About Marie Alafaci | Melbourne Copywriter and Strategist
Great. You’re here. Grab a seat. You’re definitely in the right place.
Maybe you’re here because you’ve seen people’s eyes glaze over when you’re explaining something important. Or perhaps it’s because someone once told you that nobody gets paid until someone sells something…and you’ve been looking for a better way to do it ever since.
Whatever reason you have for landing on this page, take a bow. Why do I say that? Because I’ve known since I was very young that communication done badly can do more harm than good. And I’ve spent 30 years making sure it doesn’t.
Where it all began
Like most copywriters, I love words, but for me, understanding their power came when I was around four or five years old. My grandparents came to Australia from Italy in the 1920s. While my grandfather’s English was pretty good, my grandmother sometimes struggled to find the right word…probably because she dealt mostly with their Italian boarders and businesses nearby so had limited exposure to English.
I remember clearly, even as a young child, that some people would shout at her when she didn’t understand what they were saying. As if volume were the missing ingredient from their interaction.
When someone doesn’t understand, the responsibility…lies with the communicator not the listener.
Of course, there were people who would slow down or use different words for her, but they seemed to be in the minority and it used to get me really upset that the shouty people either thought she was stupid or didn’t realise they were being unkind by not even trying to find better words to use. And why, I wondered, couldn’t they see that what they were doing wasn’t working?
That idea of how communication works has stayed with me ever since. When someone doesn’t understand, the responsibility often lies with the communicator not the listener.
Of course, both people need to put in some effort, but the simple act of trying to find another way to say the same thing isn’t giving up ground. It’s the whole point of communicating.
The skill that followed
In Year 12, my friends would come to me for help with their Biology homework. Not because I was one of the ‘brains’ who was definitely going to get straight As. I absolutely wasn’t. They came because I could explain the same concept in five different ways until finally one of them clicked.
I didn’t think of it as a skill at the time. It was just how my brain worked. And I really wanted to help people understand things.
Turns out, they’re also pretty useful things to bring to a copywriting career.
A life-changing brochure
In 1994, I was at the Home and Renovation Show in Melbourne and my husband wandered into the Holmsglen TAFE stand. I thought he was going to sign up for ‘Lounge room welding 101’ or something like that – he’s an engineer and is always wanting to take things apart.
But when he came out, he handed me a brochure for Holmesglen TAFE’s Diploma of Arts in Professional Writing and Editing. As soon as I read that title, my whole body resonated. They had courses where you could learn to be a professional writer? I had no idea they existed.
God bless that beautiful human. He knew I’d been in a stressful corporate job at the time and was looking for a change and thought I might be interested. And he was right.
I decided then and there to throw in my corporate job and enrol. Fast forward 30 years and here I am: a copywriter, published author and the person my clients call when they need someone who actually gets what they do.
Communicating is my happy place
I find people and the things they have to say endlessly fascinating. That’s why I love being a website copywriter. I get to learn about different industries, different ways of doing business and different methods of connecting with customers…and then I get to share that with other people.
One of the best days I’ve ever had at work was seeing realisation dawn in the faces of a group of technical writers. I was presenting at a conference and they were a teeny bit resistant to the idea that marketing copy was important to their business. I showed a slide that said good copywriting was morally neutral.
Sure, I said, people trying to steal your identity or recruit you into a sect use emotional connection in their copy to manipulate you, but that doesn’t mean that using the same emotional connection to show people you have the solution to their problem was in and of itself manipulation. Showing prospects how they can help them achieve their goals was the whole reason they were in business. If mood could be gauged in frown lines, their mood lifted four face lifts each.
That kind of mindset shift is what I live for. It’s also what makes me good at this: I can usually find the thread that runs through a complex business and pull it through into words that make sense to the people it’s for.
The creative writing bit
You may have guessed this, but yes, I’m also a published author. My picture book Zelda’s Big Adventure (a story about a chook who wants to be an astronaut) was a Notable in the CBCA Awards and was read on ABC TV’s Playschool by Leigh Sales, which is still one of my proudest and most surreal moments. My work has also appeared on The Age bestsellers list and I’ve been shortlisted for a number of fiction and non-fiction awards.
I mention this not to show off (well, maybe a little) but because being a writer across genres is what shapes how I approach my copywriting. And I’ve had decades of writing across genres — picture books, adult fiction, non-fiction, reviews. That’s taught me to be ruthless about clarity, to make sure every word earns its place and to never underestimate your reader…and those habits don’t switch off when I open a new document for a compliance consultant or a laboratory specialist.
Read my work in:
A few things worth knowing
I work with a small number of clients at a time, so the work always gets my full attention and you’ll never be handed off to someone you’ve never met.
I come from a science and English teaching background, which means complex or technical subject matter doesn’t scare me…it interests me.
And I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the best copy comes from asking the right questions, not just writing quickly.
The vintage images
If you’re wondering what the deal is with all the vintage imagery: I think the world moved more slowly in the age of steam. People took time to craft beautiful things that lasted. That’s what I try to do too.
I know it’s a rose-coloured view of that era (I’d never have survived a corset or been able to stay quiet while men spoke) but it’s an elegant aesthetic, and I’m keeping it.
