The Benefits Of A Good Chair

This is another article was written by one of my junior copywriters, Joe Valente. It’s makes an important point, so I reprinted it here. Take it away, Joe!

Spring is in the air again. I can tell by the way my grass is turning yellow with dandelions, and my hayfever is acting up.

Coincidence? You decide …

As the air warms in my backyard and the birds begin to once squabble at my wife’s bird feeder over the remnants of last year’s seeds, I’m at once overcome with the excitement of a brand new year — because spring always feels more like the beginning of a new year than New Years day, doesn’t it — and at the same time struck by an odd sense of deja-vu.

Spring is the great conundrum, ladies and gentlemen. It’s the time when we try new things, while still relying on the things we know work. It’s when we hedge our bets by incorporating what we do successfully with what we’re willing to try.

And it’s a time when our comfort in the things we know gives us the courage to try the things we don’t.

And it’s perfectly natural. Take my dog for instance. Amber will be 15 years old this fall, and she has relied on an old tattered Bombay chair for daytime rest for as far back as I can remember. It’s in that chair that she’s acquired the nickname, “Roadkill,” but that’s another story.

Anyway, that old tattered Bombay is her anchor, the center to her universe, and the home base she needs to have the confidence to explore the rest of her world.

No matter where she goes or what she gets into, that old Bombay is always there for her when she returns. It’s her safety net, it’s what she knows, and it’s what works for her.

I once removed that old chair, and the poor old girl wandered restlessly through the house for a full 48 hours without sleep before I relented, and decided that the ratty old thing — the chair, not the dog — was really not all that ugly after all.

So the Bombay returned to the family room, and the dog returned to normal. But here’s the thing: with spring has come a whole new sense of discovery in the old mutt.

Just yesterday, I saw her venture for the first time onto the ledge of our bay window to catch a snooze in the sun. She’s never done that before. And after an hour or so of snoring blissfully in a position best described as “awkward,” she woke up, got back into her familiar chair, and promptly returned to doing her impression of a well-oiled chainsaw.

The point here is that everyone feels a little more daring in the spring. Everyone feels more willing — if not flat-out compelled — to try new things.

But you’re most comfortable responding to this newfound curiosity and courage when you have the unshakeable knowledge that you can always fall back on what has always worked.

And that knowledge is your safety net.

Your own personal Bombay chair.

This month, in honor of this odd dichotomy of spring, my suggestion to you is to get a refresher on what makes great copy — and maybe just as importantly, what doesn’t.

Scroll through some of Michel’s articles lingering in the archive. We’re sure you’ve probably heard a lot of the ideas in them before.

But if you’re planning any new campaigns — and you should be, shouldn’t you? — then now is the ideal time to review your websites, your marketing, your sales copy, and your general strategies to make sure you’ve got the basics covered.

It’s also a perfect time to review some of the tenets of good copy, so that you apply those tried and true ideas to your new explorations. Think of it as a spring cleaning for your own personal Bombay chair.

You may now join Amber in the sun on window sill.

Last 5 Posts by Michel Fortin

• Social Media Isn’t Dead, But It Can Be Deadly
• How to Extract Doubt From Your Sales Copy
• It’s Not About Facebook, It’s About Integrity
• Did Larry Winget Go Overboard?
• The Oft-Confused Features And Benefits

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