I fought the law ...
Patrick Pawling
Communications strategy and content marketing for tech, healthcare and financial services.
... and the law won. This time it was the Branding Police.
The deliverable was a case study. My instructions were to interview the sales team and write it per the template and brand guidelines. But that meant playing it safe. I believed safe was boring, predictable and therefore ineffective.
?My ego and I, we had a better idea.
It started to form when I learned that the sale leading to the case study didn't follow the usual script: By the time our sales team learned there was a chance to get in the door, the prospect was ready to sign with a competitor. Then, at the last second, our team wrangled a chance to present. The prospect was so impressed it signed with us.
I thought this twist presented a compelling setup for the case study: After Company A had made up its mind to buy a competitor's solution, our team rode in on a white horse with a solution too compelling to refuse. The situation pivoted from, "We didn't even know you offered this," to "We've got to have it."
So I wrote it that way. The sales team signed off with minor revisions and sent the job upstairs for review.
Then the white horse hit the fan, starting with an email from one of our brand managers. Importantly (to me, at least) this email didn't go only to me. It went to my boss. It went to all the salespeople who trusted me. It also went to their supervisors, and to the people at the company who were giving my boss the work that kept us all going.
It was scathing — to me, the cheapest of shots. Even now, many years later, it makes me want to punch a hole in some sheetrock ... but only in a spot where there's no stud and only in someone else's house. I've cooled some.
The gist: How could somebody who supposedly is capable of writing case studies ignore one of our main branding rules: We are always to be depicted as the #1 choice.
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The tone wasn't, "Let's pause a minute to get this thing more in line with our branding guidelines." It was, "Whoever wrote this doesn't know what they're doing."
Yes, I wrote a reply copying in everybody who had seen the original. No, I didn't send it, mostly out of respect for my boss. I did lay everything out in a private email to said boss, including my reasoning for ignoring branding, which was basically, "Whatever happened to telling the truth, especially when it makes the client look great? If the rules had to bend, so what?"
What a boss, by the way: This was a person who could tell me straight-up when I was wrong while motivating me in a positive way to do better.
The verdict: My angle of attack was sound, in a vacuum, but I should have run it up the chain at our agency before presenting it to the client.
I didn't argue. There was no point. My boss was right. So were the branding police. ?I screwed up.
I still believe that words and ideas should not follow, but lead. That's why, as a copywriter, I still go for edgy and different. But my deliverables don't exist in a vacuum. They have to play in a bigger universe, one that I do not control completely. Nor should I.
Thoughts?
See you next Thursday.
Content Strategist | Marketer | Storyteller | Writer | Translator of Tech to Human | Asker of "What If?"
8 个月I've often had to wear the uniform of the branding police and wield the red pen. Branding guidelines are just that — guidelines. (That's why we don't etch them into stone tablets.) Marketing provides myriad situations where you have to decide whether to adhere to the letter of the law, align with the spirit of the law, or throw the law out the window. That said, when I receive an unexpected interpretation of an assignment, I do react —?with questions. Maybe I'm too close to the assignment to see the actual story. And then, well, we have a conversation about conversations so we can stay better aligned on future projects ??
Freelance Writer, Nature Print Artist, and Outdoor Maintenance Technician, and Arborist Assistant.
8 个月Not knowing all the details, the impression from my distant viewpoint is this: your future holds assignments that are better suited to your unique talents, perspective, skills, and courage. No more "follow the template" drudgery. Like throwing red undies in with the whites, maybe you subconsciously sabotoged the dreaded laundry task so can now go outside and chop firewood. Plus, it seems you struck a nerve. Critiquing you -- attacking your abilities and then copying in everybody -- when at issue was the product you delivered, feels like a defense mechanism. It's as if you nailed something they lack the courage to fix.
Master Wordsmith, Storyteller, Detail-Obsessed Writer and Editor
8 个月Spoken like a secret superhero, Pat. I can't possibly venture an opinion here lest it be evaluated as a truth proposition, and therefore completely adverse to the work of copy writing. Truth is so last century, I'm surprised my fingers can even type the word.