Dave Harland

Dave Harland is our guest on the 339th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. After starting a career as a soccer (or should we say football) reporter in Manchester, Dave shifted to the world of copywriting where he’s known for coming up with big ideas and a method to execute them. In this episode, you’ll find out exactly how he makes it happen. You’ll also learn: How Dave improved his copy skills with limited technology capabilities. Why he branded himself using “word” rather than “copy.” How he organized his portfolio when he first started his business. A typical day in the life of Dave and how he balances client work with his own business goals. Why writers need time to simmer in their thoughts and why they shouldn’t rush the critical thinking process. How to get bigger brands to notice you. The 3 question test Dave uses when coming up with a big idea. How many projects are too many projects? His method for attracting clients and building his brand using LinkedIn. How to find your voice, break the rules, and connect with your audience. Dave’s path to becoming the “copywriting comedian.” Why you need to create a connection in anything you write. How he uses AI as a firestarter and as a means to eliminate the most common ideas. Why he believes ChatGPT won’t replace dedicated, skilled copywriters. Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Join the AI Challenge  The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Dave's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  There's a saying among copywriters, especially online conversion copywriters that goes back to Eugene Schwartz. He put it like this: sales copy is not written, copy is assembled. And of course that's true. The messages that customers relate to best are assembled from interviews, surveys, and other research. But in subscribing to this idea, a lot of copywriters have inadvertently lost the connection to creativity and copy. After all, what's the point of being creative if the words are in the survey responses? Our guest for The Copywriter Club podcast today takes a more creative approach than many copywriters we know. Dave Harland, also known as the word man, walked us through his 10-step process for coming up with big, compelling ideas. And he shared three questions that he asks every time he comes up with a good headline or a good idea, to make sure that it is good. He also talked in-depth about his unconventional approach to posting on LinkedIn, one that has attracted a lot of great clients for his business. If you want to be more creative in your approach to copywriting, this episode is for you. Kira Hug:  But before we get to the interview, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think tank. That is our mastermind for copywriters, content writers and other marketers who want to figure out the next thing in their businesses. That could be anything from creating a new revenue stream or a couple new revenue streams to launching a new product or a subscription service or a membership or podcast book. You name it. Our members are doing incredible things and we actually have a retreat coming up in early June. It's a virtual retreat and in-person retreat in London in September. And so we are really excited to add a couple of new members to the Think Tank before the retreat in June. And if you think that could be you, visit copywriterthinktank.com to apply. Let's kick off our episode with Dave. Dave Harland:  Probably like most people fell into it completely by accident. My, no, my background is journalism, so I did a journalism degree. I mean, before that, I loved writing as a kid, as I presume most copywriters. Had a love of words growing up. Got into Scrabble when I was six with my dad and just never looked back, really. Started writing poems and stories and loved English at school. So yeah, that led me down a journalism path. So I did work experience at the local paper when I was at school for a couple of weeks and just loved the buzz of that. And then yeah, went to university to do a journalism degree. So I was a three-year undergrad degree in journalism, which really opened my eyes to all the different kinds of types and styles that were out there. I just thought when I went there, I was just writing about news. Didn't for one moment think I'd be learning how to package up a radio news article, or we did a little bit of TV as well. I haven't got a face for TV at all. So we tried that. And then watching it back, I just looked all kind of nervous and my tongue was hanging out. It was like "TV isn't for me." And at the time they just introduced an online route. So it was online journalism. In your third year, you get to spec, specialize in TV, newspapers, radio, or this new route online. And in a class of a hundred, there were only two of us that went online. I mean, I'm talking 2002, 2003. So, Google was only in its infancy. There was no social media at all really. Maybe MySpace was just starting, but there was nothing like that. And I thought, "That's where the world's headed. Let's do this." So I learned a little bit of Photoshop, learned about Dreamweaver and basic HTML and some of them things that I learned back then I still use today. Maybe not in the copywriting side of things, but certainly on my website, or when creating little memes and things. So that was the journalism side of things. But then I only really did four months of journalism. I worked as a football reporter, or, sorry, soccer reporter just for a website based in Manchester, which isn't far from where I live. But I was only there for three or four months. My face didn't really fit. So I was scrappy looking for a new job, and my old university came calling and said, "You fancy being the editor of our journalism department website?" So I went back there and I still thought that was like, "Oh, it's great journalism. I'm interviewing students." It was promoting the university in all the courses, really. I was a secret copywriter, but I didn't know it. So then, yeah, I was there for a couple of years and then got a job as an actual copywriter for a Christmas hamper company, which is a bit of a mad one. But yeah, it was around the corner from where I lived, and at the time I was kind of... I'd just met a girl, moved back home rather than being at the university. So it was just a nice little fit. Again, it was a copywriting role, but it did it. The job title was content and communications coordinator. I was like the editor of their customer magazine. So again, I still wasn't a 100%, I'd never really heard the word copywriter before until about two years in when they asked me to start doing, they're that direct mail letters and some kind of product descriptions for their catalog, which is when they official say, "Oh, so I'm a copywriter now, let's Google that and find out all I can." So that led me to where I am. So that was about 17 years ago I joined that company. So I've been doing it ever since then. So yeah, I was there for 10 years and then got a bit bored. I will probably outstay my welcome by about five years. And then a friend of mine had just moved to an agency in Dubai, and started asking me if I wanted to do some projects for him. That was about two years before I left. And then after those two years, I was earning more on the side than I was in my day job, and it made sense to go it alone and be a full-time freelance copywriter. So that's what I've been doing ever since. So over the past seven years, yeah, pure generalist, everything from email campaigns and tone of voice projects to banner ads and conceptual stuff. I tend to leave the longer form blog posts and case studies and the more content market and stuff for the sector specialist. So I tend to focus more on the big idea, more leaning towards stuff with humor and personality of late. So that's me, in a nutshell. Rob Marsh:  So as you talk about that, Dave, obviously you had the journalism training. Did you ever have any specific copywriting training or was everything learned on the job? And I guess, what would you say are the three or four big things that you had to learn in order to become really good at what you do, and this is me saying you're really good at what you do. Dave Harland:  Oh, nice one, because I find it hard to take compliments sometimes. No, when you're just kind of working on it and people say, oh, you really good, I'm just like, "Oh, whatever. It just fell into this." I think it's probably because I haven't got that kind of formal training. So training-wise, when I was about three years into that job at the Christmas hamper company, they said, "Why don't you do courses someday, just to learn some really intense skills?" So I did a few one-day courses. There's a place called the IDM in London Institute of Data and Marketing. So they do some really good, just, I think it was just one or two-day courses, one on how to write more powerful direct mail letters. Another one, how to write a really impactful sales email. So I did about three or four of those, and they really gave me the foundation in most of the fundamental skills that I use today. So put the reader first, and the importance of benefits over features and the staples of which form the basis of most of the stuff I still write today, and probably what most copywriters out there write. So by doing these courses, it gave me the confidence to see myself as a copywriter, and not so much a journalist anymore. So yeah, aside from that, nothing else. It was just learning as I went. Did loads of testing at the company where we were at.

Dave Harland, Copywriter and creative director of Copy Or Die, talks about redefining professionalism, generating leads authentically, going narrow with your brand, using self-deprecation in copywriting, picking the right fight in marketing, and channeling hyperbole in branding strategy.

Dave Harland, a brilliant copywriter, discusses how to write effective cold emails. He shares tips for improving cold emails, highlights flaws in a cold email example, and emphasizes the importance of personalization and clear messaging.