It’s fantastic and I love it deeply.

I’m a connoisseur of ultraportable laptops and most of them have been disappointments. The OQO, Libretto, tiny Sony Vaio, the 1995 HP 200LX, two Newtons, four Pilots and many more have all been through my grubby paws but only the Air has really delivered portability and functionality in the same package. (Although the old Toshiba Portege 3440CT did a pretty good job in its time.)

I use some others pretty regularly: Balsamiq for UI mockups, OneNote for note taking, Outlook for task management, Live Writer for blog posts. I’m slowly moving to hosted cloud apps for routine business stuff and I’m loving Freshbooks for invoicing and Capsule for CRM. I use Microsoft Office 365 for email hosting and it works really well. And Dropbox, but you’re already using that, aren’t you?

I have an iPad which is great for reading. Every aspiring writer should be a greedy reader and I have the New Yorker, Atlantic, Wired, Economist and Kindle on my iPad. I also like the Readability app. Not sure I could write a long article on my iPad but I’m thinking about how I might be able to use to mark up or edit documents via Dropbox.
 

Any Special Copywriting or Workflow Tricks To Share?

Three big breakthroughs in my working life:

1. Ruthless task management. I have a good list that tells me all the time what I need to be working on and when it’s due. I have had this since I was 15 but it’s evolved from a school notebook to a carefully curated Outlook task list.

2. Document parsing. I studied history at university and learned, mostly by practice and enlightened laziness, the ability to read through a lot of material quickly and soak up the bits of information I needed. Also, for larger more formal projects, the ability to take notes and clip out the bits of data I need for references. This makes large projects much easier.

3. Doing interviews on the phone rather than schlepping out to see people and then taking notes while I’m talking so I don’t need to write a post-call transcript. When I was a journalist this technique literally saved me two or three days a week. Even as a copywriter, interviews are a valuable tool and this approach means I can do a bunch of them without spending a lot of time on the process. There’s nothing like talking to an expert to get a project kick-started.

I don’t know how useful this is as advice. If you want some advice, I think my best tip is to learn to concentrate. Getting up early and writing in the morning is also helpful, but again, I already wrote about it.
 

What Pieces of the Puzzle Are You Missing?

Context switching between jobs is a big issue. It takes a while for my brain to Alt-Tab between one client’s project and another. So when the phone goes and I have rewrites to do and two or three little things to do in a day, I’m much less productive than when I have one big project and the whole day (or week) to do it. So I love it when clients give me big chunky projects to do. It’s not just the money, it’s the chance to really get up into top gear and put get motoring.

What I’d love is two or three screens with the resolution and size of the new iPad 2.5. It would be easier on the eye and better for reading.

I think my perfect setup would be three iPad-style screens plus a computer that is as quiet as my current one but much faster. However, I suspect that in two or three years, I’ll be running very little local software. It’ll all be in the cloud and all I need is a great screen and a great keyboard and a good Internet connection.

The biggest non-technical problem I have is that my intellect knows it has to write because of deadlines or mortgage payments but my ego doesn’t want to. The more I write, the more I sympathise with Ezra Pound’s gentle satire:

THE LAKE ISLE
O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,
With the bright little boxes
piled up neatly on the shelves
And the loose, fragrant cavendish
and the shag,
And the bright Virginia
loose under the bright glass cases,
And a pair of scales not too greasy,
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing,
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.
O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
or install me in any profession
Save this damn’d profession of writing
where one needs one’s brains all the time.

The Web Economy Bullshit Generator

I first blogged about this years ago, and while it could probably use a language update (who “reintermediates out-of-the-box e-commerce” any more?), it’s still a useful, relevant tool for many online marketers.

At least that’s what a casual survey of marketing blogs would suggest.

If that’s just a little too e-commerce for you, then consider the Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator, which offers you the ability to “harness citizen-media folksonomies.”

I suggest using both at the same time, making it possible to engage 24/365 mindshare while integrating peer-to-peer synergies.

(I’m doing it right now, and I’m telling you it makes feel awesome and a little dirty at the same time.)

So the next time you need to fill that ad, report or blog post with marketing jargon that absolutely no one could disagree with (you can’t disagree with something that doesn’t exist), then drop by.

I looked for a Social Media Bullshit Generator, but then realized (somewhat foolishly) that a visit to many social media guru blogs offers pretty much the same effect.

Keep bullshitting, Tom Chandler.

UPDATE: I missed the Bullshit 3.0 site the first time around. I’m not sure it’s as vertically agile as the first two, but it’s clearly bootstrapping seamless engagement, and really, what more could you ask for?

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You can't write your next novel without it -- the USB Typewriter

As always, I work my fingers to the bone to bring my readers the best in writer-related entertainment.

Keep writing (and enjoy the sore wrists), Tom Chandler.