Posts Tagged ‘ Blogging

New provider and new start

After a year of treating this blog as a second-class citizen and posting in fits and starts, I’ve finally decided to do something with it rather than focus my attentions elsewhere. I’d been planning on using this as just a “business face” for my copywriting work, but now I realise that it’s not the right way to go about working in this industry in this day and age, and that I was approaching it from the perspective of a much older business model. It’s not Matt Bruce The Copywriter, or The Blogger, or The Article Writer, but rather Matt Bruce The Writer (or The Author, depending upon which side of the Pond you live).

So I’ve moved this site to a new hosting provider — with unlimited everything (a lesson learned from another blog I write that experienced the breathtaking Slashdot Effect first-hand) — and will be posting items of interest to the writing community. Not everything will be original, I’m sure, but the plan is for the content posted here to be relevant, helpful, light-hearted or humourous (where appropriate), and interesting.

Rather than every 5 months.

That’s got to be a good thing, yes?

There are still a few cosmetic details to sort out in the site software and I’m contemplating integrating a Twitter feed and perhaps a Facebook connection, too, but I don’t know if that may be a little bit of overkill at the moment. What do you think?

Story of a Sign: The Power of Good Copywriting

Every now and then we come across something that puts us at a loss for words — either because it’s appalling short-sighted or because it’s so incredibly insightful. The following short film by Mexican film-maker Alonso Alvarez Barreda, Historia de un Letrero (Story of a Sign), falls into this latter category.

The film’s YouTube page says that it won the Cannes Film Festival 2008 Short Film category, but I could not find reference to it on the Festival’s 2008 Short Films or Awards pages. However, I did find it as the winner of the Canadian National Film Board’s 2008 Annual Cannes Online Competition, along with articles about the prize by sites such as NowPublic and even Digg.

I’m sure you’ll agree that it is a powerful piece.

I think the film illustrates a good point — both in writing copy and with human nature — that people are more likely to react to something if it engages them directly, rather than merely observed about a third-party.

(Thanks to Kristen from inkthinkerblog for sharing it).