Weekly Round Up #126
Your once-a-week digest filled with copywriting insights, AI tips, must-read articles, pretty cool copy examples, and much more!
Welcome to the 126th 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 more!
In this week’s issue:
Copy Tip: There’s a line between persuasion and manipulation.
AI Tip: Your Project knowledge base is only as good as what you leave out.
How to Rot Your Brain with AI (via Ruben Hassid)
No, a headline tweak won’t fix your differentiation problem (via Diane Wiredu)
You’re Wasting Your Highest-Intent Shoppers (via Eli Weiss)
Podcast Pick: How to Influence & Sell to Anyone Using Imagination (via Joanna Wiebe)
Swipe File Additions
Job Opportunities (it’s back!)
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Copy Tip of the Week
There’s a line between persuasion and manipulation.
Too many copywriters and marketers don’t know where it is.
Persuasion helps someone see a real problem (and the path forward) more clearly. Manipulation exaggerates, distorts, or invents one.
Persuasion says: here’s what’s actually at stake, and here’s how this helps.
Manipulation says: things are worse than they are, and you’re running out of time.
The reason this matters isn’t just ethical, it’s practical. Manipulation might convert once. But it attracts the wrong customers, potentially spikes refunds, and quietly destroys trust in your brand.
Good copy doesn’t manufacture urgency. It reveals it.
If the problem is real and your product actually solves it, you don’t need to exaggerate anything. Just make it clear.
AI Insight of the Week
Your Project knowledge base is only as good as what you leave out.
Your instinct is probably to upload everything. Brand guidelines, tone docs, past campaigns, product specs, competitor research, etc.. You think, more context feels like better context.
But… it isn’t.
Claude pulls from everything in that knowledge base when it responds. EVERYTHING. Bloat it with tangentially relevant material and you dilute the signal. The important stuff has to compete with everything else you threw in.
Think of it like onboarding a new hire. You don’t hand them every document the company has ever produced. You give them what they need to do the job well, and nothing more.
For most Projects, that’s three things: who the brand is, who the customer is, and what good output looks like.
Everything else is noise until proven otherwise.
Must-Read Articles
How to Rot Your Brain With AI (via Ruben Hassid)
Why I recommend it: You can outsource your thinking to AI, but you can’t outsource your understanding. Ruben Hassid walks through his full 5-step workflow — from loading real context to treating Claude’s first draft like a junior intern’s work — and makes the case that if you finished an AI task in two turns, you stopped too early.
No, a headline tweak won’t fix your differentiation problem (via Diane Wiredu)
Why I recommend it: Most “copy problems” are messaging problems, and most messaging problems are positioning problems. Diane Wiredu makes the case that differentiation doesn’t live in a tagline, it lives in the gap between what you think makes you special and what your customers actually value.
You’re Wasting Your Highest-Intent Shoppers (via Eli Weiss)
Why I recommend it: Three flows and a welcome series is not a retention program. Eli Weiss breaks down why most brands’ email revenue is propped up by one flow while the rest of the lifecycle sits empty, and why lazy discounting trains your best customers to wait you out instead of buy.
You Should Read This Too:
JOANNA WIEBE
How to Influence & Sell to Anyone Using Imagination
Watch on YouTube
Why I recommend it: Five frameworks for living in your customer’s imagination — from flipping the status (Nespresso didn’t make better coffee, they made you feel better for choosing it) to giving them a superpower (Stripe didn’t sell payments, they sold “you can build now”). Each one works by changing how the customer sees themselves, not how they see your product.
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PLUTOTV
Format: Email
Why I like it: Two things I enjoyed about this email: 1) The hero’s image + headline pair; and 2) the CTA button for the X-Files module.
ROBBINS
Format: Sign
Spotted By: Jade Trott and Lee Trott
Why I like it: A great glimmer of a brand’s personality in action. It doesn’t take much to surprise and delight your reader – just intention (and bravery).
HISCOX
Format: Ad
Spotted By: Vikki Ross
Why I like it: Yeah, it’s hard to read, but it sure does stand out compared to everything else next to it. Next time you’re writing a subject line for an email or an ad for Meta, think about what everyone else’s creative is going to look like – then do the opposite.
Classifieds
Job Opportunities
That’s it for this week! If you have questions or comments — drop a note below.
✌️
Matt
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