If you’d like the text on your website to reflect a fresh non-AI look at what you’re offering, call Colin. I’ll give you a free appraisal.

Send me the URL of a page you’d like to improve and I’ll tell you what I think. 

How I help companies explain themselves.

I’m looking for companies that have a marketing problem. I have a methodology that has been useful for a lot of companies over the years. Maybe it’s “Back to basics.”

If you want people to know more about you, I can help.

I’m an expert at interviewing subject matter experts and turning their information into strong marketing text. Usually it takes me two interviews because no matter how much I prepare, the expert knows more than me and I have to digest what I learn in the first interview and come back with better questions in the second interview. 

What is it that I want to do.

Use my skills to help people improve the marketing aspects of their online text.

I’d like to find a client who wants something done.

Maybe I could peddle myself as an examiner. I can take a look at your website and tell you what a normal human sees in it.

AI can create ad text that is acceptable for most website clients. AI is ingratiating and flattering and just because the client likes it doesn’t mean visitors will engage with it.

start generating incoming emails from people who would like me to help them with the graphics and text in their web projects.

Companies often have mistaken ideas about how well-known they are among their supposed customer base. They have a dismissive attitude toward people who don’t already know all about them. “If they don’t already know what resublimated thiotimoline is, they’re not going to be one of our customers,” they tell me.

 I used to work for ad agencies and graphic design firms in the print industry.

 I’ve tried to write about it several times but I’ve floundered every time. The technology of language allows us to share attention. Bees do it: a worker returns to the hive with a load of pollen and does a dance that communicates the location of a fresh source of pollen. It’s a case of shared attention.

The problem with corporate marketing is that it is not sharing attention, it is demanding attention. We are all exhausted by the commandeering of our attention. Read this or be fired!

The problem with corporate marketing is that it is not sharing attention, it is demanding attention. We are all exhausted by the commandeering of our attention. Read this or be fired!

1030am

I don’t know what’s keeping me from using ChatGPT. Maybe because it’s smarter than me. The other day it mentioned my dedication to Rosser Reeves’ theories. It said I don’t need more content, I need to change the goal of my page. Right now, ChatGPT says, my message is, “Here’s everything I’ve ever done.”

It gave me four suggested headlines promoting myself, but they sound like generic marketing brags.

Generic text does not engage the reader. There’s no shared attention.

My tale is that good writing is useful in marketing. Most marketing people have a wrong idea about the definition of good writing. They have an academic model in mind. The readability of the text is not an issue for them. Everywhere I look I see marketing text that scores poorly on the readability index. That doesn’t matter, the marketing folks believe, because our customers are motivated to battle their way through unreadable text. And we’re marketing to intelligent people, we don’t have to talk down to them in baby talk.

No, “readable” does not mean “baby-like.” It means the information presented in the text is grammatically coherent. The rules of grammar are not imposed by frumpy schoolmarms, they are the condensed best practices humans have evolved for transferring info from one mind to another.

Everybody castigates Americans for not reading. Not castigates…derogatory mentions of the declining ability of Americans to read.

I discover what the client wants to say.

In as few words as possible. Well-articulated so that one thought flows seamlessly into the next.

ChatGPT says I should make a direct offer. “Send me a link to your website, or a pdf of your brochure, or a description of your product, and I’ll tell you —honestly—how I would improve it.”

Readability, and the excision of Borrowed Interest. My term for it is “Advertising About Something Else.” Nobody cares about your stupid gadget so lets show it being held by a young woman with a nice rack.

Free sample.

Would your site get more response if it was easier to read?

It’s a copywriter’s job to make the offer easy to read.

What can people find out about you by reading your site.

Copywriting is writing with a purpose. A copywriter flenses away the fat and blather and leaves only the important info for the reader.

I told ChatGPT that I wanted to emphasize readability and it tells me this is a “powerful differentiator.” It says I have a long commitment to Strunk & White clarity, a Reeves-style “truth sells best” philosophy.

Whatever it is that you tell ChatGPT, it will tell you that you have a terrific idea.

I have a theory that readable text is more effective than the passive abstract generic blab that tech companies typically fill their sites with.

Web designers gravitate toward the site designs of the most popular sites, sites with high visitation rates. Sites that people will visit several times a day. Sites with a dozen different items seeking your attention.

This is not the correct role model for an innovative product trying to stand out from the competition. My methodology is to find the core advantage of the new product and immediately start discussing it.

Here’s what I learned from my recent interaction with a PR agency in Santa Barbara. The owner proudly told me her agency does not use AI. She didn’t tell me anything about what she does use, which turned out to be a design guy in Los Angeles and a production manager in Greece.

The design guy is also the Creative Director. He disavowed any responsibility for the text. He doesn’t start designing anything until the text and the photos arrive.

In my ad agency life, a Creative Director’s task is to decide what the text should say and what the graphics should do to present the client’s message. In the old days, almost all Creative Directors started as copywriters. We dive into the information and sift through it and create an approach.

If you don’t care whether people read your site or not, it doesn’t matter what you say. AI can instantly fill the vacant text blocks in your web template.

I create shared attention between your company and your reader.

Synthetic attention from AI. I was thinking about this on my ride. Attention is the new coin of the realm, hundreds of thousands of websites and video channels desperately compete to gain your attention.

It’s not so much that people no longer read, it’s that they’re no longer willing to read what you are offering.

AI, on the other hand, will read what you offer. AI can simulate thousands of people paying attention to you. Surround you with a fawning digital entourage.

Social media rewards attention whores so there are a lot of them. It seems to be harder than ever to rise to the top.

In this new era, AI can create better art, better photos, and better text than you can. Posting stuff AI makes for you is not going to calm your inferiority complex.

If all else fails, just tell the truth. I was imprinted by the story of a famous ad campaign. An ad agency researched their new client, a car rental company, and discovered that they were second-best in almost every category and aspect. They couldn’t claim to be the best. So they made that their campaign: We’re #2. So we try harder. Meaning they were more eager to satisfy the customer than the other guy.

It was a daring ploy to admit they were #2. It went viral.

830am

I’ve always tried to find some truth about the client that can be made into a campaign. Of course, it helped that Avis put a billion dollars (inflation adjusted) into publicizing the slogan.

AI Overview

The greatest print ad campaign ever made…

Avis’s most famous ad campaign, launched in 1962, is “We try harder”. Created by Doyle Dane Bernbach, the campaign famously embraced their status as #2 against industry leader Hertz with the tagline: “When you’re only No. 2, you try harder. Or else”. The campaign instantly increased profitability and ran for 50 years. 

I don’t know anything about your company or your industry. I never heard of you, same as most people. I offer an unbiased look at what your company is presenting to the world.

Everybody is beginning to see the limitations of AI. AI can fill pages instantaneously but it doesn’t know how to connect with the reader.

And AI loses track of the thread all the time and diverges into sidetrails.

I can make your website message more clear.

Improve your message.

Too vague.

Here’s how you can get people to actually read your website.

How to make people read your website.

How I can make your website more accessible for the public.

Clean out the clutter from your website.

If words are important on your website, I can help improve them.

I can help you spread the word.

If you want people to pay attention to the words on your website.

Effective text for your website.

Free analysis.

Is your website easy to read? I’ll give you a free assessment.

—————-

From ChatGPT, 3-11-26:

Clear writing for complex products, ideas, and stories

I help companies, entrepreneurs, and organizations explain what matters in plain, persuasive language.

From technical marketing and product positioning to memoir, journalism, photography, and long-form storytelling, I bring decades of experience turning raw information into material people will actually read.

[See portfolio]  [View writing samples]  [Contact Colin]

Intro

If your company has something important to say but no clear way to say it, I can help.

I have worked across copywriting, creative direction, graphic production, publishing, advertising, web content, photo editing, and narrative writing. I have written for products, services, catalogs, brochures, websites, ads, features, and presentations. I also build structure out of large, messy collections of notes, images, and technical input.

This site reflects that range.

What I do

Copywriting and marketing communication

I write clear, informative copy for websites, brochures, catalogs, ads, product pages, case studies, and sales material. My approach is built on substance, not fluff: find the real value, make it readable, and present it in a way that earns attention.

Technical and industrial messaging

I work especially well with companies that make specialized, engineered, or hard-to-explain products. I can translate expert knowledge into language customers, buyers, investors, and non-specialists can understand.

Creative direction and production

I have long experience shaping projects from concept through finished execution, including layout, visual sequencing, print production, editorial planning, and coordination between words and design.

———————–

If you’d like the text on your website to reflect a fresh look at what you’re offering, call Colin.

Over time, the in-house creative staff produces marketing materials more and more aimed at management than at the public. Keeping up a strong face for the shareholders. As a freelancer I see the client differently. I try to set aside their current lore and find out what it is that the company actually does. It’s amazing how many websites force you to click through several layers if you want to find out what the company does.

In-house groups are satisfied to use the regular buzzwords of their industry. It was surprising how many clients were worried about what the competition would think about the ads I made–that was foremost in their thinking. My concern was about the effect of the ad on the customers.

How I help companies explain themselves.