*** DATA BREACH ***

Dear clients and colleagues,

I regret to inform you that AMOK Creative has been the victim of a data breach. Hackers are demanding a ransom, and threatening to release years of sensitive information about how I conduct my freelance business. I refuse to enrich these criminals. I have decided instead to publicise these secrets myself. It’s not pretty, but it’s my way of taking back ownership:

1. On more than one occasion I have used the word ‘hyper-real’ despite having no idea what it means.

2. I have tried to sell an idea called ‘Dinner without drama’ on at least 3 different briefs. It’s a daytime soap parody, pretty funny IMO, but not IOO.

3. I have agreed with retouching feedback where someone says ‘Let’s knock back some of the greens in that red…’ but I don’t see any greens - I just see red

4. I have presented the platform line ‘Thing big.’ for at least 4 brands with very broad product offerings. I still thing it is good.

5. I have - with a straight face - suggested that a line in my script ‘could catch on and become part of the vernacular’

6. I have written an ad with Will Smith and Chris Rock as the talent.

7. I have written an ad that re-imagined Keith Urban as an R&B singer called Urban Keith.

8. When Urban Keith was knocked back I RE-PRESENTED him mere days later.

9. I have responded to the TikTok portion of the brief with a dance idea.

10. I know full well that everybody can see my screen on Teams.

11. I have pitched far too many experiential ideas in Martin Place Sydney, and Fed Square Melbourne.

12. I have almost no idea what to do or say at a grade.

13. I have presented split screen ideas. And doppelganger ideas. I know. I know.

14. I have done a meeting camera-off so that people won’t see I’m drinking wine on a Monday evening.

15. I have done a meeting camera-on with the wine in a mug

16. Pretty much every thing I write is - on some level - a rip-off of Bud Light ‘Real Men of Genius’.

17. I have cheerfully thanked people for feedback I am not thankful for

18. I have written an ad for an electric car where it drove through an epic electrical storm. Basically the most hack visual pun imaginable.

19. I have presented Crypto, NFT & AI ideas

20. I have billed a half day for writing a manifesto that took 8.5 minutes.

21. I have LAPPED UP the flattery in the opening paragraph of most director’s treatments.

22. I have deployed some of my best creativity when doing timesheets

23. When struggling for ideas, I have taken an alt name for an idea, and given it its own duplicate slide, to pad the overall slide count of the deck.

24. I have aided and abetted award case studies with whole sections of fiction in them.

25. I don’t even know how to properly indent the dialogue bits in a script.

So there you have it. I may have lost my dignity but I have held on to my BitCoin. Maybe they’ll think twice next time they try to hack a hack.

My learnings since starting an OnlyFans

At the back end of last year I decided to start an OnlyFans. AMOK had turned five years old - five years of being creatively promiscuous - and I thought I would celebrate by getting an OF page, and slanging some free ideas on there. A bit of a gag, sure - but not just a gag. As I discuss in my video about it, I have long had a suspicion that we undervalue the ‘first thoughts’ that come to us on a brief. Obviously 5 minutes of thinking will never be as good as 5 days - but I think the gulf isn’t as wide as most people would like to think it is.

Anyway, I thought the OF stunt was the perfect way to test it. I’d make the ideas free to begin with, to try and motivate people over the barrier of creating an OnlyFans account. It would also skirt any issues CCO’s might have with their finance department. I would fire out some quick turnaround ideas from my DMs. And we might find that there is market for them. And once we did, I might up the price from $0 to some nominal amount like $250. The ideas would of course be a bit hit and miss, but they’d be super cheap, and they wouldn’t soak up much of my time. I thought it could become an interesting solve for availability issues. When an agency contacts me about a job but I’m flat out on other projects, I wouldn’t have to just say no - I could at least point them to my OnlyFans for a ‘quick and dirty idea’.

That was the plan. It didn’t go at all to plan. Everyone got a kick out of the gag, almost no one hit me up for a quick and dirty idea. As is stand the total stats are:

  • 100 visits to my OF page

  • 0 subscribers

  • 0 DMs

  • 1 person who hit me up for a free idea over email but didn’t open an OF account - Simon Joyce at Emotive

  • 1 person who was prompted to send me a brief by the stunt…but insisted on paying me!

I thought the uptake for FREE ideas would be way higher. I guess people either thought I was joking, or they didn’t think that the quick turnaround ideas would be any good. But they are wrong about that. Just yesterday I presented some brand platforms to a big network agency. I had spent a couple of days on it, and I think I shared 15 or 16 of them. But where was all the love? The line that everyone loved was the one I scribbled down 5 minutes after taking the brief. It warrants further investigation. And folks my OnlyFans remains open for business - for anyone who is brave enough to slide into my DM’s.

George Vlahos and The Lace Arse

Years ago I lived in an apartment block in Waterloo. The building manager was a bloke named George Vlahos. Vlahos was of Greek heritage, and thick set. He wore wraparound sunnies, a soul patch, and a robust cologne. He wasn’t a great building manager, but we always had entertaining conversations.

One such time we were talking about the cost of car repairs - I think I was complaining about replacing the transmission on our Jeep. He said that the cost of parts is even greater for European cars. And then after saying that he said the following thing:

“Mate I always say, ‘If you wanna wear lace panties…you gotta have a lace arse.’ Ya know what I mean? If you wanna have something fancy, ya gotta be able to back it up. The original saying is ‘If you wanna wear lace panties, you gotta have a nice arse’ but I like to say ‘a lace arse’…”

Years later I’m still thinking about this remark, and have many questions. Why does he think his version is an improvement on the original? What does he mean when he says ‘a lace arse’? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean an arse made out of lace. I think he means an arse suited to lace - a lace-quality arse. But surely that’s just a nice arse? The original saying seems to work well. His tweak just adds some repetition and some confusion. But he likes the tweak enough to not only change the saying, but specifically call out to me what the tweak is. He wants me to know his ‘build’.

It was so baffling. But I can’t call the guy stupid. At the end of the day, I am still thinking about this conversation 10 years later. My wife and I still use the saying - his version! I’m not sure we would be doing that had he quoted the sensical version of the saying. (side note: it might be a stretch to call it a saying as I’ve never heard anyone else drop it in conversation - before or since)

I don’t really have a larger, intelligent point to make other than to say that this anecdote kinda supports a longheld belief I have that linguistic clunkiness and wrong-ness can play an important role in achieving cut through and memorability. It creates a cognitive dissonance that we can’t help but pay attention to, and linger on. Shit, I’ve lingered on this one for a decade.

Weasel word: Cadence

Cadence is a lovely word. Or at least it is when applied traditionally. It makes me think of like Irish poetry, or classical music, or some other thing I am too cretinous to appreciate. But if you hear it in an advertising context, you should probably run for cover. I’ve noticed people only whip out this beautiful word when trying to mask a truly hideous set of timings.

‘…unfortunately the cadence of approvals on this project requires us to go back to client later today…’

‘…we’ll need to work the weekend, to keep pace with the cadence of this pitch response…’

Don’t be dazzled by cadence’s charms. Tell them that it doesn’t align with the natural cadence of your week - 5 days on, 2 days off.

Get briefed last

When you go into production on a TVC, you brief 3 different directors. The first one you brief has a practical advantage - time. Often he or she will get briefed a couple of days before the third one. So they have some more time to craft their treatment. But I reckon the slot you want is the last one. Why? Because as a creative, I reckon my third briefing is the best one. And my first one can be a bit rubbish. There are things I haven’t thought through - the first briefing often happens the day after the script is approved by client. The act of talking about it with a director sharpens up my view about this or that. And it focuses my mind on what are the few key things that need to be nailed, for the spot to be a success. By the time I get to the third director, my brief is clear and concise. He or she might have less time, but I reckon they are in a great position to win the job.

Loretta Lynn, genius copywriter

Country music tends to maligned and kind of sneered at by popular culture, but I’ve always had a soft spot for it. One reason is just that some of the writing in country music is so brilliant. There is such clarity to it. Other genres’ lyrics are so often this kind of vague poetry. If you can even make out what the words are, the meaning is opaque - completely open to interpretation. Not in country. Country songs have a story to tell. Or a central idea. And every element of the song serves that idea - as clearly as possible.

There’s a song by Loretta Lynn, that I think is the perfect country song. It’s called ‘Miss being Mrs’, and she wrote it many years ago after her husband died, but it came out in 2005 when she did an album with Jack White. There are so many things I love about it, starting with the title. Three short words capture the story so poignantly. There’s also a slight wordplay/pun to it - country songs are great at using a little wordplay to make a song stick. So just the title has me intrigued and a little moved. But Loretta still has 3 minutes of song, and she doesn’t waste a second. Every single line goes after the heart strings. She creates this vivid portrait of grief. I don’t need to interpret it in the slightest. She just lays it out and it smashes me - even though I’ve never experienced that in my life. What a gift.

Ambiguity is overrated. Just hit play on the below video and have Loretta go for your jugular.

Scenes from the C-Suite

Often I’ll be following the news and see a public figure exhibiting behaviour I’ve encountered in my agency life. It used to happen a fair bit with Trump. I would often read about that way his staff would tippy toe around his volatile mood. If he was in a rage they would hold back bad news, and try to butter him up with good news or praise. Any time things were shared with him, it needed to be done in a way that accommodated his impatience/short attention span/illiteracy etc. And then any garbage idea he farted back at them would be furiously agreed with. Obviously no one I’ve worked with is on The Donald’s level, but boy I have seen versions of it. CEO’s or CCO’s who - if you caught them at a bad time - would just torch a week or more of creative work on a whim. Even worse, sometimes they would replace it with an idea of their own - that they have spent mere moments thinking on - and you now have to run with it. You just have to cop it of course. Being in the top job, that’s his prerogative. (I’ve only ever seen these traits in men lol).

Whilst it isn’t Trumpy, I also got that pang of familiarity when I saw this leaked text from NSW Premier Dominic Perrotet, to the CEO of Sydney Trains Matt Longland. I find it such a repulsive trait in a leader, when they just pile the pressure on someone beneath them to deliver a particular outcome…without any guidance on how they might get there. It amounts to ‘Just so you know, I’m going to be super pissed off (and blame you!) if this doesn’t come off’. I’ve seen CCO’s lay it on thick with GADs: ‘You have to get this idea sold - it’s a guaranteed award winner.’ I’ve also heard it from clients, who sometimes like to just re-iterate - sometimes mid-preso - that this product launch is CRUCIAL for the business. Or that the sales targets for it are HIGHLY ambitious. Okay. I am fully onboard with those outcomes. Let’s discuss how we can get there.

2021: Bring back the good ol' days of the pandemic

This past year was a bit of a bastard. And whilst I would love blame Omicron, or Omnicom, the real reason is a bit more mysterious. Firstly, why am I saying it was a dud year professionally? Because basically nothing I worked on got made. Having turned out plenty of ads in 2020, the second year of Covid was far less kind. And I don’t really have an explanation. It’s just how it goes sometimes. I certainly worked on some great briefs. With some great agencies - I spent most of the year with Clemenger Melbourne. It’s an agency I’ve long admired but never worked with before. And I was not disappointed - I met some incredibly talented people and some of the projects have been unreal. But even the great Clems is not immune to the high rate of attrition that is so common in our industry.

A few weeks ago I was at a 4th birthday party, talking to the lad’s mother, who is a teacher. She had asked how work was going and I said there was no shortage of it, but that nothing I had created this year…had actually been created. It took a little while for her to comprehend this.

“So, these brands get you to come up with all these ideas - and they pay you for them - but they don’t do anything with them?”

You’ve about captured it, Jules. There are times when it feels like the advertising industry is primarily a maker not of ads, but of inspiration for marketers and their bosses. Most days we are creating mere fodder - terabytes of slidecraft that just help the client decide what they really want.

Often what they want is to scrap the project for one reason or another. Other times they just opt for some fairly straight film, or something else traditional. Yes, 2021 has seen the continued floundering of activation as a channel. In an industry that has a lot of conceptual roadkill, no creature been splattered as frequently as the Non-Traditional Brand Act. Everyone asks for them. I would say that - comfortably - 50% of my time is spent coming up with them. And they NEVER get made. I have a few theories about why - but that might be another post for another day. Today, I wish to just bid 2021 adieu. I’m hoping that 2022 brings a bit more love from the ad gods.

A good time to give yourself an uppercut

If you ever find yourself in a client meeting, talking up some phrase you’ve coined, and suggesting ‘you can see it catching on, becoming part of the vernacular’ - do us a favour and punch yourself in the face.

No one’s group chat is going to split its sides as the resident larrikin says ‘Don’t get your Twinings in a twist’. Nor will ‘Grab life by the Bundabergs’ be the next YOLO.

It’s extremely rare, and impossible to predict, because it is a random byproduct of your ad just colliding with the chaos of culture.

Have I ever made such a claim about one of my lines? You bet I have haha. More than once. And each time, I absolutely deserved a smack in the chops.

Deadbeat Dad

One of the biggest things I’ve had to adjust to since going freelance is the wild variation in how much I can influence a campaign once it has been sold in. I’m always at the coalface when the idea is generated, but I’m rarely around come the day of the shoot.

The upside of this run-and-gun approach is that I get more work out. If you’ll forgive the crass metaphor, it can be a bit like the life of a sperm donor. I have lots of babies. But sometimes you see one of them out in the world and damn - the kid is ugly.

Other times it turns out great. Other times it turns out fine but is a bit unrecognisable - all that has survived from when I worked on it is the end line or something. The child unmistakably has my eyebrows, but nothing else. It can feel a bit odd to claim it as my work. And yeah, sometimes that munchkin is a minger. In those instances, it can feel as though this is the downside to freelance. Not being there for the kid! Not being around to shape it, and protect it.

In the end, I get a bit more philosophical, and more practical - am I sure I could have really changed the outcome had I remained involved? The answer I usually arrive at, if I’m honest, is no. Of course I would’ve made passionate arguments for this or that piece of music, or edit choice or whatever. And my CDs would’ve been in fierce agreement. In fact, they probably made most of those arguments in my absence. But the harsh reality is that the success rate of changing a client’s mind about such things is super low. Even as a full-timer, when I was a very doting father to ideas, there are these other Fathers and Mothers - with the Big Daddy being the client. Their opinion trumps all, as it should - they’re paying, and it’s their brand. And whilst you can usually win a couple of the one percenters, arguing the bigger bits - the kinds of decisions that can turn a brutish bub beautiful…well, I think that opportunities for persuasion are far more limited than most of us can bear to admit.

But maybe I’m just not persuasive enough.

I’m certainly a deadbeat dad.

Weasel word: Collaborative

Creatives are often asked to work in a ‘collaborative’ style - by both clients and account people - and we always say yes. Not only does it sound modern and innovative, if you say you don’t want to work collaboratively you just instantly sound like a jerk.

But a lot of the time ‘Let’s work collaboratively’ just means ‘I also want to be a creative on this one.’ Simple as that. The person saying it thinks they have ideas about what the concept should be, and they want you to go along with them/just jazz them up a bit. Sometimes their ideas are good, in which case you should. But sometimes their ideas are shit. If you say they are shit, be prepared to be accused of being un-collaborative.

NB: When a creative says they want to be collaborative, it has the inverse meaning. It usually means they don’t really give a shit about the job, and so they’re happy for you to give them the answer.

What will socials say?!

There’s an exchange I’ve had with many clients over the years that goes something like this: They brief the agency on the need for a new platform, that says something positive about their brand. For argument’s sake we’ll say it’s XYZ insurance. We come up with one - for argument’s sake we’ll say it’s ‘XYZ. Insurance you can rely on.’ The client says they like it, but that are hesitant to make such a definitive statement, because they feel it would be attacked on social by:

  • Some group of customers they have stiffed somehow eg flood victims they have refused to pay out on

  • A bunch of employees they made redundant when they shut down an office somewhere

  • Customers who have faced their lengthy call centre wait times

  • Etc etc

‘On social, people can just flip that on us and say we were anything but reliable.’

The client is, of course, 100% right. People On Social can scoff at your end line. But here’s the thing about People On Social: they will do that whatever your line is. If your brand is big - and if it has bruising encounters with various stakeholders in the market - those aggrieved folks are going to grind their axe regardless. It’s not for me - the agency copywriter - to craft a line that simultaneously delivers all the positivity the client wants, and linguistically snookers the keyboard warriors. There is no snookering them.

Even though we seem to all agree that ‘the Comments section’ displays all of humanity’s worst impulses, we seem intent on giving these people more and more power. In advertising - and in culture more broadly - we need to just accept there is going to be a degree of vitriol there, and get comfortable with it. Obviously that level will be elevated if your company is committing bastardry in pursuit of profit. But I can’t do anything about that. All I can do is write a simple, impactful, plausible articulation of what you claim to be about. It’s then over to you as a company to get as close to that promise as possible.

2020 Hindsight

I can’t let such an infamous year pass without a bit of reflection. I have assembled some thoughts on AMOK’s year, for the enjoyment of both of the people who read this blog.


Win Column


AWARDS. 2020 was a blockbuster for awards, in a way that I still don’t entirely understand. I can honestly say awards have never been my objective since I started AMOK. On the contrary, I kind of resigned myself to the fact that as a freelancer I wouldn’t get many of those juicy, award-friendly briefs. But I’m looking back on a year where I notched 20 pencils at AWARD. I also had 5 different campaigns get shortlisted at B&T, with 3 of them winning: Best TV, Best Outdoor, Best Radio. That is a unique trifecta, one I’m bloody proud of. Whilst I’ve had some good award years in the past - and often it has been at more international, ‘illustrious’ shows - it has always been for work that few people in the general public actually saw. The stuff I’ve put out with AMOK is doing nothing at the international shows, but it’s doing really well at home, and it’s cleaning up at something like B&T, which only really recognises big, real campaigns that lots of punters saw and liked. I’m finding this type of win more satisfying.


REMOTE WORK REVOLUTION. I can’t put ‘Covid Pandemic’ in the win column, but I think I can put this? Remote work was a key part of the AMOK proposition from the outset, and it met plenty of early resistance. But I carved out a small set of clients who were willing to tolerate it. Then coronavirus comes along and overnight, every agency in the world was strong-armed into trying the way of working I have been promoting. There were a few bumps but everyone has discovered the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. And now I don’t get a word of pushback on dialing in. This has precipitated two further big wins for AMOK:


RELOCATION OF WORK. For the first time this year I picked up a client in Melbourne. I did a couple of stints for TBWA Melb and have another one coming up. Then after that it looks like I’ll be doing a stint with the big dog, Clems Melb.


RELOCATION OF HOME. A long term goal when I started AMOK was to be able to move out of Sydney. Somewhere with more space and less pace. We were fairly on track for this sea change but it got a huge push along by the pandemic. Our little family moved 90 mins north to Copacabana, which is as idyllic as it sounds. I wear a panama hat, drink buttery chardonnay and sometimes in between Zooms I go for a quick soak in the Pacific. Then I wander back through the soft Copa sand to rewrite some scripts and cuddle my kids. In these moments - for just a moment - life feels like a brief that I have cracked. It doesn’t last all that long - I get some heinous client feedback, or Joseph kicks me in the dick - but to even feel it fleetingly is potent, and thrilling.


Loss Column


LOCKDOWN LOCO. When the pandemic hit, it was bloody stressful. I started to hear that a lot of agencies were imposing pay cuts across the board. I did a simple mental calculation - if you’re asking your permanent creatives to take a pay cut/work 4 days a week, what budget are you going to have for freelancers? I quickly came to the conclusion it would be zero. I had a stern conversation with Jess and told her I thought we could afford to go about 3 months with no work at all. Not because we had savings, I just figured I would tap into the money I’d been accruing for income tax and super. I also started to brainstorm some leftfield ideas, like offering to work on new business pitches on a success fee basis - no win, no pay. Luckily it never came to that! But it gives you an idea of how dire I thought things might get. I was ecstatic to be wrong. The entire year was solidly busy.


PITCHES. Lost some pitches that really stung. Catch.com.au and West Coast Cooler, both for Emotive. I have a lot of heart for Emotive, and whilst they managed 2020 very well, I really would have liked to bring in some fresh brands for them. These two would have been very handy additions and I worked on both, but went 0 from 2.


THE DEATH OF THE DOUBLE DIP. In July we welcomed our second child, My Beautiful Darling, Lois Lucinda Dawson. This was undoubtedly in the Win Column of Life, but it really upped the parenting workload and reduced my ability to churn through work. Not that I was a big double dipper before, but if a juicy brief came up I would often take it on, on the side. I can’t really do that at all now. Every day is bookended with big blocks of bathing and bum-wiping, so one gig at a time is all I can manage.


BAILING ON A JOB. There was one gig where I got so sick of it, I just told the agency I couldn’t continue working on that job. I didn’t feel good doing it - I pride myself on having a degree of resilience and a work ethic where I follow through. I never want to be the guy who just storms off when he doesn’t get his way. BUT...this wasn’t that, in my opinion. I had put in a very solid effort - repeatedly - and was just getting nowhere with the client. Looking back on the decision, I maintain it was the right one.


TVC OD. Yet again this year my output was overwhelmingly film, despite my love of non-traditional/activation-type work. I presented heaps of it, but it’s the same old story - clients just feel a bit more comfortable buying a script. Maybe even more so in an uncertain period like 2020. It’s a minor complaint though - I still love punching out a good TV spot.


-


So, when I look over the two columns, it’s no contest. 2020 - for all of its turmoil - was a cracking year. I have been wildly fortunate and am so grateful to the agencies that kept giving me opportunities throughout this turbulent year. Below is little reel I assembled of what I was able to get out the door.



When being the Worst is the Best

Humility and swagger aren’t concepts you normally associate with one another. I certainly didn’t, up until a formative moment in my career. I remember it vividly - it was 2007. I was the most junior of creatives, working at Clemenger BBDO Sydney. Management brought in a new ECD, with all of the attendant fanfare and uncertainty. He came from Colenso BBDO - then, as now, an absolute creative powerhouse. His name was Richard Maddocks, and ahead of his start date, he did a bit of a preso to the agency to introduce himself. In it, he rattled through some of the work he had done at Colenso - and it was cracking stuff. Multiple campaigns that cleaned up at Cannes. Finally, he played an ad for some brand of kiwi bacon, and said that it had been awarded Worst Ad in New Zealand the previous year. He had a good laugh about that, and told us that he doesn’t mind a bit of failure - that it’s sort of an unavoidable byproduct of trying to do something good.

These days that kind of sentiment is quite trendy. I think W+K’s motto is ‘Fail Harder’, and every time I get on LinkedIn people are talking about how great failure it is. But in 2007, succeeding was still very much en vogue. Rich was at the forefront of failure. And it kinda blew my mind. I remember thinking ‘Holy shit. This guy has done so much great stuff, he can just laugh off winning Worst Ad of the Year?! Not just laugh about it - almost boast about it?!’ It was roughly the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

So you might think it was planned when, a mere 12 months later, I bagged myself a Worst Ad Of The Year gong. Sadly, it was unintentional. We were trying to make a Really Good Ad when we made ‘Daniel’s Birthday’ - a TV spot for the Mitsubishi Pajero about a guy trying to avoid a family function with the help of his Compact SUV. I maintain it was half decent, but the B&T Annual of 2008 said it had ‘No depth, no cleverness, and no point’, awarding it the Number 1 position in its Top 10 Worst Ads. 

As you can imagine, I was quietly thrilled by this. Granted, my portfolio didn’t have any of the illustrious, Lion-winning Colenso stuff. So there wasn’t that weight of metal that so heavily offset Rich’s bacon ad in that initial preso. But I wasn’t about to let that dampen this epic achievement.

My creative partner and I clipped out the honour and stuck it to the wall of our office. And I made it the last line of my professional bio...where it remains to this day. If you were being generous, you could call it a tribute/homage to Maddocks. But let’s be honest - it’s a blatant rip-off from the best CD I’ve ever worked for. A pose, an imitation...but not without substantiation: I did win that award, fair and square.

A POV on TOV

Pretty much every brand has a Tone Of Voice document of some sort these days. Done well, they can be quite useful. In my experience, they are rarely done well. And every single one of them has the same maddening ‘WE ARE...BUT NOT...’ slide. This slide lays out a series of adjectives that describe the brand personality, along with a series of related adjectives that do not. I’ll give you an example that - I swear to God - has been in every TOV doc I’ve ever read:

WE ARE Confident BUT NOT Arrogant

Thank goodness for this clarification - I was about to plonk down at my keyboard and bang out a 200-word eDM that was absolutely dripping with hubris and conceit. Forgive my sarcasm, but surely it’s obvious that no brand would ever identify as arrogant - so the linguistic guardrail you have given me is useless. Often, the adjective in column B is just the excessive form of the adjective in column A. The above example could be rephrased as follows: WE ARE Confident BUT NOT Too Confident. When you phrase it like that the full banality of the statement is laid bare. Obviously no brand wants to be Too anything! So if your statement fits that format, consider rewriting it, or binning it.

But the crimes aren’t just in column B. The above example also errs in column A - ‘Confident’. Point me to a brand anywhere in the world that wouldn’t say this describes them. You would have a hard time doing it. Confident is like Authentic, Optimistic, Positive. These traits are in every single brand document. So how can it possibly be helpful to include them in this one as well? It just wouldn’t make sense for a brand to be Meek, Fake, Pessimistic or Negative. So attaching to their antonyms is pointless. It is like a band describing their music as Tuneful, Melodious, Rhythmic. 

So, a fairly simple test to apply: when describing what your brand is, try to use words that some brands wouldn’t. When describing what you brand isn’t, try to use words that some brands would.

If you adhere to those two rules, your tone of voice document is going to be clarifying and useful to a copywriter.

But you know what else is an amazing TOV document? An ad! I would argue that sending over a few print headlines or social posts, that the marketing team agrees are bang-on tone - that is as good as any TOV document.