A case for the professional copywriter

I’ve been chuckling to myself ever since seeing this billboard outside Barclays Bank in Ladbroke Grove. Now, I know that with a bit of patience, you can understand it, but my, what a mishmash at first sight. “Were”, it begins, putting your mind on totally the wrong track, and then, dispensing with punctuation altogether, it crams in a few further thoughts.

The funny thing is, you’d expect Barclays, that most renowned of banks, to be more careful about its professional image. Well, clearly, somewhere between the copywriter and the builders, the message got lost. Builders aren’t renowned for their grammatical pedantry – well, why should they be? They concentrate on the building.

To those who care about such things as apostrophes and grammar, however, it will affect a small erosion of the brand’s image. It’s worth a thought. As a small business owner, you yourself might be quite comfortable with the thought that your signage – and indeed your website – contains a few prime examples of the so-called “grocer’s apostrophe”.

Your customers may well care, though. And if they do, they may go to your more professional-seeming competitor who happens to have all his commas in the right place. If you care about your brand image, you need to care about grammar. And if being, perhaps, a builder, or a grocer, or from some other trade where you certainly know what you’re doing, but copywriting isn’t part of the required skillset, that means you need to employ a professional copywriter.

Our copywriters wouldn’t necessarily know how to erect a billboard or choose a prime cabbage, but they certainly know how to polish your prose for you.