Schnitt hot pun
Although most copywriters turn their nose up at them, I enjoy a good pun.
Walking into the city last week, I passed a pub: the Unicorn, on Oxford Street.
It happens to be the pub where I had my first drink in Australia. So that's going back.
For years, they had a big sign on the outside wall:
'Best Schnitty in Sydney'.
Then: 'If you find a better one, bring it in and we'll swap it'.
Funny.
But they've changed it. To a fabulous pun:
'Get Schnitt faced'.
It's a pub. It's Schnitzel. It works.
Coming up with puns is quite easy. Start word-associating around the topic.
So: chicken, chick, schnitt, meal, plate, pub, grub.
Then look for a word with two or more meanings. Or that sounds the same as a word that's spelled differently.
You could have: 'Chick out our new Schnitzel', for example.
And now I've got a craving for chicken schnitzel. Advertising does work, after all.
Onto the articles that got my attention last week …
Plain English
How good is this: an article on LinkedIn Pulse.
It lists all the financial impacts of writing (or rather, not writing) in Plain English.
Referencing a Harvard Business Review article, it quotes that investment funds with less readable annual reports were worth 2.5% less.
It also quotes Grammarly and Harris Poll Research that estimates US businesses lose $1.2 trillion a year to poor communication.
Yes: trillion - a 1000 times a billion.
If you need to argue the case for Plain English, it's all here.
Webinars
Remote learning: copywriting courses, by remote. Got an internet connection? You can learn. Pick your topic, then contact me Nice idea, Jon ... >
KFC F*CK up
Oh, dear.
KFC in Germany tweeted a message to customers suggesting they celebrate Kristallnacht with one of its cheesy crispy chickens.
Kristallnacht was a night of violent attacks on Jewish-owned businesses and synagogues, in 1938.
90 people died. And it's seen as the beginning of the holocaust.
How did the KFC tweet happen?
They said it was the result of an automated push notification that linked to calendar events.
So, the tech just grabbed some data and pushed it out.
I often talk about this in my copywriting sessions. How we need to be a conscience in an increasingly-automated digital world.
Think through worst-case scenarios. Have a quality control. Dear, oh dear. One for the marketing books.
QotW
Quote of the week:
'Puns are the highest form of literature.' Alfred Hitchcock
Workshops
• Maximum Copy: online and in-house
• Copy Ninja: the craft via Zoom or in the room
• Writing for Digital: about the web, over the web
