PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS

Brilliance on demand: Breakthrough creative processes to inspire, transform and accelerate your writing

Creativity is the coin of the realm—it’s what bosses and clients pay you for, especially if your creative ideas inspire action. It’s not always easy to deliver brilliance on demand, though. Good news: You can learn easy exercises to successfully tap the creative corners of your mind—even when you’re under extreme pressure to perform. You can use these methods to quickly write copy people want to read, share and act on—whether it’s a speech, announcement, article or even a PowerPoint presentation. Join CBD Marketing’s executive creative director Mary Olivieri to learn how to change the way you think to improve the way you write—so that you deliver prose that is must-read and must-share for your audience every single time.

 

In this session, you’ll learn:

• Improvisational exercises to bring the words forth freely
• The power of “Yes, and…” to bring you to better places in your writing and craft stronger stories
• The creative process that transformed the marketing of ITW BuildClean, Firestone and Dos Equis
• Savvy ways to manipulate your “same-old” writing style
• How to inspire your own creative thinking using successful examples and exercises
• And much, much more

 

Vital editing practices to improve everything you write

In this session, you’ll gain insights and techniques for spotting redundancies, inconsistencies, overwrought phrasing and linguistic logjams—so you can fix them now and avoid them in the future.

You’ll learn:

• The four C’s of strong writing (plus two bonus elements)
• How to avoid the most common pitfall in writers’ opening sentences
• Ways to condense your copy without losing one shred of important information
• The essentials of punctuation, and why they matter
• Why proper usage is essential for clarity and power in your text

Lunch

Story crafting — telling your story to impatient, distracted audiences

Keeping your audience engaged requires more than basic storytelling. Today’s readers have incessant distractions, of course, but they might also be skeptical of your company and content. They may be reading on their smartphones while in line at the supermarket. They might even wonder if what you’ve produced is “fake news.”

In this interactive, hands-on session, you’ll learn how to craft your story so that even busy, impatient, doubtful readers will take notice.

You’ll learn how to:

• Discover your story. After all, everyone has a story. What makes yours special? What makes yours credible?
• Craft your story. Be sure every word counts.
• Expand your story’s reach. Make it accessible in other formats and channels.