Review: MAMIL
Written and Directed by Gregory Cooper
Centerpoint Theatre 

​Review Date: 9/11/2019


Prostates, Pelotons, and Property Management what more could you want out of your Saturday night?  There’s another P word, so just use your imagination. . ..
Saturday night was opening night at Centrepoint Theatre as they wheeled out their latest showing—MAMIL aka Middle-Aged-Man-In-Lycra.  I was eager to see a MAMIL up close because usually they are only seen moving in packs—cycling like they are trying to outrun the inevitability of their lives.  Getting a MAMIL out on his own in front of a live studio audience was sure to be a rare treat.

​This show written and directed by Gregory Cooper is the story of one shallow, privileged, white male (Bryan) who transforms his life by joining a cycling group after his world crumbles around him. He finds his soul and learns how to really love himself and his fellow man.  

The set design was the barest I’ve ever seen at Centrepoint, I guess they were emulating the soul of a MAMIL.  It was sparse and black, like a recently divorced middle-aged man's bedroom. The special effects amounted to a smoke machine, lights and sound effects.  The attention was centred on one middle-aged man acting out multiple personalities.  Of course, there was also a bike and Lycra.

New Zealand actor Mark Hadlow delivered this one-man show. He was confident, strong, and a great story-teller.  It seemed like he held nothing back. It’s worth seeing this show just to see a theatre legend work a room.    I’m in no way qualified to have opinions about acting techniques so I’m not even going to try.  I’ll use lay persons terms.  He played at least eight characters and switched between them seamlessly using different accents for many of them.  My personal favourite character was the wiry old man who organised the cycling group.   Also, he cycled throughout the whole show and made it look effortless.  Leaping on and off the quite tall set and getting changed on stage multiple times goes a long way towards proving that he’s obviously a superhero. The audience were highly stimulated by the probing nature of the show—literally.  Mark Hadlow certainly has his fingers in a lot of places.  There was more than just a bike seat around his rear end.

This is a man friendly show.  If you want to drag your man out for a date at the theatre, then this show has the black décor and right amount of testosterone to make even the most theatre-hating man happy.  If you’ve raised your eyebrows about this heavily stereotyped statement then rest assured, the whole show is like that. . ..
 
I’d like to see Centrepoint Theatre open-up a night for palmy MAMILs with a group discount for arriving in their Lycra and click-clacking into the theatre with their cycling shoes on.  Maybe a latte special that day would be useful too.
​
This show is well explained.  You won’t have to turn your brain inside out to figure out what is going on.  It’s an easily accessible laugh if you can overlook the quite un-PC content.

Look I could spend hours trying to get a better design look on this but actually I just need my logo and service to stand out because that is what people are looking for.  Might I add that it’s the words that count and good direction from your website.

Your website should be saying “Hello, my name is **** and you’ve come to the right place. What would you like today, let me show you how to get there”

So let’s move on to the next tasks which were to:

• Change the tone to match my brand voice (sassy)
• Cut the writing down and make it appeal to my best clients (value proposition) 

So I’ve changed the tone to match my brand voice and now my homepage sounds just like me.  I love her! Lol! I do think that I’ve made it appeal to my ‘best customers’ because I’ve targeted the sorts of things that they may think/feel/want.  I’ve written the copy to reach out to the kind of people who I want to work with. They don’t want to write their own web content and they know what kind of person I am--cool, easy-going, a genius, I could go on...Honestly, why wouldn’t you choose me? And, I’ve reduced the writing on the screen to offer a ‘value proposition’. 

The next task is:

•  I’ll provide directions with a clickable link within each service description.  I’ll tell people clearly what they need to do or where they need to go next. Just like being a good host you have to anticipate your client’s needs and present them with it before they have to ask.

And there it is.  Clickable links in bold with clear next steps will usher my clients from reading to enquiring or buying.
Look:

​​

Let’s do a Web-Content Audit on my Website

This will be embarrassing, but I will do it for us.  Let’s have a look at my website content and structure and do an audit. We’ll  identify the strengths and weaknesses and make a plan on how to improve things .  Sometimes it’s just easier to look at something and find problems than to come up with a plan of what should be there. That’s where that tired cliché about mistakes being 'learning opportunities' comes from. I like to live my life embracing all my flaws and mistakes.  Guess what? I’ve learned a lot of lessons with my ‘fools rush-in’ habits. 

What do the experts say?
If you’ve read my previous web content blogs you’ll see that I regularly refer to other experts who have good advice on offer. I'll always try to check-in with what’s happening in the web-content world, you can’t just write your website once and leave it that way forever.  Why reinvent the wheel when you don’t need to? You can either use other’s advice and replicate it, or you can put your own creative spin on it. Anyway, this blog post by copywriter Jessie Lewis tells you all about what you should have on your website homepage. And, we can’t just use one source of information so there’s also this comprehensive checklist detailing how you can optimise your website homepage by Stream Creative. So let’s assess my website homepage.

What is your home page doing?
Jessie Lewis suggests that your homepage should accomplish these four things: 

1. Communicate your offering and its value
2. Direct visitors to the desired next action
3. Offer basic navigation
4. Build trust

They seem like  pretty good suggestion to me.  I’d also suggest that as much of this story is told to your client in as short and easily accessible way as possible.  So, does my home page do this?
​

Making my homepage great again!
Okay, well I guess you’d get the idea that I write stuff and my tiny little logo at the top does indicate that I have something to do with words.  Am I being intriguing? Or, am I pissing people off with my subtle hints about what service I provide? 

Here are the things that I need to change on my homepage
People should be able to tell in a matter of seconds what it is that I do and at the moment my website is not doing a good enough job of that. So I need to:

• Increase the size of my logo
  
• Come up with a strapline to easily describe what service I provide.  
  

I like the picture, so that’s staying, and my menu is accessible and visible (basic navigation) so that ticks a few boxes. 

We’re only part of the way through my homepage, so let’s move on.

​

Is my web content working?
So this could be described as the part where I’m ‘communicating my offering and its value’.  It does look like a bit much writing though, and I’m not convinced it’s as impactful as it could be. 
Jessie talks about making value propositions.  Basically it’s a way of framing what you do to tell your clients what benefit your service will be to them. We are all pretty selfish people so most of the time what we want to know is ‘what about me’.  So, it’s time that I change my wording to reflect that.
  
Why would someone want to use my service?  
One reason is because I am great fun, and another is that I am an excellent writer.  Who wouldn’t want that? Some people do not want that actually, so should I tone myself down to broaden my appeal? Um, I don’t think so.  Let’s not get too far down the rabbit-hole of brand voice here, but I just want to say that my brand voice is articulate, sassy, and lots of fun and I only really want to work with people who are after that level of service.  Nobody puts baby in the corner. Last time I updated my website I did tone down my authenticity and made my web content more ‘professional’. I pretty much hate it.  

So, the task for this part of my home page is to:

• Change the tone to match my brand voice (sassy)
• Cut the writing down and make it appeal to my best clients (value proposition) 

​What is the purpose of your website?  
My purpose is to tell people what value I can add with my service and help direct them towards getting in touch with me so that they can start their ‘customer journey’ (this lingo for getting people to continually buy stuff from you is gold isn’t it?).  So I need a system that acts like a virtual usher to  push them through the whole ‘experience’.  

How to guide your customers towards your service
Here’s how I plan to do this:

• I’ll provide directions with a clickable link within each service description.  I’ll tell people clearly what they need to do or where they need to go next. Just like being a good host you have to anticipate your client’s needs and present them with it before they have to ask.
• I’ll package services like I have with my CV and Cover Letter links below and send them to my shop or a contact page. Jessie suggests that sending clients to your about page can be effective too as a way of building trust.

How to build trust
We’re nearly at the end of the homepage audit, hang in there!  As you can see below I’ve got a contact form which invites people to contact me.  Tick. I also have a testimonial slider that helps to ‘build trust’ because it shows why people love me and my work.    

​