I wouldn’t say I’m an especially brilliant cook, but I do like to dabble. I’m less of a culinary wizard and more of a competent recipe-follower. And I like my recipes to be simple, tasty and unpretentious too. Think Jamie and Delia, rather than Nigella and Gordon.

I do most of the cooking in my house and over the years I’ve honed a few signature dishes. My lasagne is pretty sweet and my kedgeree always goes down well. I can do a mean chilli and I never have any complaints when I make a roast. I’ve learnt how to cook almost all of these dishes by reading books and following instructions.

But what I’d really like to be able to do is cook on instinct. You know how they do on Masterchef or Ready, Steady Cook, when the contestants get given a bag of random veggies, some meat or fish and a maybe a tin of this and that – then gets told to make something from it? That’s what I want to be able to do.

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It’s fairly obvious how Coca Cola, Pizza Hut, BBC and Schuh came about their monickers. But have you ever wondered how some of the familiar brands, shops and technology you see everyday derived their identities? Maybe you’re looking for inspiration to create a new company or product name? Great, here’s an A-Y of some of the easier to find explanations. If not, Steve White’s blogs are always worth a read.

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Financial Services… sounds dull doesn’t it! Ask the average person on the street what that phrase means to them and the ones that stay awake will struggle for a definition. The trouble with ‘Financial Services’ is that it’s a corporate phrase that has found its way into consumer facing communications.

In the struggle to unite the benefits of credit cards, loans, investments and insurance under one umbrella term, a phrase has been created that means nothing to the consumer. Customers of course, use ‘money’ to buy cars, clothes and holidays, they save and invest ‘money’ and protect the ‘money’ tied up in their belongings with insurance.  So when we were asked to rebrand the ‘Financial Services’ section of our client’s retail website, we knew just how to help it resonate with consumers.

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There’s something quite compelling about the lonely hearts section in newspapers and magazines. It’s like people watching in miniature. The ads are like windows into other people’s lives. And I must confess I’m quite nosy, so for me they make compulsive reading.

It’s mainly because I think they must be really hard to write. For a start, there’s the stigma. Letting the world know you’re (oh God) single and looking for love seems like an admission of failure – as if you’re saying “yes, it really has got this bad.”

Plus, it’s a pretty tough copy brief when you think about it: sum yourself up in 30 words, in a way that makes you irresistible to your target audience. I mean, where do you start?

Well just like writing a commercial ad for a real product, it’s no use resorting to tired old clichés or standard lonely hearts acronyms. For one thing you’ll just sound like everyone else that’s advertising themselves. But for another no one will believe you anyway.

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The truth is out there

At Red C, as well as juggling our busy schedules, we have a number of Creative team projects and initiatives that bubble along throughout the year. These include filming and editing video case studies to researching search engine optimisation. This time around, our team got the tricky task of generating new business opportunities with our current clients.

Finding new business avenues for clients sounds easy, but there are lots of things you need to consider. Identifying potential oportunities requires a deep understanding of a brand and the directions in which it could and would want to expand. And that’s just for starters. On top of that, it has to be financially viable, fit in with wider brand and marketing strategies and be measurable in terms of return on investment.

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He may be a Spuds Spurs fan, but Red C Account Director Steve White is not completely useless. He knows an awful lot about Email Marketing for one thing. So when he gave me a 700-page document from MarketingSherpa called Best Practices in Email Marketing I thought to myself, this is probably worth reading.*

MarketingSherpa is a research firm that specializes in tracking what works in all aspects of marketing (and what does not.) Their goal: to give marketers of the world the stats, inspiration, and instructions to improve their email marketing results.

According to their Research Manager Stefan Tornquist this guide was written “to provide one-stop guidance on building a ‘best in class’ email program, whether you’re managing an enterprise level marketing department or a small business.”

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I really like Andy Maslen. Next to Drayton Bird he’s probably the man whose books I’ve learnt most about copywriting from. I’d recommend his first, Write to Sell to anyone, and do quite frequently in fact.

He’s just released two new ones, the first of which I’ve just finished. It’s part of a series called 100 great ideas. Andy’s contribution is called 100 Great Copywriting Ideas.

It’s not a book you should read from start to finish. As the dust jacket says it’s “more tapas or dim-sum than three course meal. You can start anywhere you like and pick and choose whatever takes your fancy.”

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Saturday morning, whilst tucking into my crunchy nut cornflakes, I watched a rather interesting news piece on the BBC about how newspapers are essentially suffering from a failing business model; and are looking at new ways to raise income due to the falling numbers of people buying papers… mainly because of the Internet.

Their immediate solution is to start charging readers a subscription fee for looking at content online, an initiative that is being championed by Rupert Murdoch, and admit that one day, newspapers will no longer be around.

As an ‘Ad Man’, I find something incredibly sad about the migration of newspapers away from traditional print and on to online. Especially as it seems very real that one day newspapers will no longer exist… especially with the rise of e-readers… meaning we could one day say farewell to the beautiful art-form that is the ‘long-copy advert’, which these days is a rare beast, but when it appears it’s a compelling and persuasive one.

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I really like reading. My problem is I buy books faster than I can read them. The drawers on my bedside cabinet are buckling under the weight of unread hardbacks, paperbacks, novels and non-fiction. I’ll be honest it’s starting to get me down a bit. Too much to read, too little time. Your customers have the same problem…

They’re bombarded with things to read every day. So if you’re planning on adding to their pile, you’ve got to make sure it’s easy to read. And there is one very simple way of doing just that.

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Monday at the Red C began like any other. Employees were pulling themselves into the office for yet another busy week, priority for most of course being a beverage before the start of their working day.

This particular morning was different though. The kitchen was brimming with a variety of delicious cakes that staff at Red C had spent their weekend baking. This change in morning ritual came about in support of ‘Time for a Cuppa’, an event that raises awareness for those affected by dementia which was organised by ‘for dementia’.

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