Have you seen The Devil Wears Prada? Anne Hathaway’s all-consuming job as Meryl Streep’s bag-carrier/mind-reader is a real one, and for a while I did it.

For some brief and endless months, I jumped through hoops in the executive office of a Fortune 50 company. Sadly, there was none of the glamour of the fashion industry. Only the daily goal of removing any and all needless-friction from my boss’s life.

The job wasn’t fun, but it gave me an extraordinarily personal insight into how senior leadership make decisions and how to grab (and miss) their attention. Here’s what it taught me about the vital ingredients of business-to-business copy.
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