Corporate slogans for the era of now™
Today during a conversation about trademark symbols, I mentioned in passing my old Pain Points™ blog (yes, I had yet another blog. Sue me.). I realized I’d never really thought critically about why I created it in the first place, and because this blog is a vehicle for self-discovery, I’m sharing my thoughts about it here. Lucky you.
Why Pain Points™ came to be
When I switched careers from journalism to copywriting, the shift from facts and sources to messaging and catch phrases stretched my mind in wonderful ways. But I had so much to learn, and so many words to type, before I could feel confident and competent in my new discipline.
When you’re starting a new career or even an individual project, it’s normal to look around you for inspiration. What’s working well for other people? Where are the opportunities? What is the current standard for excellence and how can I surpass it? In design we might call this competitive analysis.
As a fledgling copywriter, I searched for the bar and found it well below eye level. (By the way, experience has taught me that this is in part because good copywriting is very, very hard). The market was absolutely rife with vapid taglines that bastardized our beautiful language. Writers were verbifying nouns. They were adding the “re” prefix to words they really oughtn’t. They were using adjectives in unspeakable ways.
My idea for Pain Points was this: I’d use animal memes to satirize these copywriting trends. I felt like the cat and dog photos helped illuminate the absurdity of the prose.
A sampling:
It was a dark time for copywriting, but I made it a bit brighter for myself through Pain Points™. (And I taught myself Photoshop along the way.)
Anyway, if you’d like to see more, click here and visit the blog’s accompanying Facebook page (because that’s how extra I was back then).