Freshness guaranteed!

One of the most common refrains you hear from clients in India, while working on their website content or marketing material is this: “Have your writer take a look at this content and make it fresh.”

If you’re not from India that basically means “do a rewrite”.

This used to be the source of endless frustration for me as a writer, because if I think the content has been well-written, I prefer to use it exactly as it has been given.

In India, that could be a problem, because:

1. The content is not client-original, meaning they’ve ripped it off competitor sites.
2. The content has been written by the CEO, CTO, VP-whatever for a completely different purpose and your client is actively recycling.
3. The client wants his money’s worth out of the writer.

The above cynical view developed over my time with agencies. However, now that I’m on the other side of the table, I not only see it was remarkably accurate, but I now have a few more reasons to add:

1. The content was written in 1987 when the company was founded. It was never updated and by “making it fresh” they want YOU to get their sales material up-to-date.
2. The content has been used so many, many times in multiple formats across group websites, intranet pages and newsletters, that they are just sick of seeing it, and want to “repackage” it in a way that’s “fresh and new”.
3. SEO is the flavor of month and so the client wants content to be constantly updated. Unfortunately, there’s no new information.

If you have a tone or theme for your content, this issue of new content usually sorts itself out. Or if you understand what’s going on behind the curtains, you can usually get a general idea of what the client expects to see in the rewrite. However, if all you’ve heard is “make it fresh” without the knowing the reason why, you’re in for a long rally of submissions and rejections.

So as always, I encourage you to pick up the phone and ask.