This week: muesli ads.

In the course of my career, I've had some hard and painful lessons about the craft of copywriting. Two of those lessons involved minor jail terms (< 5 years), and one led to my deportation in a poorly ventilated FedEx box. Happily, though, I’m here to stop you repeating the mistakes I made in my youth.

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So, you've got a muesli brief?

Despite how tempting it may be when writing ads for the Swiss breakfast dish:

• NEVER refer to raisins as "disaster grapes".
• NEVER mention the cereal industry’s brutal and bloodthirsty oat barons.
• NEVER create a ranting animated character called Muessolini.
• And NEVER write a radio ad that consists of a poem about a muesli-facilitated political assassination. Not even – and this is where I used to go wrong – not even if it rhymes beautifully and has a lovely, lilting rhythm to it.

There: the four classic muesli NEVERs. For future reference, write them on the back of your birth certificate twice – using two different coloured crayons. I chose orange and purple, but it's a matter of personal choice.

And now, to offset those NEVERs, here’s a muesli ALWAYS:

• ALWAYS give the impression that muesli tastes better than sawdust that has successfully traversed a hamster's digestive tract. Remember: it's not good enough to claim that it's on a par.

The best of luck to you.

Happy writing!

Chris

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Chris Miller | The copywriter with his own strapline.

www.ccmiller.cc | [email protected]