The most valuable lessons in my professional life have often been delivered by assholes. One of the toughest was given to me in the summer of 1991 about my copywriting.

I was interning at the Detroit office of the Carlson Marketing Group, the loyalty marketing behemoth. I just finished drafting direct mail copy for Chrysler dealer incentive trip to Hong Kong, and was quite proud of my 20-year-old self. That was until I was called into the office of Haul Quarier, one of their account executives.

Haul was one of those agency types nearly the end of his second wind of his career in automotive marketing: angry and old with a false sense of entitlement. Haul was a classic asshole.

“Curt, your writing is clever, but complete shit,” he said bluntly. “Do you know why?”

I sat there for a moment, stunned, and meekly replied: “Bad grammar?”

“Really?” He snorted, called in one of the copywriters and spent the next 10 minutes reading all of my copy to both of us. “You should write for Conde Nast, not us, Curt,” said the copywriter with laugh and left me sinking deeper into my chair.

“Wow, you’re still not seeing it,” Haul blurted with a laugh. “You’re not writing to the Ambercrombie & Kent jet setters. You’re writing to Chrysler dealers. Quit being clever. Rewrite this with a dipshit dealer from Des Moines in mind, and give me the new drafts first thing tomorrow.”

So I spent the night channeling the persona of that dipshit dealer Mortie. I wrote why he should want to hit his service shop goals so that he could take his wife, Margie, to Hong Kong on Chrysler’s dime. And most importantly, I saw his painful point.

I put the new copy of Haul’s desk the next morning, but I should have left a thank you note as well. That past-his-prime account executive gave me two great lessons:

1. Always write to your audience. Your content must engage them instead of showing off your writing acumen. Your prospect cares about their interests only, not how great your company/product/mad writing skills might be.
2. The best advice is often best deliver bluntly and by assholes. A little pain and embarrassment are often required to shock us out of our internalized comas.

 

While I never will like Haul Quarrier, I’m eternally grateful to him every time I’ve seen others make this major mistake in their writing, and I still pull no punches when tough lesson have to be shared.

So take a moment today to review what you’ve written this week from the perspective our your readers. What have you seen?