Scott Bowen

Focusing and Simplifying the Message

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We’ve all seen how brochures meander, handbooks slide into the boring, and Web site content gets repetitive. And while the editorial process calls for a bit of experimentation, the overly adorned, a tad-too-strange piece of marketing won’t connect with your audience.

Every part of a marketing campaign has to fulfill a range of needs of the target audience. Every page of every piece has to meet the intended informational goal. Every tweet or text has to trigger a specific action or reaction.

Your desired customer never arrives in a perfectly orderly fashion—no one opens up a brochure on page 1, or clicks through Web site sections 1-2-3.

Focused marketing materials reward the customer with qualified, actionable information no matter how or where the person enters the information stream. Specific, simplified language generates comprehension that gives the customer reason to keep going.

Scott Bowen Creative can help focus the brochure while cutting the page count. We can revise the Web site to make it compelling so the customer keeps clicking.

Together, we can create a whole suite of collateral that functions in concert, in such a way that no matter how a customer enters the realm of information, that place is a perfectly fine starting point and the trail onward is clearly marked and fulfilling at every point.

Capabilities in Financial Marketing Media

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For the past four years, Scott Bowen Creative has worked closely with financial advisors in brokerage and investing teams and private financing groups to develop print and digital marketing materials. The goal has been simple: turning prospects into new clients.

Together, we’ve tackled, and beaten, the standard criticism of the profession: Financial advisors all do the same thing the same way.

Acting as an editorial consultant, we have helped these teams talk plainly and effectively about their investing and asset allocation processes, their investing philosophy, and, most importantly, how they maintain client relationships. Transparency is the first step in client engagement.

Every financial team has its own personality. And financial advisors are frequently a close, key member of an individual’s or family’s inner circle of advisors, including attorneys and accountants. So potential clients have to find out if a given financial advisory team is the right fit philosophy-wise and personality-wise.

Imagine if there were a Facebook of financial advisors, and potential clients are looking for friends.

With the right editorial direction and revision, your financial marketing materials can make clear how you can create the right relationship with people who make a good match.

Commercial Uses of Narrative and Character

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Think about Flo, the Progressive Insurance heroine. She’s no happy accident: Flo was created in a laboratory.

Think about the Jack Link’s Beef Jerky “Messin’ with Sasquatch” commercials. The creators of that series of jokes didn’t just wing it, spot-by-spot–they wrote them like a collection of short stories.

Developing characters and short, sectional narratives have long been central to marketing and advertising, but they are originally the devices of literature and drama.

Scott Bowen Creative offers years of experience and deep talent in these kinds of highly creative efforts. In a number of published works, and others in the pipeline, we have put numerous memorable characters into action. We also know how to handle the sometimes very technical problems of connecting the pieces of narrative–the “what happens next” that can stump many creative people.

We can help you creative original characters or refine and focus the ones you’ve already created and figure out how they can better serve your business mission and audience needs.

And we can help you create short narratives that tell the story quickly and hook the target audience, making them want to watch the next installment.

 

 

 

 

 

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Expertise in Outdoors Content

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At previous career stages, Scott Bowen, principal member of Scott Bowen Creative, was a senior editor for Field & Stream and wrote outdoors pieces for ForbesTraveler.com, Fortune – Small Business, American Angler, and The Fly Fish Journal. Please take a look at his resume (see the top margin).

So, this consultancy knows a thing or two about outdoors media and marketing, product promotions and testing, and, yes, how to make a campfire.

If you have an outdoors-related media need, we can help you.

Need to pick some cool-looking, vintage fishing tackle for a photo shoot? We know what to use and how to find it.

Trying to create a outdoorsy or back-country theme for a promotion? We can help authenticate the content.

Need content about outdoors legends and lore? Let us work up some stories about wendigos, splintercats, and other mythic beasts.

Need research into a specific outdoors history (lumberjacks, dog sledding, mountain climbing) to help create a branded image or logo? We know the sources to check, and how to use the right information to refine the concept.

Strategies for Book-Length Projects

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Scott Bowen, principal member of Scott Bowen Creative, has written and published four book-length works (fiction and nonfiction), and ghostwritten or edited about twenty more titles on numerous subjects, including cookbooks and other how-to.

So all the hard labor involved from concept to finished product–the book a person buys on-line or in a bookstore–is familiar work to us.

The question is: How can Scott Bowen Creative make it easy, effective, and efficient for you?

The consultancy can work with you on: Modeling and refining a concept. Writing and following outlines. Creating original characters and developing various narrative voices. Figuring out a chapter count. What to do about illustrations and photography. Creating a writing schedule and pursuing benchmarks while seeking larger goals. Researching agents, and targeting publishers. And taking measure of the whole thing–does it work, does it hold together, and is it the right length?

Step-by-step, we can help you figure out what each chapter should do, and work towards a visualized, valuable ending. And we can help you take a measure of the whole thing–the finished work–to assess how well it holds together, and just what this thing really is.

Perhaps you have several published titles to your name, and you’ve reached a point where you need to strategize about to write next. That’s a pleasant conversation, one that we could have with a strong interest in how to advance your career and profile.

 

Constant Content Development

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It didn’t used to be this way, did it?

You, the business owner, didn’t have to write so much. The blog. E-mails. Promotional concept sketches.

You didn’t have to get into the editorial weeds. You ran the business.

Keep running it. Let us do the creative stuff.

Scott Bowen Creative can keep the blog going, create content for e-mails and Web sites, and develop ideas for promotions. Again, and again. We’re your constant gardener, and the content keeps coming up.

How? Easy: You talk, we listen and write. You review, we revise. We post. Do it again. Don’t like it? We fix it.

How about a Haiku?

Content needs exceed

Capacity, so outsource. 

Focus on your core. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Scott Bowen Creative serves clients in the greater Metro New York region. Yes, the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor--we know it well.

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