Our father saw him about 20 yards away in front of the Disneyland Hotel, walked up to him and said, “Mr. D? Dan Zeimer. Would you mind taking a picture with my kids? We’re big fans.” Walt was very gracious and even signed an autograph. The photo and signature are framed and hanging on my office wall.

Now, I can’t say that the chance meeting in the late 50s made me become a writer decades later, but it did inspire my creativity. And about 10 years later, on another of my frequent visits to Disneyland, I bought a Mickey Mouse watch at Tinkerbell’s Toy Shop in the Fantasyland Castle. Since then, I’ve worn it virtually every day for over 40 years to remind me of Walt, the Disney magic, and the power of creative thinking.

PS: Remember in “Diner” when one of the guys gave his wife a Baltimore Colts trivia test and if she passed, he’d marry her? I did something similar by giving my wife a short Disney Trivia test. She was able to name all Seven Dwarfs from “Snow White” and I’m happy to report that we’ve been married now for 18 years!

Welcome Message

Hi there,
My freelance copywriting consultancy has weathered several recession cycles over the past 15 years, so it continues to forge ahead despite a rocky economy. I am still cautiously optimistic that the worst is behind us. In fact, every new project I’m awarded fuels my vision of a financially more robust economy in the coming months. But hey, the glass is always ¾ full here!
Cheers!
Gil Zeimer

What’s New?

What I’ve been doing since my April NewZletter:
* Writing sections of a new Website for my networking group
* Completing a brochure and website for a leading foreign exchange company
* Creating a script for a video tour of a senior living facility in Kentucky
* Finishing a six-panel brochure and landing page for an architectural firm
* Crafting direct mail projects for a California-based healthcare provider
* Introducing a new service to personalize your debit card for a major bank
* Read past issues of Zeimer’s NewZletter:
– April 2010
– December 2009
– October 2009
– August 2009
– July 2009
– March 2009

Recycled Creativity

As a Certified Green Bay Area Business, I took a pledge to reduce my carbon footprint by using recycled products and services wherever possible. To that end, I?m recycling some of my past successes as a freelance copywriter in each of these newsletters.

Here’s an example: FedEx Freight Trade Magazine Ad

Before it was FedEx Freight, it was Viking Freight in the West and American Freightways in the East. So when the two were taken over by FedEx, I wrote this ad to introduce the new company to the shipping industry.

Headline: “The United State of Fedex Freight.” Ad copy: Mix Viking Freight blue with American Freightways red. What do you get? Purple. Introducing FedEx Freight. We now offer bigger next-day and second-day delivery, expanded EZTDBW® commitment, and industry-leading reliability. Need fast, dependable reliable LTL shipping? Don’t worry. There’s a FedEx for that.

A Recent Success Story

A colleague of mine is an architect. Joshua Larson and his partner Carrie Shores of Larson Shores Architecture have created a new solution called ASAP (Architectural Solutions For The Aging Population) to improve people’s lives through design. With ASAP, families and seniors have a new solution/service to help them avoid the cost of assisted living, increase safety and maintain their lifestyle, plus have more livable and beautiful spaces.

Recently, Josh and Carrie asked me to write a six-page brochure and a landing page for ASAP. Within a few weeks from start to finish, we accomplished this goal, thanks in large part to the strong design and project management by Arlene Santos, Principal and Creative Director of AG Design Group.

Josh said, “Gil brought great clarity and creativity to our business marketing material well beyond our expectations. He performed efficiently at the highest possible level under a tight schedule. I have a new-found respect for command of the English language and all its intricacies that make writing a powerful vehicle for small business.”

Humor Is A Funny Thing

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual similes and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country:
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E.Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30 p.m.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are known to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Why I Love Referrals

BNI Embarcadero is the largest word-of-mouth referral chapter on the West Coast. About 60 professionals meet weekly in downtown San Francisco to hear each other’s infomercials, watch presentations, share referrals, and report closed business as a result of those referrals (which has topped $1.2 million each of the last three years).

I’m proud to currently serve as President of this vibrant group and lead us into the second half of the year. If you want to increase your referrals by 20%, 30% or even 50%, visit us on an upcoming Wednesday from 7:15 – 9am at Schroeder’s Café, 240 Front Street (between Sacramento and California), San Francisco, CA 94111.

By the way, credit for the new BNI Embarcadero Website goes to Lauren Deane Evans of Good Looking Ideas for the site design and layout, plus to Bradley Charbonneau of Likoma for the WordPress implementation.

About Zeimer’s Advertising Shoppe

Zeimer’s Advertising Shoppe is an award-winning writing consultancy and ad agency. As a freelance direct response copywriter, email and newsletter copywriter, website copywriter, and healthcare copywriter, I create content for ads, brochures, direct response/email campaigns, radio and TV scripts, White Papers, newsletters, and more. For information or to receive an estimate on your next project, contact me via email or call 415.491.1058.

© 2010. Zeimer’s Advertising Shoppe. All Rights Reserved.

Bluegrass Assisted Living, in Kentucky, is one of my clients. It was approached by a virtual tour company in the Midwest. So I was brought in to write separate 10-scene scripts for each of these two senior living facilities to offer an online tour and showcase the properties that offer four levels of assisted living, support, and even memory care through Alzheimer Care Enrichment.

Here’s the virtual tour for the Elizabethtown community. Click on “rotate” to see a 360-degree view of each scene, click on “Scenes” to view another area of the facilities, and click on the “i” to learn more about the community.

The tours are powered and produced by www.virtual-rabbit.com. And because I write and manage this site in WordPress, I was able to cut-and-paste Virtual Rabbit’s code for the produced tour right into my client’s site.

Here are a few radio public service announcements produced recently to be played in cities where they’re touring to promote ticket sales and donations.

To enable the choir’s local audience to hear the children’s energetic voices, as well as to pomote ticket sales and donations, I scripted and pre-produced the audio music tracks for two :30 radio public service announcements. The local community or church can use these music beds to record their own commercials that are played on local stations to announce the venue name, date and phone number to buy tickets:

• :30 “ACC Tour” Radio Script (doc)
• :30 “ACC Tour” Pre-Produced Music Bed (mp3)
• :30 “ACC Tour/Gospel” Radio Script (doc)
• :30 “ACC Tour/Gospel” Pre-Produced Music Bed” (mp3)

Welcome Message

Hi there,
Is the recession over? With a roller coaster stock market and other vague indicators, who knows? But when I’m awarded six new projects in one day recently, I can’t help but be overly optimistic that the worst is behind us. But it is really? Only time will tell.
Cheers!
Gil Zeimer

What’s New?

What I’ve been doing:

• Revising the website for a Bay Area business broker
• Blasting out more Webinar emails for a leading tech client
• Writing sales literature for a local spice company
• Completing three newsletters for SF Bay Area Life Care communities
• Starting a Website and direct marketing materials for a global choir
• Crafting radio concepts for a Middle East bank through an ad agency in Toronto
• Read past issues of Zeimer’s NewZletter: December 2009; October 2009; August 2009; July 2009; March 2009.

Recycled Creativity

As a Certified Green Bay Area Business, I took a pledge to reduce my carbon footprint by using recycled products and services wherever possible. To that end, I’m recycling some of my past successes as a freelance copywriter in each of these newsletters.

Here’s an example: Roadshow Magazine Ad

Seeing a fleet of Roadshow 18-wheelers at the Billy Joel and Elton John perform in February at the Oakland Arena jiggled my memory of writing this ad in 1990. This company, which calls itself “The Premier Live Event and Tradeshow Transportation Specialist” shleps all the sound equipment, stages, video screens, musical instruments, and more for groups as diverse as Rock & Roll Hall of Famers like Billy Joel and The Rolling Stones to small groups you may never have heard of.

A Recent Success Story

A new client of mine in Tokyo wanted to launch a new oral care products company in the US with a proprietary technology that was already accepted in Japan: functional candy. This new category has three effective ingredients that help kids naturally chew away cavity-causing bacteria.

Oralcryst Junior is available in four kid-friendly fruit flavors. Plus, it’s nut-free, soy-free, wheat-free, gluten-free, trans-fat free, and sugar-free. You can read more at www.oralcryst.com. There, you can connect to an online store to purchase it www.Amazon.com. Let me know what you think of this product; your comments are most welcome.

Humor Is A Funny Thing

The Washington Post has an annual Mensa Invitational. Readers are invited to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, then supplying a new definition.

Here are the Top Ten:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an a-hole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

Read more: Plus the Washington Post’s contest winners for readers supplying alternate meanings to common words.

Why I Love Referrals

I was recently referred to a client in southern Florida who is a marketing agency for the travel industry. Because I’m both a travel copywriter AND a travel writer, this is a great referral for me, but I wouldn’t have been able to begin a dialogue with this client without someone recommending me to them and asking the client to check out my capabilities first.

About Zeimer’s Advertising Shoppe

Zeimer’s Advertising Shoppe is an award-winning writing consultancy and ad agency. As a freelance direct response copywriter, email and newsletter copywriter, website copywriter, and healthcare copywriter, I create content for ads, brochures, direct response/email campaigns, radio and TV scripts, White Papers, newsletters, and more.

For information or to receive an estimate on your next project, contact gil (at) zeimer (dot) com or call me today at 415.491.1058.

© 2010. Zeimer’s Advertising Shoppe. All Rights Reserved.

NOTICE: If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter, send me an email and type “REMOVE” in the subject line.

Wearing a variety of hats — from straw hats for golf to neoprene caps for scuba diving –– I’ve written:

• Quarterly enewsletters and Websites for Red Sail Sports from 2002 to 2009. This included the main Website at www.redsail.com, then separate sites for each of this largest resort based diving and watersports operator in Grand Cayman and Aruba. For the latter, I had a spectacular visit filled with scuba diving, snorkeling, parasailing, lunch and sunset catamaran cruises, and more. Read Watersports Paradise Found.

• A year of monthly enewsletters and promotional emails for All Nippon Airways.

• Print ads for Frontier Airlines that helped an ad agency in Dallas win the account –– even after I left Texas and moved back to the West Coast.

• The initial website, three Annual Reports and miscellaneous brochures for Hawaii Air Ambulance.

• Shore brochures for Alaska, Mexico and the Caribbean for Princess Cruises.

• Weekly ads and radio commercials for a three-year span for Caesars Tahoe Resort Casino, Nevada, to promote its wide variety of stellar entertainers.

• Ads and outdoor boards for the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Download English Grill PDF.

• Ads for the Monterey Marriott in Northern California.

• Over 20 magazine articles for Scuba Times, Alert Diver, Adventure Journal, Sport Diver Interactive, Dive Pacific Magazines, Asian Diver, Dive Travel, Undercurrent’s Travelin’ Diver’s Chapbook, Marin Independent Journal, S.F. Chronicle and L.A. Times about diving in Maui, the Turks & Caicos Islands, Australia, Kosrae (Micronesia), Baja California (Sea of Cortez), Aruba, Florida, The Bahamas, Monterey (CA), Belize, and other tropical, warm water destinations.

• I’ve traveled through 40 US states and throughout the world.

• Newspaper ads and radio spots for the Westin San Francisco Airport Hotel. Download Benchmark Grill PDF,

• I’m also the managing editor for www.vagablond.com, a luxury ezine for travel, shopping, food and wine, where I’ve posted over 1,400 articles since 2005. Some of my favorite articles include:

– Kool, Klassy Kimpton: Hotel Monaco Denver

– Show Me The Monks’ Key: Kruisheren Hotel, Maastricht, The Netherlands

– South Beach Cool Meets St. Barts Calm: Ku´Luxury Hybrid Hotel, Anguilla

– This Is The Winter Of Our Discounts Sent: Europe on Sale, Expedia.com

– Love Your Boutique Hotel? Buy It at Kimpton Style Program

– The Paws That Refreshes: Pet Friendly Hotels

– Where To Get Drunk In Disneyland: Club 33

– Dinner And A Thousand Stars: Canyonlands by Night & Day, Moab, UT

– Cathay Pacific Airways; First Class In A Class By Itself

– The Bride Wore A White Wetsuit: Caribbean Weddings, Cozumel, Mexico

As a freelance healthcare copywriter, I was asked to create a new brochure for its Health Center. People who use this Skilled Nursing Rehabilitation Center that promotes personal and individual care are usually recovering from a heart attack, strokes, broken hip, reconstructive knee surgery, or other injuries. With both private and semi-private rooms, the Portola Valley Health Center offers skilled nurses, on-site physicians, licensed therapists, state-of-the-art rehabilitation equipment, gourmet meals, and wonderful views.

Download Health Center Brochure PDF.

Healthcare copywriting by Gil Zeimer, art direction/design by Andre Cohen.

As an established IT managed services company serving clients in the San Francisco Bay Area, IPSO FACTO IT SERVICES works with small businesses, medium-sized businesses, large enterprises, and government entities, as well as not-for-profit groups.

Visit the site of approximately 50 pages: www.ipsofacto.info

Copy by Gil Zeimer; Web design by Naoki Nitta.

(Caption) Kingsley Leung, of Terra Linda High, (front right) and fellow TL student “attorneys” Wilhelmina van Royen (wearing vest, left) and Natsuko Porcino (far right), applaud for their school during the awards ceremony at the 2010 Mock Trial Competition, coordinated by the Marin County Office of Education at the Marin County Courthouse in San Rafael, on Saturday, February 6, 2010. Terra Linda and Tam High were selected as the mock trial finalists, facing off in the “People v. Bratton” case, in which students examined the orgins of the Fourth Amendment and discuss privacy and protection against unreasonable search and seizure. (IJ photo/Jeff Vendsel)

This article has nothing to do with copywriting and everything to do with blogging. As Betty Suarez said last week on ABC-TV’s “Ugly Betty”, “some people blog because they don’t write for a national fashion magazine or a TV station.”

I blog about advertising copywriting, marketing, branding, and travel. But today, I’m blogging about my daughter Sara’s performance yesterday at the Marin County Mock Trial finals held at the County Courthouse in San Rafael, CA. She (shown above, second on the left) and several of her Terra Linda High School teammates were also given awards for their outstanding performances.

The finals were covered in the article below by the Marin Independent Journal reporter Jennifer Upshaw Swartz and photographer Jeff Vendsel: Tamalpais High School advances to state mock trial competition.

Tamalpais High School, which for years has dominated Marin County’s mock trial competition, did not disappoint Saturday, beating finalist Terra Linda High School to advance to the state finals.

Twenty-seven Tam students, who won the Marin County Mock Trial Championship for the 15th year in a row, also competed for the right to advance against The Branson School, Marin Academy, Marin Catholic High School, Sir Francis Drake High School and San Marin High School during the competition Jan. 30 and Saturday at the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael.

Winners of the California Mock Trial Tournament, set for March 19-21 in San Jose, will advance to the national championship, won by Tam students in 2005. Winners of this year’s state finals will compete May 6-8 in the 2010 National High School Mock Trial competition in Philadelphia.

“I love these kids,” said David Vogelstein, the Tam attorney coach and a local criminal defense attorney from Mill Valley. “I love teaching them and learning from them. I’m a mock trial junkie.

“They develop moral and ethical toughness and learn to think on their feet,” he said.

Mock trial veteran Sam Katsin, 23, a Tam High and Cal Berkeley graduate who now works in the Marin legal community as he prepares for law school, said he loved returning to his roots.

“This program gave me more than I could ever possibly give back,” he said. “I want to make sure that everyone has the same fantastic experience that I had. Frankly, I miss being part of it.”

A group of local attorneys scored the competition, which was presided over by Marin Superior Court judges and commissioners. This year’s case was People v. Bratton, a murder trial in which a comedian was accused of killing a man who wrote a poor review of his routine.

During the finals, in which each school’s team served as both the prosecution and defense in separate courtrooms, students enacted a jury trial, arguing motions, delivering impassioned opening and closing arguments, grilling witnesses and, occasionally, objecting.

“They do their job as if it’s a full court,” said Robin Gerrity, Marin County Office of Education competitions coordinator, who said the students benefit from “the academic challenge and the moral and ethical challenge of the law.”

“I think you are an inspiring group,” Marin Superior Court Judge Andrew Sweet told the students after one of the two final trials ended in a mistrial due to the jury’s inability to render a verdict. “This is my first year judging this competition. I’m blown away by what you guys do here. It’s awesome.

“I think today may have been one of the most enjoyable days I’ve ever had in a courtroom.”

It wasn’t until last summer, while having dinner with Brian Jacobson of Focus Design in San Rafael, that we discovered we’d worked together on this project. Brian was the designer at Michael Osborne Design and I was the freelance packaging copywriter, but we one of the company’s account executives was the liaison. So we never knew about our collaboration until 2009.

In fact, Brian told me that this had been a creative test project vs. a number of other top design firms, and that his company had actually won this account through this project. The salad dressing group was the first product release of a national repositioning to compete with top-name brands on a national level. The new design featured a new word-mark and logo to communicate Trader Vic’s international heritage and commitment to quality with a natural, fresh image to the consumer.

How’s that for delayed gratification?

Download Trader Vic’s Salad Dressings PDF.