| Dear Chase, I've never been what most would call a "good employee". In fact, I was basically every employer's worst enemy. I've always been a man of the people though. I used to work at a coffee shop that was a 2-minute walk from the local yacht club. And I was so busy flirting with 50-year-old billionaire women that I messed up a lot of orders. However, it was never my fault. I always blamed it on the kitchen, the managers, or the establishment itself. Because I was so ridiculously charming, NOBODY got flack. Especially not me. If I was working, it doesn't matter WHAT went wrong, every customer would leave happy. I was the intermediary for their anger, and I just distracted them until we fixed the issue. I took this into my career as a copywriter and I have made every brand more lovable than they were before I showed up. For brands that take themselves seriously, they don't usually like to make jokes about their customers, their products, or…anything, really. So, to get around this, I'll create a character with a new email address and a new sender name. This character will be some low-level employee at the company, and he's very useful. This character can do a lot of things that the usual face of the brand can't do, such as: -
Brag about how cool the brand is and how great the products are. -
Talk about how some other people at the company made mistakes that caused shipping delays, messaging mistakes, whatever. -
Break the fourth wall and offer brutal honesty when needed. I'll give an example. I used to write copy for this spiritual guru guy who helped business owners get in touch with the Universe or something. The main face of the brand, let's call him Bryan, was suuuuper serious. Because spirituality and the Universe were nothing to joke about. He would use a lot of cloudy, fancy language in order to inspire people and make the audience feel like he was larger than life. That brand voice and communication style was very sacred to him, and he never wanted to break character. 10% of the audience understood him, 90% of people thought he was a bit of a crazy person. It was only until the "Intern" character that I created would come in and actually explain WTF he was talking about. Bryan would be all like: "Reach for your heart. Do you feel the stars? Do you feel the voice in your head tickling your root chakra? Buy my course." Then I'd be like: "Hey, I'm an Intern at this company. If you don't understand what Bryan is talking about, I don't blame you. No one does. But he actually is more in touch with the Universe than anyone I've ever seen, so he doesn't have the capability to talk like a normal person. What he MEANS is that most business owners have broken souls and you need to fix that in order to be more productive and enjoy your work more. Buy his course." See the difference? We added a level of clarity without breaking Bryan's character. And we'd make tons of money with emails like that. I do this with any client that has a high-and-mighty brand voice that they don't wanna break. And I recommend you do the same. If you're going to break character and be real, do it with an alter ego. Wink, wink. Yours truly, Alex. Sent from The Coffee Machine At My Former Workplace That Was Always "Broken" | 
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