Wallpaper of the Week #2
Here is the next wallpaper of the week. Designers gonna design!
Wallpaper of the week
Great News! The designers at Velocity Branding are taking on the creative challenge of making a new desktop pattern every week (For free! No pay!). Here’s the first of many to come – see you next Friday for another. Enjoy!
Make it a conversation, not a declaration.
How your company says something is as important as what your company says.
If all writing were created equal, a dense, poorly-written document would be read with as much vim and vigour as the latest paperback thriller. And if that were the case, we’d see John Grisham sharing the bestseller’s list with our inept 9th grade essay on A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
But we don’t, and for a simple reason: how you say something is as important as what you say. And just because something’s written in English, doesn’t mean it’s interesting, or that people are going to read it. (Which may mean you’re not moving past this sentence, right?)
Without good writing, your company isn’t telling a story. And if it’s not telling a story, it doesn’t have a brand. And if it doesn’t have a brand, well, why are you in business? Good writing is a conversation, not a declaration, and how you write is a huge factor in your business’s success.
I, Robot or I, Person?
It’s a myth that professional writing needs to be formal (boring) and use as many pompous words as possible. (See: every office memo ever written.) This kind of writing is often created by those who lack knowledge about a subject or enjoy a false sense of sophistication through their writing skills. Not surprisingly, this style of writing’s bad for business: your company needs to sell itself, and to sell itself, it needs writing that doesn’t obscure its message.
Conversational writing speaks to your audience directly and clearly. Unprofessional writing- the stuff some would consider ‘professional’- alienates your audience through murky meaning and unnecessary verbiage.
For example, which of these companies would you rather buy from?
“Comfy Pillows is a factory direct manufacturer of polyester, feather, and down pillows that meet the highest standards of quality and that ensure a satisfactory sleep for all of our customers.”
“Sleepy Pillows makes comfy pillows out of really great materials. But if we’re being honest, what we really make is a good night’s sleep- our pillows are just the comfy means to a comfy end.”
For us, it’s Sleepy Pillows. They’ve got personality. They’ve got a story. And, most importantly, they realize that conversational writing creates an experience that customers can embrace. (And this is just their “About Us”-imagine all the other great things they’d say if they were a real company.)
Comfy Pillows, on the other hand, is trying too hard to impress: by clouding their message with unnecessary and overused words, (every company has ‘high standards’ and ‘quality,’ right?) they’re not saying anything meaningful. This kind of writing may satisfy the owners of Comfy Pillows, but it leaves the customer- the one who needs to be satisfied- empty and cold.
Let’s converse about conversational writing.
Conversational writing isn’t something learned overnight, or that anyone can do easily. It’s a craft, and one that’s perfected by copywriters every day. Copywriters like… OK, we aren’t going to hard-sell you. But you get it. Conversational writing is a learned ability that strengthens a company’s brand and engages its customers, and its something we approach seriously.
To learn more about the beauty of conversational writing, check out these articles:
Conversational Writing vs Formal Writing
How to Master Conversational Writing
And to see just how intricate conversational writing can get, try The Economist’s Style Quiz
