Words That Work: Strategic Writing with Carmine Montalto

Summary

Podcast Summary: Coffee N° 5 with Lara Schmoisman
Episode: Words That Work: Strategic Writing with Carmine Montalto
Release Date: May 13, 2025

Coffee N° 5 with Lara Schmoisman serves as a treasure trove for entrepreneurs and business enthusiasts seeking actionable strategies to scale their ventures. In this episode, titled "Words That Work: Strategic Writing with Carmine Montalto," host Lara Schmoisman delves deep into the art and science of copywriting alongside esteemed writer and branding expert, Carmen (likely Carmine Montalto). The conversation spans various facets of strategic writing, emphasizing its pivotal role in effective branding and marketing.

---

1. The Essence of Strategic Writing

Lara opens the discussion by highlighting her journey from radio to marketing, emphasizing the unexpected yet profound impact of screenwriting on her copywriting skills. She shares:

“When I started working in marketing and digital and I had, I found myself trying to write copy for my, my clients. Basically I was like, okay, I can do that. And I start using my knowledge of how to build a character. And I realized a character, it wasn’t the brand and the character actually was my consumer, which I didn’t expect that.”
[00:05]

Carmen echoes the universal nature of writing:

“I hope. But there’s so many people who are so terrified of writing and looking stupid in writing that they, they close themselves off to it. Of course, we’re all writers, but some of us are passionate about it and make our living off of it and, you know, it fuels us.”
[01:41]

---

2. Overcoming Writer’s Block and Building Foundations

The conversation shifts to the challenges of starting with a blank page. Carmen shares her analogy of writing as an art form:

“You just need to get a foundation and it’s like a foundation to anything. You know, if you’re making clay, like you need to build it into something. If you’re making a house, obviously that’s the easiest analogy. You build the foundation and then you build on top of it.”
[02:33]

Lara adds her struggles with writing English and the importance of intention in writing, stressing that writing with purpose attracts the right consumer.

---

3. The Art of Editing and Maintaining Objectivity

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the editing process. Carmen emphasizes the necessity of an incubation period to gain objectivity:

“You need what’s termed an incubation period, you know, where you, you need to separate yourself from your own writing. And you give yourself a day, two days sometimes, and you can come back and it’s like someone else wrote it.”
[04:07]

Lara relates this by sharing her own experiences with over-editing:

“It's not about being worthy. It's about hyper-editing yourself.”
[03:50]

---

4. Brand Voice vs. Visual Branding

The duo explores the often-overlooked importance of the written word in branding. Carmen critiques branding agencies for prioritizing visuals over copy:

“Visually. They focus on visual to the detriment of the written word. It happens every single time.”
[04:42]

Lara underscores this by highlighting the critical role of subject lines in email marketing:

“What is going to make you open an email? Not amazing graphics, just a subject line.”
[06:54]

---

5. Mastering Email Marketing and Storytelling

Email marketing is dissected as a blend of strategic writing and storytelling. Carmen advocates for viewing every email as an advertisement:

“I look at every single one as an ad. Every single email should feel like an ad.”
[07:38]

Lara emphasizes the synergy between subject lines and preview headers, stating:

“You need to know the magic of each channel.”
[08:23]

---

6. Embracing AI in Copywriting

A pivotal segment addresses the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the writing industry. Carmen references Scott Galloway's perspective, emphasizing AI as an enabler rather than a threat:

“The danger to a writer is not AI. The danger to a writer is another writer who knows how to use AI to better their own writing.”
[08:47]

Both Lara and Carmen discuss their daily use of AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, viewing them as essential partners in enhancing their writing efficiency and creativity.

---

7. Ensuring Consistency Across Brand Channels

Consistency in brand voice across various platforms is highlighted as crucial. Carmen insists on the necessity of having a single writer to maintain a unified voice:

“You need to use the same writer for all of those things. Right. Like it is very challenging for one particular writer to pick up the same cadence as another writer and carry it through all materials on a particular campaign.”
[12:23]

Lara elaborates on her practice of creating a comprehensive "client Bible" to document and maintain the brand voice consistently:

“Every content has an intention. You cannot break down. Put a big font, little font in when it’s the same sentence. I’m giving an intention with this message.”
[15:47]

---

8. The Evolution of Language and Its Impact on Writing

The dynamic nature of language and its continual evolution is a topic both hosts find fascinating. Carmen shares her multilingual background and appreciation for language's adaptability:

“I love the dynamism of language. And I understand that English, to me, isn’t a static language. I love that the English language is constantly evolving.”
[18:30]

Lara adds by discussing the challenges of understanding humor in a foreign language, emphasizing that mastering a language involves more than just grammar—it’s about cultural nuances.

---

9. Direct Response Writing: A Specialized Skill

Lara introduces the concept of direct response writing, defining it as communication aimed at eliciting specific actions. She asserts its growing importance across various marketing channels:

“It’s like communication through our channels that is going to create an action.”
[24:57]

Carmen acknowledges her involvement in direct response through email marketing, highlighting the distinct skills required for different channels like SMS marketing.

---

10. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The episode wraps up with Lara and Carmen reflecting on the indispensable role of strategic writing in branding and marketing. They emphasize the importance of intentional content, consistent brand voice, and leveraging tools like AI to stay ahead in a competitive landscape.

Carmen signs off with a thoughtful remark on the balance between creativity and practicality in copywriting:

“But, you know, I’m not out here teaching English grammar. I’m out here helping brands sell product.”
[17:58]

Lara concludes by inviting listeners to engage with future episodes, reinforcing the podcast’s mission to empower entrepreneurs with the wisdom needed to build successful businesses.

---

Key Takeaways:

• Strategic Writing is Integral: Effective copywriting goes beyond mere words; it's about connecting with the consumer and conveying the brand's essence.

• Overcoming Writing Hurdles: Building a strong foundation and allowing time for incubation can enhance the quality of writing.

• AI as an Ally: Embracing AI tools can significantly augment the writing process, fostering creativity and efficiency.

• Consistency is Key: Maintaining a unified brand voice across all channels ensures clear and coherent communication.

• Adaptability in Language: Recognizing and adapting to the evolving nature of language is essential for staying relevant and engaging.

This episode serves as an invaluable resource for anyone looking to refine their copywriting skills, understand the nuances of brand voice, and harness the power of AI in their writing endeavors.

Transcript

[Carmen]

Foreign.

[Lara Schmoisman]

This is Coffee Number Five. I'm your host, Lara Schmoisman. Hi everyone. Welcome back to Coffee Number Five. And well, we are gonna go back and back in, back in time today and well, my first love was radio and here we are. But my second degree, and I don't know if you know this about me is so screenwriting, which I never thought it will come back to my life and help me so much. When I started working in marketing and digital and I had, I found myself trying to write copy for my, my clients. Basically I was like, okay, I can do that. And I start using my knowledge of how to build a character. And I realized a character, it wasn't the brand and the character actually was my consumer, which I didn't expect that. So. And if you understand your consumer, then you can start writing with an intention how to attract that consumer. But I wanted to take it to the next level today and bring to you someone who specializes in writing in copy packaging and all across the board so we can have a really insightful conversation of how important is a copy because I think a lot of people are underestimating the written word. So welcome. Carmen, thank you so much for being here today.

[Carmen]

Hi, Laura. Thank you. I'm, I'm excited to be here and I, I love this topic, of course, because it's near and dear to my heart. I've been a writer since I was 5 years old.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Aren't we all writers?

[Carmen]

I hope. But there's so many people who are so terrified of writing and looking stupid in writing that they, they close themselves off to it. Of course, we're all writers, but some of us are passionate about it and make our living off of it and, you know, it fuels us. At least it fuels me.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah, I love, I'm super picky. And one of my challenges was when I start writing English. First of all, writing English is completely different. And everyone who listen to this knows that I'm self taught, so I never took grammatical classes, so. And you don't write the same way that you speak. It's completely different.

[Carmen]

Yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

So it's like learning a language all over again, for sure. And then to me, it's all about intention. So for you, where do you start when you need to start writing something?

[Carmen]

You know, the worst thing is starting with a blank page. I know. And I think it took me a long time to realize that getting from the blank page to something written on the page doesn't mean that that something needs to be perfect. You just need to get a foundation and it's like a foundation to anything. You know, if you're making clay, like you need to build it into something. If you're making a house, obviously that's the easiest analogy. You build the foundation and then you build on top of it. The Statue of Liberty is on a foundation. Right. Like, so to me, you start with a foundation and then you mold it. Like, again, like you're making a beautiful piece of art. That's what writing is to me.

[Lara Schmoisman]

But I mean, I think with writing, for me, sometimes what it's hard is where to stop, because you.

[Carmen]

Oh, guilty, Guilty. Every single paper I ever submitted in during my education, to every single teacher, it didn't matter what grade it was. From grammar school all the way through college, I got the word wordy in the margin when they handed the paper back.

[Lara Schmoisman]

It's not about being worthy. It's about hyper editing yourself.

[Carmen]

Very difficult. And you know that I learned too, that you need what's what, what's termed an incubation period, you know, where you, you need to separate yourself from your own writing. And you give yourself a day, two days sometimes, and you can come back and it's like someone else wrote it. Right.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Sometimes even happened to me. It's like, did I write this?

[Carmen]

Did I write this? That was just two days ago. Wait a minute. Right, so then, then you can edit it. But it. That's such an interesting process where you get so fixated on your own writing that you can't, you can't edit it and you can't see it objectively until you give yourself some distance.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah. And I always go back to this that I was mentioning before about the consumer, who is my consumer and how is this connecting with the consumer? And I feel like right now there are a lot of brands and a lot of branding agencies on making everything about the brand.

[Carmen]

Yes. Visually. Visually. They focus on visual to the detriment of the written word. It happens every single time. I can't tell you how many. You know, I work on a lot of consumer brands, predominantly in beauty. And the brands have paid, I don't know, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, two hundred fifty thousand dollars to a branding agency to, you know, refresh the brand. And they share the guidelines with me. And I'm like, where are the guidelines for copywriting for the voice? And it's always like maybe one slide, bare bones. Nobody really put any thought into it. And I have to fill in the blanks for them or, you know, edit it or add those pages.

[Lara Schmoisman]

It's so, so sad that we, why you think that happened? I mean I feel like these right now everything and that's what we do at the darling. I think we do it really well which is integrating everything. But right now I see that most agencies are becoming our growth or creative, which is copy mostly or branding.

[Carmen]

Yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Why you think that happens?

[Carmen]

I don't know. The business really, the business really has changed and I understand the creative, the creative around branding is dynamic. But if you think, if you think about Mad Men, like you've watched Mad Men. Right. Like you think about how revered the copy was in Mad Men and Elizabeth Moss was, you know, the copywriter and, and what she created was just as important and maybe even more important than what the image was in the ad. They were of equal weight. When I, you know, I was in house at Kiehl's for seven years and I was ironically their first ever copywriter in 150 years they never had a copywriter at Kiehl's. At least the, the visual element and the verbal element, the written and the visual were, were of equal weight. I, oh, I always really appreciated that. Not just because I was the head of copy and you know, I wanted to feel important but because to your point, it's important for the consumer that a brand is speaking to them and not proverbially but literally.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah, I mean I, we do this all the time. Like for example, email marketing. What is going to make you open an email? Not amazing graphics, just a subject line.

[Carmen]

A subject line. Isn't that crazy? A five word subject line.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah.

[Carmen]

That makes you open. You'd think everybody would get that, that that means everything. And you know, I'm really big when I have to work on, you know, I have a, I have multiple clients and sometimes clients need me to write consumer emails. Yeah. And I'm really big on the synergy between the subject line and the preview header. You know that little line right below it. You can link those up and, and, and pair that up and that's what you use. Yeah, that's exactly. You lure the consumer in that way.

[Lara Schmoisman]

But then you go into the email and then that storytelling, the narrative needs to be continue.

[Carmen]

Yeah, I look at every single one as an ad. Every single email should feel like an ad.

[Lara Schmoisman]

But that's something. Also I talk to my design team all the time, a multimedia team. Guys use the written word.

[Carmen]

Yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

They're giving you the clues of where to start with the design. You're not starting with a white canvas design because you having the thing they telling you read. Don't just slap pictures. And I feel like that's a lot of friends that come to me and they tell me email marketing doesn't work.

[Carmen]

It's because you're not working it right.

[Lara Schmoisman]

You're not doing it right.

[Carmen]

Yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

The same that if you tell me social media doesn't work, it's because you're not doing it right.

[Carmen]

For sure.

[Lara Schmoisman]

You need to know the magic of each channel.

[Carmen]

Yeah, yeah. And they're distinct. Each of her. Each is distinctive.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah. I have a question for you. This is gonna be a little controversial.

[Carmen]

Okay. I love controversy. If you follow my blog, you know, I love controversy.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Let's talk about AI for a minute.

[Carmen]

Okay.

[Lara Schmoisman]

How is it changing the industry and how.

[Carmen]

Yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Change you?

[Carmen]

Well, I'll tell you, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with. Oh, God, what's his name? The professor of branding at nyu.

[Lara Schmoisman]

I'm really bad.

[Carmen]

Scott Gall. Scott Galloway.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Okay.

[Carmen]

And so, you know, he does a technology podcast, a couple of them, in fact, but one of them is called Pivot, and they talk a lot about AI. And I'm a. I love podcasts. You know, I ride across Brooklyn Every morning, 15 miles, sometimes more, for an hour. It's like an hour and 20 minutes. And I love to be immersed in a podcast while I'm doing it. And so I remember very distinctly listening to this one podcast. And it was about three or four months after ChatGPT launched, and it was like this big hoopla, and what is this going to do? And everybody's threatened by it, and writers are threatened by it, and, you know, all of this stuff. And he said, you know, and again, he's a professor of branding at nyu. You know, the danger to writers is not AI. The danger to a writer is another writer who knows how to use AI to better their own writing. Yes. And I use AI every single day. I use either ChatGPT or Perplexity every single day.

[Lara Schmoisman]

I use so much AI. For me, talking about AI is like three years behind. I mean, it's a talk that I had a long time ago. I was using it from the beginning. And I feel like we don't adapt to use AI. We are behind.

[Carmen]

I. I look at it as a tool. You know, when I was at Kiehl's, I had a copywriter reporting to me. He was outstanding. And again, back to that white. That white space that. The white canvas. You know, I would say to him, can you work on this first? Work on this first? You know, we would ideate around it. You get started with it and then I'll handle it and you know, finesse it and all of that. And you know, we worked in tandem. We were like a right and left arm of each other and I don't have that now because I'm out doing my own thing. And I look at an AI as this as a tool to help, you know, move me forward. Breakthrough ideas, do research for me. Like just asking, what are peptides? What's the, the, the molecular weight of peptides in Dalton's. What are the. Of a specific peptide? What are the implications of that? Can it penetrate the skin barrier? If it penetrates the skin barrier, what does it do? And you know, perplexity will give me this whole dossier that's supported by all of this evidence from all of these sources and there you go. And then I can use that as a tool to write from and you know, inform my blog.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah, no, I mean I use it all the time as well. I encourage my team to use it. I'm not afraid of AI.

[Carmen]

You shouldn't be.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah, I think you need to use it as a team player, as a, as a team member.

[Carmen]

Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly the way to look at it.

[Lara Schmoisman]

So what's the difference for you and. Or not the difference? Because for example, to me, when you creating a narrative of a brand, and that's what you said before and that's what worries me sometimes that the branding, it has not written words and so much even what it goes into the packaging is the brand voice.

[Carmen]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Lara Schmoisman]

How do you connect the brand voice from a packaging perspective? Website, email, and you make sure that is omnichannel and the same voice works around in all, all platforms.

[Carmen]

Well, I, you, you probably will agree with me on this and a lot of people will be like, of course he's going to say that. But you need to use the same writer for all of those things. Right. Like it is very challenging for one particular writer to pick up the same cadence as another writer and carry it through all materials on a particular campaign. Or if you're do doing brand identity, if they work on it in tandem, fine. But if you have, if you have one writer owning the voice, then, then you get to that.

[Lara Schmoisman]

That's. I think more than one writer for me is about the head writer and how it created that brand voice. And there is a good job done in how the brand voice is and what we use and what. Like when I create brand voice and I do that, most of my clients come without a brand voice. Come.

[Carmen]

Oh for sure. Yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

So the first thing I do is I create a very lengthy document. Okay. This is your brand voice. When you sign off on this. This is it.

[Carmen]

Yes.

[Lara Schmoisman]

It's the same that your color palette. Why we go to the color palette, we have a font, all that, and we don't have a brand voice.

[Carmen]

Yeah, for sure.

[Lara Schmoisman]

So. And from that brand voice, we do something at the doll that we call the Bible. So we call it the client Bible. And. Oh, we found out that this word is not something we want to use. So we keep adding. So every finding, we keep adding to the Bible.

[Carmen]

A live document. I love that. Yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yes. Because sometimes happens, and sometimes, like writers, we get carried away. And then we have the graphic designer that they say, hey, this is too long. How can we shorten it?

[Carmen]

Oh, my God. I just went through that. I just went through that with a brand. I won't say who.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Tell me about it.

[Carmen]

And actually, it's. It's. You know, they're just not. They're not sophisticated in brand voice, and they've never worked. They've never worked with an expert in brand voice before. And, you know, it's not unlike, honestly, the way Kiehl's was when I first started, where, again, there was no copywriter for 150 years who was writing the copy. Everybody was writing the copy, which is why the Kiehl's brand voice was so quirky, which is fine. Right. It was organic that way. But there. There's just. There's just a lot of really fun feedback I get on the copy. You know, we're working on packaging, and, you know, the. You know, they don't want one panel on. The packaging is empty, and they are disturbed by that somehow. It's unsettling that a panel is empty. Can you write something for the panel? And I'm like, what? Just to fill the panel. Just write something to fill the panel.

[Lara Schmoisman]

That's a mass in graphic design to me. Or packaging design. Learn how to deal with the blanks.

[Carmen]

Absolutely. And I said, well, how does that serve the consumer? Because you're asking the consumer who's standing in a Sephora picking this up, you're asking her to read the copy on that panel. Does she need to read the copy on that panel? There's copy on other panels that is more important for that product and for the brand itself. So it was just a fascinating exercise. Right.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Well, I have another thing that we do. I do with my team, and anyone in my team will quote me when I say, this is content with intention.

[Carmen]

Yes.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Every content has an intention. You cannot break down. Put a big font, little font in when it's the same sentence. I'm giving an intention with this message. You cannot break the format, even if aesthetically is pleasing.

[Carmen]

Yeah, absolutely. And you have to always remember the end consumer. Again, you're having a conversation with them. Every single piece of that package is the brand speaking to the consumer. And she's hearing it. And what is she hearing? Standing in Sephora surrounded by 10,000 other products.

[Lara Schmoisman]

I think anyone at our point in our life, in maybe grammar school, I don't know when, probably me, many years ago, we did this exercise of that they changed the commas or the period or they remove all of them. Have you done that?

[Carmen]

No.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Okay, well, they say it, I'll find it and I'll send it to you. But it's like a sentence that they remove all the periods and the commas and they tell you put the periods on the commas and. And depends on how you put it. The sentence is complete. Completely different meaning.

[Carmen]

That's. That is wild. I love that. You know, I'm studying. I'm studying Japanese and the Japanese use very few, very little punctuation and they use no spaces in between words. The words all just run on. And interestingly, it's kind of the same thing. Like if you looked at English, you could read a sentence in English with no spaces between the words.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah, but our commas and everything give you. In intentions. In Spanish, even we have the accent. That depends on where you use the accent.

[Carmen]

On the word.

[Lara Schmoisman]

On the word.

[Carmen]

Yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Different things.

[Carmen]

Yeah, for sure.

[Lara Schmoisman]

So it's so interesting that then we use. And everybody learned that. But then when we go into the design phase, many times we get over creative and we're breaking the messaging. There's any anytime that you think that it's okay to break a sentence, a grammatically correct sentence.

[Carmen]

To make it ungrammatically correct.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yes. Or to make it more fun visually.

[Carmen]

Yeah, I've been. I've been in that situation. Absolutely. Because I think to, you know, and I always think that my high school English teacher is rolling over in her grave when I do that kind of thing. But, you know, I'm not out here teaching English grammar. I'm out here helping brands sell product.

[Lara Schmoisman]

And how do you feel about the language evolving? And it's not necessarily the most British academy or English Academy, and with all these LOL and etc.

[Carmen]

I don't. I mean, I. I'm a linguist. I've studied so many languages. I studied Latin. For six years, four years in high school, two years in college, I've studied French, English, obviously Spanish. Now I'm studying Japanese. When I was growing up, when I was a teenager, I taught myself how to read Cyrillic and Greek. And I. I love the dynamism of language. And I understand a language like French that doesn't allow words in without them being approved by the Academy Francaise. I understand that, but that's not English. English is many languages brought into the one language. English is based in German, Latin, and all. All kinds of other foreign loan words. And so English, to me, isn't a static language. I love that the English language is constantly evolving.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah, but it's very interesting. Like, every time that I go back to Argentina or talking to friends in Argentina, I can tell you that there are new expressions.

[Carmen]

Oh, yeah, that's great.

[Lara Schmoisman]

That I don't understand what they mean.

[Carmen]

That's amazing.

[Lara Schmoisman]

And I feel, oh, my God, I don't speak the same language.

[Carmen]

That's so amazing.

[Lara Schmoisman]

I always say one of the hardest thing for me to learn English was the humor. To understand the humor.

[Carmen]

Humor is the hardest thing to understand in any foreign language I know.

[Lara Schmoisman]

And yeah, like, I say that you can only understand a language when you can laugh in that language.

[Carmen]

Absolutely. I remember the first time I told a joke in a foreign language. It was in French class in high. In college, and it was the first time I ever told a joke in another language outside of English. And I was so proud of myself. I know, because I understood that, like, that's the hardest thing to do because it, you know, it's about. It's about stretching the language itself, not only into a place where you, you really need to understand the nuances of a language in order to do that.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Not only the nuances, you need to understand the culture and what the culture.

[Carmen]

Absolutely. Well, the language is a reflection of the culture, right?

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah.

[Carmen]

And you know what's so interesting about studying Japanese? When you study Japanese and you're studying in a school setting, that Japanese you're learning is not the Japanese you're going to listen to in a TV show, particularly a reality show. And I only discovered that, you know, I thought, oh, a lot of people learn languages by watching tv. So let me, let me reinforce what I've learned in Japanese class by watching reality TV in Japan from Japan. And they were speaking something completely different. I could barely understand 1%. Like, it was like every couple minutes I would understand something they said.

[Lara Schmoisman]

And it's the same for Chinese. It's a depends of how you say things is completely different.

[Carmen]

Yes. Depending on the situation and who you're with. And there's different, like, hierarchies to the language. Yeah. I was. So I was like, you know, English isn't really like that. Right. We just know it's the same for everybody.

[Lara Schmoisman]

But it's very. I have to tell you, there are some sounds in English that they are not natural to other cultures.

[Carmen]

Of course.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Like, oh, this is a fun one, if you want to have one. I was talking to someone very early when I came to this country, and I was saying that it wasn't something. It is not in my butthead.

[Carmen]

Say it again.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Budget.

[Carmen]

Oh, budget. Right.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah.

[Carmen]

Right.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Not a natural sound. And the person thought I was telling him there was a butthead.

[Carmen]

Yeah. I thought you said butthead too.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah.

[Carmen]

So I stopped as well.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yes, exactly.

[Carmen]

Yeah. That's wild.

[Lara Schmoisman]

The wall. The word focus could be very interesting.

[Carmen]

Totally. You really need to stress the O focus.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yes.

[Carmen]

Yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Those are very interesting ones.

[Carmen]

Yeah, that's cool. Language is amazing.

[Lara Schmoisman]

It is amazing. And it's amazing to be able to play with the language.

[Carmen]

Yeah. I'll tell you, you know, the best. The best thing that I ever did to inform my writing in English as a copywriter was to teach English to foreign students. When I was in la, I taught esl and most of my students were Japanese. And it taught me because I had to explain so many things that I never had to think of before.

[Lara Schmoisman]

It was the same for me. I mean, I started working in digital marketing. So early on, that was basically no digital marketing. There was teaching to my students at the Cal Poly, digital marketing was, okay, how to think. How to explain this and for them to understand it. So you become to think. To start thinking deeper about.

[Carmen]

Yeah, you do.

[Lara Schmoisman]

And how you do it.

[Carmen]

Yes. The. The. The craziest thing. Of course I know now because I. I'm studying Japanese now for two and a half years. The craziest thing was getting them to understand why and when to use a, an and the. Because they don't. Those three. That concept really doesn't exist in Japanese.

[Lara Schmoisman]

On. At.

[Carmen]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[Lara Schmoisman]

All.

[Carmen]

All. All prepositions.

[Lara Schmoisman]

All prepositions are hard. And I think every. In Spanish, they're hard, too.

[Carmen]

They're hard in every language. But the Japanese at least have at and on and of. They have those. But they don't have an equivalent for a, an and the. And you know, when I talk about. When you talk about an. English, I had an apple. The apple was rotten or I ate an apple. The apple was rotten. Like, for me to have to explain to them why all of a sudden I changed from using an to the. It was so befuddling. I'd never thought about why you do that.

[Lara Schmoisman]

You just do it in Spanish and we're making this linguistic.

[Carmen]

We are, yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Like how old are you? And in Spanish is how many years you have.

[Carmen]

Yes.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Which is very interesting. But let's go back to our life.

[Carmen]

We digressed. We digressed. It's okay.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Let's focus for a minute about something very interesting that in our world we call it direct response, which to me is a skill. Not every writer has this skill. What is direct response?

[Carmen]

I don't know. I've never worked in direct response marketing. Well, is that what you mean?

[Lara Schmoisman]

Well, there is direct response writings mostly.

[Carmen]

Yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

It's like communication through our channels that is going to create an action.

[Carmen]

Okay.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Like when you do email marketing, you write direct response, correct?

[Carmen]

Yes.

[Lara Schmoisman]

You're doing it all right.

[Carmen]

Yes, I'm doing it already, but I just don't use the language for it.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yes. So SMS marketing is a completely different skill.

[Carmen]

Oh, completely, yeah. Yes.

[Lara Schmoisman]

And it's a skill that I think that not a lot of people are. And this is a whole new term, it's been around only for a few years and. But it's necessary because we need to use different tools and different elements. Like we were talking subject line, preview line. You need to know all those elements. Where a CPA is going to go. In the case that you're writing ads, you need to be writing. Why are you writing the ad for? For what platform? You need to implement all these technical elements into writing.

[Carmen]

Yeah. So SMS is fascinating to me because, I mean, I'm a consumer. Right. And when a brand texts me, I'm like, oh, God, what? Right. And I think most consumers, when I write an SMS for a brand, I think most consumers are thinking the same thing. But, oh, hopefully enough of them are. Are receptive to it. And, you know, I realize I've opted in.

[Lara Schmoisman]

I think we know too much.

[Carmen]

I think so too. That's so true.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Too much to be a typical consumer.

[Carmen]

That's the reason why I don't have my own skincare brand. I know too much.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Exactly. And I wish I knew that before. But anyway, that. No, the question is, it's fun because if you are like me, I subscribe to everything because I want to see what other people.

[Carmen]

Me too. Yeah.

[Lara Schmoisman]

I think we get a lot more messages than normal people.

[Carmen]

You might. So I'm hoping I'm not horrifying anybody then, you know, ruining their day. Oh, God, that brand again.

[Lara Schmoisman]

Yeah. No, I mean, we love you all, you guys. Well, Carmine, thank you so much for having coffee with me. This was really, really fun. And I hope you guys out there, I'm sure they have a good time with us.

[Carmen]

Thank you, Lara.

[Lara Schmoisman]

And to you out there. I will see you next week with more coffee number five. Find everything you need at larashmoisman. Com or in the episode notes right below. Don't forget to subscribe. Was so good to have you here today. See you next time. Catch you on the flip side. Ciao, ciao.