How to Create Copy That Doesn't Suck...But also...
Doesn't say "that doesn't suck"
Hello Gobbledeers,
How’s it going?
Last week I linked to an article where the author wore the Friend AI thingy dingy for a little while and then wrote about it. Except that wasn’t the article I linked to. Amazingly, only Gobbledy reader and former person-who-lived-in-my-apartment Scarlett B. bothered to alert me to that. So, here’s the correct link that you will definitely not click on. Scarlett B. - you get 100,000 GobbledyCoin added to your wallet.
Moving on…
I’m speaking at two events next week:
- The Martech World Forum takes place on Tuesday & Wednesday November 18 & 19 here in New York City…I’m speaking on Wednesday. I have two free passes for Gobbledy readers - the only catch is that you have to work for a brand (ie, not for a software company, or a consultant, or a fractional, or someone related to me, etc….) If you work for a brand and would like a pass to this event in NYC next week, shoot me an email at jared@sagelett.com.
- FED Talks (at least that’s what it’s called until the TED Talks people send a cease and desist letter) takes place Thursday, November 20th starting at 1pm…it’s a free, virtual event with marketing people giving 20 minute presentations that are supposed to be very tactical. My presentation will, obviously, be amazing. You can sign up for the free event here.
Lastly, y’know how everything kinda slows down in December? That’s a great time to fix your homepage messaging - if you homepage confuses your prospects (or board members), let’s chat! I’m at jared@sagelett.com or here’s my Calendly link.
OK, today we’ve got:
- The correct subject line for the email telling everyone they’re fired
- AI tools and guilt
- PhArt
- A suggestion that doesn’t suck
A Quick Public Service Announcement
There have been so many layoffs lately. Soooooo many.
And if there are layoffs, that means there has to be an email telling the company that there are layoffs.
And if there’s an email telling the company that there are layoffs, then there needs to be a subject line for that email.
A Gobbledy reader shared the email sent to employees at a very large media company announcing layoffs, and the subject line was “Tough Day.”
Here’s some free advice: The subject line on all layoff emails should be, “A Company Update.” That’s what it should always be. If you ever get an email where the subject line is “A Company Update,” then you should:
1) shit a brick; then
2) start packing your stuff or help your friend start packing their stuff. Some stuff will need to be packed.
“Tough Day” is saying, “Gee, as CEO this is a very hard day. For me. As someone who makes $117 million a year and still has a job. Tough day. I know you no longer have a job, and let’s be honest - it’s a tougher day for you. I was going to have the subject line be, ‘Tougher Day’ because it’s a tougher day for you than it is for me, who has $117 million and a job. You’ve got the tougher day, I’ll admit that.”
Just go with “A Company Update.”
(Co-Pilot is fun.)
A Quick Reminder About AI Tools
Consider this all a side note:
I’ve been working on a project with a client where we’re using an AI tool, and it turns out that not using the AI tool (and using a spreadsheet for this particular task) was faster and more accurate. That felt weird, and I felt like I had to justify that decision - I’m not not embracing AI, but that given the current state of AI tools, sometimes what I was doing before actually just worked better.
I subscribe to a newsletter called Grow.co written by a guy named Adam Lovallo, and in it this week he wrote this about creating digital ads for an app he’s working on:
“I’ve had a lot of fun diving back into the mobile/mobile web UA world. Notably, the most frustrating aspect of this entire experience for me has been creative. I’ve tried a variety of AI generated assets, UGC style videos made by competent performance creative agencies and/or sourced from UGC platforms, playables, and screenshots. Annoyingly, nothing has come even close to beating our screenshots.”
Given the amount of hype around AI tooling, I thought this was a good reminder that sometimes what you were doing before worked well, and you shouldn’t feel guilty (or have to justify) why you stopped doing something that worked well to try something that may or may not work.
OK, carry on…
Your Company Name Is Probably Fine As It Is
Sometimes I like to give a little behind-the-scenes peek into the writing of Gobbledy (something literally none of you have asked for), and I will do that now because this is my newsletter.
I’m going to share a little story about the Philadelphia Museum of Art and why they fired their Director. You may know that that particular Museum features that steps up which Sylvester Stallone ran in the movie Rocky. So I was going to start by saying, “Philadelphia Art Museum Director Ends Rocky Tenure” but that felt like a very, very, very long road for a middling joke. Yet, I’m a dad, and it’s a dad joke, and like most dads who like dad jokes, I had to share it despite knowing it would - at best…at very very best - elicit a groan.
You are welcome.
Anyway, the Board of the Philadelphia Museum of Art fired the Director of the museum (at least in part) because of a rebranding project.
If you work in software, this does not sound like a particularly interesting story - more like, “oh, was she there for 18 months? It must’ve been time to fire her because of a rebranding project she did.”
Funny enough, in the museum world most people do not get fired quickly because of re-branding projects.
The director decided that she wanted to change the name to reflect the “museum’s transformation into a more engaging and expansive institution.”
To do this, they changed the official name from The Philadelphia Museum of Art to (wait for it) The Philadelphia Art Museum.
As a lover of prepositions, I was immediately filled with offense. Nobody should dismiss the preposition, one of the most important of all parts of speech.
But then I read that the people of Philadelphia had rebelled against the rebranding, which included colloquially referring to the museum as “PhAM,” and instead the people of Philadelphia chose to refer to the museum as “PhArt.”
I can always get behind a phart joke, especially one like that that doesn’t stink.
However…
Why weren’t people always referring to it as The PhArt? Shouldn’t the brotherly lovers of Philly - who famously booed and threw snowballs at Santa Claus during an Eagles halftime show - have noticed at some point over the past 90 years that they could call it that? How did those oblong pretzel eaters never notice that?
Anyway, what I’m saying is that if you are ever doing a rebranding project, you should definitely show it to a bunch of 14 year olds before you roll it out to make sure you’re not missing anything, phart-wise.
The Giant Sucking Sound…
Approximately a million years ago, when I was in 6th grade, I had a teacher named Mrs. Malloy who taught English and is directly responsible for my incredible (and incredibly annoying to others) nitpickyness regarding grammar - Mrs. Malloy had us diagram sentences up the wazoo.
Mrs. Malloy was also terrifying to 11-year-old me. I don’t know if they still make middle school teachers like this, but she accepted absolutely no nonsense from anyone, and I can confidently say that when you have a room full of 11- and 12-year-old boys there will be an extraordinary amount of nonsense.
(Side note: I know this because it was in 6th grade when I was sitting in our New Jersey-mandated, very progressive sex-ed-for-11-year-olds class where, after Mrs. Berger explained “nocturnal emission,” I started laughing and then crying so hard that I fell off my chair.)
As I was saying, Mrs. Malloy terrified me, which is why my worst day of middle school occurred when I was on the playground playing basketball (er… “playing”) and I said that a shot I took, “sucked.”
Mrs. Malloy marched over, pulled me aside, and made it clear that we were not to use that kind of language (the sucky kind), and it’s unacceptable, and do I hear that language at home?
It was here that I faced the first ethical dilemma of my young life - my father worked in live television, and if I were to tell you one thing about live television it is that there is an unthinkable amount of swearing that occurs when producing a show. As noted in this classic:
So, well, yes Mrs. Malloy, I had absolutely heard this kind of language at home. However, even 11-year-old me knew that the correct answer was, “No, nobody speaks like that at home,” and I took it on the chin, and to this day I get a little shiver in my bones whenever I hear that something “sucks” in mixed company.
So now you have a bit of background as to why I have a violent, unpleasant reaction to the oft-oft-oft-used “XXXX that doesn’t suck” wording I see from tech companies everywhere. To wit:
Yes, I will note the irony that, in fact, copy that doesn’t suck does not include the phrase “that doesn’t suck.”
Like if you saw this, I know what you’d think:
Yes, that sucks. (Sorry, Mrs. Malloy).
If you’re ever in a meeting about messaging, undoubtedly someone will suggest, “What if we just said that it’s HR Software That Doesn’t Suck?”
You should respond, “What if we just said that you suck?”
And then it’ll get ugly. You shouldn’t say that.
You should, of course - of course! - be constructive and tell that person that that’s a great idea, and then you should “yes and” them and say that that’s a phrase that other companies (like, every other company) has used, so maybe you should come up with a different way of saying the same thing. I think you have 2 options:
Option 1: Same idea, but maybe use a little - even very little - creativity. “HR software that doesn’t make you wish you listened to your parents and became an orthodontist.” Or whatever. A little specificity goes a long way.
Option 2: A lot of specificity. “Finally a spreadsheet that doesn’t make you ask ChatGPT how to use Vlookup every time you have to use Vlookup” (or whatever).
That doesn’t suck.
As always, thanks for reading to the end - it’s the best part.
P.S. You can 100% blame Gobbledy reader Jeff C. for this:
Booking my flight to Montgomery immediately!