57. A brand strategist who knows how to write copy (f. Lauren Moore)
Is there a secret to writing well? ✍️ In this episode, Phil and Lauren discuss all the ins and outs of copywriting. Instead of a guest, Phil puts Lauren in the hot seat by asking her tricks for writing copy for Phil Pallen Collective’s clients. The two talk about writing tricks, writing authentically, writing quickly, and writing in a way that’s (gasp!) actually enjoyable. For anyone who gets writer’s block the moment you put pen to paper, this episode is for you.
Episode transcription
Phil:
Well, hello there. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil
Lauren:
And I'm Lauren
Phil:
And this is the podcast, where we treat branding like it's therapy. People come on the show with a specific question or area of expertise and we talk about it. Sometimes we're giving people advice on where they should go next with their brand. Other times we're now speaking to experts and learning ourselves, putting ourselves into student mode, but I have to say today is neither of those formats.
Lauren:
Today's a bit different?
Phil:
Did you gasp all the way over there in Los Angeles?
Lauren:
I did. I did.
Phil:
Today's exciting, it is going to be an interesting one because yes, we have an expert in town, but that expert is someone you are going to be very familiar with. Her name is Lauren Moore, and while most episodes, she's a co-host today we're flipping the responsibilities upside down and Ms. Moore of Moore Ideas Inc., right? Isn't that the name of your company?
Lauren:
Yeah, it is.
Phil:
You kept it hidden all this time and now the world knows. Moore Ideas Inc M. O. O. R. E get it. Cute. That's the last name.
Lauren:
You won't find it anywhere online. Just for the record. So don't bother looking.
Phil:
This digital strategist doesn't have a digital strategy.
Lauren:
Ah, nope.
Phil:
That's okay. I'm happy for that because then you put all your effort into mine! So, so that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. I'm going to interview you about copy. I want to talk about this wordsmithing. You know, I mean, I'm not even gonna start the interview. Let's just do this like we would a guest.
Lauren:
Okay. All right. I think I'm ready for this challenge. I'm up for it. I'm really gonna have to let go. I think.
Phil:
Well, if you don't, I'll remind you to do. You just don't even worry about that, little miss. I'll tell you. Oh, let's do it. Let's get to it right now. My conversation with Lauren Moore.
Phil:
Okay, so something new. How do you feel being in the position, first of all of only answering questions, not asking them?
Lauren:
I feel so uncomfortable. Well, but excited.
Phil:
You should be excited. Here is where I got this idea. I got it for a few reasons, right? We've had people on the podcast that have said, I can't put everything I do into one sentence, or they say, I do a little bit of everything. You know? How do I communicate that in a concise way? How do I write my brand sentence? We've even, I mean, I say we, I'm so used to saying we, but I guess I can say me in this case, I've struggled with, how do I say what my brand is without leaving out a few of the details along the way that I feel like people should know. So I think in this conversation, since this is the area that you help our clients, by the end of this conversation will shed some light on how people can start to think and do this for themselves. How does that sound?
Lauren:
Sounds great. You're going to be asking me some questions that I haven't even asked myself before. So this is good. We'll figure it out together.
Phil:
From the minute you meet someone and you're tasked with the challenge of figuring out how to communicate what they do. What are you listening for or paying attention to?
Lauren:
Usually I try to look for the common threads between what someone does in the widest spanning sense. So for example, today we had a call with, I guess he's going to be a guest, but we had a call, I'll keep them anonymous with an investor of sorts of a business, a serial entrepreneur, and he'd done everything under the sun. He had a bunch of experiences in college and throughout his career and he'd start and closed lots and lots of businesses and it didn't really seem like there was much of a throughline at first, but I try to ask questions and really think creatively about what those common threads are between what a person or company does and lean hard into that.
Phil:
Interesting. How do you know to do that? Is it based on what you've just kind of learned along the way of listening for those opportunities? How do you know that that's what usually works? And I also might give you, might get you to give an example.
Lauren:
Okay, well you know it actually goes back to English class in high school. This is so ridiculous, but you know when you used to get assigned a paper in English class and you would have to make a claim that there is a recurring metaphor of you know, life throughout a certain novel.
Phil:
I mean I might've had to, but I think I've repressed it. I much preferred grammar, like I loved deconstructing a sentence and identifying what word type it was and drawing lines underlines. Double underlines for verbs. Single underline for noun adjective gets the arrow. Adverb describes the adjective or the verb. Oh, I love grammar.
Lauren:
Goodness, I need a grammar lesson from you, I think. I'm certainly not at that level, but I remember that in high school we would get assigned a novel and you'd have to like make some sort of claim like about in essays or whatever. You would have to say like the color blue had significance to this novel. And then you'd read through the whole thing and look for all circumstances related to blue. Like whether it's the ocean or the shirts that people are wearing that's in the writing or the blue sky. And you, you know, when you're searching through the text looking for a little facts and themes to fuel whatever case it is you're making. It's the exact same thing with a brand and with copywriting today for me. I try to look for clues, like I'll have a hunch about something and I'll look for clues and ask questions so that I can find those through lines. Do you want me to give an example with you?
Phil:
Yeah, sure.
Lauren:
Okay. So actually why don't we, why don't we do a little experiment? So you are in a really interesting part of your career and I think that over the past few years we've had a lot of opportunities to work with different types of brands and companies and industries. And because it's going so widely, we've actually had problems describing what it is that you do. Right. So let's think about how we might present you as a public speaker. So I'm going to ask you some questions right now and then I'll show you sort of the common, the common threads, but between it. So what is it that you get most excited teaching someone when you're speaking?
Phil:
I would say I get most excited when someone realizes how powerful branding is as a business tool. So it's the misconception that branding is just making things look pretty. It's not. Branding, when used as a tool properly, allows you to actually manifest your goals because you start verbalizing who you want to become, now. So if someone wants to do more speaking, right, and speak internationally and they're not doing that yet, we might actually dig deeper and find, okay, well what, what things have you done that we can through copy and visuals position now, not lie, but certainly position so that it becomes a focus. And even in the way that we would position the brand, we'd make it very apparent that you're, you know, keen on expanding international speaking opportunities as an example. So branding is a tool that helps you manifest your goals. When people realize that, even midway through a project, right, they've updated their photos of their profile photo and they're getting great feedback or they use their brand sentence to pitch to someone when they start to realize the power of this art, that power it has, not just in a visual pretty aesthetic way but in a business way. That excites me. That was a long answer, but I think that's kind of the driving force I'd say behind what we do.
Lauren:
Fantastic. Yeah, I completely agree. And there is something that you really said. You said about the misconception of branding, how branding is really a business tool. And so if I were to be writing copy for your website for example, or for a speaking topic, I would probably using what you just said, go for the angle of branding is more than just a pretty logo or something like more than just a pretty face like playing around with that idiom and using almost like similes if you will, of idioms where people dismiss something just because it's, it's pretty and discount it’s internal value too. So that's kind of by listening and by asking questions that open people up and listening to the misconceptions and where they have a hard opinion, I think that's where the best copy comes from.
Phil:
What's your advice, and I may coming up in this conversation, actually revisit the brand sentence that for the record you and I haven't even looked at in over a year.
Lauren:
It's been awhile.
Phil:
That'll be a fun thing for us to do. But in the meantime, while I track that down, I want to know advice to someone who's trying to write their own brand sense or take inventory of all of this, what should they do? Should they actually have a conversation with someone else in recorded or what can they do if they don't have us? You know, let's say if they don't, we're available by the way, but if they don't have us or a branding expert or someone to help them take inventory of this, how could they start to do this themselves?
Lauren:
Well, first of all, I will admit writing about yourself is so hard. I mean there's a reason why I have minimal appearances online and it's because it's really daunting and overwhelming and so easy to overthink. So the advice I'm about to give is like it's coming from a very conscious place. I know how hard it is. I think I would probably recommend to have a conversation with someone and you could even supply them a list of quick questions that help you open up. But the goal really is to figure out what do you stand for. That's the real question here is what do you stand for and what can someone get from you? What can you offer others? And I think once you figure that out by answering questions in a long way where you're not judging yourself, it makes it easier to edit down.
Phil:
That's interesting. I mean people have to listen right to themselves to their own conversations. Like I've been finding myself recently opening up texts at it on my computer in the middle of a client call because there are just moments where I'm doing what I do for a living. I'm just doing it on a call with a client, talking about branding or giving advice or developing a strategy in the moments in the thick of it. There are moments when I'm doing that, I try really hard to audit that or to listen to those anecdotes, jokes, stories, because a lot of times, not just for your brand sentence, but those make for great content, right? Like Instagram captions or email blasts, any advice beyond just the brand sends on how people can create their own content by listening to themselves, if that makes sense.
Lauren:
Definitely. Definitely. I mean, think about how boring it is to have coffee or dinner or a phone call or a meeting with someone who doesn't have an opinion. Right? It's so boring and it's, it's through strong perspectives that we either get attention or connect with people and both are very positive outcomes. So I think my main advice when it comes to copy is to, again, really figure out what your opinions on topics are and don't be scared to go there.W hether it's the work that you do or something that you see online or a thought that you have about your approach to the work that you offer others, like embrace it fully and don't be afraid to write in a way that that might be polarizing. Because at the very worst, you're getting a message across to someone who wouldn't be a good fit anyway.
Phil:
Hmm. Good point. I found the brand sentence that we wrote for us over one year ago. I've dusted this out literally over a year ago. We wrote two and we're going to, let's workshop this live on the call because I mean, if we can't do this right ourselves, then, then we might as well, we might as well stop the podcast now.
Phil:
We're in trouble. So this is interesting and I think it's interesting to share this experience because you'd think, well, the branding experts must have a perfect brand and an easy journey. But even we have struggled and even made questionable decisions. So a year ago we decided the smartest thing to do was to separate PPC Phil Pallen Collective and PPE philpallen.expert, which was a website built just for my speaking engagements. So what we did was we created two brands sentences. Do you remember these? You want me to read them to you?
Lauren:
I don't really remember them. Please read them.
Phil:
I have them right in front of me. Let me read them for you. So the first one for PPC, for the agency work that we do, the brand sentence was we're a lean, efficient and damn good agency full of the world's best creatives. Consider us your BFF with all the right answers. Okay. That's the first one. And then the brand sentence, I can read again, but the brand sentence for me was for my own personal brand was I'm a celebrity brand strategist who helps people craft a memorable first impression. If your baby's ugly, it's my job to tell you, which is obviously my tagline was my Twitter bio for a long time and now we reference that in a lot of stuff. Those are the two brand sentences we're working with. We decided one year ago to split these out and build a presence for both.
In doing so, I have found it challenging, for example, to have a blog on one site and not the other to have podcasts on one site and not the other. So while we do have two different audiences for each vertical, it's been a challenge to split the content on both platforms. And I think it's been harder to kind of have that cohesiveness. So we're now in the place where I'm thinking everything's gotta be under one roof, but we just have to be extra thoughtful about positioning about exactly what we're talking about. So that's enough of my talking. What are your thoughts after hearing those from a year ago and now evolving, maybe adding thoughts to, to what some of this? Well, you know, these are all, these aren't static decisions. These are discussions we're having.
Lauren:
Yeah, well, first of all, it's bringing a lot of memories back. I completely forgot about this, so it's pretty fascinating to hear it. I think that, you know, at the time that this was written, I feel like these brand sentences were pretty spot on because we were in a place where we wanted to go after corporate clients and expand the team and grow significantly. Right? So in that case we were trying to think, okay, well what makes us different from those other agencies out there? Well we're really lean. We move way faster than most agencies and we're also really, really good not to be too, you know, no way are whatever. But I do think that like our standards from having worked within agencies and working in corporate America and with agencies in that way, like our standards are really, really high and we're good. We're really good. So I think at the time this brand sentence was great and I think yours was pretty spot on too. But now I don't think so. Now I think this needs an update. Do you agree?
Phil:
I agree. Yeah. I think let's update it. Let's actually let people listen to how we updated if we can do is at least a starting point over the phone. Cause even when I hear celebrity brand strategists I'm like eh, you know I still get media requests occasionally but it's not something I care overly about. I'm much more interested in visual branding, personal branding, less about celebrities. So that one doesn't totally jive with me. I'm thinking back to when you just asked me that question a few minutes ago, cause obviously I'm also trying to listen for this and so I was listening to myself, but part of me had this thought where it was like, you know, homepage of this site is often how I'm thinking, how I'm framing a brand sentence, how would it look if that's what we hit someone with right away. This idea that like branding isn't just about making things look pretty.
It's the most powerful business tool available to you, if you know how to harness it, that's not perfect. But like I said, something to that effect and I thought maybe that would grab people's attention, but it assumes that people know what a, what a brand is. Do they know what a brand is when they land on our website? Did they know how important it is? That's the point at which I'd probably start to look back at my past clients, my client list or the last 20 people I worked with and go, if they read that sentence, would they buy from me? I don't know.
Lauren:
Yeah, I don't know. Do you think that past clients know what a brand is or knew when they approached you?
Phil:
Some did, but I can't say for certain that all of them did. I think actually more people come to us because they need a website and they want it to look as good as all of our portfolio projects, but in order to look as good as our portfolio projects, you have to go through our branding process. So I can't say for certain that they would, I think they come to us wanting an updated website. Would you agree?
Lauren:
Yeah, I do agree. And I'm going to ask another question. I don't totally know the answer to it, but we should talk about this. Why do you think people want a website?
Phil:
They know they need one. Everyone else has one. They know that people are looking them up online.
Lauren:
You know? I think that that people want to control, they want to control the message and the way that they're perceived. It would kind of be like, like I think if you don't have a brand, it's almost like someone else is constantly introducing you to people, but you're not allowed to say anything.
Phil:
That's interesting.
Lauren:
You know, so I like exploring that. I think a message about being able to control, like being able to choose how you’re perceived is pretty cool.
Phil:
I liked that. We've never explored that.
Lauren:
No we haven't. But this is Brand Therapy. Anything can happen. I always like type when I'm an, I type so loudly. I always type when I'm copywriting, but I feel something like I help people decide how they're perceived online or, you know, I help people figure out how they're perceived, I think as a kind of cool angle. I love that. We've never done that before, do you?
Phil:
Yeah, I think I like that.
Phil:
Okay. Hold on. Hold on. This is a great conversation we're happening, but it's time for a little break. A little pause.
Lauren:
Oh, wait, conversation we’re happening?
Phil:
Did I say that?
Lauren:
Yeah.
Phil:
Did I really?
Lauren:
Yup.
Phil:
Okay. Let's re-record. Hold on.
Lauren:
No, let's not re-record. Let's live with the consequences of not using the right words in a situation.
Phil:
Oh, great. Okay. Where are you going to tell us about? Since I, apparently I'm having trouble speaking.
Lauren:
So here's our free download for the week. You go to Philip, you got a free download, free download. If you go to philpallen.co there is going to be a free download that has 100 words to describe your personal brand and words. Yeah. And words are important, right? Phil?
Phil:
Using the right words can change your life or using the wrong words could really, also change your life.
Lauren:
Yeah. Using the right words, help people understand what it is that you're talking about. Right. It felt. It's funny, I love this because usually I'm the one who's like, hold up, stop Igor. Edit this out. Let me start again. You never make mistakes, so just let me have this I guess.
Phil:
Yeah, you got it. You got it. So that's our worksheet. Tell us about the blog post since you're the star of the show today.
Lauren:
I know, after this, I'm going to be shunned to my dark working space and never heard from again. So anyway, the post of this week, our 10 content writing tips for your personal brand. So a lot of clients come to us and they don't know what their voice should be online. They're like, okay, should it be light and funny and should it feel like very personable or should I be writing in a almost like luxurious manner and kind of restrained to show and indicate my value in pricing. So we're gonna be addressing all of that in this blog post, all of it.
Phil
All of it. In this blog post, you're going to like this one. You didn't like all of them, but this week's really great. So take two seconds. You've already taken a few minutes to listen to us. Take a few seconds to go over to philpallen.co wait, now I'm scared to talk. philpallen.co/resources we'll have the blog post and the worksheet. Shall we get back to it?
Lauren
Back to our conversation with ourselves. I know we've always talked about first impressions, but I actually as like, uh, another thing, and I think it's true, but I also think that the work that we've started to do over the past year is well beyond a first impression.
Phil:
We've often felt like go back to our process positioning, build, promote. We still kind of reference that in terms of explaining the process. That hasn't changed, but you're right, it is more than a first impression. That would just be the build, but it's so much more than that. One thing that I think is worth addressing as well in this conversation. We're kind of taking it for granted because we live this every day, but we are having this discussion based on a pretty good knowledge of who our audience is. Right. So one of our first questions on a brand audit is who is your audience, right? You need to know the answer to that in order to write a brand sentence. Right.
Lauren:
I do. For me personally, I do because I think if you don't know who your audience is, then how do you know who you're selling to? Yeah. To me it's just in order to look emotionally connect with a group of people, you need to know who they are. It's similar to when you're at a party and you ask someone what do you do or where are you from? Those questions are so that you get closer, like emotionally closer to someone and it's the exact same thing with copy, you just don't necessarily have the party involved.
Phil:
To take it a step further. How should someone get the answer to that question? If they don't know the answer right away?
Lauren:
I always think about what problem it is that your business solves. And then I ask myself first, so what problem is it that you're solving? And I try to keep it as like simple as possible. I help make blank for blank. I help make you know lives easier for babysitters. That just came to my head. I have no idea why. But so once I figured that out, then I ask, well what problems would someone have who might need your service or your, your product. So if it was, let's say it's like an online network for babysitters where you can get jobs easier, you know, get matched with a family to babysit like regularly or something like that. I would think about, okay, well someone who would be hiring a babysitter would be like a busy parent. So the problem the busy parent might have is like they want to know that their kids will be safe without having to conduct full background checks themselves or something like that. So I always think first, what problem is it that the brand is solving? And then I separately think, okay, well this might be the potential audience and what problem is it that they might have.
Phil:
And then how's this person uniquely positioned through content? What they say, personality, how they say it, you know, what do they do that's a little bit different. Um, and start to account for for that. Maybe not in the brand sentence, but certainly in the copy. Yeah, definitely on a website is usually like the exercise of preparing that content. Right. Would you say like the website we usually use is kind of also figuring out services, naming of certain things. That's like a good exercise to get all of this, you know, straightened out.
Lauren:
Yeah. Yeah. Like think about if you were texting with different people. Say the way that you would compose a text to your grandma versus your boss versus your best friend. Even in something as casual as the text, you're probably, whether you're aware of it or not, changing your tone of voice and changing the words you use and the length of the sentences. You might use an exclamation mark or you might use an emoji or you might just keep it very strict and streamlined if it's your boss and only use a period. But all of those changes reflect your voice and it reflects the conscious decision that you are making to connect with a certain type of person. And it's the exact same thing with copywriting online. You need to know who you want reading this so that you can make decisions to appeal to that person.
Phil:
Interesting. Okay, good. Well, I think we've dissected this. I think we’ve round off the discussion with my proposed brand sentence. I always say, I always say me, but there's actually a lot of faces that work behind this face right here and voice for this matter. So going into this year, at least if you go to our website, you'll see that either this brand sentence will exist in this exact form or we may have tweaked it slightly to that point, right? This is constantly evolving and we're constantly thinking, how are we speaking to our audience, first of all, so we didn't answer that. Who is our audience? How would you describe our audience?
Lauren:
I think that our audience are successful business owners and people who know who they are, but they don't quite know how to translate that online.
Phil:
That's interesting. You know who you are, but you don't know how to translate that online. That could be interesting. Maybe not on the homepage, but somewhere on the site. Now I'm auditing you and then so the brand sentence, let's go back to that. We make it clear. I agree. That's our audience. What's that sentence? What have you distilled that down to?
Lauren:
You know, this is always a work in progress, but I think right now I like, “I'm a brand strategist who creates a platform for your perspective.”
Phil:
Hmm. I love that. That's even better than what you said a few minutes ago. Yeah. I think we should rock with that.
Lauren:
Because the way I see it is the work that we provide by creating a brand, it's almost like creating a podium, right? It's the stage that you sit on. It's the presentation that you have behind you. It's that gavel that you use before people listen up. I think that's a brand. You already have your perspective, but you just need the tools to make people listen.
Phil:
Great. Got some good finds here. So from the moment of listening to this, well from the moment I should say of recording it to then you listening to this, we've made some progress on this task. It should be interesting for you guys to then go or for whoever's listening to go and check out our website and see if we updated our brand sentence based on this conversation, Lauren Moore, you've revealed your genius today. How does it feel?
Lauren:
Well, gosh, I just keep thinking, I keeping like, I hope this isn't the most boring episode of Brand Therapy.
Phil:
I don't think it is. We've given some tangible takeaways, important questions that people should be able to answer themselves. And even as you said, it's very hard to talk about yourself if you have trouble answering these questions and you've got to engage someone to help listen to those answers and then to do something productive with those answers. Right?
Lauren:
Yeah. And thinking about idioms. So for example, one of our clients is an internet safety expert and she's amazing. And so with internet safety I think about, okay, well she's a lifesaver because you know, she can help kids. We use the internet in a smart way. She's a shield because she's shielding them from potential consequences of their decisions. So think about metaphors or analogies that can kind of ground your thoughts. I find it's always easier to be creative if you're playing within a sort of a, a set like sandbox if you will instead. Otherwise you can't make any decisions. So like for you Phil, we just came up with this analogy of like speaking and a platform and a podium and a gavel and that's sort of that, that inspired the use of the word platform. But it can be done with really anything, any visual can help bring copy to life.
Phil:
Great. Well I think, let's leave it at that. We could talk about this all day, but I think hopefully people have been able to learn to watch or you know, been able to learn from listening to us workshop this over the last few minutes. Think about how this applies to yourself. We're actually in time and don't even have time for like a separate out-tro, which would be weird, right? I mean, I did the intro, but then the outro of what do we do just like stop talking, play the theme music.
Lauren:
I guess or be like, well that was great. What an amazing guest.
Phil:
You've done some good work here on display for all of our listeners, so I won't put you through that awkwardness. We'll wrap it up there, but hopefully you've learned by watching us listening to us workshop and these are the kinds of conversations we actually have throughout the day. Not on the phone. We're usually on the phone with other clients, but in between we're on Slack. Slack is a really great tool because it organizes things into channels by thought or subject or category so you can keep a running kind of brainstorm of your ideas and developments. Right.
Lauren:
Definitely. Definitely. I would always have some sort of notebook or place where you can just keep thoughts as they come to mind and even if you tabled them later it's, there's literally no such thing as a bad idea when it comes to copywriting. There's only like bad final uses of copy. But everything is a stepping stone.
Phil:
Well that's great. Where can people find us?
Lauren:
Well as people know from previous episodes, I'm @thelaurenmoore
Phil:
You got to go first every time I always butt in the front of the line so I'm @philpallen everywhere, Instagram, Twitter to #brandtherapy. If you want to continue the conversation.
If you listened to this episode, don't keep it a secret. Let us know if you enjoyed the episode, go to iTunes, leave us a friendly little review, we read those because we like to be popular. Thank you. This is a different kind of format and episode, but we hope you've enjoyed us chatting about this. Let us know and we'll see you next week on Brand Therapy.
Lauren:
All right. Thanks for having me, Phil.
Phil:
You're welcome, bye bye!
