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Copywriting
Successful Writing for Design, Advertising, Marketing
Mark Shaw
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eBook - ePub
Copywriting
Successful Writing for Design, Advertising, Marketing
Mark Shaw
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About This Book
Many people train in graphic design and typography, but writing copy is often assumed to be a natural talent. However, there are simple techniques you can employ to craft strong written content with ease.Using a series of exercises and illustrated examples of award-winning campaigns and communication, Copywriting takes you through step-by-step processes that can help you to write content quickly and effectively.With insightful interviews from leading copywriters, as well as illustrated case studies of major brands that explore the challenges involved in creating cutting-edge copy, this book will provide you with all the tools you need to become a confident and versatile creative copywriter. With chapters devoted to each specific medium, the book teaches the art of writing great copy for advertising and direct marketing, retailing, catalogues, company magazines, websites, branding and more.
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Études sur la communication1
Getting to grips with copywriting
Fresh and original writing oils the wheels of every aspect of commercial activity, and language is a key element of many forms of modern design. Copywriting is not about copying—it’s about communicating in an original way. You can put a sentence together, and your imagination is alive and well, so you have everything it takes to be a creative writer. All you need are some guidelines to help you figure out when your writing is good, and a little inspiration from some practitioners in the field.
Why do I need to know about copy?
Creative writing for business is challenging and rewarding in equal measure, and when it all comes together with great design to create innovative communications it can feel like the best job in the world. Copywriting is an essential part of the design communications mix, and those of us who do it for a living will tell you that crafting messages and telling stories is a rewarding mental process, even in the business context. You’ll find that being able to generate a response from your audience is a valuable and highly sought-after skill.
Copy (or text, or words) used in design is a very particular type of creative writing that requires the inspiration of an artist and the control of a craftsman or craftswoman. In comparison to the rails on which the copywriter runs, the novelist or poet has no limitations. Poetry and storytelling are flights of the imagination, with no client or news editor to bear in mind. Whether the personality of the writer shines through directly or indirectly, this is the purest creative writing—it can take off in any direction, be as fictional as it wants to be, and go wherever it pleases. Writing copy, however, is all about sticking to a brief, while paying homage to the creativity and style of the poet and storyteller.
Journalists and copywriters are commercial writers, but the essence of their roles is completely different. In most cases journalists have to create the story from scratch, usually by following leads. They will have to research the facts to get to the heart of the matter, discover the different viewpoints and opinions, and bring this material together accurately and coherently. Articles are often written to a tightly defined structure, while features can allow more room for individual expression and the interweaving of the writer’s viewpoint. The message has to be factually correct, balanced, and fair, but the writer is allowed to take a stance, which could reflect that of the newspaper or, in the case of a regular column, the writer’s own opinion.
Copywriting borrows from all other fields of writing in its quest for creative expression, but there is no room for your personality in the copy that you write; you are simply a scribe, a hired mouthpiece for your client, and it is the brand’s voice that must come through, loudly and clearly. The starting point, whether you’re working on a one-off project or are writing copy every day, is to set aside your ego, forget all ideas about expressing your own thoughts, and put on the company coveralls. You’ll be surprised how well they fit and how good you look in them.
“If you are a writer of novels, or plays, or poetry, you can write and take your own time, generally speaking. But in advertising, you’ve got deadlines, you’ve got to have the idea, and it’s got to be a great one, and you’ve got to have it Tuesday morning.”
David Ogilvy
Good writing makes things happen
In Mesopotamia, the earliest cuneiform writing was developed to record ownership of animals and goods. Writing was at the heart of trading, and its invention was the catalyst for the dawning of modern civilization. It is now one of our greatest forms of expression, and, whatever the brief, is a powerful tool for all types of business. The techniques of creative copywriting are really about finding the most natural way to communicate well with others.
Business has one aim: to deliver a profit. Everyone in every sort of commercial enterprise is trying to sell a product or service for more than it costs them to produce it, and make an honest profit to live off. Selling—which is what you’re doing when you’re writing copy—used to be a case of steering customer demand by pointing people in the direction of the leading brands.
Before the competitive nature of the global marketplace really hotted up, all you needed to do to have a viable business was to identify and satisfy a customer need. Our abundant times have created a huge amount of choice, and with choice comes competition: it is no longer enough to hold up your hand and tell your customers where you are; you now have to tell them why you are better, why they should bother to knock on your door, and why they should keep coming back to you.
There has been an enormous increase in the different media that can be used to reach customers, from blogs and microsites to talking retail displays and e-mail campaigns. Customers now have even greater control over which of these messages they will give the time of day to, which means the results we can achieve through traditional advertising and marketing are increasingly less predictable. The reality is that we as customers consciously select and deselect the promotional and advertising messages that we wish to listen to.
Innovative graphic design is a powerful way to catch and hold the attention, but we’re becoming a bit blasé about stunning visuals, amazing concepts, and slick photography, and they no longer have the power to make us sit up and think as they used to. The messages they carry and the way those messages are expressed are the essence of effective communication.
It is not enough to splash out on expensive media campaigns and expect high-profile visibility alone to deliver results. If the customer isn’t watching, or doesn’t like the message, you won’t attract a response. The starting point has to be to select the best way to reach people, whether this means sticking posters at the top of ski lifts or sending specific text messages to shoppers as they pass your store. Then you must make sure the overall message you’re communicating is targeted, relevant, and inspiring. For this you need great copy.
“I’m sure that everything a man does is grist for his copy mill. I’m sure of that —what you’ve done and what you’ve experienced— if you can put more thinking and more interesting things into your copy, you’re that much more provocative.”
Bill Bernbach
The attitudes and principles that apply to copywriting for external customers apply equally to any written or verbal communication. The clearer and more accurate your communication, the more successful you will be.
What’s stopping you writing great copy?
Your essential objective as a copywriter is to create clear, easily understood messages that target a defined audience and encourage them to do something for your client. If you get to know the basic processes and avoid the common pitfalls, you’ll find that this is not as difficult to achieve as you might think.
Being a natural creative writer will give you a head start, but it is not enough in itself, and you do not need to be a natural writer to be a good copywriter. Some agency writers have got by on their natural talent for decades, and actually have little idea about process or technique.
One of the latest executions from a long-running and consistently award-winning campaign, this uses a few simple words to speak volumes to an intelligent target audience.
“A writer should be joyous, an optimist ... Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer, and cynicism is rejection of life. I would say participate, participate, participate.”
George Gribbin
The best way to write copy is to focus completely on the true nature of the target audience so that your messages are crafted with them in mind. This will produce compelling copy and your reader will feel at home with your writing. Using a clever play on words, a pun, or a quick witticism is becoming less important than being able to craft a well-constructed, stimulating message.
Understand the heart beating at the core of your message, consider the makeup of your quirky audience and their particular habits, such as their buying patterns, and make sure your copy plays to these at all times. Most of the copy that you will be working with will require clear, uncomplicated writing about what you are selling that clearly presents the benefits, not just the features.
A creative or conceptual idea should always underpin your approach—you can establish this by giving careful consideration to your overriding message or call to action and explaining how the audience can respond.
Too much analysis can hamper creativity. There’s no right or wrong way to go about writing copy, yet there are several patterns that you can follow. Every writer will do this slightly differently—you should find the best way of developing your own unique approach that blends proven techniques with your own preferred way of tackling a brief.
Take aim, you’re targeting your audience
Whatever the brief, you will have a message to communicate to a specific audience. Build up a profile of this audience, develop an understanding of what they’re like and what their situation is, and decide on a style of language that they will relate to. A good word for this process is profiling, and anyone can do it.
The most comprehensive briefs can give you an in-depth picture of your audience based on economic profile, geographical location, and even the type of street they live on, the papers they read, and cars they drive. If you haven’t been given this sort of information, you can compile it yourself without having to leave your desk or search Google, simply by using your common sense and experience to determine the characteristics of the people in your audience.
You’ll be surprised how much you already know about your profiled audience. For example, if you’re writing toiletries product copy for women aged between 25 and 40 you may be given the insight that they’re professionals, with a reasonable disposable income, and are regular shoppers with the client. An image—a stereotype—will come to mind immediately.
What can your profiling add to this? Well, think it through. It’s likely that our 25- to 40-year-old women are busy looking after a family, or juggling home responsibilities with work, or pursuing a career that takes up all of their time. Being this busy will mean that they are living with stress. At the point when they read your copy they are likely to be tired and not have much time. When they stand in the store with your product in their hand, they have their kids with them, or have sore feet, or are being jostled by other customers. How do you cut through all of this?
Now you’re building up a picture of a real human being and are writing for someone who is bright, and enjoying life, but who’s being distracted and has a lot on her mind. You need to make sure that your messages focus on helping to reduce her stress (and don’t expect her to study the text for very long). You need to catch her eye with a strong product name and description, the tone of voice you use should be friendly and on her level, and you’d better have something good to say—a clear benefit or an inspiring proposition—otherwise you’re wasting her time.
By contrast, if you’re writing advertising for the business customers of a computer supplier your profiling will again tell you how to develop this tone of voice. Your readers are IT-procurement managers of large corporations, who will be sourcing computers for 50 to 200 people at a time. They control company expenditure, and as well as getting good value for money they require excellent ...