Tag: Marketing
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The Courage to Kill Good Ideas
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One of the biggest misconceptions about our industry is that the best creatives are the ones with the most ideas. In my experience, the opposite is often true. The people who consistently produce the strongest work aren’t trying to fit every clever headline into the campaign or every interesting insight onto the slide. Instead, they’re…
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The Writers’ Room Playlist: Midnight Margins
Midnight Margins is for the writers who tell themselves they’ll work for “just twenty minutes” and look up to discover it’s 1:43 a.m., the hour when distractions disappear, ideas get bolder, and second drafts turn into the third. These aren’t the obvious singles—they’re the songs tucked into the middle of great albums and feel like…
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Taste Is the Last Competitive Advantage
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I think we’ve been asking the wrong question about AI. The conversation has mostly centered around whether it can create, but the more interesting question is who decides what’s worth creating in the first place. We no longer live in a world where ideas are scarce. If anything, we’re drowning in them.
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The Secret Sauce of Great Copy: CTAs That Convert
Writers obsess over headlines, subject lines, and hooks, and rightly so. But a brilliant headline without a strong CTA is like a beautifully plated meal that no one tries. Your CTA is where you turn interest into action. It removes friction by making the next step obvious and guides behavior by answering the unspoken question,…
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How to Write Headlines That Actually Work
Years ago, I wrote what I thought was the perfect ad: smart copy, clean design, and a headline I was proud of. When the results came back, though, the numbers told a different story: almost no one read past the headline. That was the day I learned the hard truth about copywriting: the headline isn’t…
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The Basics of Copywriting: What Every Writer Should Know
People often ask me what copywriting actually is. Much to the chagrin of my relatives who still think I deal with copyrights, my answer is always: it’s writing with a purpose. Copy isn’t poetry. It isn’t your journal. It’s not even content, exactly. Copy is writing that persuades, informs, and moves people to act—whether that’s…
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How to Know When It’s Time to Rebrand
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When Cracker Barrel unveiled its recent rebrand, the internet had thoughts—lots of them. From memes to outrage to measured applause, the reaction proved one thing: people feel deeply about the brands they’ve grown up with. But here’s the truth: backlash doesn’t necessarily mean the rebrand was a mistake. In fact, it can signal that a…
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From Lyrics to Launch: How Taylor Swift Turns Storytelling into a Marketing Masterclass
When Taylor Swift releases a new album, it’s never just music—it’s a cultural moment that’s carefully orchestrated, deeply personal, and nearly impossible to ignore. That’s not luck. It’s strategy. And it’s one of the clearest demonstrations of how storytelling can drive loyalty, conversation, and cultural relevance.
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Sweating the Small Stuff: Why Great Copy Lives in the Details
While the rest of the world is slathering on SPF and dreaming of popsicles, I’ve been thinking about sweat—the kind that comes from laboring over a single word in a headline, reworking a CTA for the fifth time, or debating whether “discover” or “uncover” feels more on brand. That kind of sweat? It’s the secret…
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Snackable Content: How to Make Every Word Count
Today’s audiences are busier, savvier, and more distracted than ever. If your content isn’t easy to consume, it’s easy to ignore. That’s where snackable content comes in: short-form, high-impact content designed to grab attention, quickly deliver value, and keep your brand top of mind.
Sara Barton 