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AN INTRODUCTION TO COPYWRITING
“A copywriter is a salesperson behind a typewriter.”*
That quote comes from Judith Charles, president of her own retail advertising agency, Judith K. Charles Creative Communication. And it’s the best definition of the word copywriter I’ve ever heard.
The biggest mistake you can make as a copywriter is to judge advertising as laypeople judge it. If you do, you’ll end up as an artist, entertainer, or, worse, a clown—but not a salesperson. And your copy will be wasting your client’s time and money.
Let me explain a bit. When ordinary folks talk about advertising, they talk about the ads or commercials that are the funniest, the most entertaining, or the most unusual or provocative. A prime example is the annual creative TV commercial extravaganza broadcast during the Super Bowl. These are the ads people point to and say, “I really like that!”
But the goal of advertising is not to be liked, to entertain, or to win advertising awards; it is to sell products. The advertiser, if he is smart, doesn’t care whether people like his commercials or are entertained or amused by them. If they are, fine. But commercials are a means to an end, and the end is increased sales—and profits—for the advertiser.
This is a simple and obvious thing, but the majority of copywriters and advertising professionals seem to ignore it. They produce artful ads, stunningly beautiful Web site design, and clever commercials whose artistic quality and creativity may rival the finest feature films. But they sometimes lose sight of their goals—more sales—and the fact that they are “salespeople behind keyboards,” and not literary artists, entertainers, or movie directors.
Being creative by nature, advertising writers naturally like ads that are aesthetically pleasing, as do advertising artists. But just because an ad is pretty to look at and pleasant to read doesn’t necessarily mean it is persuading people to buy the product. Sometimes cheaply produced ads, written simply and directly without a lot of fluff, do the best job of selling.
I’m not saying that all your ads should be “schlock” or that schlock always sells best. I am saying that the look, tone, and image of your advertising should be dictated by the product and your prospects—and not by what is fashionable in the marketing business at the time, or is aesthetically pleasing to some creative people who deliberately shun selling as if it were an unwholesome mental chore to be avoided at all costs.
Some people say (erroneously) that no one reads anymore and we live entirely in a visual age. To that, Carlin Twedt of Ragan Communications replied, “Sure visuals are gaining in popularity, but words are still a communicator’s most precious commodity.”
As a creative person, you naturally want to write clever copy and produce fancy promotions. But as a professional, your obligation to your client or employer is to increase sales and gain new customers at the lowest possible cost. If a banner ad online works better than a full-page magazine ad, use it. If a simple postcard gets more business than a four-color pop-up mailer with a sound chip, use the postcard.
Actually, once you realize that the goal of advertising is selling (and copywriter Luther Brock once defined selling as “placing 100 percent emphasis on how the reader will come out ahead by doing business with you”), you’ll see that there is a creative challenge in writing copy that sells. This “selling challenge” is a bit different from the artistic challenge: instead of creating aesthetically pleasing prose, you have to dig into a product or service, uncover the reasons why consumers would want to buy the product instead of others in its category, and present those sales arguments in copy that is read, understood, and reacted to—copy that makes the arguments so convincingly that the customer can’t help but want to buy the product being advertised.
One of the greatest advantages of digital marketing is that results can be measured quickly and accurately. This makes it difficult for copywriters to defend creativity or humor should the metrics—page views, time spent on page, click-throughs, conversion rates, opt-ins, and sales—underperform other e-mails and Web pages used by that same client.
Of course, Judith Charles and I are not the only copywriters who believe that salesmanship, not entertainment, is the goal of the copywriter. Here are the thoughts of a few other advertising professionals on the subjects of advertising, copywriting, creativity, and selling:
My definition says that an ad or commercial has a purpose other than to entertain. That purpose is to conquer a sale by persuading a logical prospect for your product or service, who is now using or is about to use a competitor’s product or service, to switch to yours. That’s basic, or at least it should be. In order to accomplish that, it seems to me, you have to promise that prospect an advantage that he’s not now getting from his present product or service and it must be of sufficient importance in filling a need to make him switch.
—Hank Seiden, Vice President, Hicks & Greist, New York
For years, a certain segment of the advertising industry has been guilty of spinning ads out of whole cloth; they place a premium on advertising’s appearance, not on the reality of sales. The result: too many ads and commercials that resemble third-rate vaudeville, desperately trying to attract an audience with stale jokes and chorus lines. On its most basic level, [the advertising] profession involves taking a product, studying it, learning what’s unique about it, and then presenting that “uniqueness” so that the consumer is motivated to buy the product.
—Alvin Eicoff, Chairman, A. Eicoff & Company
Those of us who read the criticisms leveled at advertising around the world are constantly struck by the fact that they are not really criticisms of advertising as such, but rather of advertisements which seem to have as a prime objective finding their way into creative directors’ portfolios. Possibly the best starting discipline for any creative man in any country is the knowledge that the average [consumer] does not even know that an advertising agency, creative director, art director, or copywriter even exists. What’s more, she couldn’t care less if they do. She’s interested in buying products, not creative directors.
—Keith Monk, Nestlé, Vevey, Switzerland
Of course, I have never agreed that creativity is the great contribution of the advertising agency, and a look through the pages of the business magazines should dramatize my contention that much advertising suffers from overzealous creativity—aiming for high readership scores rather than for the accomplishment of a specified communications task. Or, worse, creativity for self-satisfaction.
—Howard Sawyer, Vice President, Marsteller, Inc.
When your advertising asks for the order right out front, with a price and a place to buy and with “NOW” included in the copy, that’s hard-sell advertising, and it should invariably be tried before any other kind. Advertising is usually most beautiful when it’s least measurable and least productive.
—Lewis Kornfeld, President, Radio Shack
Viewers are turned off by commercials that try so hard to be funny, which is the present product of so many agencies. The question that comes to mind is, “Why do these people have to have characters acting like imbeciles for thirty seconds or more just to get the product name mentioned once or twice?”
Are they afraid to merely show the product and explain why the viewer should buy it instead of another like product? Possibly the most stupid thing advertisers do is allow their agency to have background music, usually loud, rock-type music, played while the person is trying to explain the features of the product.
Frequently the music is louder than the voice, so the commercial goes down the drain. More and more people are relying on ads for information to help them decide which product to purchase. The entertainment-type ads on TV are ineffective.
—Robert Snodell, “Why TV Spots Fail,” Advertising Age
Humorous ads are troubling because you have to create a link to the product and its benefit. Often, people remember a funny ad but they don’t remember the product.
—Richard Kirshenbaum, Co-Chairman, Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners
Direct marketing … is the only form of accountable advertising. It’s the only kind of advertising you can ever do where you can trace every dollar of sales to every dollar of costs. Major corporations using traditional advertising have no idea which advertising is effective. If you employ direct marketing you can tell exactly what works.
—Ted Nicholas, How to Turn Words into Money (Nicholas Direct, 2004)
Copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take the hopes, dreams, fears, and desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people, and focus those already-existing desires onto a particular product. This is the copywriter’s task: not to create this mass desire—but to channel and direct it.
—Eugene Schwartz, Breakthrough Advertising (Boardroom, 2004)
Ads are not written to entertain. When they do, these entertainment seekers are little likely to be the people whom you want. This is one of the greatest advertising faults. Ad writers abandon their parts. They forget they are salesmen and try to be performers. Instead of sales, they seek applause.
—Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising (Bell Publishing, 1920)
The advertisements which persuade people to act are written by [copywriters] who have an abiding respect for the intelligence of their readers, and a deep sincerity regarding the merits of the goods they have to sell.
—Bruce Barton, Cofounder, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO)
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself. It should rivet the reader’s attention on the product. It is the professional duty of the advertising agent to conceal his artifice.
—David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man (Atheneum, 1963)
The “literary quality” of an advertisement, per se, is no measure of its greatness; fine writing is not necessarily fine selling copy. Neither is its daring departure from orthodoxy, nor its erudition, nor its imaginative conceits, nor its catchiness.
Copyright © 1985, 2005, 2020 by Robert W. Bly
