August 22, 2004
write like you mean the words
More thoughts on “How To Be A Copywriter”:
5. Write like you mean the words.“Being creative” is not the hardest thing in the profession. That’s easy. Being able to write about the client’s product with conviction, with passion, with genuine humanity is far harder. Most copywriters can’t do it. If you can do it, there’s always going to be a market for it. Be excited.
Most copywriters “can’t do it” for one of three reasons:
1. They’re hacks. Hacks cannot write. Not really write. They can futz around, make it look fancy and professional, but they cannot inject it with any resonant human spirit, for they lost all that themselves years ago.
2. Their clients are idiots and won’t let them write properly. Any time they try to write like a human being (as opposed to a whipping-boy-for-cash) their client kills what they do and sends him back to his cube for a re-write.
3. Fear. Also commonly known as “practicality”. It’s a competitive world out there, so to minimize risk and avoid conflict with their paymasters, they pre-emptively rid their work of any human quality, and replace it with dry, blethering, meaningless corporate-speak instead. If you do this often enough it starts to feel normal.
I’m kind of hardcore about this. I think if you’re writing meaningless drivel, it’s your fault. You chose to work for this guy, you took his money, you cashed the check. It’s not his problem, it’s your problem. All writers are responsible for their own experience. “The client won’t let me” doesn’t cut it.
The thing to do is only work with people whose vision and character excites you. The only way to do that is to have vision and character yourself.
Part of the artistic process is letting go of your “common sense” and allowing the process to take you where ever it will.
Followed to its logical extreme, it might lead you places you never expected to go. While that makes for good prose — and interesting reading –it may not be ideally suited for a commercial application.
The rare, practical skill is when you can write with an artistic flair AND sell the product (or draft the legal motion or market comment, ir whatever).
Its more than creativity and passion — its Applied creativity.
Hugh, I think you need a #4: Ability to sell your idea.
To me, client used to be everything. Few people in my niche (trade shows) even know the definition of psychographics. But, once they let me sneak a couple of additional questions into their standard research questionnaires, they begin to understand how and why that information is critical.
Clients were how I got to use a photo of a baby in an ad for a highly technical design engineering show. Or an ad based on the five senses for a show on something as mundane as ceramic tile. Or a photo of a group therapy session for an online hotel booking product.
But once I had a decent book and a track record of success, it came down to my ability to sit across from a client and convince them that my ideas were better than theirs.
There are plenty of people I know who have the same or better copy capabilities as me. But, they don’t have either the clients who will give them creative freedom or the capability and conviction to sell their ideas when they do find one.