Weekly Round Up #111
Your once-a-week digest filled with copywriting insights, AI tips, must-read articles, pretty cool copy examples, and much more!
Welcome to the 111st edition of the Weekly Round-Up — your once-a-week digest filled with copywriting insights, AI tips, must-read articles, pretty cool copy examples, and much more!
In this week’s issue:
Copy Tip: Non-Linear Customer Journeys
AI Tip: Use AI to surface your default thinking patterns
Why Marketing is the Conscience of Business (via Brand Strategy Insider)
Designing Email Journeys Using TFDS (via we are astral)
The Future Belongs to the Creative Generalists (via It’s Nice That)
Mentor Moments: How to Build a Growth Plan for Junior Copywriters This Year (via The Copy Minimalist)
Video Pick: The Top 1% Think on Paper (Here’s Why) via Joanna Wiebe
Swipe File Additions (Benchmade, AllTrails, Water?)
Job Opps
Copy Tip of the Week
I stopped using traditional customer journey maps a few years ago.
They look great in slide decks, but they don’t tell you why someone stalled, skipped, or disappeared.
Most frameworks treat the journey like a conveyor belt. Awareness, consideration, purchase. Nice and neat.
But customers don’t move in straight lines. They’re people. They’re messy. They loop back, stall, and skip steps entirely.
The real question then is, what has to be true for someone to move forward?
Here’s how I think about it now:
1️⃣ Start with the end decision.
Work backwards. What does someone need to believe before they buy? What has to happen before they believe that?
Then keep going until you hit the first moment of contact.
2️⃣ Identify the friction points.
Every pause is a question that hasn’t been answered. “Is this for me?” “Can I trust this?” “Is now the right time?”
Your map should show where those questions live.
3️⃣ Map the internal shifts, not just the external actions.
Sure, a click is an action, but it’s an effect. What you want to know is what THOUGHT preceded it? What’s the cause?
The journey that matters most is the one happening inside your customer’s head.
4️⃣ Build bridges, not funnels.
Funnels (mostly) assume everyone enters the same way. Bridges assume people are standing on one side and need a reason to cross.
Your job is to make the crossing feel safe and obvious.
All this to say, a good journey map answers one question: What’s the next logical step this person would WANT to take?
If you can answer that at every stage, you don’t need a complicated framework.
AI Insight of the Week
Use AI to surface your default thinking patterns
Most people use AI to do work.
The more interesting use is letting it show you how you think while you work.
It’s because most bottlenecks aren’t tactical. They’re cognitive.
We don’t stall because we lack ideas. We stall because we keep applying the same thinking patterns to new problems and don’t realize it.
AI is surprisingly good at spotting those patterns.
Not because it’s insightful, but because it’s not you.
Here’s how this looks in practice.
Instead of asking AI to solve a problem, you give it your thinking about the problem.
Your plan.
Your rationale.
Your reasoning for why this feels like the right move.
Then you ask questions like:
“What patterns do you see in how I’m approaching this decision?”
“Where am I likely overthinking, underthinking, or defaulting to familiar logic?”
“What kind of problems does this thinking style handle well, and where does it usually break?”
What comes back is rarely flattering, but it is often clarifying.
You start to notice things like:
You default to optimization before validation
You avoid narrowing because it feels restrictive
You over-index on effort instead of leverage
You move fast when certainty is low and slow when it’s actually safe to decide
None of that is obvious from inside your own head.
That’s the value.
AI becomes a mirror, not a machine.
And once you see your default patterns, you can choose when to use them and when to override them.
Better tools don’t fix bad thinking.
Better awareness does.
AI just happens to be a very patient way to get there.
(You know what else works with those same questions? Asking another human being!)
Must-Read Articles
Why Marketing is the Conscience of Business (via Brand Strategy Insider)
🔗 https://brandingstrategyinsider.com/why-marketing-is-the-conscience-of-business/
Why I recommend it:
This nugget of wisdom they unpack throughout the whole article: “The marketing golden rule for business is to do unto our customers what we would have done unto us as customers. It is not about taking advantage of people or exploiting people’s weaknesses.”
Designing Email Journeys Using TFDS (via we are astral)
🔗 https://weareastral.co.uk/thevault/designing-email-journeys-using-tfds
Why I recommend it:
This piece walks you through using a simple “Think–Feel–Do–Say” framework to build email flows that actually match what subscribers are thinking and feeling at each touchpoint. The result? Journeys that feel relevant instead of random. I’d love for someone to try it in a live flow and tell me what happened.
The Future Belongs to the Creative Generalists (via It’s Nice That)
Why I recommend it:
This piece is a good reminder that becoming more valuable as a creative isn’t always about going deeper into one lane, but about investing in skills and perspectives that might not make sense to others — yet compound into better judgment, range, and depth over time.
You Might Also Like:
JOANNA WIEBE
The Top 1% Think on Paper (Here’s Why)
🎧 Watch on YouTube
Why I recommend it:
The big takeaway is that writing things out by hand sharpens your thinking in ways typing doesn’t. It improves recall, forces clarity, and helps you actually synthesize ideas instead of just collecting them.
The video outlines 6 simple practices used by high-level thinkers. For copywriters and marketers especially, it’s a strong reminder that better thinking leads to better work. If you want clearer ideas, stronger creative compression, and fewer thoughts lost in your head, this is worth watching!
🔓 Want access to my entire swipe file database?
Subscribe here to unlock the magic link.Pretty Fly Copy
Benchmade
Format: Email
Why I like it:
This was a good product launch email. Specifically, I loved the headline on the inside of the email. Given their ICP, it was right on the nose.
All Trails
Format: Email
Why I like it:
They’ve done similar promotions before, but never had a hero that was this good. I loved the way they formatted the text with the primary offer in bold and the “benefit of the benefit” a little more opaque.
Water
Format: Ads
Spotted By: Abi Prendergast
Why I like it:
Just good inspo for the swipe file, honestly – especially about how to position a product without ever naming it!
Career Opportunities
These remote opportunities are updated every week with copywriting and marketing roles ambitious job-seekers should definitely apply for.
Senior Copywriter at Upstart
📍Remote ℹ️ AI Tech 💸 up to $143,000/yr (USD)
Creative Conceptual Copywriter (Temp) at tmp
📍Remote ℹ️ Agency/B2B 💸 $30 - $35/hr (USD)
Lead Video Copywriter at Launch Potato
📍Remote ℹ️ Agency 💸 $110,000 - $135,000/yr (USD)
Creative Lead Social (Copy) at Microsoft
📍Remote ℹ️ Tech 💸 $119,000 - $258,000/yr (USD)
Sr. Copywriter (Paid Media) at hims & hers
📍Remote ℹ️ B2C 💸 $120,000 - $145,000/yr (USD)
That’s it for this week! If you have questions or comments — drop a note below.
✌️
Matt
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The AI tip about using it to surface thinking patterns is genuienly underrated. I've started doing this with my own briefs and its kinda unnerving how quickly it spots patterns I was blind to, especially the defaulting to optimization before validation thing. The framing of AI as a mirror instead of a machine changes everything about how to use it well.