Ideas
Words
Ads
Engelman Writing
Concepts and copywriting for advertisements, websites, brochures and more …
Back when CIBA Vision was my client, arch-competitor J&J started branding their lenses — bypassing eye care practitioners, advertising directly to consumers. With 30 second TV spots, magazine and direct mail coupons, J&J got consumers clamoring for their brand of lenses.
And while practitioners appreciated the business, many felt that J&J was usurping their role as gatekeepers. Even beyond their obvious limitations in powers and diameters, the J&J products were not always a good fit. Practitioners felt that they, rather than coupon-bearing patients, should be the deciders. CIBA didn’t have the money to go full consumer, but we could runs ads in professional journals and remind practitioners that CIBA always put the needs of patients — and practitioners — first.
More than just a quick gig for ready cash, the idea here is to position a job with a Staff Builders as career move — it comes from personal experience. Over a holiday break while I was studying rhetoric at UW, Madison, I took a two-week gig with Kelly Temporary Services. Kelly sent me to a warehouse — loading and unloading trucks. I was a good worker, so the warehouse bought out my contract with Kelly. And for the next couple of years I was able to work pretty much as much, or as little, as I wanted — the warehouse being perpetually short-handed. Not exactly the career move indicated in the ads, but it payed for my classes, which, in turn, gave me expertise to land my first job as a copywriter. And, later, gave me the idea for this campaign.
Information. Graphically presented and available at a glance. Introducing an analog display into a digital world is fraught with danger. The folks at Mettler understood that their little, green dial was up against their scientist-customers’ penchant for numbers, but the display did speed up repetitive tasks, and it helped prevent errors. To ease the transition, I came up with the name DeltaTrac— Delta, the Greek symbol used to indicate change. And Trac to make it sound snappy. We added DeltaRange for the formulating, and art director Sal Panasci came up with some great visuals.
A crisis in the world of soft contact lenses: Acanthamobea castellani invading soft lenses and attacking wearers’ corneas — leading to intense pain and, occasionally, loss of vision. None of the prevailing lens disinfectants could kill it, but CIBA’s Miraflow Cleaner could. We had to walk a fine line and clearly identify Miraflow within its FDA indication as a cleaning agent, not a disinfectant. New saline solutions eventually solved the problem, but for a while we had a strong USP and a killer campaign — won a Gold Addy for art director Natalie Reverdin and myself.
To back the ad up, Natalie designed a nifty sales aid, complete with a reprint of an article from a professional journal.
As much as we all love fish sticks, french fries and snappy headlines, some products call for a bit more precision — and exposition. Putting together a complex sales pitch or website is, well … I guess like writing a little novel or short story, because it is a story — a story with features as characters, benefits as plot-points, and a climatic call-to-action. Now, thermal analysis may not be in everyone’s narrative, but if you’re a scientist with 200 samples to test, a single method that can “characterize both raw resin and finished product” translates into getting out of the lab at a reasonable hour, home in time for dinner with the kids.
Over the years over I’ve written extended brochures for a wide variety of clients: Matlack Trucking; Rollins, Burdick, Hunter Insurance; Mettler Instruments; Kratos Instruments; CIBA Vision; Penn Ship Building; Kinetic Concepts …. You get the idea. Besides brochures, I’ve edited and ghostwritten articles for scientific and technical journals, letters for sales managers and CEOs, scripts for speeches, sale meetings and videos. Content changes, but there’s a grammar to these things that transcends individual products and can be applied to most any bit of persuasive rhetoric. In a sense, selling is selling, and The Rhetoric hasn’t really changed much since Aristotle.
I worked with art director Natalie Reverdin on this one. Maybe we got a little carried away (cough, cough). But hey, it’s sales promotion in Drug Store News — gotta have a bit of fun, right? I hope we made some buyers smile. Natalie and I had a lot of laughs creating it.
There’s a heroic quality to the copy here — that’s intentional. The hospital was going through a merger, and management wanted to boost moral. So we highlighted the heroes of the Trauma Center and made sure that Hahnemann led each headline. The primary audience was hospital staff, then potential investors and consumers. It’s a nice example of using a particular attribute to signify the whole.
These were all over downtown Philadelphia — we had a whole slew of them — different colors, different copy, but same palette, same font, and same layout to create a unified message. Each ad covers the same three points: speciality, location, and office hours. The idea is to get consumers to interact with the ads intellectually —move from the specifics of the ads to their own specific needs. It was fun to see my work around town. The seemingly ubiquitous Sal Panasci did the art direction.
Midlife crisis: I considered the red, sports car, but jumped instead into teaching. I went back to school and earned a Master of Education degree with a PA certificate for secondary English. My plan was to save the world — or at least a part of it — as an urban school teacher. A year teaching at Germantown High School, then another at Maritime Academy Charter School … these ads for my tutoring business tell you how well that worked out. Let’s just say that classroom discipline is not my forte. But I’m a good teacher, good at breaking down complex ideas and making them clear, so tutoring has been a good match, and has left me time for other pursuits.
One of those pursuits has been fiction. Two and a half years ago I published the Lord looking down in pity. Since then I’ve been sending out short fiction and writing novel number two.
Another current pursuit is politics. November 9th, 2016 was a kick in the ass for me. Good citizen, I have always voted. But that’s all. Directly after the election I joined the local Indivisible group and from there the my local Democratic committee. The Dems’ website needed an update, and my precinct needed a committee person. So I built them this website and am now managing it. I’m also knocking on doors and organizing my precinct to get out the vote. I know I’m small part of the solution, but part of the solution I am.
After all the meetings are over, the phones have stopped ringing and the vocalizing has died down, somebody has to get out an ad, often after hours. Somebody has to stare at a blank piece of paper. This is probably the very hight of lonesomeness. Out of the recesses of his mind come words that interest, words which persuade, words which inspire, words which sell. Magic words. I regard him as the man of the hour in our business today.
That’s me, that somebody.
I’ve earned my living by shuffling words and ideas around since I got my first copywriting job at 28. The media has changed quite a bit over the years, magazine ads turned to social media memes, brochures & catalogs now websites, the liner transformed to links…..but the idea is still essential and the words magic.
And here’s me with the skate sail at Peace lake near Doylestown, PA. — photo by the loyal Rebecca — “Before ya go out, let me hold the car keys” — Barger. Frozen lake, I skate. Thawed finds me windsurfing or the beach surfing. Throw in a kayak, or a mountain bike, or a walk with Morgan (dog) … and you have a picture of me when I’m not at the keyboard.
I live in Wyndmoor, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia.
If you’re looking for ideas, words, ads … give me a call 267-226-0638.
copyright: gene engelman 2020