Dave Harland: [00:00:00] One day I said to a client, here's your blog post. Uh, have a read through and let me know if you want any amends. And you know what he said? He said, how the hell do I know what amends are needed? You’re the expert here. You should be telling me straight away. I was like, I'm a consultant now. I'm not just a supplying the words.

And I see the chat bots are just supplying words and they’re supplying images. They're not giving you the guidance. They're not giving you that expertise, which I think businesses who want to take their marketing seriously. You kind of need that, don't you? You need that level of expertise to let you know whether you're doing it right or not.

And I think if you hand that over, you don't value your brand, do you? You don't value your business. That's not worth much to you.

Chris Kocek: Welcome to Any Insights Yet? The podcast that explores the intersection of strategy, inspiration, and branding. I'm Chris Kocek. On today's episode, we get a glorious peek inside the creative mind of Dave Harland. Also known as the Wordman from his copywriting agency, Copy or Die in [00:01:00] Liverpool, England. Dave first got my attention because of his impossible to ignore posts on LinkedIn where he routinely shares examples of marketing spam and his wonderful responses to it.

As well as genuinely useful copywriting tips that can help your brand stand out, entranced by his creative word mess “aboutity”. I went deeper into his branding ecosystem, signing up for his weekly newsletter, the word where he shares even more tips and techniques for how to write compelling taglines, headlines, and engaging body copy.

And let me tell you, Dave's weekly emails have on several occasions made me LOL and LMAO. Dave has worked with dozens of brands over his 20 year career in America and the UK, including Google, Tesco, and Jabra, just to name a few. And one thing that really comes through in this interview is this. Dave absolutely loves words.

During our conversation, Dave [00:02:00] shares why he thinks AI can't hold a candle to an experienced copywriter. And he has some wonderful tips on how to persuade clients to work with real humans instead. We begin though with a question I've been thinking about for a while.

Chris Kocek: Do you need an insight to write great copy? 

Dave Harland: I don't think they're essential, but they can help me and other writers get so much more specific with messaging because I always say the best copy has three key elements, which is. Number one is it does grab your attention. The second thing is that it's clear and understandable, and the third thing is that it makes you feel something.

So I don't think it's essential. I mean, I've had plenty of briefs where it just is kind of what we wanna say and I've gotta dig for that insight and interview customers, which we do anyway. We have to really dig deeper, looking at reviews and what makes that audience tick and what place the product or service fits into their life.

So there's a bit more work involved if that insight isn't there. 

Chris Kocek: And what's the best [00:03:00] insight you've ever gotten in a brief that made your job so much easier? 

Dave Harland: Yeah, good question. So many to choose from. One that sticks out. I was working with a headphone manufacturer called Jabra. They make business headsets and these little speaker phones that you stick on a desk in conference rooms and it picks up everyone's voice.

And they had this new product, it was like the, the second version of their speakerphone called the Jabra Speak. And they gave me two insights. So the first one was that in North America. They're not called the Jabra speak, they're just called the Puck. 'cause it looks like a hockey puck. So straight out I was like, oh, okay.

So now could be lean. Lean into that. Right. Okay. So they call it a puck. What rhymes with puck? Can we go there? So the headline we went with just was, get the puck outta here and it was, yeah, great for hybrid work and not so great on the ice. So there was that nice little, um, bit of familiarity of leaning into what these people called it.

The second insight, which I laughed my head off when I heard it, was half of these speaker phones are so good they generally get stolen from offices [00:04:00] and from meeting rooms, like the staff are walking off with them. So I came up with a headline, criminally good speaker phones. So this is the upgrade that everyone will want to get their hands on.

And then obviously went into details about the insight and talking about sticky finger staff in, in offices up and down the country. And you'll, you might want to get a padlock on it to lock it down and stuff. So just two nice little insights, which. If the clients hadn't have told me that, I think the output would've been probably a bit more generic and a bit more focused on the product.

Then the benefit, you know, it makes meetings a lot clearer than stuff like that, but those two insights help move away from that into something which I think was a lot richer, a lot more interesting for the audience. 

Chris Kocek: Yeah, it's those little details that come up in conversation that I feel like are critical to a great brief because I feel like summaries or bullet points just kind of flatten everything out.

What about your first insight or aha moment when you were a kid or a teenager? What's the first time you remember noticing something where you were like, [00:05:00] doesn't anybody else notice this? 

Dave Harland: There was a a little local independent carpet shop on the main route between where I lived in my town center. So when I used to get the bus when I was like 10 or 11, we'd go past this carpet shop and one week, I remember going past and on on the other side of the road, all of these derelict houses had been pulled down and in their place was a big, giant national chain Carpet World. It was huge and it was hideous. Whereas Taffy's, you could go in, you knew the people, you could haggle. You could get money off the carpets.

You know, if you saw a little tear on the edge of an offcut, you could say, oh, give us that for 20% off. Whereas in this carpet world, it's just like people who didn't really care about the carpets, they were just staff. You couldn't haggle and it was a lot colder. So, in a maverick move, which I remember seeing when I was 10, Taffy’s is the little independent carpet shop.

They had a space on the side of their shop. They put their own billboard up. And the billboard in like 3,000 point type, [00:06:00] it just said, “Wealth Warning. Crossing the Road will Seriously Damage your Wealth.” And for me as a kid, that was the best thing I'd ever seen in my whole life. 'cause I was like, hang on a sec.

Like that. Very cunningly. Like going against these on price, like looking back, the insight was that local people from a little working class town like Birkin, where I'm from, they don't pay over the odds for things if they don't need to. Mm-hmm. And suddenly Carpet World over the road was charging a bit more.

They were given wear service and crucially you couldn't haggle. So yeah, Taffys did the one thing that they could and said like, right, put me boxing gloves on. We're going up against you. So they cunningly went against them on price and said, look, don't go there. Don't waste your money over the road. And crucially, they did it in a way that made me smile.

I've never forgot it. So that was one that really stuck out. Like they knew their target audience straight away. They knew these people aren't gonna want to pay that. So we'll tell 'em like as bold and as brashly as we can. 

Chris Kocek: And there was the clever [00:07:00] wordplay as well, right? With uh, wealth warning instead of health warning.

Dave Harland: Totally. Yeah. It looked like the thing that used, used to be on cigarette boxes. It used to be wealth warning, the big black and white type. And yeah, it was just so, so well done. Uh, 'cause they were leaning into the familiar as well. So when you see it, you go, oh, what's that? And then you, oh, oh, there's like three pennies dropping in your head as you worked out what was going on.

Oh, that's the road that they mean because of this, this thing's been put up. And the perfect end of the story is that there's still. Like I'm talking 30 years ago here, 32 years ago. It's changed names, but there's still a little independent carpet shop on the corner of that road and over the road. Do you know what's there now?

An Aldi supermarket. So yeah, long Taffy’s. That's what I see. 

Chris Kocek: Oh, that's a great story. What's the first piece of writing that you did where you got some serious attention and made you think? Words are cool. I wanna do more stuff with words. 

Dave Harland: Well, I've always been into them from early age, loved English at school and was always destined to do [00:08:00] something with words.

So I did a journalism degree where I kind of learned all of the different writing styles, editorial and news and sports and stuff. And then. I'd say it was like my second job out of uni, which is where I moved more into copywriting. And I think the very first time where I thought I love doing this was writing an ad.

It was like a press ad, which went in all the rewards and incentives magazines. 'cause they used to sell these gift vouchers. To businesses as well and businesses would give them to, you know, top sales teams and long service awards and things like that. But the gift vouchers themselves, they could be spent in like a hundred different retailers.

So it was advertising the fact that these things are great for everyone. And what it did, they gave me free reign. They said, come up with some like fun ideas for how we could advertise this. And I did a twist onthe Monday's child. Old Canon Nursery, I'm Monday’s child is fair to face. Tuesday's child is full of grace and I just tweaked it with the things you could buy off the voucher.

So it was Monday's child needs cream for their face, Tuesday's [00:09:00] child needs a new suitcase. And it was just showcasing the different retailers where you could buy this stuff. And I remember doing it and it went into the trade press. And I remember seeing it, and then sales were coming in and I was just like, I was hooked straight away.

I was like, if I can play around with words like this, I can make a decent fist of this. And I've always loved putting those plays on words and, and literation rhymes and messing around with stuff that already exists and, and rehashing it to kind of make messaging fit for the different brands that I've worked for.

That's always been what I've enjoyed the most. How can I do it more? 

Chris Kocek: Well, people who work with words right now are very nervous, right? Because there's a lot of tension around AI coming in, and you love to take the piss out of chatbots and as you like to call them shatbots. So the first thing is, why do you call them shatbots?

And why do you think clients should hire professional human copywriters instead? 

Dave Harland: Yeah, good question. The shatbot [00:10:00] thing, I mean, I think it's a fair description, don't you? You've only gotta take a look at the output. It is shit, isn't it? Come on. Let's face it. We focus on tone of voice and copywriting that's full of personality and references, like real lived experience and really nuanced metaphors.

And we shine a light on the sometimes like harsh realities of real life, occasionally in a humorous way. And in any test I've ever done any of those shatbots, they just, they can't manage it to the extent that's believable. It's like the opposite of what good work looks like from my perspective. So, and it's certainly not just a case of saying, write this in a professional tone of voice, or write this in a playful tone of voice.

Like if you know what you're doing, tone of voice wise, there's 50 different degrees of professionalism in a tone of voice or playfulness. Like playfulness doesn't mean the same thing to two people. So just saying, create something that's playful. I know comedians who are playful, but one is playful in a really dark and sick way.[00:11:00] 

Another one's playful in a really family friendly way. Both playful, they're both playing around with words, so I think that's dangerous in itself. There's a lot of generalisms when it comes to tone of racing, but if you're looking for real consistency in your tone and you want to align with your brand strategy, whatever that is, I just think it's risky.

You almost have like handing the keys over to something that's outta your control. And I think for copywriters, the moment you hand your thinking over to these things, it's just a slippery slope. Towards losing that ability to think like we purposefully our agency, we work with writers. Like the moment that I see a writer saying, oh yeah, I've embedded AI into my workflows.

I'm like, we can't knowingly work with you then because I want our writers to be on a call with our clients. And when a client goes, what do you think it is? The moment they go, oh, I'll have to speak to me, chat bot. Like no chance. It's, yeah. Ain't happening. Like, so we want people who love what they do.

They care about what they do. And, uh, the first protocol is what's the, the smart and sensible way to [00:12:00] attack this brief. Not let's just dump everything I've got into a chat bot and choose the least terrible option out of the 20 or so that it spits back. And from a selfish point of view, I get no satisfaction from, you know, just being an editor of something that our machine writes.

I've, I'm kind of given away little, these little dignities in life, which like over the years little things have been stripped away as like robots take over our life. We used to get a sense of, ah, I've achieved something there. Just like, you know, reading a map to get somewhere. Now it's like, take the next left.

Those little moments have dignity have been stripped away, and I think what I said before about me looking at that press ad and going like, I did all of that. I'm so proud of that. I can see the sales coming in. If I'm given it away, even a small chunk of that to something that I haven't kind of thought of and created, which might make me sound like a big load Dave, you know, come on, get with the times.

I'm selfish enough to say no, I, I don't want to give that dignity away and that joy of creating it, which I think for me is I may [00:13:00] as well just not do what I do 'cause I've always been a writer. I haven't started as a marketer and fallen into this. I've always done the writing. I always want to do the writing.

Given that up, I find it really hard to do. Um, and something I'm reluctant to do, don't get me wrong. If the output was great, I'd be like, oh, shit. What are we gonna do here? We, we screwed a little bit here, but for what we do, humor, tone of voice, really creative ideas, I just don't think there'll be any replacement for that.

Chris Kocek: Well, you bring up some really interesting things because you remind me of, with Google and with search engines, you can search up just about anything, right, and, and find answers to it. But talking about micro dignities or just the enjoyment of trying to solve something with somebody else, have you ever been at a party or talking to someone?

You say, who was that actor? Who, who was in this movie? Or what, what was that line? Or, or whatever it may be. They said, well, we can just Google it. Well, no. Part of the fun is just us trying to figure it out together, and that's the fun. And the other thing that you made me think about just now was this idea that writing [00:14:00] is just crystallized thinking.

And so what the chatbot (shatbots) are doing is that they're kind of taking away our ability to think. Right, and it started with things that could memorize your phone numbers. I don't remember anybody's phone numbers anymore, but when I was a kid I had a Rolodex in my head of like 20, 30 phone numbers.

And so it started with that, and then it took over everything else, including the maps. You mentioned. The maps, right? Like cabbies. And from my understanding, new cabbies, younger cabbies in London, their brains work totally differently in terms of being able to navigate the city, whereas older cabbies have like these massive maps in their heads.

They know the ins and outs of everywhere, and they can actually oftentimes outperform the GPS. 

Dave Harland: I still think it's around like the London Cabbies Hackney cabs, as they call them. They do a thing called the knowledge. So it's, it's understanding all the little back roads and you know, what happens if this road's closed?

What are different [00:15:00] routes? It's almost like a really intensive kind of exam where you need to study that type of stuff. I think it's still around, but obviously the zoo better. There's all these other ride share apps now, which just like, it's all just take, take the next left, isn't it? Which can be frustrating if you know where you're going.

And the driver's taking what he thinks is the best route. And you're like, hang on a sec, mate. You know you're going the wrong way here. I still get that here in Liverpool. There's like two main ways to get from my house to Liverpool. Sometimes the Uber driver takes a slightly longer way, and I'm like, hang on a sec mate.

Take the shorter way, please. 

Chris Kocek: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So what would you say to someone with a marketing team of two. Right? So very lean marketing team, and they want to turn to a chat bot to help them instead of an experienced or talented copywriting human. What would you say to persuade them to go with the human and not the shatbot?

Dave Harland: Good question. I think the first thing I'd be kind of really quite blunt and say it is this, all your business is worth you. I'd always say again, you like, you get what you pay [00:16:00] for. They were probably gonna use a cheap writer anyway, weren't they? Before all of these tools were available to them, in which case I'd advised them to do exactly the same.

Don't accept everything at face value. Whether you're using a chatbot or a writer who's inexperienced, doesn't know what to do, check facts, make sure that aligns with your strategy and tone. And at the end, like if you have any budget at all, try and get it to someone who at least knows what they're doing to give it the once over and they can advise you.

'cause otherwise you just, you're just accepting the first thing at face value. And if you don't know what you're doing, you don't know whether it's right or wrong. And I think that's one of the biggest issues in this mad rush to kind of downsize marketing teams and upskill generalist marketers. To do design and video editing and copywriting with the help of all of our diligent chatbot overloads.

I think there's a danger that we'll get to the point where those people in those roles, they genuinely don't know what good looks like. They [00:17:00] dunno, you know, is it different enough to what's already out there? Like, I could have easily gone to Fiverr for my new business logo, or gone to one of these new tools instead.

We paid a really good designer, good money to create something that had meaning and longevity and had a story behind it. And I knew that we could be proud of rather than just going, oh, okay, give us 12 options and we'll choose the best one. I don't know, design. I'm paying for this expertise. I'm not paying for, you know, just him to churn out.

And when he presented the three or four options, he said, if, what do you think? Does this feel right? And I was like, I trust you, like you advise me. It's the other way around. I learned this lesson the hard way. I used to see myself as a supplier of words to my clients. Mm-hmm. One day I said to this, uh, a client, here's your blog post.

Uh, have a read through and let me know if you want any amends. And you know what he said? He said, how the hell do I know what amends are needed? You are the expert you should be telling me straight away. I was like, I'm a [00:18:00] consultant. No, I'm not just a supplier to ads. And I see the chatbots are just supplying.

Words and the supplying images, they're not giving you the guidance. They're not giving you that expertise, which I think businesses who want to take their marketing seriously kind of need that, don't you? You need that level of expertise to let you know whether you're doing it right or not. And I think if you hand that over you, you've, you don't value your brand, do you?

You don't value your business. That's not worth much you. 

Chris Kocek: So when you're meeting a client for the first time, what are some questions you typically like to ask to help you understand what the real problem is so that you can get to that impactful language? 

Dave Harland: We don't get great briefs. Often we ask like key questions at the start, which are all about, you know, tell us about your business.

What problem do you solve for your target audience? Like, who is the target audience? We ask them pointed questions, all like that. That's like the basic stuff. They've usually got the same old phrases that they've been using for years. [00:19:00] And so when we say, what do you do? They might come back and say, you know, we provide an ever-growing range of innovative incentive and reward solutions.

And I'm just like, okay, so what does that mean? And then they'll say, oh, so okay, so we create these gift cards. Next question, tell me how that works. I'll just take 'em down as, as deep as I need to go to understand exactly what it is that I'm writing about. So they're the kind of basic questions. How do they buy from you?

Take us through your process. What do people think about your brand? And sadly to say, what do all of these acronyms mean? What does BF cheat GT or whatever mean? Because you've used it 18 times in the brief and we have absolutely no clue, and we presume your audience feels exactly the same. And then we often find as well, they tend to make some unfounded claims like, we're the best at this, or we're number one, or we're leading, or the classic, we're cutting edge.

And again, we do exactly the same thing. We don't say like, you can't just say that. Like explain how, how are you the leading, like what have [00:20:00] you won? Classic, put your money where your mouth is type stuff. Which, yeah, we find that a lot is quite baseless and what the ones that get us to the goal tend to be.

Tell us the story of the brand. Tell us the backstory behind the name of the brand. If we're working with the founder, it, it's normally like plain sailing sometimes if you're working with the CMO and they can't tell you that. It's like, what are you even doing this job for? Like you should at least know that.

And then negative stuff as well. So we kind of. Try and pick holes in. What do you struggle with when you are normally communicating this product or service? Or what do people usually complain about or like, you know what puts people off. That question usually makes them feel a little bit uncomfortable, but it tends to get to the source of truth quite fast and the real honesty behind a brand, which is where the best stuff starts from, I think.

Chris Kocek: I mean, I like to ask sometimes, you know, why don't people come to you in the first place? Why do they go somewhere else? The problem with that, I've found, is that it's all usually based on [00:21:00] assumptions. Oh. They just don't know about us. Oh, really? Are you sure? Because you know, I've talked to a lot of people who say, oh yeah, I passed that place all the time.

If it's a brick and mortar type place, I pass that place all the time. I know about it, but I just think of it this way. You mentioned doing interviews. Is that a typical part of your process? 

Dave Harland: Yeah. If we can get access to the customers, we'll interview them and dig deep into all of the questions I've mentioned.

What was the process like when you were buying from them? What other alternatives did you consider? And all of them, it's just given us a clear, clear pitch in their mind. Okay, what type of message is gonna resonate with the most? Like what's the opening gambit? When we've interviewed eight customers, uh, six of them gonna say they've had the same problem because you can bet that's the smartest way to, to write some copy when you're talking about the problem that this product or service solves because you're focusing in on an area of commonality that most people are having.

Occasionally, like if they say something a bit mad off the wall, like something really interesting, we'll go, ah, that's gonna make a great headline. If one customer said that it's authentic, it's real, it's about the [00:22:00] brand and whatever we're writing about them, we can usually make something really, really fun.

Off the back of that. 

Chris Kocek: Yeah. You mentioned in a recent edition of your wonderful newsletter that I get every week of the word, you were doing a workshop with Union, which is an apartment co-living space, and you mentioned how it was the off the cuff comments and the funny little quips between their team members that came up that led to some aha moments for you and for the brand.

What are some of the off the cuff comments or quips that you experienced in that workshop that made you say, that's brilliant? Could you say that again? 

Dave Harland: Love, love the accent. Uh, classic American doing a British accent. Just Dick Vandyke, isn't it? Just Dick Vandyke. Mary Poppins. Easy. 

Chris Kocek: Hey, I grew up on John Cleese.

Dave Harland: Oh, John Cleese. Yeah. There you go. Hey, tell you what, that wasn't a bad Basel faulty actually. Yeah, it was good. Um, funny, funny. I can't do an American accent. Don't worry. Hey, man, what's all that about, man? Come on, dude. It's just like [00:23:00] standard. I, although I, I did read someone saying. Are better at American accents because we are exposed to all Hollywood movies and stuff, rather than the other way around.

'Cause you guys tend to only like, you know about the Queen and you know, like classic British comedy or the odd rock star who's British. Um, so what was the question? Off the cuff comments or quits off the cuff comments. One of the exercises we did, we put the teams into pairs and said, do a bit of role play here.

So one of you pretend to be, um, a manager of these new, funky apartments, and you are chatting to a young professional who's looking for a new place to live. Like explain it to them in your own words, and one of the guys explain it to them. He just said it's like a mad hotel. Like he even did it with his hands and we were just like, like the, the tone, he did it in like, we didn't use those exact words in any ads.

It's like a mad hotel, but just the image that created in mine and Ben, who run the agency with mine and Ben's minds [00:24:00] was just like. The tone of this place needs to feel like it's this bit of an unhinged like crazy like drop-in hotel where anything could happen. There's all sorts of fun stuff going on.

'Cause they have these communal spaces and they've got like pop-up shops on the launch day. They had like a chart up and band on stage playing a set there. Like they do really cool stuff. So when he said it's like a mad hotel straight away, we already knew they wanted to sound like no other rental property descriptions or anything like that.

They wanted to be far away from that kind of really formulaic and stuffy, which is what the property market is known for. They wanted to be quite youthful in what they were doing for us that flick the switch to any, any headlines and stuff that we wrote as part of their tone of voice. There's so much to do.

Your life's gonna be amazing living there. So it, it helped with positioning. And then second to that, we also did another little exercise, which I think doing these in person, we probably got to the root of the best off. I think if we just said, you know, here's an exercise, send us email over what you think.

One of the [00:25:00] things we get them to do is write a sign that might go on the lift, apologizing that the lift is out of order, and one of the guys like completely off the cuff. Because they're called Union. The whole brand is Union. He just put “Lift, gone on Strike. Union has been notified” and I was just like, they get it.

This is amazing. Like, and everyone in the room heard it and straight away, soon as he did that, they were all thinking more playfully. How can we write stuff that's totally unlike anything else you'd expect. Normally you'd just say. Out of order, you know, an engineer that's being called. At the moment he wrote that everybody else in the room kind of bought into the tone of voice as well.

So it was like a nice little epiphany moment for everyone, not just us. We love doing the in-person stuff as much as we can, just so we don't miss out on that stuff. We can pick it up occasionally on a Zoom call. Even then, nothing replaces being there. The little golden nuggets. And back to what we were saying about like insights, like the Mad Hotel thing is so interesting, isn't it?

It's just like, where could you go with that? There's so many little, little [00:26:00] avenues you can go down with that. 

Chris Kocek: Yeah. When you think about a project that you've worked on recently, maybe other than the union. It could be recently, it could be in the distant past. Are there any words or phrases that came up that made you say, and again, forgive the accent, but what in the bloody hell does that mean?

Gimme a lesson here. What in the bloody hell does that mean? 

Dave Harland: If you're doing it in my accent, you'd say what the bloody hell does that mean If I was in London, I'd go, what a bloody hell does that mean? Ah, what a bloody hell does that mean? They say Bloody, where did I say Bloody The Dick Vandyke is based on our classic old cockney.

Alright, Gnet apples and pears, Cockney rhyme slung. Whereas up north we tend to get a little bit less. We say bath. They say Bath. Oh, they sound a lot more like the queen. They're further south, you go. But then you've got Birmingham right in the middle, which sounds like that. And they, they sort of, uh, elongate, some of the words.

Whereas like, you've got up in Liverpool, which is me, and then you've got Manchester, which is the Liam Gallagher [00:27:00] brothers top mad for it sorted. Like that's them. And then you go like way up north, which is Newcastle, which is like Iman. They took kind of to it like that. And it sounds like they're singing a little song.

Look at that whistle stop accents for you. And then you've got Irish, and then you got the Welsh, and then you've got Scottish. And this is crazy, considering we're all within like 500 miles of one another. 

Chris Kocek: I mean, there's a lot of swallowing of vowels. Mm. The further north you go, it gets thicker and thicker.

Dave Harland: Love that. Look at that. Yeah. Scottish is, well, better than English, but saying that. Let's leave it for the Scotsman to, um, to judge who's got the best Scottish accent. But you've nailed that. I love that. 

Chris Kocek: I also grew up listening to a lot of Billy Connolly as a young lad of course, he taught me how to swear.

Dave Harland: Billy Connolly. 

Chris Kocek: Um, 

Dave Harland: Yeah. Uh, amazing. Like in any language, you know what fuck off means, like in any language. Uh, sorry. You don't have to do No, no. We went off the deep end 

Chris Kocek: there. But you were working on something and somebody [00:28:00] said a word or a phrase and you said. What the bloody hell does that mean and you start dissecting it or interrogating in a way.

Did that ever happen where you started to dissect the word or the phrase or interrogate in a way that led to an aha moment for you? 

Dave Harland: There's one in particular, and back to what I was saying before about the acronyms that businesses use, which every business does it. Becomes part of your brand's vernacular because you say it every day in day out.

So there was a brand, I was working with an agency on this one, an a really good agency in in London called Gasp, working on a brand in a peculiar little category called Goods Not for Resale, which is, they call it GNFR, which sounds like some kind of train, like an acronym for a train company, GNFR Goods, not for resale.

First time I had ever heard that phrase, and I was like, okay, so what's this? The agency said it's basically everything that a retailer needs, what they don't sell. So it's everything like from, you know, the rolls of paper that go in their tilt. If the clothes shop or [00:29:00] fashion retailer, it's the hangers that the clothes go on.

It's the rails that the clothes go on. It's the signs within the shop that see. You know, summer season, 50% off. It's the uniforms that the staff are wearing. If they have uniforms, it's the cleaning products in the kitchen. It's the toilet rolls, it's everything that they need to, to do their day-to-day operations, but don't sell.

But the agency that was working with em said like the, the loads of fun within the business, and they wanted to bring some of that personality out in their copy. But they were stuck with this phrase, GNFR goods, not for resale. So I started interrogating that. So I was like, okay, so what's that? Let's break that down.

So it's all the stuff that's in the background, shall we say? Stuff that's in the background behind the shop floor. It's all the details that you need to run your retail store. And I was like. Detail retail, and I was like, ah, you know what they do? They do the detail behind the retail and that's their kind of brand mantra and tagline.

It's like we are CCS McLay. The [00:30:00] detail behind the retail I. And that's what they're known for and what that did, it didn't just give us a nice, lovely, catchy, memorable tagline. It opened the door to zoom in to all the details on any ads that the brand does in future or any, any time that they talk about anything.

They don't just say, we can provide you with cut price till rolls, or we can consolidate your uniform supplies. Like one of the ads I wrote to was, it's Saturday morning. You've got a 17 person queue and you've just used the last toilet roll. That was it where CCS McLay the detail behind the retail honing in onto those really ultra specific moments of detail that might get in the way of somebody not having these nice supplies of all of these products they need.

And we just went to town on it. So yeah, really meaningless nothing, B2B boring, forgettable phrase and found some real meaning within it. And. Everything the brand does is kind of built off the back of that and I gasp. The agency I work with, [00:31:00] the way they've executed everything, like they do strategy design, like the whole kit and caboodle, it is just like word perfect and design spot on everything looping back to their strategy.

So they get credit for everything that's gone into that. I just opened the words, wanted to make that clear, in case you're listening Giles! Very sound. 

Chris Kocek: Well, what I love about that is that it's a combination of connecting the dots. It's word play. It's having fun with it, right? I mean, you, you, you came up with a great rhyme.

You found the overlaps there, and so I just, I love that. So speaking of acronyms and idioms and phrases, what's an American English phrase that you love and does it have a British equivalent? 

Dave Harland: I'd say the one I probably use the most, it's like once people say, how much is it gonna be for this project?

I'll say, gotta take a full brief. But I can give you a ballpark. We don't have ballparks. We've, we've stolen that from you. We have stadiums, we have football grounds, we have arenas, we have [00:32:00] pitches. I've been to Fenway Park and I've been to Comerica Park. I've been to two ballparks. They're magnificent. We don't have them over here.

I think that's one. It's quite cool. I think it's in that ballpark. There's loads and then there's obviously ones that go the other way, which mean absolutely nothing. 

Chris Kocek: I was just gonna ask. How about the other way around? Are there, is there a British phrase or a couple of British phrases that you love and what do you think is the closest phrase we have in American English to that British phrase?

Dave Harland: Honestly, there's to like, I worked in America years ago when I was on a, on a gap year at uni, and I remember I. Like some English people find it, find it difficult to understand some of the dialect that I use up in Liverpool. So saying that when I was in America, it was just like going over their heads.

So we, we say like, you know, if something's good, we'll call it the dog's bollocks, or it's the bee's knees, which both sound like the bee's knees. Sounds like a Dick Vandyke craze, doesn't it? Which are both essentially like really good. So these, these are like metaphors for good. If something's gone bad, we say it's [00:33:00] gone pear shaped.

It's gone pear shaped, it's gone. Pear shaped means like it's, the bottom of it has gone quite heavy. So it's, it's, it's gonna hit the ground with a thud, uh, that's gone pear shaped, so that's bad. There's a couple that I like, which is if you are having a chit chat with someone, we say we have a chin wag.

And I think just the idea of you chin wagging. Like wagging from side to side. The description of the motion. I love in that one and one of my favorites, which is what we do as an agency. We find ways to take the piss and you know, John Cleese and Monty Python did that really well, which is basically, yeah.

Jacking people around or not taking things seriously, taking the Mickey? Or is that a British thing as well? We say taking the Mickey, that's like the softer way of saying, taking the piss. 

Chris Kocek: Well, it's so interesting because you've got such formality in England, right? But you've also got such humor in England as well, perhaps as a reaction to the heavy handed formality of parts of England.

What do you think? 

Dave Harland: Yeah, I [00:34:00] agree. If anything, we're known for our kind of politeness, aren't we? But then on the flip side of it, like we're known for being football hooligans whenever we go and play football abroad. So we've got these really polite people who will stand in a queue without complaining for an hour and a half.

We don't typically send food back if, you know, if something's undercooked, we'll probably sooner get food poisoning than bring ourselves to complain to the chef. That's how polite we are. Although I think you get less polite the more northern you get. Like I said, good, honest working class folk. We uh, we like to get our money's worth.

But yeah, it's a good observation. I've never really thought about it like that. You've got the ultra politeness on one hand, but then the kind of metaphor and euphemism town, like so many euphemisms. Of course, we have our own dialect up here in Liverpool as well. Schisms, which mean nothing to the rest of the country.

So I'll say when I'm happy, I'll say I'm made up. Like if you got a promotion, I'd say, oh, Chris, I'm made up for you. Whereas like in the [00:35:00] rest of England, if you're made up, it means you've got makeup on. It means a lady's got makeup on. Oh, or this is another one. I'm a big Liverpool football club fan.

Whenever we get a new manager in, I. They normally get the new manager to say this. So when someone's unhappy, the rest of the rest of the UK might say he's fuming. Or in Liverpool we say he's got a cob on, which is like a cob is like a bread roll. Oh, he's got a cob on. Like it means he is unhappy. So yeah, weird.

And our greeting, whereas most people will say hello, we say hello, are you all right? We use the question as the greeting. We go, alright. And that's it. We don't, you don't have to respond and say, I'm okay. Yeah, you just go Alright back and that's it. Finish. Alright. Yeah. Alright. Funny.

Chris Kocek:, Interesting, interesting.

I once used a British accent or you know, obviously a fake, my mom's from England, so that's why I grew up watching Billy Connolly or John Cleese and Faulty Towers and all that. 

Dave Harland: Makes sense now. 

Chris Kocek: And so it was the Stanley Cup finals. I was with a friend in Colorado and the bar was already full. It was the seventh [00:36:00] game of the Stanley Cup finals.

And we went in and we didn't think we were gonna be able to get a seat. The place was packed and she said, well just use your British accent. To see if we can get some people to move around. 'cause there were bar seats available, but there was just one-offs. Right. And so I followed her lead and I said, is it okay if we just sit right here?

Could we, could, would you mind just moving a little bit? Right. There's, they just wanted to be friendly to the foreigner who wanted to watch this thing called hockey. But then I had to keep up the accent for the next, uh, two to three hours. 

Dave Harland: Yeah, but you slept well that night, didn't you? Exhausted. 

Chris Kocek: That was a bit challenging.

It was a bit challenging. Before we get to the speed round, Dave, you mentioned comedians earlier. Are there any comedians that you follow? 

Dave Harland: Yeah, so my favorite British comedian is a guy called Bob Mortimer, and he's known for really absurd and surreal tales of nothingness. He's on a show called, would I Lie to You?

Would You Lie to Me? It's One, [00:37:00] one or the other. And there's two panels of three comedians and one of the comedians has to read something out and the other, the other panel has to guess whether he is telling the truth or whether he is lying and he's the absolute best because no one can ever work out whether what he's saying is so absurd that it's a lie or whether, in fact he's just had such a, a crazy upbringing that whatever tale he is talking about from his childhood and he makes up names.

And sometimes they're the truth and you're like, he must've been making these wacky names up as a kid naming all his friends. It's like, just hilarious. So he's, he's amazing. And I think I love old Monty Python, like Ministry of Silly Walks and classic stuff, which is just like Life of Brian, like the scene whether in new Gladiator Stadium and they're going round and they're talking about the different.

You know, like you have hot dogs here nowadays. Back then it was, um, ocelot spleens, jaguar's ear lobe, wolf nipple chips. Get 'em while they're hot. They're lovely. It's like one of my favorite [00:38:00] comedy scenes of all time. 

Chris Kocek: Well, and you pay such close attention to the details that one of the things that jumped out at me when I started subscribing to the word at the very bottom, you've got these little lines.

What are you still reading this bit for? 

Dave Harland: In what we do at our agency and what we advise our clients is that if you can make sure your tone of voice is absolutely everywhere, on everything that you do, it not only creates that consistency and just makes not everyone in the audience, but it makes enough people in the audience when they read it, makes them go.

If they care enough to change three words at the bottom of a website, like what's their customer service gonna be like? What's that product gonna be like if they're putting that much care into just these little throwaway lines? It's just like if you put your brand tone everywhere, they must do everything else well, because it demonstrates care.

It's showing not, not telling, isn't it? It's not saying we care. Making sure every single word on your website speaks to that audience in the correct [00:39:00] tone that's showing that you care. There's a strategy behind it as well. It's not just like, oh, we've just done this. Oh, why is that? Brand wasting the time, making the terms and conditions feel like it's your best friend telling you.

It's like, because they want you to read that and go, like, all my money's going to them. I understand everything they're saying. They're speaking to me. They value me. Ties back to that strategy. 

Chris Kocek: Yeah. Instead of guilty by association, it's credible by association. It's credible because you've clearly thought about these details.

You're gonna be detail oriented without saying you're detail oriented. You're showing your detail oriented, alright, so the speed round, it's everybody's favorite. What's your favorite word in English or any other language? 

Dave Harland: I'm really sorry for this because it's one of the most pure aisle things I ever say in my life, and I've been asked this before, but it is the really silly.

Bum hole. Just bum hole. There's your cut. You can cut that. Just have me go bum hole. You can mix that into a rap. Can you? The bum hole rap? Yeah. Bum hole. It's been [00:40:00] hilarious to me ever since I was a kid. It's just funny, isn't it? Perfect. Funny word. 

Chris Kocek: Perfect. What was your favorite subject in school?

Other than English? Oh, 

Dave Harland: other than English? I did like French as well. We did French. Any in Languagey words, isn't it? Even in another language. Just I'll soak them up. 

Chris Kocek: You have a little one at home, right? Jack? 

Dave Harland: Yeah. Little Jack. He's nearly four. 

Chris Kocek: Has he said or done something recently that made you see the world in a different way or made you go, huh, that's interesting.

Dave Harland: Yeah, he says words all the time and I say like, where did you hear that? And occasionally I'll say, I. What, who did you used to be before you were Jack? Just to see if he is like, channeling some prior life experience by knowing these words. But then he's just a big sponge. They all are at that age. Aren’t they, they just soak up everything.

He's probably heard me saying it to I, Mrs. Or he's probably heard a kid saying it in school, just like filler words, actually, daddy, like actually was, and, and in context as well. Nuts. Um, but the one that made me smile the most [00:41:00] was when he said something to me. That tried to persuade me, he's like a mini meal already.

He wanted me to go in the garden and play with his PAW Patrol figures, and I said, no, your dinner's ready in a minute. And he went. It won't take long. Daddy like he knew like that. He could persuade me by promising that it was just gonna be like five minutes. It won't take long daddy. I said, how'd you know how to persuade me you're three?

He just went, dunno, dunno. Shugg shrugged. The shoulders dunno, and just walked out. 

Chris Kocek: Now if you were talking to a five-year-old, how would you describe what it is you do? 

Dave Harland: Oh wow. I make stuff sound more fun or more fun than it really is. No, that makes me sound devious. I make stuff sound fun. I think it's probably about right 'cause it's not too, it's not too far away from what I do.

Chris Kocek: Mm-hmm. What's the most recent good book you've read? 

Dave Harland: Copywriting Is by Andrew Bolton. Where most books are all about? The kind of practice of this is how you do copywriting, his book, which is, it's a brilliant read. It's like a love letter to the craft. [00:42:00] So it's all about allowing yourself to have those moments where you just let your mind wander and it kind of opens up all of these lovely doors.

So that's a great book. I'd highly, highly recommend to any, any copywriters at the moment who are feeling the pressure and the weight of, you know, you've gotta use a chatbot now, or you've gotta get on board with all of this technology. This will give you a little bit more of an insight into a career, which isn't all high pressure and result, result, results.

It's, it's given you a little bit of freedom and leeway to let the ideas to come to you in a load of different ways. And Andrew Bolton's great at that. Follow him on LinkedIn as well. He's ace. 

Chris Kocek: What's a subject that you recently got super interested in and you just went down a rabbit hole because of insatiable curiosity.

Dave Harland: That's a good question. It sounds sad, but it's nothing. I think because when we're working with a client on stuff, I'll tend to go really, really deep in [00:43:00] whatever it is I'm writing about. So if it's perimeter fencing and I've gotta write 40 different product descriptions for 40 types of perimeter fencing around airports and around school playgrounds and around secure hospitals. I have to understand everything about it. Like some of them you can cut through these fences with hand tools. Others take, you know, you need an industrial wizard. I tend to go really deep. 

Chris Kocek: This has gotta make you the life of parties, dinner parties with perimeter fencing. 

Dave Harland: Yeah. You know what I mean? We know, I always say like we know a lot of general knowledge, but for like four weeks at a time, um, I kind of half worky, half something I'm interested in outside of work is comedy and humor.

So, I'm working on a course at the moment, write the funny, I'm still working on the lessons as we speak, but as part of that, I'm doing a lot of reading and, and listening to audio books. All about the craft of humor. A lot of it is rooted back to human nature, like we love solving problems. I think that's one of the big challenges and one of the things that I [00:44:00] think is causing issues with the, this reliance on Gen ai and it's, it's solving the problems for us.

So we're, we're kind of making our own problem solving the bit that makes life fun. We're making that bit redundant as well. So again, see, I'll always find a way to spin it back and slam those shatbots. So, yeah. So there is something I've been obsessing about humor and comedy. 

Chris Kocek: I can't wait for that class to come out.

When do you think it'll be coming out? 

Dave Harland: In the autumn? Yeah. Hopefully. Yeah. September or October, depending on how many takes it's gonna take to do the, um, the recording of the video is always the worst bit, isn't it? Especially when you've got a bit of a lisp and you mumble over words and you, sadly, a little bit of a weird perfectionist.

Chris Kocek: We'll make sure to include a link to that for anybody who's interested. What's a piece of advice that you got early on in your life or in your career that you still remember to this day or that you think of often? 

Dave Harland: This, this. It's just, it is the one that's always there, and I think it's quite British.

It's about never getting ahead of your station, even when times are going good. Some days you're the [00:45:00] pigeon, and some days you have a statue. 

Chris Kocek: That's great advice. How do you feel today? Do you feel like the pigeon or the statue? 

Dave Harland: It varies from hour to hour. Sometimes. I used to be quite pessimistic and Oh, like dwell on the negatives.

Like I always remember my dad saying, shit happens. Like just get on with it if no one's gonna die, and whatever campaign you're working on. It's not life or death is it? We can get a bit wrapped up in our own work sometimes and think that, oh, you know, everything revolves around it. And occasionally I just like to take a step back and go, we are just little tiny specks on this crazy rock like spinning around these stars.

And I think having that, like some days you're a pigeon, some days you're a statue. It just reminds you to always have perspective. If you get great feedback, don't spend the next year buzzing off yourself. And equally, if someone says it's a terrible job, you just go, sound, okay, I'll move on. Like, I'm fixing it enough now.

It wasn't always when I was younger, negative feedback, man, ah, used to hate it [00:46:00] 'cause I poured my heart and soul into that. Still do pour the heart and soul, but there's a distinct kind of business and pleasure kind of split, which I think just comes with time, doesn't it? 

Chris Kocek: Well, that's great advice and this is a phrase I never thought I would say, but Dave, you've made me feel like a pigeon today.

Dave Harland:  I like it. I like it. 

Chris Kocek: Well, here I'll do my best pigeon impression so we can close on it. Okay. 

Dave Harland: Lovely. Nice one for having me on. It was a really good chit man.

Chris Kocek: Thanks again to our guest, Dave Harland from Cop or Die. If you want to connect with Dave, you can find him on LinkedIn. If you want to turn copy into cash or as Dave says, LOLers into dollars, make sure you sign up for his online course. Write the funny, and if you don't like anything, Dave does. Let his agent Gary Champagne know so that Gary can write your name in his little book of incompatibilities for future reference.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please give us five [00:47:00] stars on your favorite podcast platform and share it with colleagues and clients who could use some inspiration. Just send them a link and say, you'll see this is what I'm talking about, insights. If you're looking for even more ideas and aha moments.

Head over to chris ec.com. There you can find some of my newest online courses, case studies, and creative exercises for building insights and breakthrough ideas. And while you're there, make sure you subscribe to the Light Bulb Newsletter. Every Thursday I share three aha moments that are guaranteed to inspire your next project, creative briefing or campaign.

Special thanks to Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios for producing this episode. And thank you to Megan Palmer for additional editing and production support. Until next time, keep looking for patterns, finding contradictions, and asking what if more often.