Shave the Fluff Off Your Copy

SHAVE THE FLUFF OFF YOUR COPY Lots of copywriters love fluff. They gravitate toward it instinctively because it sounds good. Check out this sentence: â€Å"At Acme Pet Supplies, we offer superior customer service to match our outstanding products.† You might be thinking, â€Å"Oooh – that sounds so good! Everyone wants to see that a company has ‘superior customer service.’ Anyone who reads that Acme has ‘outstanding products’ will be persuaded to shop at Acme Pet Supplies, right?† Wrong. Though it sounds appealing on the surface, that statement is weak. First of all, that sentence could be describing almost any business in any industry. It’s a fluffy generality that could be describing an auto repair shop or a deli. Secondly, â€Å"superior customer service† and â€Å"outstanding products† are unsubstantiated claims. Consumers are bombarded by statements like these all the time and tune them out. Instead of padding your copy with fluffy phrases, use solid details to sell your products. Take another stab at that first sentence: â€Å"Recognized for outstanding customer service by the American Pet Supply Organization, Acme Pet Supply stocks everything pet owners need – from canary food to chew toys.† No more fluff. Readers are left with a verifiable fact about Acme Pet Supply that proves Acme excels in customer service. Plus, this new version tells readers the most important thing they need to know: they can get all their pet supplies at Acme. The next time you’re tempted to use an empty phrase, remember that your copy will be stronger if you shave away the fluff and leave only the facts.

Capital Punishment14 essays

Capital Punishment14 essays This page aims to discuss capital punishment as rationally as possible. I propose to present information which may help people make up their minds about whether or not capital punishment keeps them safe, makes economic sense, or provides a satisfactory "closure" for the victims of homicide. How, if at all, this information affects your response, either emotional or political, to capital punishment remains entirely up to you. The questions of fact concerning capital punishment fall into three general areas: does capital punishment , freeing social resources for better purposes than warehousing and feeding murders, or does it actually cost more, consuming resources that could go into preventing crime? Does capital punishment strike fear into offenders, saving innocent lives by would-be killers? And, finally, the courts make mistakes; what does capital punishment mean to an innocent These questions fit together to define a complex problem. If experience showed capital punishment saved lives by deterring offenders, the cost would not matter; a certainty that capital punishment would save innocent lives might even make the risk of wrongful convictions acceptable. If no risk at all existed of an error by the courts, the question of whether capital punishment saves innocent lives by deterring murder might matter less. And we cannot limit the cost of capital punishment simply to money, since society has limited resources, and can only spend so much on criminal justice. A society that spends money on executions can't spend that money on police officers, courts, or jails; to say nothing of schools, vocational programs, or other measures aimed at preventing crime. If the broader public view of capital punishment does not reflect the reality, how does capital punishment work in the United States? How do alternative systems work in countries such as Canada? And if of responses to murder, and the effe...

What is Effective Leadership within an Organisational Context Essay

What is Effective Leadership within an Organisational Context - Essay Example It seems that these characteristics are not standardized. Indeed, each leader seems to have different criteria for prioritizing organizational needs and for handling organizational crises. For this reason, the description of effective leadership may have different forms, focusing on the leader’s personal characteristics (traits), the role of leadership in transforming the organizational environment and so on. The review of the theories developed in the particular field led to the following assumption: effective leadership can exist in modern organizations but not in its ideal form. This means that even leaders who are characterized as quite successful may fail in responding to all needs of their organization. This finding can be characterized as logical since leaders, like all people, can also have weaknesses and preferences. However, there is a characteristic that differentiates successful leaders from others, non-charismatic leaders; successful leaders are able to use their weaknesses as means for promoting their ideas. The lack of flexibility of Margaret Thatcher in regard to her political decisions has been also considered as a power for supporting her ideas. In other words, in charismatic leaders, weaknesses are transformed into exceptional characteristics, contributing in the success of these leaders within their environment. 2. Effective leadership – description and analysis 2.1 Nature of leadership The last decades, the development of leadership has been rapid. The reason is that the specific concept has been highly related to the organizational development. In fact, it has been proved that leaders have a key role in the success of organizations in the international market. A wide range of leadership definitions has appeared, aiming to explain the nature of the concept and its role in the organizational performance. In accordance with a well-known description of leadership, this of Bass (1990), the most appropriate description of leadershi p would refer to leadership as ‘a group of processes’ (Bass 1990, in Northouse 2010, p.2). In the context of the above description, the leader is believed to be the center of organizational processes, and that his views reflect the views of his environment, meaning the employees. However, the above description fails in explaining the role of leader in taking initiatives, a role which is quite important for modern organizations, as analyzed further in the sections that follow. From another point of view, Northouse (2010) notes that leadership can be considered as a concept reflecting ‘a combination of special traits’ (Northouse 2010, p.2), meaning that each leader has specific characteristics, which are those that make the particular leader exceptional within his environment, both the internal and the external. The trait-theory on leadership, as described above, is quite popular, focusing on the personality of leader and not so much on his role within the or ganization. It is expected that the response of each leader to his environment will be different, in accordance with his personal characteristics, meaning his perceptions, his background and his skills. 2.2 Types of leadership in modern organization As noted above, the views of theorists in regard to leadership and its role are differentiated. Most theorists consider leadership as related more to the personal characteristics of the leader, a view promoted in the traits theory of leadership. However, there are also theorists who