Patrick John Gillam

If you’re not advertising, you may want to think about it. What are display ads but memes, the most popular form of social media (except maybe for GIFs)?

How do you diss the competition without looking petty? With humor.

I love the Courier typeface on this headline.

One of the challenges to a meme or ad is to write a headline for an ordinary photo, because an ordinary photo is often all you can get.

This ad’s strategy arose out of a conversation with the client, as all good strategies do.

Read the live blog post here.

Read the live blog post.

I researched and wrote this blog post that served double-duty as an article in an industry publication. It reinforces client Steve Pappas’ position as an industry thought leader. I also drafted the email to send prospects to the article and blog post. Read the post here.

After my client attended an industry conference, I suggested we draft a blog post he could promote on LinkedIn and email to conference attendees. He drafted notes, I turned them into a blog post, he edited the draft, and so we went, building on one another’s work. Read it here.

Sadly, this blog post is no longer live. It’s a great loss to the industry.

Battery Ventures axed the legacy Newforma blog upon redoing newforma.com, so we cannot see the live post. Believe me, it was excellent!

I wrote the script, from which the amazing Josh Fisher did his magic.

I wrote the script. Josh Fisher illustrated and animated it. He does great work, doesn't he?

I researched and wrote this article to reinforce client Steve Pappas’ posititon as a thought leader in his prospect’s industries. Read it here.

At Newforma, we piggybacked on the building information modeling trend to promote our category, project information management.

In your content marketing program, don’t neglect the free publicity of industry publications. They’re hungry for good content!

Industry publications will welcome your informed content. Make them part of your demand generation program!

This was a fun piece that arose from a hallway conversation with a colleague.

I came up with this marketing content after a hallway conversation with a subject-matter expert. Be sure to include free publicity in your demand generation program!

Note the short, punchy paragraphs. They take work.

I love subject matter experts. I engage in hallway conversations with an ear to good blog and article ideas.

Industry publications are hungry for good content, and are a great way to promote your organization as a consultative leader.

I help industry experts present themselves in their best light.

I ghost-wrote this article for a colleague who is a road and bridge engineer.

PR is great to repurpose into demand generation content. Offering reprints is as good—in some ways, better—than offering ebooks.

I love talking to customers because that’s how I really learn how to write to their interests.

People read by skimming, so I make my case studies skimmable, with lots of subheads and captions. The paragraphs are longer because they’re packed with customer quotes, and customer quotes are always interesting to prospective customers.

I wrote these case studies to be strategic overviews on their first pages. Here, they describe the larger business problem to be solved. Then, on the second page, we elaborate on the solution.

People read by skimming, so I write with lots of skimmable elements—headlines, subheads, captions, and callouts. Plus lots of direct quotes, which are always more interesting to readers.

It’s technical writing to document features and give instructions, but more than that, it’s social media writing, because who doesn’t love a listicle?

These slide shows show how you can write to existing users and appeal to prospective customers reading over their shoulders, as it were.

I worked with the product manager to determine various top 10 feature lists, then tightened up the feature descriptions to work in a quick-skimming slide.

Technical writing is very different from social media writing, which is why it was so much fun to blend the two in these listicle presentations.

My original inspiration for these slide shows came from wanting to place content in SlideShare. It expanded our content marketing program into different media.

Trainers used these slide shows to help new customers discover the most important features first.

As a New Hampshire writer, I fed a massive content marketing program for this Granite State-based software company.

One of the challenges of B2B copywriting is to persuade prospects your software is better than cobbling together generic products. Here, we took on Dropbox head-on.

Before this enterprise software moved to the cloud, we had to promote its web component as a separate feature.

Business-to-business copywriting comes in many forms. Why not add listicle technical writing social media to the list?

Good search trumps good filing. If you’re searching for a business-to-business copywriter, congratulations!

Panviva software guides bankers conforming to regulations, guides call center agents providing complicated services, and guides users of new and unfamiliar software.

Newforma sales reps disliked long-copy collateral, so I developed this graphically rich product overview. I whiteboarded my concept and the brilliant Josh Fisher brought them to life.

This is the second page of a two-page product overview that uses diagrams to speak to a very visually oriented market. Note the testimonials in the sidebar.

I developed this piece for prospects who were further along in their journeys and wanted to see more detailed information about a specific software function. That’s one of the questions I ask: Where does the proposed content fit in the sales process?

This is a higher-level, conceptual piece from the mind of a strategic-thinking colleague.

Visit the tweet on Twitter.

All these great videos are the work of Eric Ratinoff of Story First.

See the live tweet on Twitter!

All these great videos are the work of Eric Ratinoff of Story First.

Visit the tweet on Twitter!

All these great videos are the work of Eric Ratinoff of Story First.

All these great videos are the work of Eric Ratinoff of Story First.

This is a counter card to be displayed in the bank offering the Financial Success program we developed.

This is a counter card to be displayed in the bank offering the Financial Success program we developed.

This is a counter card to be displayed in the bank offering the Financial Success program we developed.

I researched and wrote this 12-page Financial Success Kit under the direction of Mark Travers.

I researched and wrote this 12-page Financial Success Kit under the direction of Mark Travers.

I researched and wrote this 12-page Financial Success Kit under the direction of Mark Travers.

I researched and wrote this 12-page Financial Success Kit under the direction of Mark Travers.

I love radio.

Page 2!

I’m including these radio scripts because I like them. That’s good enough for me!

I got into this business because I wanted to pursue purposeful creativity—witty activities that had an impact in the world. This little radio script is a great example.

I got into this business because I wanted to pursue purposeful creativity—witty activities that had an impact in the world. This little radio script is a great example.

This six-panel brochure marketed an insurance program that Marsh still offers to consulting engineering firms.

This six-panel brochure marketed an insurance program that Marsh still offers to consulting engineering firms.

These quick-reading mailers are two in a series of six.

Each mailer opened to a similar message and call to action. This was demand generation marketing in the analog age.

The back of the direct mail piece, which mailed in a No. 10 envelope.

I concepted the photos to go with the headlines.

This content began as a series of blog posts I repurposed into a white paper. The outstanding design is the work of Mike Bednaz of WaLa Marketing Group.

Integration with much-used software is a big issue in tech platform sales. This white paper helped keep sales moving as negotiations moved further along the pipeline.

A digital health app. We spun up this website and collateral for this new product and company in a few weeks.

The owner of this software consultancy is a good writer with a good website; he simply wanted to refresh it to reflect new learning about his value proposition. I served as his message guide, giving him an ear to test message ideas. Then I drafted new text for his review.

I proposed “Dexter. The first name in American footwear,” as a unifying theme.

In high school I worked in a family shoe store, so I know footwear.

Another concept for this maker of athletic shoes.

On this website, I emphasize a career in business-to-business copywriting, but this Dexter work shows I can write lifestyle advertising with the best of them.

This dynamic home page fulfilled the client’s request to present them as providing food services for a wide range of institutions. The copy said, “The perfect food service for small fries, shrimps, cute tomatoes, breadwinners, hot dogs, top dogs, and big cheeses,” with an appropriate head shot next to each. It was damn clever.

These metrics compare performance before and after my copy revision. My revision only improved performance 54% (only!), but it was early in the process.

This was the top-performing Facebook ad. After my rewrite, performance as measured by Cost Per App Install dropped 77%!

My copy with video ruled the performance contest for months and months.