The latest Plain Text client newsletter

Welcome to a new update for Plain Text clients and contacts. In this issue we feature a medium-sized website writing project, a very short email and co-founder Paul Nero’s secret life as a local radio broadcaster.

And this time we’re offering free copies of Paul Waddington’s book ‘Shades of Green’ to anyone who can correctly answer two tricky green questions.

Read on – and please get in touch if you’d like to discuss writing with us. And of course feel free to forward this email to anyone you think might find it of interest.

Contents:
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* Transforming a Hay Group website
* A 100-word email challenge from the Energy Saving Trust
* What Plain Text does in its spare time #2: Exeter FM
* Answer a tricky green question and win a book

Transforming a Hay Group website
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Hay Group’s ‘transforming learning’ website is the place where this global management consulting firm sells its training tools and programs direct to businesses. The writing challenge was to create compelling, benefit-led copy that matched a refreshed site design – and fitted the firm’s new brand voice. We helped Hay Group to develop templates for different types of pages and then re-wrote the words.

In commenting on the project, Hay Group product design consultant Sam Guise also illustrates one of the reasons why outsourcing writing is sometimes necessary. “In an ideal world, every company would do its own writing. But writing is always part of a bigger project – and you have to deliver the whole project, not just the words. Working with Plain Text took the pressure off. They ‘got’ what we were about really quickly and gave us a voice we were comfortable with. And they produced all the content we needed elegantly, on budget and on time. Plain Text were easy to work with, relaxed about changes, happy to give advice and always reliable.”

Take a look at the new website.

A 100-word email challenge from the Energy Saving Trust
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We love writing longer, more involved pieces, like the white paper featured in our last email update. But we like a brevity challenge too. So a recent email from the Energy Saving Trust’s transport division was just the ticket: promote and prove the benefits of ’smart driving’ to local authorities in 100 words. We were proud to have the final email – which packs costs, savings, benefits, proof points, a headline, two subheads and a call to action into precisely 106 words – called ‘brilliant’ by our client. Read the smarter driving email.

What Plain Text does in its spare time #2: Exeter FM
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Plain Text’s Paul Nero doesn’t just write – he hones his skills with broadcasting too, every weekend on radio station Exeter FM. Paul presents the Sunday breakfast show, a mix of music, news and conversation that includes the station’s main incisive interview of the week.

Paul has been broadcasting since the age of 15 – and in the intervening decades, he’s nearly got the hang of it. His guests have included stars of major theatre production, cabinet ministers and influential businesspeople, as well as ordinary people who have something to say. Add to Paul’s listening figures by tuning in online on Sundays from 7.00 to 11.00 a.m. — or check out his attractive station photos.

Answer a tricky green question and win a book
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Paul Waddington’s third book ‘Shades of Green‘  is an A-Z guide which gives an informal ‘green rating’ to the things we do — from air travel to wine — presenting options from ‘deep green’ to ‘not even a little bit green’. While backpacking might clearly be the greenest holiday and taking a private jet to a desert golf resort unarguably the least green, some of the ’shades’ are not always what you might think. We’ve got a few copies to give away to the first correct answers to these two questions:

1) Which is more eco-friendly – a) washing up by hand b) using a dishwasher?
2) What uses more energy a) organic chicken b) intensively farmed chicken?

Email your answers via our contacts page.

Contact Plain Text
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If you have questions or would like to discuss a writing project, please get in touch.