Category: Words and writing

What does a copywriter do, actually?

Every now and then I get a request for help in copyrighting something. Here’s an example:

“I am a singer/song writer who has just recorded my first single. I am trying to get my single in stores to be sold but I need it copywrited first. I wrote the lyrics to the song and need them copywrited before I put the single in stores so that no one will steal the music…do you do that kind of thing or would I need to look for someone else? I’m a bit confused.—L.D.”

Answer: no, L.D., that’s not what a copywriter does. (Although I think I know the answer: if you created it, you ALREADY own the copyright unless you expressly sign it over to somebody else. But hey, I’m a copywriter, not a lawyer, so don’t take my word for it.)

For an excellent depiction of what a copywriter DOES do, check out this short movie on the Veer website. In case you don’t have 7 minutes to spare, here’s a synopsis. Copywriter gets a job in a design agency. He keeps showing his work around for feedback and nobody ever has anything to say. Finally he realizes all the designers are illiterate. He teaches them to read and write—and then gets fired. As his boss explains, “now we can write our own copy, so we don’t need you any more.”

Thanks to designer Steve Stanard for sending this link my way. Think he is trying to tell me something?

Nuts for the super bowl

The Wall Street Journal’s advertising column (2/3/06) ran an item noting that Emerald Nuts had spent a fifth of its ad budget last year on a single spot in the 2005 Super Bowl, and as a result sales more than doubled in the 10 months that followed. Actually, the column didn’t say “as a result” but that was the implication since no other information was given to explain the sales increase.

It’s more likely that Emerald Nuts used the same formula that is described for this coming year: use its cachet as a “Super Bowl Advertiser” to gain shelf space, promote tie-ins to the event, and forge alliances with other, bigger marketers. So the few mill for the spot in the game are leveraged to make its participation look far bigger than it actually was.

Compare that to the Gillette “Fusion” razor that was introduced with an elaborate spot in the 2006 game. The next day I got an email inviting me to “Experience Fusion” by clicking through to a rich media website that took forever to load and then was pretty silly… a giant razor rotating on a stand while an out-of-sync Vanna White avatar invited me to check it out. Zzz.

And what was missing? The coupon, of course, to clinch the deal and get me to try it. P&G did have a sweepstakes but you can tell their heart wasn’t in it because the stakes were small and the copy flabby and generic: “enter the Ultimate Sports Fan Sweepstakes for a chance to win $7,500 in cash to spend on other good stuff: a big screen TV, season tickets to your team’s games-you name it.” If the copywriter can’t get excited about the offer, you can bet the audience won’t either.

P.S. Clicking on the title of this post will give you a look at the sweeps; if you want to meet animatronic Vanna she’s waiting right here.

The S*uper Bowl of copywriting!

Coupon FSIs (freestanding inserts) in the Sunday paper are like Toontown—a separate reality where the colors are garish, the actions outsized, and stories don’t quite make sense. This is especially evident around Super Sunday, when we are asked to believe that across America Big Game hosts are training to lay out a spectacular feed based on branded products.

In the highly competitive FSI pages where package goods makers vie for our attention, you can count on the writers of heads and taglines to rise to outsized brilliance. Thus we have “roll out big game flavors” and “the easy game plan!” (Totino pizza rolls), “Score big when you serve Boboli… the football party favorite!”, “the big game plan…lineup the great taste of Dean’s dips” (this one has a diagram of wings and ruffles going for the goal line, and an invitation to download your own football tablecloth pattern at www.deansdips.com), “kick off your party with Farmer John’s hot dogs”, “savor the taste of victory” with Cattlemen’s Barbecue Sauce, “enjoyed by BBQ experts and football fans everywhere”, “is your sandwich dressed for game day?” with French’s mustard and of course “it’s CRUNCH time” with Mt. Olive…”the super pickle for the super game.”

What makes the copywriting stars shine even brighter is the fact that none of these ads can actually mention the Super Bowl by name, since they didn’t pay for licensing rights. The results are doing a full court press on my taste buds (oops, wrong metaphor) but I’m holding out for an invitation to “throw the MVP—most valuable PARTY” with the ultimate Kraft 7 Layer Dip (heart attack on a platter) and Game Day Football Cake made with extra-strength Maxwell House coffee and dressed with Cappuccino Pudding Frosting. Call the trainer—this playah is DOWN!

This ad stinks…and I can prove it!

A recent email from Doug Stine, a copywriting colleague in Albuquerque:

“My question is this: The time tested techniques of
direct mail copywriting seem so fraudulent to me, yet
“research” says that they work. What’s the scoop?

“I recently received a direct mail piece ostensibly
from Tommy Franks. The teaser on the 9×12 envelope
was “check enclosed.” I opened the envelope. It was
a check for $1 and a solicitation to send money to the
cause. I felt deceived.

“It was a four-page letter. I know that research
(although I can’t find any of this research) shows
that people respond more to longer copy. Yet the last
thing I wanted to read was a letter “from the desk of
Tommy Franks” which I KNEW was not written by Tommy
Franks but a copywriter.

“The result? I tossed it in the trash.

“So my big question is this: why are these crap
mailers considered time-tested techniques? Am I
really in that much of the minority that I see through
these gimmicks? Are there enough people that respond
to these frauds that make them financially worthwhile?

“Is there really anyone in the U.S. who would say. “Oh,
WOW, a letter from the desk of Tommy Franks. I think
I’ll read the entire letter and send $400 to the
cause.” Are people that stupid?”

MY RESPONSE:

“I’d love to confirm that the “time tested techniques” really are fraudulent… But I can’t. One of the things about direct mail copywriting that is both a curse and a blessing is its measurability.

“We don’t get to say something is brilliant just because we think, as writers, it’s creative when the client who pays for it has the numbers to prove nobody is moved to respond. And the flip side is that we can’t say something is crap from a response standpoint if the numbers prove it works. (Though we can certainly say it is crap from a perspective of personal taste. But direct mail is expensive, and nobody’s going to pay us for creating a creative masterpiece that won’t get response. At least they won’t pay us twice.)

“I haven’t seen the Tommy Franks piece you describe but the format suggests something that has a lot of money behind it, so if you’re seeing it that probably means it has gone through repeated testing and trial by fire. And I can tell you the “real check” is indeed a proven and effective device even though it may seem phony to you. The Pavlovian response is to start salivating at the prospeet of free money, followed by a flood of tears when you realize someone else needs the money much more. (Which reminds me of one of my favorite teasers, done by a writer at Russ Reid: “Christmas gift enclosed. But not for you.”)”

Comments? Tommy Frank, if you’re reading, what do YOU think?

Electronic Etiquette

A good friend and colleague died this past winter. I quickly learned about a tribute website, and posted a message which expressed my feelings in the passion of the moment. Having achieved some satisfactory personal closure I never got around to contacting his widow, who is also a good friend and colleague.

That faux pas clearly deserves a bitch-slap from Miss Manners and I needed to atone for it. Thus, when the widow wrote a broadcast email with the news that she was moving to a small town where she would be mainly taking care of her aging parents, I responded with some personal news about my family and expressed a wish to keep in touch. I never heard back.

Some possibilities are: a/the lady’s mad at me, as well she should be. But what if b/in her new life she rarely checks email; or, c/my message got caught in her spam filter. How can I know and what do I do about it, if anything? Such are the new challenges of communication in the electronic age, as we attempt to communicate through media that are still being defined.

In my copywriting classes, I always do an informal survey of email habits. Some findings:

1. Email has gotten much more formal over the past decade as it’s become a primary mode of correspondence. Misspellings, for example, are no longer OK. (Save them for IM.)

2. The majority of female senders say they start their message with a salutation (Dear so-and-so) even though it’s superfluous. Most male senders don’t use a salutation.

3. Most people “sign” their emails with their personal name, even though it’s unnecessary because you can be identified both by the “from” line and from the boilerplate signature if you use one. A best practice seems to be to sign off with your first name just above the standard signature, as a way to personalize the email.

4. There’s a trend toward composing email in HTML even though there’s no need for it because no graphics are involved. I like words to stand on their own, so this one really makes me grind my teeth.

Dead Sons

My two favorite TV dramas, “Rescue Me” and “Deadwood”, wound up their 2005 seasons by killing off a major character’s young son in a bicycle accident. I thought the device was appropriate in the Victorian confines of “Deadwood”, over the top in “Rescue Me” where the characters are already spinning out of control with no need for a deus ex machina.

But the bigger question is how two inspired screenwriting teams settled on the same out-of-the-blue plot device. I think it’s more than coincidence. Going back to Orestes, the classic dramatic arc is that the parent dies, there is a struggle, then a son (or daughter) emerges as the successor tested by fire. (True, Abraham did offer to sacrifice his son, but God spared him.)

To go the other direction, with the child dead before the parent, is an tragedy that’s maybe symptomatic of these writers’ world view and, if we keep seeing it, maybe of our culture. The death of a child, whose life is the older character’s reason to live on at least some level, represents an implosion. There’s no longer an heir to the world the character is striving to create. The hurt can diminish with time, but never go away. One goes on, but one’s world is smaller.

I know, this doesn’t have much to do with advertising. Unless you see popular culture as a mirror of current moods, in which case our customers and prospects could use some good news and cheering up.

How to write so people will read

An insurance company recently asked me to teach an in-house version of my copywriting course. The audience was mostly lawyers who write white papers on various legal topics. Since the scope was much broader than advertising, I retitled the course “how to make people read what you write”. I added two points which I think are worth repeating here:

1. Virtually everybody you are writing to has grown up with television, or at least movies, which means they have been trained to make mental edits when the communicator jumps from connection to another. What’s more, they EXPECT these jumps in the material they absorb and if you take pains to write with a smooth transition, they’ll just pass over the transitional paragraphs and move on to the next topic.

This means you need to write for scanning, not word-for-word reading. It also means you need to be aware of how the mind handles mental edits, and make transitions much as a film editor would. Cut from the big picture to a closeup, instead of showing two slightly different views of the same thing. When something is important, showcase it (=a closeup shot) and then establish context (=a person reacting).

I read a lot of “Magic Schoolbus” books with my 3 year old and I notice a wide range of skill levels in the cartoon factory workers who draw these. When the same character appears, in a similar context, on two facing pages, then Eli says “why are there two Carloses?” When the narrative talks about a giant squid that doesn’t show up in the picture, he says “where’s the giant squid?” He already has a well-formed system to tell him how stories should be told with words and visuals—and your older reader does too.

2. Dr. Johnson said that “knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.” White papers fall into the second category of knowledge, as do a marketer’s informational premiums. It isn’t necessary for the audience to read all the way through; the author has done his or her job if the reader glances at the first page, accepts that the paper is making an authoritative analysis of a topic, then files it for future reference.

On the other hand, you may fail even when communicating valuable information if the paper is poorly organized and hard to get at. This isn’t to say that presentation is more important than information. But if presentation falls short, the reader will never gain access to the information and the writer is judged a sorry failure.

The Robert Collier Letter Book

Early in my copywriting career, I stumbled across the Robert Collier Letter Book at the L.A. Central Library. Discovering it was out of print, I flirted with telling them I’d lost it… and soon wished I had, because the only copy was lost when the library burned down.

Now, the Robert Collier Letter Book is available once again via the web (use this Amazon link). It’s just as relevant and meaty as I remembered. Robert Collier was an early “Giant of the Mails” who shared his knowledge in 1937, but people are people and selling is selling so most of it still applies today. For example:

“All of us are consciously, or unconsciously, using ‘TESTED SELLING SENTENCES’ from morning, noon till night. Some of us use them to sell ideas, others service and others actual merchandise.

“Little Willy wants an extra slice of bread and jam; sister wants 15 cents for the movies; Dad is scheming how to get out of the house for lodge that night, and Mother is planning to have Dad sweep out the cellar–while around the corner the Preacher is planning a visit on the household to make it more church conscious and one and all, have their own pet ‘TESTED SELLING SENTENCES’ they plan to use on one another!”

If you work in marketing or selling, or even if you don’t, I say: get this book.

On persuasive writing.

Before my most recent copywriting class, a prospective student sent me this email:

“Can you please let me know how applicable the course content will be to writing technical press releases, magazine articles, editorials  and advertisements. I am an engineer who recently moved into product marketing and am interested in improving my writing skills, but I’m not going to be doing any direct marketing campaigns.”

My response:

“Fair question… One of the principles I teach is that persuasive writing applies to any situation because you always need to convince people to do something. In some cases that “something” is simply getting them to read what you’ve written… So you want to translate described features into why this is important, and write in a way that’s easy for people to follow. I’ve had a number of people who don’t actually work in marketing take the course and no complaints that the material wasn’t relevant enough to invest a day in it. Also, it may help you to know that since we’re in San Jose many of the attendees work in tech and want to discuss tech writing challenges and I myself have a lot of tech writing experience. (Though the ones I share in the course are tech direct marketing, not straight technical writing.)”

She did end up registering, and I followed up and asked this morning how she liked it. She said:

“Yes thanks I really enjoyed the day. There are techniques I will be able to apply to my press releases. Also, it reconfirmed some of my personal beliefs about writing styles and what works. It’s good to learn what are the proven methods to capture an audience.”

In the middle of things

So, I finally got my website up. It’s no big deal, some HTML with a few images and links, and I will do more later. I’d planned to use GoLive, which I got as part of Adobe CS, but became baffled as soon as I started the tutorial. They wanted me to make a Site Diagram and I tried, but couldn’t make it like the examples onscreen. I then went browsing for simple HTML references and was delighted to find this nice tutorial on the w3.org website.

I then went hunting in “view source” on other pages for examples of how to construct links and open new pages to display my samples… the challenge, in an era where everybody uses javascript or, I guess, tools like GoLive, was to find a site to emulate with an author whose vision was as modest as mine. And then I went back into GoLive to edit the whole thing for publication. But I still don’t know what a Site Diagram is for.

This brings to mind what a student in my class last week said is the characteristic of good documentation: it talks to the user about the process they are in the middle of. Or, in the case of the CSS tutorial mentioned above, it puts the user into the middle of something and gives them logical, easy steps to take that will pay back with satisfying and tangible results. I certainly did learn from the CSS tutorial, as you can see if you go to my site. And if anybody has a good GoLive book to recommend, or simply wants to explain Site Diagrams, please drop me a line.