Lack of Honesty = Broken Wine Glasses = Hilarious X-Factor Auditions

This morning, I have this to say: the world is now full of people who have this massively mistaken belief that they can sing! Have you ever wondered why that person in your office, or on the bus, or in the room next door to yours keeps belting out "ballads" that have yet to feature a correct note? Are you sick of replacing your wine glasses because your neighbours singing makes them explode on cue? Where did these people, and their mistaken beliefs, come from? Well, I blame "X-Factor" personally. I mean, let's look at someone like Gareth Gates (yes, I know he was on Pop Idol). He started as a nervous nobody with a stutter. Now, he's a household name. He's a successful recording artist. He's even appearing in Les Miserables in the West End! The thing is that previously, we were used to hearing of great singers after they'd been working at it for years. People like Rod Stewart seemed to have been born for singing; I can't imagine anyone like that having a stutter. This does cause a slight problem, however...



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What do you do when even the experts have no clue?

Why is it so hard to get good advice these days? For example, I had a cough in October last year that seemed to go on forever. I tried to ignore it, then down copious quantities of honey and lemon, but when I became bored of coughing up my spleen, I headed to the pharmacy who suggested that I should try some cough medicine. When I asked which one, she merely said "this one is good; it tastes of strawberry". Really! That's your basis on what sort of medicine to pick from? I then proceeded to head to the Supermarket to see what they had. I did ask an assistant, but to be honest I might as well have channeled Barney the Purple Dinosaur. He seemed to have an affection for the words "um" and "uh", and kept saying "I dar' now, mate". He did attempt to work out which was cheaper overall, but seemed to shut down every other part of his body, including blinking, as he concentrated 100% on basic addition. I ran away before he overloaded and exploded, naturally.

The doctor was my next port of call, as you'd imagine. However this only served to confuse me even further: apparently, cough medicine doesn't even work at all! Huh?



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Learn To Speak All Proper, like.

Have you ever stayed up to watch those infomercials that come on at about 2am, that try their best to sell you some overpriced exercise machine? Well I have, and I think they're hilarious. Apparently, the only people who use them are super-toned super heroes, with muscles bulging in places that don't quite look right, and naturally we believe they look like this through exclusive use of this machine, and with no help from those funny pills that a guy called "Bazza" has supplied them. Hmm...

Anyway, I'm not here to sell you a "SuperPowerBoostAwesomeGo 3000". I remember seeing one recently where the presenter said "without this machine, it would of taken me, like, loads of months, like, to get all, umm, you know, toned and stuff". Really? You want me to start taking you seriously?



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Copywriting hints and tips

Since we’ve been running our ‘Copywriting – The Art of Persuasion’ workshops, so many delegates have commented “I wish I’d only known that, before I wrote my brochure/sales letter/flyer”

So here’s a few hints and tips when you’re writing sales letter, adverts or any marketing communication you want to have impact and really get to your audience.

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