As designers we are often presented with the most passionate of people, the most exciting product and sometimes the most hideous of names and as people describe it – a slogan to go with it.

Quite often, new ideas are wonderful and terrible.

Particularly with those new to small business or new product or idea.  We call this entrepreneurial myopia – a sort of blind faith that, enamored with the New and exciting, that of course the new venture will succeed.

Few businesses realise their true potential as the true value of their idea or initiative gets lost in poor naming and brand architecture that simply does not fit the owner, the value proposition or the strategy that it needs to deliver a return. As with the art of pottery and the imagination and skill of the potter, creating a wonderful brand takes art and science.

In our next article we will cover some of the art and technology of why some brands work – and some work to create an unsuccessful business……….

When I talk about copy selling, I don’t necessarily mean that it actually shifts products. In many instances it’s as simple as getting the recipient to respond to the direct mail. Basically all the copy on the direct mail is there for a purpose. It’s been designed to get people to follow a particular action.

Now it strikes me that writing for the web is very similar to writing for direct mail. With direct mail you’ve got to get the persons attention immediately. Once you’ve got their initial attention you need to spark their interest. The copy and design needs to say, read me and you’ll get something out of it.

Once you’ve got the reader involved with your copy you need to build up their desire. Good copywriters do this by painting a picture, explaining values and letting the readers know what the benefits will be in an language they understand. Most DM copy will have a very strong value proposition and will be benefit, rather than feature led.

Once the desire is there the last job is to get people to act. Any good salesman will tell you the call to action is the most important part of a sales pitch. You can have the best product, let people know how useful it’s going to be to them, but unless you actually get people to act it’ll all be in vein.

In the DM world this process is called AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) and it’s a technique that most good DM copywriters will use on a daily basis.

Essentially it’s about writing persuasive copy. Copy that provokes the desired response. On the web that could be anything from getting people to read the next page or follow a link, to signing up for a service or buying a product. The bottom line is that good copy sells and a good web copywriter is literally worth their weight in gold.

Unfortunately the state of copy on the web is pretty shocking. A large amount of web copy is recycled from brochures, mission statements and other marketing material. It’s usually dumped on the web team because the commissioning company involved either doesn’t see the value or doesn’t have the resources to write specific web copy. This type of copy has inherent usability problems. It’s generally too long, feature or organisation focussed and written in a language only an MD or marketing department would love.

Instead you need to write copy that is user focussed. Look at the words your visitors use and use them yourself. A great way of doing this is to look at your search logs and feedback forms. By speaking the same language you make your readers feel comfortable and it gives them the impression that you understand them and are on a similar level. Using the same language is also key to getting good search engine rankings. In fact good copy is the most fundamental part of a good SEO campaign.

Unfortunately what goes on a website is often more about company politics than joined up thinking. To keep the marketing department happy they’ll want to put one thing on the site, to keep the MD happy they’ll want to put on another thing. You end up creating a site that the company love. That is until they realise nobody is using the darn thing. To get around this you need to have clear goals from the start. Then when the MD wants to put a message on the home page (complete with board room picture and signature) you can say what a nice idea you think it is, but that you’re concerned that it doesn’t support the goals that she and the board set down in one of the many long meetings you had a few months back. You’d be happy to do it, but it would mean changing the goals in the project document and getting the change signed off.

We all know that web users have the attention span of a goldfish. We scan read, we have multiple pages open a once. If the copy doesn’t grab our attention and spark an interest we’ll move on. Keep mission statements to end of year reports and business plans. Nobody wants to read them on the front page (or any page for that matter) of your website.

Web copy needs to be more like DM copy. It needs to be short and sweet. It needs to be written in a language the reader identifies with and not in an obscure dialect of marketeese. The copy needs to be value led rather than feature led. Don’t tell me why your offering is the best. Tell me what that means to me and how i’ll benefit. Then close the sale with a call to action. Don’t just lay your cards on the table, cross your fingers and hope the person knows what to do next. Give them a hand. Point them in the right direction.

Fundamentally web copy needs to put the reader at the centre of focus and in this respect there is a lot we can learn from Direct Mail.

http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2003/12/the_importance_of_good_copy/

MAIN GOALS

Locally: transform the public’s expectations of, and relationship to, public toilets by raising awareness about issues and providing solutions.

Globally: support the World Toilet Organization and its community to improve toilets and sanitation in developing countries.

The Australian Toilet Organisation aims to improve access to and quality of toilets and sanitation, domestically and internationally.

The Australian Toilet Organisation does this by:

1. Raising awareness of the global sanitation crisis in developing countries; and
2. Encouraging improvement in public toilets across Australia.

The tank was thrilled to work with this not for profit organisation and provide branding and  a website that delivered important charity content in a light hearted and fun way. The challenge was to maintain credibility for the organisation whilst making it interesting and innovative.

Its aim was to raise awareness of The Global Sanitation Crisis. Approximately 2.5 billion people across our planet do not have access to a good toilet or adequate sanitation.

The absence of a good and safe toilet linked to an efficient and safe sanitation system causes spread of disease and water borne pathogens. This leads to many social and economic problems.

For women in particular the lack of access to a safe toilet compromises privacy, ability to move freely within a community and safety.

Children – and particularly girls – are denied their right to education because their schools lack private and decent sanitation facilities. Women are forced to spend large parts of their day fetching water. Poor farmers and wage earners are less productive due to illness, health systems are overwhelmed and national economies suffer.

The world community has been working toward resolving this crisis. In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals were established by the United Nations to address major world social and environmental problems. Goal Number 7 is: To ensure environmental sustainability. Target 7C: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

Jack Simm (World Toilet Org CEO) gave the Tank Studio a glowing commendation at the WORLD TOILET Conference in 2010 in regards to the voice in which the brand was communicated through it’s identity and website. The Tank took a risk which paid off and “just works”.

This blog is a way for the tank studio and its valued members and clients to add and read articles on recent projects the tank have completed and generally interesting articles on design, architecture, art, music etc.

It will be a way to casually connect and create a place to share.

This was an exciting prospect not only for the organisation but for the participants to be able to see themselves online. Ricky Grace founded the not for profit and was a key part of the process.

The websites echoed there branding and closely aligned itself to the offline identity they had recently established. Respectful use of Indigenous art as well as using contemporary design techniques proved a winning formula

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