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Other people’s opinions, trailblazing women in media & copy resource of the week
Kimberly Houston
November 03, 2024
Hey, hi, howdy, and welcome to Issue #29 of The Subhead, a bi-weekly newsletter about copywriting, marketing & media, and a look at some of the women who make it great.
In today’s edition:
✨ This week in freelancing
✨ Other people’s opinions
✨ Trailblazing Women in Media: Hunter Harriss
✨ Copy Resource of the Week: Email Inspiration Galore
✨ Just for Fun
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This week in freelancing
The pace of life and work has picked up these last couple of weeks, and I’m ready for it.
I house-and-cat-sat for a friend for 5-6 days, I onboarded a new client and wrote three articles for them, I got a new batch of article assignments started for another long-term client, I early voted, I worked on a personal creative project, I planned out the final two months of the year and set some goals for myself, and if I’m being honest, also spent far too much time falling down various YouTube rabbit holes, lol.
But, onward!
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Other people’s opinions
I recently re-watched a 2012 talk by famous potter, designer, and successful business owner, Jonathan Adler, about not letting other people's opinions impact your creative work.
It happened to pop back onto my radar recently, because I shared it with my other email list, and a subscriber to that list asked about it.
The gist of the talk, in case you don’t want to spend 18 minutes watching the entire video, is that Adler let the opinion of one of his teachers at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) stop him from doing what he loved to do – make pottery – taking her suggestion to get a job instead.
So, he got a job and got fired. Then he got another job, and got fired from that one too. Then another job, another firing. You get the picture.
Until one day he decided to get back his first love, pottery. Now he has a design company with stores int the US and UK, a thriving e-commerce site, and a wholesale business with over 1,500 locations globally, all “without being hemmed in by brand ideas or strategy, or other people's opinions," according to the man himself.
So, follow your dreams, kids!
Check out the talk here:
(*FYI, there are a few f-bombs in this talk, so you might not want to watch it in front of the youngs.) 😉
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Trailblazing Women in Media: Hunter Harris
Hunter Harriss is a writer, critic & screenwriter based in Brooklyn, NY. Previously a staff writer at Vulture and New York Magazine, Harriss has also written for the New York Times, GQ, the HBO Max show, Gossip Girl, and other venues.
Harriss launched Hung Up, a twice-weekly newsletter about movies, tv, music, the celebrity industrial complex, and pop culture in November 2020. Hung Up, which she left her gig at Vulture to pursue, goes out to over 80,000 subscribers.
Of the decision to leave her position at Vulture to launch the newsletter, she says:
“I was happy doing this at Vulture, but four years is a lot of time to spend at one place, or whatever, and going independent gives me a lot more control over my work life. Hung Up lets me do everything you know and love — or maybe will know and will love — and it also allows me to pursue other writing projects, like freelancing for magazines and writing scripts.”
“Find a niche that someone knows to come to you for …. [It’s about] building some kind of rapport with your community, and having things that they expect from you. Then, consistency.”
Harriss also co-hosts a podcast with her best friend Peyton Dix, called “Lemme Say This.” More pop culture gold, if you’re into that sort of thing! (Which I have to admit, I really am, sometimes. There, my secret’s out.) 😊
Harriss, like several others I’ve written about recently in this newsletter, has created a substantial body of work. Her Muck Rack journalist profile features 4306 articles, as of this writing. How is it even possible?
As always, I have way more research than I can distill down into what’s meant to be a short mini-profile here, but you can read / learn more about Harriss and her newsletter below.
Find out more about Hunter Harriss at the inline links above, and / or check out:
Critic and screenwriter Hunter Harris discusses standing firm on your opinions, developing a self-assured voice, and managing your inner critic.
I highly recommend this stellar Growth in Reverse breakdown of Harriss’s success and how she’s grown her newsletter and her audience over the last four years. Excellent takeaways here!
The Hung Up newsletter
Harriss’s LinkedIn profile
Lemme Say This podcast
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Copy Resource of the Week: Email Inspiration Galore
When I was writing copy for the apparel brand, Champion, I mostly wrote PDP pages (aka, product detail pages), but I was sometimes tasked with writing emails for the brand as well.
Of course, writing ecommerce emails is different than writing other kinds of emails because they’re typically pretty image heavy.
That said, you might be shocked – shocked, I tell you! – to find out how much time, effort and attention goes into coming up with the perfect messaging for every single ecomm email, as scant as the copy may be.
One resource I often turned to for inspiration?
Really Good Emails, or RGE for short.
RGE is like a database of great email examples from top brands divided into categories including Abandoned Cart, Customer Service, Customer Appreciation, Engagement, Follow-Up, Post Purchase, Onboarding, Welcome Emails, Product Launch, Promotion, and lots more.
Even if you don’t need to know how to write ecommerce emails, there’s a lot you can learn about successful email campaigns from RGE:
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Just for Fun
I found the images and video in this story truly terrifying, but I couldn’t resist sharing the story of this woman’s uncommon career. Brace yourself.
…but the Invasive Creatures Still Have a Hold on Her
Donna Kalil has plunged into canals in the dead of night, straddled two-hundred-pound serpents, and been bitten more times than she can count—all in the name of killing a thing she loves and playing a game she can’t win.
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That’s it for this week, my friend.
As always, thanks for reading, I appreciate you!
Be well. Stay curious. See you again in two weeks, on November 17.
Warmly,
Kimberly