I loved this article in The Guardian about Gordon Brown’s team appointing West Wing Writers to tart up his speeches and make him appear more charismatic to US audiences (now there was a challenge…).

Charismatic? Who...me?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/nov/04/gordon-brown-speeches-west-wing-writers

You’d think from The Guardian headline - “How Gordon Brown paid West Wing Writers $40,000 for ‘tailoring’ speech”- that the British PM was mugged in broad daylight. USD40,000 sounds like an absolute bargain to me – just YouTube Brown addressing the House of Commons and you’ll see what I mean! Sigh… it’s going to be a tough time till the next elections, better get WWW on board for the campaign trail as well. Jokes aside, 40K can’t even buy you a decent handbag these days and that my friends is a fact!

So, spare a thought for Washington’s finest hired pens, they had a tough job to do and they pulled it off in style. After delivering his rousing speech Brown received 19 (YES, 19!) standing ovations from Congress and a call from President Obama (that chap who snubbed meeting up with Brown); surely that’s got to be worth more than a Birkin?

Scarily worth a heck of a lot of speeches

P.S. Mr Brown, with the weak Ringgit I’m far more cost-effective than those over-paid Yanks!

While waiting for a meeting to begin I was flipping through this week’s The Edge and skimmed through a brilliant article by Oon Yeoh about Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak’s recent efforts on Twitter.

The PM’s tweets were banal in the extreme, and Oon guessed that this was all down to the efforts (or lack of!) of his PR team. While it’s great that the Putrajaya mandarins are using the latest in new media/communications, it looks like they still haven’t got a clue over how to use such applications effectively. Updates like ‘In a meeting’, ‘Still in meeting’ are neither informative, entertaining or inspiring…leading me to ask – ‘WHAT’S THE POINT?’

As Oon points out, great apps are one thing but having decent content is vital. Content is king and substance is far more important than style - I couldn’t agree more! 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4522525/Education-ministers-blog-littered-with-spelling-mistakes.html

It inspired a haiku:

Hasty fingers type

Garbled prose and typos many

Bloopers for all to see

• Salesperson
• Hawker
• Peddler
• Dealer

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these descriptions or occupations, I would never actively use the term - vendor - to describe Clarity and the services we provide to other agencies and organizations.

This isn’t a question of being snooty-pooty about labels, but rather a differentiation we want to make because we believe in adding value. A vendor offers clients a template menu of services at fixed prices and what you see is what you get. Simple. This is not the Clarity approach.

We believe that the best, most effective work comes from building long-term partnerships with our clients and sharing insights based on our collective experiences, market and industry knowledge etc.

Even though you may engage us for one specific job, we like to see how our ‘piece’ fits into the ‘bigger picture’ and if we can work together to improve on this. Great ideas never occur in a vacuum – it takes sparks to start the proverbial bonfire!

Ta-daa!

Here’s the first of our big budget ads for your viewing pleasure!

Ye olde days before ye mac.

• Weak basic writing skills i.e. poor grammar, spelling, sentence construction etc. Without a solid foundation it’s impossible to create focused, effective writing for a client.

• Inability to adapt their writing “style” to clients’ requirements. When you’re dealing with clients from different industries, who are trying to engage consumers/readers from various market segments, adaptation is crucial; otherwise the words are merely POINTLESS RAMBLINGS!

• Mistaking creative writing for effective writing. Creative writing 101 just doesn’t always cut it in the real world where clients have real deadlines and real targets to meet. Effective copywriting always has an end in mind, and isn’t about using the most flowery, most bombastic words.

• Wrongly prioritizing ‘inspiration’ above ‘research’.

    These little “gems” might sound familiar:

“It doesn’t matter if no one understands, as long as it sounds good.”

“Oh, was that section/fact/etc important, I didn’t think so, so I left it out.”

“Facts are boring!”

So, ‘what’s the point of Clarity?’ - it’s very simple, really.

As an agency we’re like the all singing, all dancing

These chips make you fat.

‘INTEL-ligent’ chips tucked inside PCs. As these groovy little chips power your computer, Clarity powers marketing, pr and corporate communications campaigns with clear, effective writing. Because all our writers have extensive writing experience on top of different skill sets and competencies, we are able to deliver targeted copy – our writers include ex-agency copywriters, journalists, a teacher and even an accountant!