Writers Bureau Taken to Task

I was interested to read on Linda Jones's excellent Freelance Writing Tips blog about a complaint made to the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) against UK correspondence college The Writers Bureau by blogger Rob Spence.

The main substance of Rob's complaint concerned the testimonials used in The Writers Bureau's ads in newspapers and magazines. Rob believed that these exaggerated how successful the books and authors in question had actually been, and for the most part his complaints were upheld. You can read the full story in Rob's blog post, and also in the full ASA judgement, which was posted online earlier this week.

As a former Writers Bureau tutor, author of some of their course material, and creator of one of their regular ads (though not the testimonials!), I must admit to a particular interest in this matter.

In my long experience The Writers Bureau is a reputable organisation which in general offers a good service to its students, so I take no pleasure in seeing this judgement made against them by the ASA. However, I had been aware for some time that their newspaper ads always used the same testimonials, which I would have thought counter-productive anyway.

It seems to me that The Writers Bureau has been lazy in not updating its advertising. The testimonials also seem to have been misleading in other ways, for which I suppose the charitable explanation is that somebody at their advertising agency got a bit carried away. I know from my own experience as a WB tutor that many of their students did indeed go on to achieve publishing success, so I'm sure they could have found plenty of genuine, non-misleading testimonials if they had bothered to look. As I say, it looks like laziness to me, rather than anything more sinister in the organisation as a whole.

When this topic was discussed on my forum, one member commented that every company invents testimonials to try to make their product sound better. I absolutely disagree with this, however. I've worked for a wide range of mail-order and web-based publishers and, while they may indulge in some creative copywriting at times, testimonials are one thing they will never make up. With a good product, anyway, you don't need to. In the case of my writing courses such as Quick Cash Writing and Write Any Book in Under 28 Days, my publishers and I have received hundreds of unsolicited testimonials, and the only difficult thing is knowing which to feature in our advertising.

So my view is that The Writers Bureau have shot themselves in the foot on this issue. Rather than complaining about the ASA judgement, I think they should take a long, hard look at their advertising strategy, and in particular the testimonials they use. They should ensure that these are genuine and regularly updated. Even if they may not always sound quite as impressive as the discredited quotes described in the ASA judgement, they will be more realistic and believable, and may actually be more effective in persuading people to sign up with them. And, of course, The Writers Bureau will not risk having its reputation tarnished any further if someone such as Rob Spence decides to look into them in more detail!