When someone else messes up your perfectly-crafted work

In this post by Dianna Huff, she discusses the difficult situation marketers face when they have a boss rewriting their copy, often making it worse.

While I try not to press myself too closely into the inner workings of our clients' communications, I can usually tell when an ad was created by a boss or a committee of managers -- rather than by an intelligent copywriter who has an eye on results.

It's always wonderful to see the great performance a campaign that's well-crafted and "unfooled-around-with" (to steal the slogan of Simply Orange brand orange juice) can yield. But when someone in the process feels like they need to include "this is why our company is so great" wording, or they lose sight of the customer's desires and objectives, the results can be disastrous. I've seen click-through rates that have differed by a factor of 25 (yes, 25 times better!) when one well-written ad runs in the same medium as a poorly-written ad.

Aside from Dianna's suggestion of printing out that article and leaving it on your boss's chair, I'd simply recommend pushing back (delicately, of course). If you're dealing with a medium that's measurable, like most online ad campaigns, suggest some testing to see which ads perform best. Remind your boss to put themself in the prospective buyer's place (maybe using the personas you've developed). Sometimes it just takes a small nudge to make them remember the basics and snap out of their short-sightedness.