Copywriter Self-Promo That Works...

Here is a Self-Promo for copywriter Lawson Clarke that was sent to me by a recent grad Jett Landicho.

I tell my students when it comes to self-promo... “make sure it has impact, make it real, make it memorable, make it worth the time somebody will spend with it”. In this case it does. All around.

Lawson pays a fun retro homage to the Burt Reynolds Cosmo Centerfold from 1972. The work within his portfolio samples are great. I love the way the site interacts and informs... most of all it hides very little... in terms of talent.

Personally, I love the "Star Spangled Banner" as the site loads... my imagination ran wild looking for some sort of rising.

In 1972, Burt Reynolds shared a late-night talk show couch (in a totally non-sexual way) with Helen Gurley Brown, author of Sex and the Single Girl and editor of Cosmopolitan.

At some point in the evening, Brown challenged Reynolds to pose for a nude centerfold (shown above) in her magazine, and he agreed. Here is in all his bearskin glory, cigarillo barely held aloft by his smirking lips. Later he would write the whole thing off as a joke - and really, just look at it and there's no reason not to believe him - but he'd also write the entire period off as a blur.

Now it got my attention, I want to hear the response Lawson gets to the site. A female colleague asked if I found it a bit sexiest, you know "the girlie icons etc..."... I said get a grip lady.

Thanks Jett.

Thanks Lawson for letting it all hangout for us to see great work.

Take a visit: http://malecopywriter.com/

Whack Upside The Head

"Roger von Oech has won a loyal following around the country."

- BusinessWeek Magazine

The Creative Whack Pack is a creativity tool and trust me it will "whack" you out of habitual thought patterns and safety-nets you fall into when brainstorming. The Creative Whack Pack is a "creativity workshop in a box." It consists of 64 cards, each featuring a different strategy. Some highlight places to find new information. Others provide techniques to generate new ideas. Some lend decision-making advice. And many give you the "kick" you need to get your ideas into action.

Roger von Oech, is a best-selling author of creativity books "A Whack on the Side of the Head" and "A Kick in the Seat of the Pants", and now has launched a version of his Creative Whack Pack brainstorming card deck for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Once again, trust me, this is very welcome to me. You see there have been a 100 different times I wish I my "deck" with me… but only to have it at home. Now, it comes with me everyday… on my iPhone. And the interface makes the most of the iPhone user interface, and delivers a fun, engaging user experience.

When you first fire up the Creative Whack Pack on the iPhone, you're greeted by a menu that gives you five different choices:

• Give me a whack, which displays one of the 64 brainstorming cards in the deck at random
• Whack of the Day, which displays a different brainstorming card every 24 hours
  
• The Creative Workshop, which gives you an opportunity to use the Whack Pack to solve a particular problem, issue or topic, using a set of four cards. It displays each of them in turn, followed by a summary that asks you to think about any patterns that the quartet of creative stimuli may suggest.
  
• A card index, which lets you drill down to specific cards by "suit" -- explorer, artist, Judge and warrior (the four types of creative personas that von Oech suggests we be able to take on in his books). If you remember seeing a card that you thought was particularly intriguing in a previous session, this is a great way to find it again.
  
• Information, which includes the help files for the Creative Whack Pack, an explanation of the creative process, and how this is reflected in the four different suits of cards contained in this creativity tool.
  

A lot of thought has gone into how to organize the Whack Pack in a common sense, easy-to-use way. The arrangement of screens and tool navigation are simple and hierarchical, with "back" and "home" buttons clearly displayed at the bottom of each screen, which enable you to back up one level or go to the start screen for the program, respectively.

Best part… it's only $4.99 for the Creative Whack Pack for iPhone.

One of my students, Jett Landicho just purchased the Whack Pack iPhone App and told me the following, "It's so simple but so great. These are great ways to really take creative thinking to a deeper level. I could see myself using this for any time I felt creative, not even just for advertising".

Any tools we can find to help get the process started… the better!

http://blog.creativethink.com/2009/03/creative-whack-pack-iphone-app.html

http://www.creativewhack.com/