A great interview: Dan Germain, Innocent

I love reading interviews with people who work with words, from copywriters to translators. It’s always interesting to find out how they got to where they are today, the path they took. Roger Horberry’s interview with Dan Germain of Innocent fame is no exception.

I think lots of writers stumble into their profession via a muddle of other roles: some are related, most are not. But it’s still refreshing to read about the success stories that many of us still spend a large proportion of (billable) hours daydreaming about…

Dan “went to university with the three chaps who founded Innocent” and started off “driving vans and delivering smoothies” before moving on to writing the ‘blurb’ on the bottles. And ten years later, he’s head of creative services. He comes out with several words of wisdom; here are my favourites.

“Brilliant copywriting doesn’t demand any explanation. It’s short and sweet and hits the spot first time.”

On golden rules for writing: “…you have your first idea – great, but don’t use it. 90% of people will have thought of that so it’ll be boring. Have another idea – great, don’t use that either. 8% of people will have thought of that. Go for the third idea – that’s what hardly anyone will have got to…”

On writing guidelines at Innocent: “…it’s mainly about being polite. Say hello, write to the person you’re speaking to, get their attention quickly and leave them with something to think about at the end.”

On escaping writer’s block: “One thing I do is start from a random word or sentence [...] like ‘the thing about squirrels is…’. It’s good to have a few opening lines like that to play with and wake you up.”

“Write lots of stuff. Keep writing. Write snappy lines and short stories. Stick your words on a blog. Try writing a bit of everything. But most importantly, just write.”

Read the interview on the wonderful www.26.org.uk, a group for writers, editors and language consultants (I’m a member!).

Learn a language, help your writing, improve your prospects

The Guardian recently reported that “there is increasing demand around the world for [website] translations into English…particularly inside businesses”.

This is an interesting and exciting prospect for me, as a web copywriter living in Spain, learning Spanish and hoping to gain clients here.

Increase credibility and improve search results

As well as needing help translating content into English in the first place, many companies have websites with English (‘the language of business’) pages that, while understandable, could be better.

I already offer help in this area, and have rewritten the English pages for a local Spanish web agency. It recognised that to attract the substantial English businesses in our locality, well-written web pages provided credibility and would help it to appear in relevant search results.

Write appropriately for your readership

But learning a language doesn’t just mean adding another service to your offering; it can help to make you a better writer. John Clifford, Quality Manager at corporate web agency Investis, has a diploma in French translation from the Chartered Institute of Linguists (IoL). He thinks that:

“What [translation exams] assess as much as anything is your ability to write clearly and correctly in the appropriate register for the readership in your mother tongue…so it’s a highly relevant qualification for a copywriter even if most of the work you do is original authoring rather than translating.”

Understand the need for clear and simple content

Another benefit is understanding the need to write simply and clearly in whatever language you speak. Websites are global, which means a large proportion of a site’s potential audience will speak a first language other than the one it’s written in.

If you can empathise with the challenges of understanding and navigating a website written in another tongue, it can only bring greater awareness to your writing.