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lizhodgson@gmail.com > slideshare.net/lizhodgson
Continued >
Why You Should Back Burner your
Online Marketing Strategy (For Now)
by Liz Hodgson | Blog posting | August 21, 2014 |
Hey, what’s wrong? Creating the perfect online marketing strategy got you down? I feel ya.
In the great leap from bricks and mortar to online commercial transactions, standing out
amid the online crowd is an eye-crossing challenge. Mornings you spend tackling shipping
issues and a parade of other headaches. Afternoons fill up leveraging Facebook, Google+,
SnapChat, Instagram, et al. I have some advice: don’t bother.
I know. Sounds crazy. Hear me out. If the goal is to sell product, build a loyal brand follow-ing
and achieve viral cachet, the law of “obliquity” says those goals are best achieved in-directly.
A British brainiac named John Kay coined the term and in his book on the subject
“I’m a copywriting
and design
specialist with five
years+ experience
inside print and
TV media. The
samples provided
here range from
newspaper articles
to pitch documents
to blog postings.
Regardless of
genre, I always aim
for an engaging
tone and persua-sive
cites dozens of real-life examples. Like the story of Boeing.
In the early days, the company was committed to creating the finest commercial aircraft
the world had ever known. The result was the spectacular 747. The company’s fortunes
soared thanks to, in its own words, an obsession with “technological challenges of
supreme magnitude.” In the late ’90s, that changed. The new goal was all about profits and
style.”
shareholder return. The company, forgive the metaphor, took a dive.
Boeing’s mistake was shifting the aim to profit, rather than the indirect target of exception-al
quality. More case studies abound in the business world. But none prove Kay’s theory
more than the pursuit of happiness, which is rarely attained by a direct route but instead
through hard work. I’m never so happy than after I’ve tackled the dreary task of doing my
416.458.9757 | @howzliz
taxes. Happiness is the by-product of accomplishment. ca.linkedin.com/in/lizhodgson

2. So what does obliquity have to do with your
eCommerce business?
Let’s say your goal is to get rich selling underwear online. Received wisdom says: mind your web analytics, brainstorm a
brilliant content strategy, outwit Google for prime SEO and then Instagram the hell out of your product. And all before
breakfast. Obliquity dictates that your time is better spent first perfecting design. IE: making the most comfortable, endur-ing
P2
and far-out gotchies in all the Milky Way.
The unintended but delightful outcome – ideally – will be those desirable sales. You may end up with a product so in
demand, your shipping issues will melt away. Leave drone delivery to Amazon. Customers are amazingly patient when it
comes to those must-have items.
None of this means ditching your social media campaign or firing your data mining and analytics company. These tools are
essential. As essential as a clean, well merchandised website with fluid transition to checkout. As the awesomeness factor
of your brand rises, these things have a way of falling naturally into place. If only because positive word of mouth yields
sales that in turn generate income to better contract top designers and social media wunderkinds.
John Kay says “obliquity is characteristic of systems that are complex, imperfectly understood, and change their nature as
we engage with them.” If that doesn’t describe the new and mysterious world of eCommerce, nothing does.
Still not convinced? Ponder this: which is better? An Indian restaurant with a brilliant online marketing strategy but a so-so
sag paneer and a mediocre masala? Or the other way around?
And here is the irony: when it comes to online cachet, the better butter chicken has a distinct advantage. Because if there’s
one thing we know about eCommerce, online customers value community and rely heavily on internet reviews and cus-tomer
consensus. So to sum up: don’t abandon your digital marketing strategy. Instead, FIRST concoct the world’s finest
butter chicken. And then Instagram the hell out of it.
EH
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Blog post > How to Sell Online > Continued

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What goes down must come up
The era of the belly is officially over.
The era of the belly is officially over. Britney Spears’ midriff—and the bejewelled bellies of her countless mall-cruising
imitators—has finally enticed designers to cover up. Phoebe Philo’s high-rise pants in the spring 2004 collection for Chloe
offers compelling proof; fashion insiders consider Ms. Philo somewhat of a barometer. The cut of Chloe’s high-risers shock
at first sight but are timely for a culture grown weary of in-your-face erotic fashion. Cultural critics say overkill is killing the
low-rider. “Like most men, I look fondly back on that Britney video, Baby One More Time, but now it’s enough already,”
says writer David Eddie. “The watershed moment for me was staring at Paris Hilton’s pixelated butt crack on The Simple
Life. Her jeans were so, so low-cut, she was censored.”
For others it’s a matter of practicality. “The pants were getting lower and lower,” says Ceri Marsh, editor of Fashion and
co-author of The Fabulous Girl’s Code Red. “That’s a hard look to wear.” It also doesn’t jive with the current fashion
landscape. “Right now, there’s a rage for retro,” Ms. Marsh says. “The feeling out there is very ‘50s. And that silhouette is
waist-oriented. We’re seeing lots of circle skirts and wide belts that accentuate the waist.”
Bart Testa, humanities professor at the University of Toronto, notes different body parts go in and out of favour, depending
on the time. “The minute reproduction and sexuality come back in style, so do the breasts. Meanwhile, the legs symbol-ized
a line. Betty Grable’s pinup was essentially linear. This was a period of explosive design -- from the machines of war
to architecture -- and the line is the basic element of that,” Dr. Testa says. Why the emphasis has been on the belly of late,
he is less certain. “My guess is that the bare belly reorganizes the body, making the torso look long. Anthropologists will
probably tell you that the illusion will accentuate an ability to have children, making the woman more alluring to men.”
The belly, according to Dr. Testa, is a relatively new focus. “The bikini was only invented in the 1950s. We found out about
it from Brigitte Bardot, who happens to be the prototype of the woman with the extended torso. Forget her breasts. Or
even that perfect face. She was the model for the exposed belly. When a bikini-clad Ursula Andress rose from the water
like venus in the James Bond picture Dr. No, the look exploded.”
P3
National Post > Section: Arts > May 29, 2004
Continued >

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Since then, the belly has come and gone. But why? Ms. Marsh again sees practical reasons at heart. “It’s appealing for the
very young to be sexually provocative. When we hit our 30s, that’s all done, because now we’re actually having sex. The
mystery is gone,” she says.
Joel Carmen, owner of Over the Rainbow in Toronto’s Yorkville, is responding the rising waistline though he says low cuts
have a certain permanence as young women have more to show off. “We’re in the world of low carbs and yoga. These girls
are in the gym and they to flaunt their hard word,” Mr. Carmen says. Bart Testa agrees: “We’ve lived through the golden
age of the navel. But I doubt we’ve seen the last of it. We’ve heard this prediction before: the end of erotica-based fashion
is coming. It hasn’t yet. And frankly my wife took one look at those Chloe pants and gasped. She can’t see it going over.”
Then again, that may be the first stage in what Trina Conroy, a merchandiser at Hill’s of Kerrisdale in Vancouver, calls
fashion’s “3-R rule.” “Reaction,” says Ms. Conroy, “is the first. And it’s either enthusiasm or disgust. Like the miniskirt. Girls
went crazy for it back in the ‘60s. Religious handwringers thought it foretold Armageddon. “Then you have the replica,
where everyone rips off the original design. And then the repudiation where the look gets so tired, you’d sooner wear a
garbage bag. If I had to name the repudiation to that Britney skank look, I’d say it’s a return to traditionalism.”
Which may explain why Alanis Morissette’s nude suit at the Juno awards was met not with shock but with a universal
yawn. If you want to shock, the message seems to be, then leave something to the imagination.
“These wholesome, nostalgic looks suggest a sexuality but a more subtle one. It says there is something to hide,” says Ms.
Marsh, who points out that “Britney Spears looks painfully out of date. Even in the bare-all world of rock. Look at Gwen
Stefani. She’s wearing couture. It’s all very sophisticated and smart.”
And being smart, says Mr. Eddie, might be the biggest aphrodisiac of all. “Sooner or later, all men realize that the sexiest
body part is the sensible head on a woman’s shoulders and perhaps fashion is starting to reflect that. Then again, don’t
hold your breath.”
P4
The Belly > Continued
Down But Not Out
Critics say the waistline is rising—but within limits.

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Office Space: Brian Hill, Aritzia Clothing
Brian Hill—president of Aritzia stores—could have saved himself a bundle in the design of his offices in Vancouver when he ren-ovated
four years ago. He could have gone with that pre-bought, late ‘90s modern, and modular, Wallpaper magazine look—one
that would have suited his chain of mid-market, pret-a-porter retail outlets, targeted to teens, ‘tweens and 30-somethings. But
that look has lately crept into your average dentist’s office Brian has no patience for tolerance for cliché. He sure doesn’t want to
be portrayed as one.
“Don’t make me out to be some cheeseball businessman aspiring to hipness who takes himself really seriously. I’m an average
guy. I like to watch hockey and have a cold one with my friends,” Hill says. Fair enough, but his company’s HQ is anything but
average. Located in a century-old, block-long converted cannery -- wedged between the storied beauty of Vancouver’s Coal Har-bour
and the notorious blight of the city’s Downtown Eastside -- the interior, says its designer, Ian Pratt, “speaks of a company
that is highly design-oriented.”
Spread out over three floors and 4,500 square metres, staff does what it must to keep the 14 (and counting) stores (seven
in Vancouver, one in Calgary and five in Toronto) in steady supply of every de rigueur item that your typical It Girl is snapped
wearing in the pages of US while in transit from kabbalah lessons to auditions. Things like Juicy Couture sweatsuits, 7 jeans,
slipper-like Puma sneakers, Von Dutch trucker caps, Havaianas flip-flops, UGGs, Vans and the latest little desirable: “Ponchos.
They’ve been threatening a comeback for the last five years,” Hill says. “Now it looks like they’re going to stick. Why, I don’t
know. Maybe it’s because they just re-released The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
In his own work space are Jacobsen and Charles Eames chairs plus a rare black leather and teak Eames sofa. The view from here
is of a parking lot and a methadone clinic. “That’s OK,” says Hill. “I get the sun coming in.”
The stores themselves are more Brady Bunch cheery -- retro, sleek and unfussy, specially designed to send the aforementioned
merchandise flying out the door with maximum ease, helped along by an impossibly cute young staff.
If the whole enterprise feels a little effortless, that’s because it’s bred in the bone. Hill is one of the same family that owns the
department store Hills of Kerrisdale, a venerable retail destination in south Vancouver that began in the ‘20s as a mom-and-pop
high-end dry goods outlet and which today is ... still pretty much that. Only instead of Model-Ts pulling up out front, there are
Jags and Lincoln Navigators.
P5
National Post > Section: R eview > June 19, 2004

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Vancouver Sun > Sectio n: Mix > Sep tember 8, 2001
Stripe’s Checkered Past
Once considered ‘the devil’s cloth,’ striped fabric has made its mark on history—and overcome its diabolical repuation.
The long, cold decade of minimalism is officially over. Wallpaper magazine’s chilly ethos of the last few years, with its ice
queen uber-models lounging on Lucite cube chairs, staring wanly over chilled pickled herring and gravlax on marble slabs,
is leaving designers cold. The monochrome neo-modernism of the last decade has left designers hungry for more tradi-tional
prints and patterns of every variety including checks, tweeds, florals and what Michel Pastoureau, author of the
succinct and impeccably researched The Devil’s Cloth, calls the “rhythmic, dynamic, narrative surface of stripes.”
The Devil’s Cloth has arrived just in time. From Vivien Westwood to Jean-Paul Gauthier, designers of every stripe included
striped elements in their repertoires this season. Meanwhile an ad for bebe features a vamped-out model wearing striped
cigarette pants a la Keith Richards. The image strikes just the right note of rebellion and mainstream acceptance—a meta-phor
for the story of the stripe itself. Turns out stripes haven’t always had it so good.
The fuss began in 1254 when Carmelite monks left their monastery in Israel and arrived in Paris wearing striped habits.
The stripes were a kind of homage to the order’s spiritual leader Elijah, who was carried off to the heavens in a chariot of
fire, casting his cloak—said to be striped with burns from the celestial flames—to his disciple Elisha, according to Biblical
myth. The medieval townsfolk prefered solids and a scandal was afoot. Still, the monks steadfastly resisted peer pressure
until they heard it straight from the Pope Alexander IV: no more stripes.
Stripes wreaked scandal in all over Europe through the Middle Ages. Towns in southern parts reserved stripes for serious
outcasts. Germanic customary law of the early Middle Ages imposed stripes on “bastards, serfs and the condemned.” Oth-er
laws on the books at the time imposed stripes on prostitutes, jugglers, clowns and hangmen. The idea was to separate
the supposed reprobates from “honest citizens.”
But people still wore stripes, including Colin D’Aurrichier, a cobbler and cleric, who was condemned to death for his fashin
choice. Even the innocuous zebra was considered a dangerous animal at the end of the Middle Ages by zoologists who
included them in Satan’s bestiary, without ever having seen one.
P6
Continued >

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By the 16th century, stripes were upgraded from diabolical to simply inferior. But it was stripes’ association with outsi-derdom
and political and religious eccentricity that later recommended them to upheavals like the American Revolution.
A flag of 13 red and white stripes for 13 colonies rebelling against the British crown says it all. And of course the French
Revolution, which was followed by two centuries of striped paintings, engravings, picture books and theatre.
Fisherman, yachtsmen and Venice gondoliers started wearing them for reasons unkown. Everyone else started wearing
them to copy the aristocracy who, hanging out at beaches in the mid 1800s, admired the nautical look and adapted it
on dry land. By the last half of the 19th century, stripes on European beaches were the thing. Come the First World War,
“there isn’t a beach in temperate Europe that hasn’t become a veritable theatre for stripes,” says Pastoreau.
If there’s an image that best conveys the story of the stripe, it may be a photo of Charlie Chaplin, lounging seaside in
a broad-striped terrycloth bathrobe. Taken in 1959, about a decade after his banishment from the U.S. for communist
sympathies, the picture uncannily epitomizes the stripe’s chequered history: the vertical bands suggest imprisonment, but
they also symbolize the world’s supreme jester, ever playful despite his wretched beginnings and scandal-ridden career.
From Dickensian orphanage to international star through the pathos of his lonely and eccentric creation, the tramp, Chap-lin
-- another tortured metaphor coming -- followed the same trajectory as striped fabric, eventually finding peace in his fi-nal
years in Switzerland. A decade after the photo was taken, Hollywood would reinstate him with a life-time achievement
Oscar, and he had already found marital happiness, for the first time, with his fourth wife, Oona. That the photo was taken
in France, by the sea, is all too fitting: as circuitous as a tricolor rosette—also a stripe that just happens to be circular.
P7
Stripes > Continued
A True Fashion Revolution
One minute you could get killed for wearing them. The next minute stripes are all the rage.

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SUNDAYNIGHT ENTERTAINMENT P.2 scott@sundaynight.ca
Proposal Copy & Layout
client Sunday Night Entertainment | TV idea pitch | April 2014 |
P8
Trailers, Tents
& Treehouses
A Survey of the World’s
Coolest Alternative
Getaways
Hey, what’s wrong? Can’t afford that chic summer home? Cheer up. You
have options my friend. For starters, there’s “glamping,” as reported in
the New York Times and everywhere else. Billowing canvas tents on oak
platforms with four-poster beds, Frette linens, oriental rugs and antiques.
What you save in building costs, you make up in luxe decor.
It’s not just bare-bones, leaky-tent camping getting a face lift. Architects
and designers are transforming all manner of familiar old downscale shel-ters
into mini — importantly affordable — masterpieces.
Who doesnt’ want a closer look at a three-storey treehouse, a mid-century
modern-themed caravan or a cottage compound built from discarded
shipping containers?
The humble abodes of yesteryear are getting 21st century upgrades to
dazzling results. TRAILERS, TENTS AND TREEHOUSES goes inside a
selection of the wildest, most exotic, boundlessly imaginative and utterly
cool permit-free shelters from across the continent.

9. EH
SUNDAYNIGHT ENTERTAINMENT P.3 scott@sundaynight.ca
CONTENT & COPY s e l e c t e d sa m p l es
Proposal Copy & Layout
client Sunday Night Entertainment | TV idea pitch | April 2014 |
P9
Is This Seat
Taken?
On the Trail of the
Unencumbered
Globetrotter
News flash. Single life isn’t what it used to be. No longer is the singleton a sad,
lonely spinster with cats and cardigans. Technology, urbanization, gender
equality and people living longer all contribute to the new singleton reality.
Single life doesn’t suck anymore... and neither does single travel. The lone
adventurer is more fearless than ever, scaling the Seven Summits, rafting the
Amazon or catching a rare glimpse of a Mauritias kestrel dangling from a tree
in the Black River Gorges National Park. Who is in a better position to explore
the world than those unencumbered by the demands of kids?
In each episode of IS THIS SEAT TAKEN, a different globetrotter acts as make-shift
host on his/her travel adventure. We’re talking about the modern nomad:
people who’ve embraced The 4-Hour Workweek, refugee dotcom millionares,
eccentric birders and various adventurers embracing the globe toute seul.
By following them on their journey, they reveal all the latest prizes and pit-falls
of seeing the world at large—the best hotels, restaurants and attractions.
But also traps, ripoffs and disappointments—the Sochi-like hotel fiascoes and
street scams that torment the modern traveler, especially those navigating
uncharted territory alone. Like Who Do You Think You Are?, IS THIS SEAT
TAKEN? is a journey of both inner and outer discovery.

10. SUNDAYNIGHT ENTERTAINMENT P.9 scott@sundaynight.ca
Proposal Copy & Layout
If a great paint job is the simplest, cheapest route to reviving a cottage, then
why do we see so many drab looking, featureless ones? Why is cottage
country so seemingly terrified of the bold, bright and beautiful? Take a tour
along your average lakeside getaway and marvel at the sea of brown. And
the inside? White, white and more white.
DRAB TO FAB is a fabulous half hour of TV that bids adieu to mono-chrome’s
long, cold reign and welcomes in dynamic, dazzling, vibrant colour.
So long, solemn and subtle! Hello hot pinks, canary yellows, candy reds and
even high-gloss teals.
Every episode features cottage owners looking for a quick, affordable lift to
their living space. They want transformation—or at least they say they do.
But saying you want lemon shine or raspberry truffle is one thing. Doing
it is another. It is precisely people’s hesitation to embrace BIG CHANGE,
combined with the power of high intensity colour, that fuels the drama and
transformation of DRAB TO FAB. A bold, visually dramatic “before” and
“after” are just icing on this very colourful cake.
P10
From Drab
to Fab
A Complete Cottage
Makeover From Inside
a Can of Paint
EH
CONTENT & COPY s e l e c t e d sa m p l es
client Sunday Night Entertainment | TV idea pitch | April 2014 |