Professionalism is Killing Your Brand: Here's the Cure

Louis Grenier (0:00)

Some will argue that you can say whatever the fuck you want, but then what if those brands, people working for those big brands read you and feel offended and therefore don't work with you, right? The risk is also quite high.

Dave Harland (0:10)

Yeah, but equally, I've set out from the outset to really only purposefully wanna work with brands and the people at those brands who are comfortable with maybe me swearing, maybe not in the first interview to the CEO, or maybe, but two or three emails in, or when we're on the first call, straight away, as soon as they hear me, they'll know that I'm not gonna be using any buzzwords. They'll know I'm gonna be speaking to them straight.

And it's like, if they've got an issue with that in meeting one, it's gonna be a fucking nightmare working with me once we get further down the line, because I'm just gonna be honest and I'm gonna be trying all these different ways of bringing out their personality, which don't, I mean, I know that's the kind of thing I do on social, like all in on the funny. When I'm working with clients, it's probably only like 40% want me to do funny stuff for them, the others are just like, we just need to be a bit clearer, or we just need to get our real authentic personality out.

Louis Grenier (1:06)

Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Everyone Hates marketers.com, the No Fluff Actionable Marketing Podcast for people sick of marketing bullshit. I'm your host, Louis Grenier. In today's episode, you will learn where to find the funny and write about it. My guest today is the world's least dangerous superhero. His superpower is that he knows loads of rare and obscure words, which makes him better than most at Scrabble. So not super helpful when it comes to fights, like Strutter or the villains. For two decades, he's been writing funny stuff for businesses and brands who want to stop boring people to tears. I've discovered him years ago now on LinkedIn, always laughed at his posts, which takes a lot of energy to make me laugh when I'm fucking browsing LinkedIn at like 11 p.m., trying to fall asleep. So anyway, he's also the agency owner of Copy Or Die. I don't think I need to explain what they do. Dave Harland, welcome.

Dave Harland (2:01)

Thanks so much for the intro, that's ace. And yet there's the whole thing about Scrabble, me knowing loads of words.

Vocal really is not amazing. I just know where to put all the small words and that means everything in Scrabble.

Louis Grenier (2:12)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're this kind of guy who would just like to make them feel like they are just average, but you're not. Clearly from your copy, from the way you write, from everything, you're far from being average, man. So anyway, enough compliments, fuck that. There's something that we both agree on that I love for you to talk about a bit more. And it's something that if we go to your LinkedIn profile or if you've just come across your work, it's clearly not your usual behavior of a marketing, copywriting professional who's selling services to brands who are so well established.

In other words, some people might call you not professional and downright rude or whatever else. So I'd love to know, how do you interpret that? How do you explain that professionalism doesn't necessarily mean wearing a three-piece suit and talking like a British Lord?

Dave Harland (3:07)

Yeah, it doesn't. I get that quite a bit.

Like, Dave, you're so unprofessional in your approach or you don't follow the same old ways of doing your marketing and your stuff. And yeah, I always come back and say, professionalism doesn't have to be all, like you say, like a British Lord, doesn't have to be really corporate and buzzword heavy and really forced. Professionalism can be exactly how I like to do things, which is just a lot of the time, just being nice and normal and honest and open and simple in the way I talk about things, like forever, whenever I go into a shoe shop, the one thing I hate is when someone comes over to you and goes, hi, can I just, it's like, fuck, leave me alone, get away from me. Like I'm doing this in my own time. And I think like in life, I've always kind of preferred taking my own time over kind of buying decisions. And obviously there's those little impulse things where you're like, fuck, I've got to have that like right away. But yeah, whenever I've signed up to anything or whatever, I've kind of followed a brand or anything like that, it's because they've entertained me first or they've made me smile or they've given me something first rather than asking for some random sale.