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Ah, the lovable anti-hero. We’ve seen many incarnations of this iconic figure in the movies, including Indiana Jones, Rocky Balboa, various Ghostbusters, and practically every protagonist Tim Burton ever framed into a closeup. The anti-hero is the character you cheer for precisely because he’s not bullet-proof, the one we can relate to as a real human being. In many cases, these figures force themselves to reach beyond their ordinary mortal frailties through sheer determination, grit and moral fiber, transcending their limitations and scaling genuinely heroic heights.

And then there’s Jack Burton.

Burton, as played by Kurt Russell in John Carpenter’s 1986 film big Trouble in Little China, doesn’t bother to surpass himself — he simply is himself. The dimwitted truck driver finds himself trying to rescue his friend’s lady love, not to mention a female reporter he has his own eye on, from an evil Asian sorcerer entrenched in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The sorcerer, Lo Pan, seeks to escape from an ancient curse that can only be dispelled when a green-eyed girl agrees to marry him. (Of course the plot really doesn’t matter in a slam-bang martial-arts fantasy-comedy, so with a sigh of relief I will abandon any further attempts to recount it here.)

Jack Burton has two things going for him in this heroic quest — guts and stupidity. That’s about it. He’s lucky to have some powerful allies in his martial artist, magic-using pals, because they end up doing most of the hard work. In one scene, Burton leaps into the fray only to discover that his buddy has already taken out all the bad guys by himself. In the big climactic fight scene, he fires his gun up into the ceiling to call attention to himself — and then gets knocked unconscious by falling debris. The fight proceeds without him.

So if Jack Burton is such a moron, why do we root for him? Because he’s a fun guy to watch, his heart is in the right place, he sticks by his friends, he’s quick with a punch line, and once in a while he gets something right. (He even dispatches Lo Pan, eventually.) In other words, he’s real, warts and all.

“Warts and all” can work as a marketing approach, too. We don’t always have to trumpet ourselves, our products or our services as the greatest thing since sliced bread. We don’t necessarily have to project an air of perfection or invulnerability. Sometimes our shortcomings have their own appeal, especially if we’re upfront about them.

I’m certainly not the right solution for every copywriting need. I’m not the fastest guy in town, or the cheapest, or the most versatile, or the most experienced. But I’m open and honest with all my prospective clients about what I can and can’t do for them, and if I’m not the best guy for the job I’ll say so. People respond to that, because they know they’re dealing with a real person who will do his best. Rocky lost that first fight, remember?

Whether you’re in shipping, insurance, real estate, personal coaching, or any other trade or profession, you can always score points with your target audience by admitting that you’re human — because, after all, so are they. And human’s a pretty good thing to be, unless of course you’re an evil sorcerer.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

I just read an interesting article on Copyblogger that reminded me of the reasons business owners and marketing firms need copywriters. I’ve mentioned a few of them before. Maybe you don’t happen to have a talent for writing. Maybe creating your own marketing content takes up a huge amount of time that ought to go toward doing your day-to-day tasks that keep your business running. Maybe you do have the talent, but you hate, hate, hate using it. (Hey, some people just don’t enjoy writing.) Maybe the copywriter you’ve been using suddenly retires or goes on a sabbatical or gets too busy to take on additional jobs. These are all valid reasons to hire a copywriter, and in each case I’m happy to step in.

The article mentioned another good reason, though — the possibility that you may be “too close to the topic.”

Let’s face it, you know your business inside-out. You’re immersed in it on a daily basis. You work with other people who also know the industry, and you communicate with colleagues that speak the lingo as well as you do. You live in the world of your business. The problem is, your customer probably doesn’t.

You may find it impossible to see yourself objectively enough to put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Sometimes it’s hard to pretend you’re John Doe instead of Jane Manufacturing Incorporated long enough to really grasp what the reader wants to know, as opposed to what you want to tell him. Time to bring in an objective party — one who happens to write marketing content for a living. Your copywriter can see John’s perspective as well as Jane’s, creating a message informed by one and aimed at the other.

You may also find that your industry speaks a language the general public doesn’t understand. I recall the time I walked into an engineering company and the owner said, “Ah, so you’re the guy who’s going to rescue us!” The company’s leadership team had spent so many years talking engineer-speak to engineers that they’d lost a handle on how to translate their features and benefits into common English. Again, copywriter to the rescue!

Whatever your writing roadblock may be, don’t keep suffering from it. Offload that specialized work to a specialist, and welcome a new brain to your company’s think-tank.

You can check out the rest of the Copyblogger article here.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

“Wow,” says FBI Agent Peters to her colleague Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) the first time she meets him in the flesh. “You look a lot like your surrogate!”

No, Greer isn’t paying someone to carry his baby. Surrogates, in director Jonathan Mostow’s film of the same name, are lifelike androids built to live out the everyday lives of humans, who direct the surrogates’ actions through a mental link. See, now that practically everyone in the world can afford a synthetic lookalike, humans need no longer face work-related injuries, traffic accidents or other hazards. People sit or recline safely at home, connected to an electronic interface that lets them see, hear and feel through their surrogates’ artificial senses and perform their daily tasks via surrogate arms and legs. You can even customize your surrogate with any features you prefer — and of course this has led to a society peopled (surrogated?) by model-gorgeous men and women. That’s why Greer’s partner is so surprised. Who would want to look like himself?

Greer’s wife certainly wouldn’t. Maggie Greer lives with disfiguring scars from an old accident, or rather she refuses to live with them. She stays in her locked bedroom, interacting with the world — and with her husband — only through her blandly pretty surrogate. But Greer doesn’t want a surrogate. He wants his wife, the woman he fell in love with and married. He wants the real person hiding behind the image.

When you create a brand for your business, you build a persona, an avatar designed to project a calculated image to your target market. That image is the public face of your company. If you run a personality-based business, however, your clients will ignore generic branding statements. They want to know and work with you, based on your skills, experience and personal values. People work with me, for instance, because of my track record, the fact that I’m easy to work with, reliable and so on. I am my brand.

If people respond to your business specifically because they respond to you as an individual, than you must try to make your own positive traits shine through your company’s branding. Make sure your surrogate walks, talks and looks like you. Then when your client meets the person behind the image, they won’t feel surprise or disappointment — just a comforting familiarity.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.