As a writer, I have often been chastised by other writers about my excessive use of commas. I always push back, unrelenting, unless forced to comply with an editor expounding (and pounding on their desks) examples in their favorite style guides. It’s mostly a personal preference of mine, but it comes out of my years of experience struggling for clarity. What is an Oxford comma? The Oxford comma, also known as the serial comma, is Read More …
This is an old one, but the rules of writing and grammar are (sort of) eternal; this applies today just as much as it did 15+ years ago… Proofreading your text for misspelled words and grammatical mistakes is essential. What about the punctuation, though? Despite being more subtle, these errors can equally hurt your credibility. I’m going to point out six common punctuation errors that you shouldn’t be making, and give you examples so you’re Read More …
If I’m being honest, data privacy is a topic that tends to elicit more eyerolls than expressions of enthusiasm among marketers. After all, data is supposed to be the fuel that powers the modern marketing machine. Marketers are awash in myriad types of data about past, current and potential future customers. Personal information, purchase history, web behavior, social graphs, second- and third-party audience segments — it’s all synthesized, sliced and scored to optimize marketing outcomes, Read More …
The sauce is S for simple, A for appealing, U for unexpected, C for credible and E for emotional. Simple Simple messages have one central truth and are easy to grasp and picture. Coming up with a simple truth is the hardest thing. How do you boil down what you want to communicate to one thing? Most marketers have several things they want to advertise and aren’t good at sacrifice. Proverbs are the example: simple Read More …