BlueFrog Creative

Can I suggest a reasonably lengthy bus, train, car or coach journey?

It might give you the opportunity to give Jeff Brooks' new book your undivided attention (as long as you're not driving, that is). It's called The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications and a whole load of useful information is packed into its 143 pages.

If you read a few fundraising blogs, I won't be the first person to recommend this book. So I won't dwell too long on what it offers, but it includes...

A guide to:

• What works in direct response marketing
• Your role as a fundraiser
• Who donors are and how their brains work

It also includes:

• Useful tips on improving response
• Insights into successful writing and design

It is:

• Admirably clear and easy to read. Jeff practices what he preaches.

You may not take me up on the suggestion of reading the book on a journey. Regardless, the book will take you to a pretty great place, where hopefully you feel proud to be a fundraiser. And lucky. And equipped to fundraise well.

Anyway, I'll move on to Jeff's one-day presentation on Monday, which was called 7 Ways to Raise a Lot More Money.

A great deal of the advice features in the book, but as you can see, there were quite a few things I noted down.

I won't leave you to decipher my scrawl, though. Here are some highlights.

'A big typeface is the admission price into your donor's head'

Designers are often young. DM donors are usually older. Young designers don't always appreciate how hard their work is to read. A big typeface may not look pretty but it's effective. A few other useful reminders: go for a Serif font for mail, a Sans-serif on screen, avoid reversed out copy or anything other than black on white. All of these techniques are proven to improve readability.

'Fundraising is based on authenticity'

Real stories, real pictures - these are always better. Jeff collects Stupid Non-profit Adverts on his blog and what they have in common is abstracting a message, when reality would be stronger.

'Do not contradict your message'

Take a look through your latest appeal. Ignore the words. What are the photos telling you? Jeff pointed out that photos in DM pack often contradict the message of need that has been painstakingly written into the letter.

'I like it has no relevance'

When you're looking at fundraising appeals and ideas, trying swapping 'I like it' with consideration of whether it will raise money. As a fundraiser, it's likely you know far more about your organisation that your donors. You'll have tired of messages that donors are only just catching onto. And the bottom line is: a lot of people don't like fundraising that works!

'Fundraising thrives on variety'

Once you've mastered DM techniques, there's still room for variety. Jeff talked about envelopes. A hand-written stamped envelope is generally best. But you can try with or without a logo. You can alter sizes. Try a teaser or an image. This applies to other parts of the pack too.

'Donors like a good deal'

Jeff's book has plenty of useful information about how to craft a good call to action. But I especially enjoyed the reminder on using leverage. Or giving the donor a good deal. Here's an example. A development charity has medical supplies that need to be shipping. By covering the cost, your gift of, say, £10 is delivering £100 worth of life-saving equipment.

'Direct mail isn't dead. It's not even sick'

Do it right and DM still works really well. Also, many of the same techniques translate well online.

One last thing...

The one piece of advice I've been having the most fun with is to write to a US grade 6 reading ability. Not because you think your donor can't make their way through War and Peace, but because they're not reading a novel. They're reading a piece of DM and it's best to make it easy.

Here's a tool you can use to check readability.

Turns out this is 6.1. And I did have to change the style I normally use for this blog.

Have a go with your latest appeal copy and see how you fare.

PS If you read the book, you'll know why I've written a PS and why this isn't a very good one.

The Third Big Lesson In Fundraising Copy

Intrepid copywriter, Margaux, blogs about just how hard a copywriter's life can be! 

 (Part 2)

If you read my first blog post last November, you may be asking yourself ‘if that was the first lesson, where’s the second? Have I missed something?’

You haven’t.

The truth is, the second big lesson in writing copy was so depressing and defeating, I went into hiding. I’ve barely spoken to anyone about work in months, and when I was asked how things were going, I knew I wasn’t being very convincing when saying everything was fine.

And I couldn’t write to you about it. You should never be insecure on the Internet. Be happy, be excited, be angry, be passionate – but keep your negativity offline. Honestly, I was embarrassed.

Because the second lesson I learned…was that I was actually shit.

Last November, I’d thought I’d figured it out. I thought writing for fundraising was a puzzle I’d finally solved. (After only a month? Who did I think I was…) Making sense of the letter was an important first step. But it really was only the beginning.

After a few weeks living under the illusion that I was the second coming, our creative director actually assigned me some real work. Appeals, newsletters, legacies, concepts – they were a massive reality check. And thus began months of my downward spiral into purest misery. I felt like I was back at square one and I just couldn’t get it right.

The second lesson you have to learn if you want to be a great copywriter is that WRITING FOR FUNDRAISING IS HARD. I really don’t think people can understand how hard it is unless they’ve been through the process of learning to be great.

And there aren’t all that many truly great fundraising writers. There’s an awful lot of mediocrity in our industry, and I don’t think many of you will disagree with that. But even on my most difficult days (especially on my most difficult days) I feel privileged beyond reason to work for a woman who demands I be great. Our creative director doesn’t let me get away with anything. And this is what brings me to the third big lesson in writing for fundraising.

Anyone can be a great writer if they work hard enough, for long enough.

The hardest part of the second phase of my writing career has been not living up to the demands of greatness. Each day I try to be great and each day I struggle. I can’t overstate how difficult it is to write something original, emotional, surprising, relevant, and on top of all that – something that will make a person reach into their wallet and hand over their money after reading your words.

And so the transition into phase three has been a smooth one. I only noticed the change today, in fact. After a few reassuring conversations these past few weeks, I’ve come to the realisation that I may be shit now, but I won’t be shit forever. If I work hard, practice, put in the hours, listen, and practice some more, I can be great too. And so can you.

The third big lesson in fundraising copy is that greatness is possible. So cut yourself some slack, honey.

The First Big Lesson In Fundraising Copy

Here's a great post from Bluefrog copywriter, Margaux Smith.

 

As the newest copywriter at Bluefrog, it still feels ridiculously novel to refer to myself or be referred to as a writer, but I adore the feeling. Writing is somewhat of a new dream for me – it only first occurred to me as a possibility about a year ago. But I know some day I’ll be able to combine it perfectly with my most fundamental goal – to protect animals from cruelty. This is the beauty of fundraising copy.

Writing has definitely not been an easy ride so far though. I’ve only just moved here to London this past July from Canada, where I was a fundraising grad student studying at Humber College in Toronto. The last bit of my degree involved taking a fundraising internship, and after figuring out exactly what I wanted, I contacted Aline over Twitter and asked for a job (people love that bit of the story, because it actually worked).

In my first few months as an intern and then as the Bluefrog receptionist, I was able to prove that I knew the basics of raising money for charity, and more importantly, that I could write conversationally. I didn’t actually even realize the latter was a skill until recently. It was just something that came from being ‘trained’ for thirteen years on ICQ, AIM, MSN Messanger, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Wordpress, and countless message boards. I’m a bit too old to be considered a ‘digital native’, but digital-since-fourteen turns out to be pretty close.

Learning how to communicate in this way marks a major departure from the dry, academic writing we learn in school. But it also leads to a massive disconnect in how we perceive our skill. I’d done horribly at academic writing in my formal education, and therefore believed that I couldn’t write. And now I’m a professional writer. Go figure.

 

"Well, let me tell you a little secret: You started out a great writer. But as you went through school, and were conditioned to think of writing as writing rather than as simply communicating, you got progressively more self-conscious about it—and progressively worse at it.

"The best writers are the ones who are able to completely ignore everything they’ve been taught about writing, and instead get on with the job of just telling."

D Bnonn Tennant

 I wish someone had told me that in high school (or even university).

 

When I actually made the official move up to the creative floor just over a month ago, I experienced a few weeks of intense struggle. And I mean the kind of struggle where you’re calling your mother nearly in tears every night. Looking back, it really only did last about three weeks, but it felt like a lifetime. I had completely lost whatever ability I’d had to write. Every idea I would hand in would come back with the same disheartening (but honest) comments:

 

‘Try starting again’, ‘These sentences feel clumsy’, ‘You’re trying to say too much’, or ‘This doesn’t make sense’.

 

Aline was perfectly nice about it but she was right – it was all pretty crap. I felt completely overwhelmed by the pressure. I knew that the previous two copywriters hired before me had both been let go after only a few months because they hadn’t been able to grasp the fundraising style, and it seemed that it might be completely beyond me as well. Aline would edit my letters (a nice way of saying re-write) and I could see the obvious vast improvement, but I just couldn’t seem to make letters like that come out of me. I couldn’t help but consider the fact that maybe I just wasn’t good enough to be a real writer.

Every day I prepared myself for the pain of being fired. Aline was being so patient and nice but I knew that could only last so long. Before long, she’d get fed up with having to tell me the same things over and over. It was a stressful time, but I realize now that the stress was entirely self-induced.

 

Thankfully, in mid-October, I got a break for a week and went to the International Fundraising Congress in Holland. I knew this was exactly what I needed. I love working at Bluefrog and am learning skills that will be completely invaluable to my ability to raise money in the future, but I was also finding myself drifting away from the day-to-day fundraising involvement that I’d had for a solid year at Humber. I was getting so focused on writing style that I was losing sight of the big picture and my enthusiasm for charity. I knew that IFC would force me to take that step back and get my head back around why I’m doing what I’m doing.

And it did. IFC gave me everything I needed it to. It reintroduced me to the big picture and reaffirmed my love for the profession (and the people). But something else seems to have happened and I didn’t realize it until well after I’d gotten back to London.

 

I finally ‘got it’. All of a sudden, I could write a fundraising letter.

And it was actually so simple. It turns out I was just getting in my own way. I had felt like I had to write something that had never been said before to bring a fresh new voice to the company. I was terrified of not being original. In fact, I had refused to even look at the material my coworkers had written because I was scared I’d copy their style.

Something must have clicked subconsciously during the conference because I came back and things just started falling into place. I sat down to write a thank you letter with my brief, the appeal pack, and the charity’s last thank you letter and I read them all. I drew from them until I had something new that was my own. I worried less about my voice and more about the charity’s voice. I made it simple and easy to follow, but still emotional and donor focused. And I finally handed something in and heard ‘Perfect!’

I’ve sure got a whole lot more to learn, of course, but at least I feel like I’ve gotten over the first hurdle. But some day, I will write something that has never been said before. For now, I’ll work on perfecting the tried and tested methods. I think you have to really understand the fundamentals before you can properly flip them on their heads.

 

Funnily enough, this past weekend I was re-reading something I’d written seven months ago and I found this:

 

“Being creative doesn’t mean you have to invent something no one has ever thought of before.”

I’d heard it - had even shared and taught it, but I guess I didn’t really learn it until now.

Are you this blog's IR (Ideal Reader)?

First, an explanation of the question.

Look to the right and you'll see a far from exhaustive list of books I think are helpful to creatives working in our field. It hasn't been updated for a while but, soon, I'll be making an addition.

It's Stephen King's On Writing.

For over a year, Stephen King played with the idea of producing a book about writing. What stopped him was the thought that, somehow, a popular writer like him had no place talking about the craft of writing.

Now, if that were true, it would only be a million times more so for someone like me who writes Direct Mail. Except, of course, there are some very useful things we can learn from a man who has written over fifty best-sellers. Because the skills you need to do one kind of writing often transfer well to another.

So here's a Stephen King idea that, with a tweak, works well for fundraising – the ideal reader.

He says:

'Someone – I can't remember who, for the life of me – once wrote that all novels are really letters aimed at one person. As it happens, I believe this. I think that every novelist has a single ideal reader; at various points during the composition of a story, the writer is thinking, "I wonder what he/she will think when he/she reads this part?" For me that first reader is my wife, Tabitha.'

Charity fundraising copy is certainly best written to one person. In this post, Mark suggests it's your grandmother. But really it's the individual you visualise once you've taken on board everything you know about your target audience. And it might suit you to write a person you know who fits the bill. 

You've probably heard that advice before, but how does it actually help?

Well, for a start it should stop you writing a sentence like this:

Which is an awful start to a letter any way, but you'd start by at least changing it to:

Stephen King explains another role that the ideal reader has:

'IR will help you get outside yourself a little, to actually read your work in progress as an audience would while you're still working. This is perhaps the best way of all to make sure you stick to the story...'

Or in our case, not a story but an objective to raise money.

Thinking about how your IR/donor will react to your writing is a great way of editing your work.

Stephen King again:

'Try to imagine if he or she will be bored by a certain scene – if you know the tastes of your IR even half as well as I know the tastes of mine, that shouldn't be too hard. Is IR going to feel there's too much pointless talk in this place or that? That you've under-explained a certain situation...or over-explained it.'

Stephen King is lucky. His ideal reader is real, and can also become his first reader. The person who gives you feedback on what you've written. Choose them carefully – they could be another writer, another fundraiser, a donor, but not just anyone. You need someone who is likely to tell you something useful.

"If you're writing primarily for one person besides yourself," says Stephen King. "I'd advise you to pay very close attention to that person's opinion...And if what you hear makes sense, then make the changes. You can't let the whole world into your story, but you can let in the ones that matter the most. And you should."

And that's a good way to sum it up. If you're writing fundraising copy, you're writing for your donor. Pay close attention to what they say. Let them into your world.

There's actually loads more useful stuff in Stephen King's book, so I'm planning a second helping sometime soon. If you can't wait, you can get a copy here.

 

PS In answer to the question above, this blog started out being for the person I used to be – working charity-side without an agency. But along the way, it changed mainly as a result of exchanging ideas with a few people via twitter. So, dear reader, this is what I think I know about you:

• Fundraising is far more than a job
• You ask questions
• You seek answers in places other people aren't looking 

 

Making a meal of it

As I begin to write this, my second Bluefrog Creative post, lunchtime is fast approaching. Searching for a suitable analogy for the long copy ad, I am inexorably drawn towards food.

The long copy ad is, I think, the advertising equivalent of a three-course meal. A succinct headline to whet the appetite. Meaty, filling body copy. All rounded off with a satisfying flourish.

Just as three-course meals seem like an antiquated extravagance, so too do long copy ads. With a profusion of brands and charities competing for attention, much of today’s advertising offers immediate impact and saccharine gratification.

Here at Bluefrog, though, we believe that if good ingredients are prepared in an interesting way, the end result will be consumed – even if it takes a while. 

David Ogilvy, whose Rolls Royce ad is a long copy tour de force, pithily proclaimed: “The more you tell, the more you sell”.  

(Click the images to enlarge)

 

Many of my favourite ads take their time to communicate their message, whether it’s putting the spotlight on human rights or extolling the virtues of eating doughnuts.  

 

(You can read more about this ad on SOFII)

 

 

So it was with a sense of excitement, and some trepidation, that we started work on our entry to the CBS Outdoor London Long Copy Challenge.

We had entered a previous CBS Outdoor competition, putting a urinal on the side of a London bus to raise awareness for The Prostate Cancer Charity. This time, our task was to create a Cross Track Tube poster.

It seemed like the ideal place to advertise lendwithcare.org, the new microfinance website from CARE International.

lendwithcare.org lets you lend money to entrepreneurs in developing countries, so they can expand their businesses and transform their lives (this post from Mark describes in more detail how the site works). 

A poster on the Tube would be a fantastic way of launching lendwithcare.org to a younger audience, who are familiar with entrepreneur-championing programmes such as Dragon’s Den and bionically attached to their iPhones. 

Our entry addressed these commuters directly, describing the benefits of lending with an example familiar to anyone who works in an office. Here it is:

 

 

Much to our surprise, and delight, our poster was on the competition longlist and put up at Oxford Circus. For a couple of weeks, commuters and Christmas shoppers on platform 3 could read all about why it’s good to lend.

 

 

On the London Long Copy Challenge website, you can see the longlisted, shortlisted and garlanded entries.

These posters show that the combination of long, compelling copy and clever, striking design remains very relevant.

Our desire to be entertained, surprised, or at least occupied, is as great as it has ever been. Perhaps even greater – we now expect to be doing something all the time (it’s rare to see anyone on the Tube who isn’t reading a book or paper, listening to music or playing with a phone).

If well-done and well-placed, long copy ads can sate this desire. And so, at the risk of overindulging myself on the food analogy, they should still be an important part of the advertising diet.

That’s it for now. I’m off to tuck into a three-course, three-Martini lunch.

Cheers!

Felix

The male fire salamander deposits a blob of semen on the ground. He then picks up a passing female (literally). And tips her into the sperm.

These last few weeks, I’ve made an effort to have, at the very least, fully functioning ears by 8.50 on Sunday mornings. Oh and an arm that is awake enough to switch on the radio in time for David Attenborough’s ‘Life Stories’.

If you’ve heard it, you’ll know that each episode is just ten minutes long, during which David Attenborough tells the story of a species he has studied. This week’s was about his first pet – a fire salamander. You can hear all the juicy details, including its innovative mating habits, here.

But for me, the best one so far was the one about Bower birds (I will get to fundraising in a minute, promise).

Bower birds are brilliant. With their eye for colour, they’re the graphic designers of the natural world. To attract a mate (or preferably several), they build themselves an irresistible love nest from sticks, grasses, feathers, fruits, pebbles. Decoration is all. Here’s one that’s gone with a blue theme, here’s another that likes flowers  and here’s David Attenborough taking you for a guided tour round a Bower bird’s pad as he builds it. 

Amazing. But what’s the link to fundraising? You’ll be relieved to know it’s not just the (painful) observation that Bower birds are like graphic designers.

Thankfully, I can turn to Ken Burnett to make a better point. I’ve taken this from his book The Zen of Fundraising – read it if you haven’t yet, “Fundraising is and always will be all about storytelling: human interest stories, engaging stories, touching stories, involving stories, moving stories – all of them welcome, well judged, well timed, well illustrated and above all well told: concise (if possible), believable, memorable.”

If that seems a little strange to you, think about the process of coming up with an appeal – that’s clearly about telling a story. But what about pitching to a prospective corporate supporter? Coming up with a new product? Formulating a brand? Done well, these are about telling stories too.

Which brings me back to David Attenborough.

‘Life Stories’ is a great example of storytelling, but not I’d say because the structure of the story-telling is particularly good. It's too anecdotal to transfer to Direct Marketing.

Those of you who’ve been kind enough to follow this blog from the start may remember the first post was all about getting beginnings right. It ended with a list of suggestions, but having listened to 'Life Stories', I’ve realised that I missed one off my list.

As I've said, the openings to life-stories aren’t particularly attention grabbing on paper. The part I lifted for my opening (about the semen) comes about half way through. (And what an unfortunate sentence that is).

What grabs your attention is David Attenborough himself. I’m not sure if I’d be that interested if it were anyone else telling the story.

So when you think about the stories you can tell to inspire your donors, you should also think about who tells them. Martin Bell, Michael Palin, Bill Bryson, Terry Waite, Jon Snow – these are just a few people who have measurably lifted response to some of the packs we’ve sent out in recent times.

Simply making Michael Palin the signatory of a cold pack, rather than the Chief Executive, more than doubled response.

But ‘celebrity’ needs to be used with caution. All of the people mentioned above had a real involvement or interest in the work we were describing. They’re also authoritative, respected individuals. And a quick look at this or table 15 here will tell you why they lift response.

Donors want and should feel important to the charities they support, but often this ‘need’ is neglected.

One route to making them feel important is who communicates with them. Another, described in this post, is how we communicate with them. And finally, there’s what we actually communicate.

I’m only really re-iterating Ken Burnett’s words here, but we need to find what’s inspiring, ingenious and innovative about what we do and share that with the donors we work with. (And, when it comes to wildlife and the natural world, David Attenborough has been doing that for over seven decades.)

At every single project I’ve seen, for every single charity I’ve worked with, there’s been something genuinely incredible being done. But often that gets lost in poor story telling within a charity, when we lapse into jargon and generalities to describe something magical and special. 

More on that another time.

But to finish, here’s an example of a piece of work chosen because it combines some of the things we’ve talked about today (but not the last bit about bad story-telling).

This piece of work went out in two versions created for low and mid value supporters. As well as loads of great information from VSO, we were also given the chance to speak to a volunteer doctor who had been working on maternal and infant health in Indonesia. It was that interview that really unlocked the story we wanted to tell and who should tell it.

This is a grab from the top of the letter which came from the VSO volunteer doctor. She tells the supporter what the first Indonesian words she learnt were.

It's hardhitting, but it tells the story as truthfully and memorably as we could. And no-one could tell that story better than the person who was actually there. I'm sure, whatever your cause, there are staff members or volunteers who could provide similar insight.

That letter was accompanied by specially prepared briefing notes giving insights into the wider issues affecting maternal and infant health - as well as the practical measures the VSO volunteer doctor is taking to change that.

The notes came with this - a potent reminder of the precious life that is at stake. And meaningful because one of the innovations the VSO doctor had introduced was showing staff how to use a scan.

But before the supporter got to any of this, they'd have read this - a covering note from Jon Snow, a VSO volunteer once himself.

And a last piece of learning from 'Life Stories'. One of the best ways to test whether what you've written is insightful, flows well and has a good pace is to read it aloud. The average appeal letter won't take nearly ten minutes so if you can't find someone to listen, it's time for an edit.

And that, in a nutshell, is how to write good copy.

This blog is about beginnings. And, fingers crossed, it’s a beginning in itself. It’s for everyone out there who is interested in creative ideas that raise money for charities and, today, we’re going to look at writing.

So…beginnings. As a rule of thumb, if you’re setting out to write anything, you need something interesting to say straight away, otherwise you’ll lose your audience. Everyone knows that. But when you’ve got a blank page (or screen) in front of you, you’d be forgiven for asking – “where do I start?” And in response, I’d suggest anywhere apart from the beginning.

Confused? Well maybe that’s not so bad. I once heard a great screenwriter say, “I’d rather my audience were confused for a minute than bored for ten”.

So here are some examples to make things a little clearer.

Have you ever seen David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia? (I have been to the cinema more recently than this – honestly). Can you remember the opening scene? I’m pretty sure that T.E. Lawrence is seen racing along a country lane on his motorbike, hurtling to his death. Lawrence of Arabia starts with the end. So does Gandhi – maybe it’s a feature of biopics.

What about books (I’m on safer ground here)? Do you recognise this one? “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Thirteen very ordinary words then one (which happens to be ‘thirteen’) that turns the world upside down.

Okay, aiming for Orwell might be a little ambitious but there is a lesson we can all learn – say the unexpected.

This one’s from a favourite of mine “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”. Again, we can’t all hope to express things so elegantly, but we can recognise that copy has the potential to transport the reader in time and place.

Onto the book I’m reading right now – Animal’s people by Indra Sinha. This is a fictionalized account of the Bhopal disaster, written by a man who came up with great adverts like this. For many years, he’s been producing all the materials for the Bhopal Medical Appeal and he’s done a fabulous job. He might not be a ‘fundraiser’ but he knows how to fundraise. His novel begins, “I used to be human once. So I’m told. I don’t remember it myself but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet just like a human being.” That could so easily be developed into a fundraising approach.

Another route might be to take a leaf out of Moby Dick (and believe me, there’ll still be plenty left). Melville uses the first three words to make an instant connection with person writing and the person reading – Call me Ishmael.

I think we’ll need another blog to go into how you might choose a signatory for charity communications and how to give them an individual voice. So for now, let’s start a list.

Next time you’re struggling to begin to write, remember you’re in good company. Hemingway once said “There is nothing more terrifying in the world than a blank page”. Then see if you can take inspiration from some writing you like. 

1. THE LAWRENCE OF ARABIA How about starting with the end or even the desired outcome? “By the end of my letter, I hope you’ll be convinced by one thing – we need your help”. Or “Aminata ran into her mother’s arms. I have never seen such wonderful smiles.”
2. THE ORWELL Let’s just call this the element of surprise. “A chili plant – you might find it hard to believe that one could feed a whole family in Zimbabwe. I was too…”
3. THE L P HARTLEY Set the scene: transport the reader. For example, “Northern Ireland, 1974 – they called that time ‘the troubles’ and that is certainly when my trouble began.”
4. THE SINHA This one is all about perspective. Let’s have a go. “Lizzie. Or Elizabeth. That’s what people used to call me. Then something changed. I don’t know what. Fat. Stupid. Smelly. That’s what the other children started to call me.”
5. THE MOBY DICK How about introducing the person who is writing? No one starts a letter by saying “My name is…” What can you say that might give the reader the same information in an interesting way? Like “What a day. I’ve been run off my feet, but the children have all gone home now…”
6. THE FELIX One of Bluefrog’s copywriter’s presented a beautiful letter to me the other day, which began with a quote from Sophocles. Has someone solved the problem for you and said before what you want to say?

 Right that’s it for now. Feel free to comment (preferably kindly) or, better still, add to the list.