White Space Isn’t Empty

It seems like website designers are terrified of empty space.

Web pages are packed like overstuffed suitcases … buttons, banners, pop-ups, chat bubbles, floating discount offers. If there’s a patch of screen not doing something, someone in a meeting starts sweating.

“Should we put something there?”

Apparently, the answer is always, “Yes.”

Which is unfortunate, because white space -- the space between things -- is not wasted room on a page. It guides the eye, directing the reader where to look first (and second and third).

When everything’s crammed together, the eye has nowhere to land. It skims. It bounces. It gives up.

White space fixes that. It quietly tells your eye: start here. Then go here. Then here. No arrows required.

Crowded design, on the other hand, has the energy of a junk drawer. You know the one. Batteries. Rubber bands. Three mystery keys. A takeout menu from 2014. Something sticky that no one wants to investigate. Technically there’s a lot in there. Functionally, you just close the drawer again.

Users do the same thing with crowded pages. They glance. They hesitate. Then they quietly leave. Not out of anger, out of exhaustion.

It’s a simple brain rule at play: crowded information is harder to process. When text and visuals are packed together, your brain has to work overtime just to sort it out.

White space isn’t empty. It’s not wasted space. It’s restraint. The quiet confidence to say, “This part matters enough to stand alone.”

And in a world that keeps trying to add one more thing, one more feature, one more blinking box asking if you'd like 10% off your first order … a little space can be welcome. And help lead prospects comfortably towards the decision you want them to make.

The Copywriting Litmus Test

Years ago, an ex-partner and mentor Tom Dombrosky would get our client brainstorming back on track with one question:

“What’s the big idea?”

Not the hook. Not the headline. Not the targeting. The idea.

His litmus test (which I’ve since heard called the Barstool Test) was: if you can’t explain it in two sentences over a drink (in Tom’s case Stolichnaya), it’s not ready.

Every idea had to pass four filters:

• Is it simple enough to say in one breath?
• Is it emotional enough to make someone feel something?
• Is it relevant to what’s happening right now in the prospect’s world?
• Is it consequential enough to demand action.

If it didn’t clear those, it didn’t leave the room.

Most modern marketing skips this part. We optimize headlines, tweak funnels, and let algorithms decide what survives. It’s efficient and measurable, but a lot of it feels like carefully engineered noise.

Great copy doesn’t start big. It starts small with a specific detail, then tension is built so the reader feels something before you explain anything. Then, once they’re leaning in and emotionally vested, you reveal the big idea.

That’s the difference between information and persuasion.

You can automate distribution. You can A/B test until your eyes bleed. But you can’t automate a clear idea.

If you can’t pitch it casually, cleanly, in two sentences without sounding like you swallowed a marketing podcast, it’s not done.

Start smaller. Tighten it. Make it matter.

Then put it out into the world.

_________________________

For a few years, Tom and I were partners in a small advertising agency in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was the senior. I was the junior. I learned a lot, made a lot of money, and had one helluva good time. Here are a few Dombrosky stories you might appreciate:

Chutzpah

Research

It Wasn't Pretty

Kicking Butt in Restaurant Marketing

Today's Consumer

 

Today’s consumer doesn’t browse. They feed.

An endless buffet of reels, memes, and microwave moments, shoveled down by the algorithm’s invisible hand.

Each of us wandering our own little maze of “for you” content … curated chaos, served a la carte.

The scroll never sleeps. It knows what we like before we do. And just as quick, we’re bored again.

Attention spans? Vapor.

Every ad, another reflexive flick of the thumb -- skip, skip, skip -- the modern heartbeat of distraction.

Judgment Becomes the Differentiator

 

When AI automates the commodity, judgment becomes the differentiator.

AI can now generate content, analysis, summaries, plans, and ideas in seconds. The kinds of tasks that once required hours of effort are quickly becoming automated.

What remains (and what AI still struggles to replicate) is the deeply human layer:

• Making decisions with incomplete information

• Having the courage to back an unpopular idea 

• Sensing when something isn’t working and changing course

As AI gets better at producing answers, the real value shifts to something else:

Knowing which answers actually matter … and what to do next.

David L. Deutsch on Copywriting and Persuasion

 

"Effective persuasion isn't about hacks, tricks or formulas. 
It's about understanding human psychology 
and then clearly and believably communicating 
the uniqueness and value of your offer."
- David L. Deutsch

Deutsch, who has written copy that has contributed to more than a billion dollars in sales for companies from startups to some of the biggest brands in the world, continues: I've found that copywriting ultimately boils down to just one thing: persuasion.

It may be obvious, but it's important to remember that people take action only when they're persuaded to take action.

And to do that effectively requires what I call the 6 Pillars of Persuasion — grouped for easy recall as S.P.R.O.U.T.

S - Singularity — Today, more than ever, a product must be perceived as unique to capture attention. And unless you can convince prospects that your product is in some way different from whatever else is out there, even if they like the product they will go off to compare alternatives and price shop.

 

P - Proof — What you say must be believed, and we believe what is proven — with facts, studies, track records, and logic. Proof also includes HOW your prospect will get the results you promise (the "mechanism"). That gives them the all-important "reason to believe."

R - Repetition — What we hear once barely makes an impression. Instead, we tend to believe and act on what we hear multiple times. Therefore, the art of copywriting is largely about making the same key points over and over in different ways, from different angles, in a consistently interesting way.

O - Overwhelming Value — It's not enough that the benefits promised and proven are worth the price. Or even worth more than the price. They must be perceived as being worth MANY TIMES the cost. (Some say 10 times — and that's a good number to aim for.)

U - Urgency — People, just like us, usually don't act unless there is some urgency. In copywriting, that's often scarcity — time or supply (or both) is running out. If both are unlimited, the urgency can be the importance of enjoying the benefits as soon as possible, and not being without them longer than necessary.

T - Trust — No matter any of the above items, people don't buy from people they don't trust. (Do you?) So be sure — with your actions, your words, your images, and your intent — that you do everything possible to earn the trust of your prospect. (First and foremost, BE trustworthy.)

_________________________

David L. Deutsch supervises, coaches, and trains writers and copy teams both in the U.S. and around the world. He is the creator of the A-List Copywriting Secrets course and author of Million Dollar Marketing Secrets and Think Inside the Box!.

Surviving the Shift - The AI blues

If you’ve been in marketing for a decade or two you’ve already survived big shifts: desktop to mobile-first, mass media to targeted advertising, outbound marketing to inbound marketing, etc.

Each shift shook up how you market, but AI is starting to change who can do the work, how fast it gets done, and what skills actually matter.

And this shift is dramatically faster. Faster in a way that makes you question whether your brain is still running the current version of the operating system. You get comfortable with a tool and, two days later, it feels like you’re explaining Myspace to a teenager.

This creates the illusion that everyone else is up to speed and you’re lagging behind.

Execution used to be the edge. If you could actually do the work -- write, design, build -- you stood out. Now “pretty good” is everywhere. It’s like decent coffee: once rare, now unavoidable.

And that’s a strange thing to watch if you spent years honing your craft. There’s no ceremony when a skill loses leverage. Experience still matters, just less. You’re not automatically ahead … you’re just earlier, trying to update your skills without discarding the parts that still work (taste, judgment and deciding what’s worth doing in the first place).

All this logically leads to compression: fewer people doing more … value clustering around the people who can aim all this capability in the right direction.

Which leaves us in an odd spot today. Still expected to perform while the ground shifts under our feet like a treadmill that occasionally changes speed just to keep things interesting.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Or maybe this is just what it feels like to go through a major shift while still being expected to hit deadlines and sound like you know what you’re doing.

Probably both.

The only thing I’m reasonably confident about is that the advantage is moving. Away from grinding, toward choosing. Away from doing, toward deciding.

Would you pay $4,500 for one of my books?

 In 2022, one of my books was turned into the artwork below by Mike Saijo. 

First he deconstructed my book "The Words and Wisdom of Will Rogers". Then, using copy machine toner, put a portrait of Will Rogers over the pages.

The title of the piece is Portrait of Will Rogers, 2022 and it's for sale for $4,500.

 

_________________________

 

Thanks to Patrick Combs. If he hadn't brought this to my attention on LinkedIn, I might never have known of its existence.

Creative Hoarding

 A lot of being creative isn’t about divine lightning bolts or some muse whispering in your ear. 

It’s about noticing things other people skim past. That weird crack in the sidewalk that looks like a map of Italy. The way someone in line at the grocery store hums just off-key enough to make it sound intentional. The shadow on the wall that looks like a hand reaching for something it can’t quite touch.

Most folks let those things slide by. They don’t mean anything. They’re background noise. But if you’re wired a little differently, you snag them. You tuck them away. You build a kind of junk drawer in your head full of odd shapes, overheard phrases, smells that made your eyes water.

And then, when you’re staring at the blank page, or the canvas, or the meeting room whiteboard, that junk drawer cracks open. The thing you thought was useless? That becomes the spark. Creativity isn’t conjuring something out of thin air. It’s remembering that you already collected the raw material, and having the guts to mix it together in a way that feels new.

So yeah, maybe it’s less magic and more hoarding. Except instead of stacks of newspapers and old toasters, it’s the little moments no one else bothered to keep.

AI would never smoke a cigarette with you.

Great headline, huh?

On March 22, 2026, this letter, handwritten by Shane Hegde (CEO & Co-Founder of Air), was published in the New York Times. 

It’s his argument that after nearly a decade working with 250,000+ creatives is AI can generate, resize and optimize 1,000 brand variations in seconds … but it can't decide what's worth making. That part still requires a person with judgment and taste.

Read the full text of the message below.

_________________________

For more thoughts on AI and the creative process:

Don't Let AI Kill Your Analog Intelligence

Why Every Copywriter & Content Writer Needs an AI Usage Policy 

Generative AI: TO BE (a tool) OR NOT TO BE (a tool)?

The Adolescence of Technology 

_________________________ 

The full 3/22 message:

AI would never smoke a cigarette with you.

In life we long for simple stories, and these days the headlines deliver:

“AI will replace you.”

Each week, there’s a new AI startup that claims its product will make creatives obsolete. Photographers, videographers, graphic designers, illustrators: highly specialized individuals who have spent decades turning crazy ideas into something everyone can visualize.

If anyone should be buying into this narrative, it’s me.

In 2018 my friend Tyler and I started a tech company called Air. We told investors that every company was becoming a media company. And, if true, every company would need an engine to scale their creative work.

Over the last eight years we’ve raised $70M to build this engine.

Today, nearly all of our product resources have shifted to build AI centric features. Our best engineers spend most days evaluating AI written code. But after nearly a decade working with over 250,000 creatives, I’ve built a rather rigid, shockingly unorthodox belief:

AI will never replace creative work.

Creative work starves for originality.

A person decides where the story begins, which frame feels right, or whether the work should even continue to exist. The best pieces of content require doubt and indecision.

The difference between a creative and a machine is this obsessive anxiety.

Artificial intelligence is trained to find patterns and recommend the most common answer. The machine aims for objectivity. It can generate images, resize assets, translate languages, and optimize performance.

It’s always correct, but it’s not always right.

AI would never tell you to slow down.

It would never argue that further introspection might change the work.

You won’t find AI smoking a cigarette at 9AM on Howard and Lafayette. Only a beautifully inefficient mind would believe cancerous reflection could improve its work.

Over the coming months every company you know will be reshaped into an unrecognizable form. Smaller teams. More machines.

But the organizations that survive will require human beings who are willing to take risks. These people understand that letting what they love kill them is a uniquely human trait. Their illogical texture for life is something machines can’t compute.

At Air, the value of our product is shaped by a creative’s direction.

We use AI to help them scale their work, but deciding when, where, and how to deploy this technology remains defiantly human.

The best creative work is always an argument.

I’m around if you want to share yours.

 - Shane   s@air.inc  419.902.7392

 

Promotions: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Promotions are the sugar rush of business strategy: make it fun, inviting, cheap, loud, and impossible to ignore. You dangle a deal, people show up. It’s Pavlovian. It works … but sometimes it goes horribly awry.

Baseball has two legendary reminders:

First, 10-cent Beer Night. Cleveland Indians, 1974.

Attendance was low, morale was lower, and the concept was simple: ultra-cheap beer to boost attendance. Which is a bit like solving a small fire with gasoline because it’s convenient and nearby.

Fans showed up, drank accordingly, and by mid-game fans weren’t so much watching baseball as participating in a kind of participatory performance art involving streaking, fights, and the slow unraveling of social order. The field became less a playing surface and more a battleground. Players had to defend themselves. The game was forfeited … but … attendance did  improve.

Then there’s Disco Demolition Night. Chicago White Socks 1979.

This one wasn’t about cheap beer (though, let’s be honest, beer was not not involved). It was about tapping into a cultural moment, specifically, the growing backlash against disco music. The promotion: bring a disco record, get in cheap, and watch it get blown up between games of a doubleheader.

Again, the premise feels clever in that slightly mischievous way marketers love. It’s edgy. It’s topical. It gives people a sense of participation, like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. But here’s the thing about tapping into cultural frustration: it can’t always be neatly packaged and it doesn’t come with a volume knob.

The explosion happened, and then so did everything else: fans rushed the field, fires started, and the night unraveled fast. The second game never stood a chance.

What ties these together isn’t just chaos, it’s optimism. Attendance was down, fans were not enthusiastic. So someone thought they could generate some fun and excitement. And they were, right ... up until fun tipped into something harder to control.

The variable is people. They’re like the weather: mostly manageable, occasionally unpredictable, and very capable of turning on you if you misread the conditions.

I’m not against bold ideas. Safe is forgettable. But there’s a difference between taking a risk and lighting a fuse. And those baseball promotions did work … just not in the way anyone intended. Which points out the quiet warning buried in all good promotions: attention can be easy to get ... control not so much.

Just ask Red Lobster about the “endless shrimp” promotion that helped push the seafood chain into bankruptcy.

 _________________________

 

If you’re still in the mood, here are a few more disastrous promotions:

Pepsi – Pepsi Points Harrier Jet Promotion (1990s)

A tongue-in-cheek ad suggested you could redeem points for a military jet. One guy tried. Lawsuit followed. Pepsi argued it was a joke; the court agreed … but not before the brand learned that consumers don’t always hear “just kidding.”

Hoover Company – Free Flights Promotion (1992)

Buy a vacuum, get two free airline tickets. Sounds harmless until too many participate. The cost of honoring the deal nearly sank the company’s European division. A vacuum cleaner is not supposed to come with international travel.

McDonald's – Monopoly Promotion Fraud (1990s–2001)

The popular Monopoly game was rigged from the inside … major prizes were stolen and distributed through a network. Not exactly the brand story you want when your whole campaign is built on chance and trust.

Snapple – Giant Popsicle Stunt (2005)

They built a 25-foot popsicle in New York City to set a record. It quickly melted, flooding the street in sticky kiwi-strawberry sludge that firefighters had to hose down. Nobody was happy except the rats and flies.

Don’t Be Misled By Data

 

Somewhere along the way, marketing forgot how greatness actually happens.

We started treating dashboards like oracles. We mistook metrics for meaning. And we convinced ourselves that if we just listened harder to the data, the comments, and the focus groups, we’d stumble into brilliance.

That’s not true. It never has been.

Your audience is not the source of the next breakthrough. They can only describe what already exists. They can’t imagine what they haven’t felt yet.

Data doesn’t create culture. It documents it … after the fact.

When you invite data into the creative process too early, it doesn’t sharpen ideas. It sands them down. It rewards familiarity, penalizes risk, and quietly pushes everything toward the center. Safe. Polite. Forgettable.

That’s how brands spend millions and still disappear.

The brands people believe in don’t ask for permission. They don’t optimize their way into relevance. They decide what they stand for, build a world around it, and let the right people find them.

Liquid Death didn’t win by playing it safe and Apple didn’t win by consensus. They won by conviction.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: If everyone likes your brand, no one loves it.

Love requires edges. It requires taste. It requires the courage to be misunderstood. Cult brands aren’t built by chasing approval, they’re built by expressing belief so clearly that the right people feel seen and everyone else self-selects out.

That’s not arrogance, it's leadership.

Metrics have a role, but not where most brands put them. Data belongs in distribution, not creation. Use it to amplify what you’ve made, not to decide what’s worth making.

Because algorithms don’t start movements. People do.

If you want attention, optimize. If you want devotion, decide.

Stop asking what the audience wants. Create from belief.

Stop chasing relevancy and start creating gravity (and gravity doesn’t ask for permission).

How to Respond Like a Career Politician

 

There’s a special dialect spoken in the marble hallways of power and the carpeted conference rooms of the C-suite. It’s fluent, confident, and utterly empty. 

It sounds smart. It feels responsible. It gives the comforting illusion that someone, somewhere, is in charge … while carefully saying absolutely nothing. 

This is the language of professional non-answers: a beautiful, aerodynamic form of bullshit designed to glide past accountability without ever landing on a real position. If you’ve ever listened to a politician or business executive talk for five minutes and realized you learned nothing, you’ve already heard it.

Below is a field guide to that language ... a greatest-hits list of phrases that masquerade as thoughtful leadership while doing the far more important job of protecting the speaker from risk, commitment, or reality. Memorize these and you too can sound wise, measured, and deeply engaged … without having to actually think, decide, or say anything at all.

"I'm not saying I'm for or against this - quite the opposite". 

 

"We need to have a serious conversation about this moving forward."

 

"I think we can all agree that this is a complex issue with valid concerns on both sides."

 

"At the end of the day, we have to circle back to our core values and leverage our strengths."

 

"Let me be clear: this isn't about choosing between A and B, it's about finding the right balance."

 

"We're committed to a holistic, 360-degree approach that takes all stakeholders into consideration."

 

"I'd caution against false choices here. The real question is how we move the needle on outcomes."

 

"Look, I think the data speaks for itself, and we need to let the process play out."

 

"This requires a nuanced approach that doesn't lend itself to soundbites or simple solutions."

 

"We're laser-focused on delivering results while ensuring we do this the right way."

 

"I'm not prepared to speculate, but what I can say is that we're exploring all available options."

 

"The bottom line is we need to be strategic and thoughtful as we navigate these headwinds."

 

"I hear what you're saying, and I want to be transparent: this is something we're actively monitoring."

 

"We're taking a data-driven approach while also listening to the voices that matter most."

 

"I think it's important we don't get ahead of ourselves here. We need to let the facts guide us."

 

"This is about building sustainable frameworks that create long-term value for everyone involved."

 

"We're cautiously optimistic, but we recognize there's still work to be done."

 

"I'm not going to litigate the past. What matters is where we go from here."

 

"We need to have guardrails in place while also not stifling innovation and agility."

 

"At this point in time, we're focused on aligning our priorities with stakeholder expectations."

 

"Let's not lose sight of the bigger picture while we're dealing with the tactical realities on the ground."

 

"I think reasonable people can disagree, but we all want the same thing at the end of the day."

 

"We're committed to transparency and accountability as we work through this process."

 

"This isn't a binary question … we need to thread the needle between competing imperatives."

 

"I want to be very careful not to prejudge the outcome, but we're cautiously encouraged by early indicators."

 

I’d Rather See the Mess

Periodically a client asks, “Should I run my draft through AI before I send it to you?”

I understand the impulse. It’s the same instinct that makes people tidy up before the cleaning service arrives. You want to be polite. You want to make the professional’s job easier.

But in writing, that instinct is backwards ... I’d much rather see the mess.

Give me the scattered notes. The half-sentences. The paragraph that starts with one idea and wanders into three others like a dog that just spotted a squirrel. That stuff is gold. It’s where the real thinking lives.

When people run their writing through AI, what I get back is something … smoother. Straighter. Like someone ran a steamroller over a dirt path.

Yes, it’s technically cleaner, but the footprints are gone.

And the footprints are the interesting part.

Raw writing tells me how someone thinks. I can see where they hesitated, where they got excited, where they doubled back. Sometimes a throwaway line in a messy draft is the best idea in the whole piece. AI tends to sand those off, the way ocean water rounds a jagged rock until it looks like every other rock on the beach.

Perfectly nice rock, but completely forgettable.

The other problem is that AI writes like it’s trying to win a politeness contest. Everything is balanced and reasonable and mildly enthusiastic. It’s the literary equivalent of elevator music. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing alive in it either.

Human drafts, on the other hand, are gloriously uneven. A great line followed by a clunky sentence. A sharp insight next to a weird metaphor that probably shouldn’t work but somehow does.

That’s the good stuff.

My job when writing or editing isn’t to start with perfection. It’s to find the spark in the pile of kindling and build a fire around it.

AI, bless its algorithmic heart, is very good at arranging the logs neatly, but it’s less interested in the spark. Which often makes editing AI-polished writing is harder. When something has already been smoothed into generic competence, you spend half your time trying to figure out what the writer originally meant before the machine turned it into something safe and beige.

It’s like restoring an old painting after someone painted over it with house paint. Possible, but annoying, and chances are some good bit are gonna get missed.

So if you’re working with a writer or editor, send the raw material. Send the notes that look like they were written during mild turbulence. Send the paragraph that ends with “I’m not sure where this is going.”

That’s OK. Writing isn’t supposed to start polished. It starts strange, lopsided, and a little chaotic … like most worthwhile ideas.

The Future of AI Might Depend on a Very Human Skill

Watching marketers, writers, and founders celebrating the fact that with AI they can generate 47 pieces of content before their coffee gets cold feels like handing someone a Swiss Army knife and watching them only use the toothpick.

AI has made information absurdly easy to access. One prompt and suddenly you’ve got ideas, summaries, campaign drafts, competitive analysis, a mildly inspirational quote about disruption, and 3 taglines that sound suspiciously like they came from a 2016 startup pitch deck.

It’s impressive. But it’s also revealing that the real difference isn’t the tool … it’s the thinking behind the prompt.

Two teams can use the exact same AI model. One asks it to “write a social post.” The other asks what emotional triggers actually move the audience, what language patterns dominate the category, what competitors keep saying that everyone has stopped noticing.

One gets filler. The other gets insight. Same machine. Different curiosity.

That’s why the idea of AI as marketing autopilot always makes me laugh. AI isn’t autopilot. It’s more like a telescope. It lets you see a lot farther than you could before. It can pull in huge amounts of information, connect patterns, surface ideas faster than any intern or agency brainstorm ever could.

But you still have to decide where to point it.

And that’s where things get interesting. Because curiosity, real curiosity, the slightly annoying kind that keeps asking “why does this actually work?” turns out to be the one skill technology can’t automate very well.

And curiosity is messy. It wanders. It asks the slightly inconvenient question after everyone else has already moved on to the slide deck.

It’s also the difference between using AI like a vending machine and using it like a thinking partner.

The brands getting the most out of these tools aren’t the ones with the most dashboards or the most prompt templates. They’re the ones treating AI less like a shortcut and more like a giant, slightly caffeinated research assistant.

They poke it, challenge it, and ask better questions until the output gets weird in a good way. New angles. Unexpected connections. Ideas that actually move something instead of just filling content calendars.

Which brings us to the slightly uncomfortable truth about this whole AI wave.

Soon, everyone will have access to the same tools. The novelty will wear off. The productivity charts will flatten. The “AI-powered” label will become about as meaningful as “internet-enabled.”

At that point, the only real advantage left will be how people think. Not how fast they generate answers, but how curious they are about the question.

After all the hype about artificial intelligence reshaping marketing, we may end up rediscovering something embarrassingly human: The people who win will just be the ones who never stopped asking better questions.

Start with the Struggle, Not the Solution

 

Ever notice how the best weight loss marketers don’t start with abs?

They start with pain. The before shot. The “I can’t button my jeans” moment.

They talk about the person before the transformation. They ask questions that make you nod and go, “Yeah… that’s me.”

Then, only then, do they drop the before-and-after photo.

And by that point, you’re not looking at them anymore. You’re looking at you.

So if you’re out there selling your magic beans, your killer service, your big bold solution, stop shouting about the AFTER. Start telling the story of the BEFORE.

That’s where your people live. That’s where they recognize themselves. That’s where your audience leans in.

Why Clients Hire Me (and How You Can Show Them You’re Worth Hiring Too)

 

Nobody hires me because I know where the commas go.

They hire me because I know where the work needs to go.

And if you’re a marketing writer trying to win over clients, here’s the secret. And it’s not just about turning clever phrases. It’s about showing that you can do 4 things most copywriters either can’t do, don’t do, or don’t bother to prove they can do.

1. Zoom Out Before You Zoom In

Anyone can write a sentence. Not everyone can step back far enough to see the business, the brand, the market, and the moment in time … and then figure out where the sentence fits. The “zoom out” is what lets you write words that aren’t just pretty, but profitable.

Show it: Ask questions that scare small thinkers … questions about the market, about the why, about what happens in six months if this campaign works. Clients will notice.

2. Speak More Than One Business Language

I’ve written for teams that looked like Noah’s Ark: two of everything: designers, engineers, product managers, brand strategists, and that one mysterious person who “handles the numbers.” My job? Be fluent in all of their dialects.

Show it: In meetings, translate your thinking into terms each team understands. Talk benefits with marketing. Talk conversion rates with sales. Talk technical feasibility with dev. You become the bridge they didn’t know they needed.

3. Tie It to the Bigger Prize

Every line of copy has a job to do, and that job rolls up to a bigger product goal, which rolls up to a bigger company vision. If you can trace the line from headline to quarterly revenue target without breaking a sweat, you’re already in the top 10% of writers clients will trust (and C-suite will love).

Show it: Map your deliverables back to product or business metrics in your pitch decks and project updates. Make it impossible for them to see your work as “just words.”

4. Bring Empathy to the Mess

Products are messy. Teams are messy. Projects, especially the big, high-stakes ones, are basically chaos in a 3-piece suit. Empathy is what lets you navigate that without losing your cool (or your deadlines).

Show it: When things go sideways, focus on understanding the “why” behind the mess instead of pointing fingers. This isn’t about being nice … it’s about solving a problem faster because you actually understand the people and the problem.

 

Bottom line: If you can prove you’re more than a typist with taste, you stop competing with “writers” and start competing with strategists. And strategists get hired, re-hired, and referred.