I once had a couple portfolio students who did a really cool campaign. The visuals were great. The tagline tied everything up perfectly. They could have kept it there. But they wanted to push it. So they tried writing headlines for each ad. And the lines they wrote were good and funny and well-crafted.
They printed out the campaign with and without the headlines. And we all sat down to take a look. And we ultimately decided the ad was better without the headlines. But just barely. It seemed such a shame to cut such scintillating copy from their campaign.
But what an awesome position to be in. It wasn’t a huge surprise when these ads were featured on Adcritic’s homepage before the team had even left portfolio school.
What did they lose? Some great lines? Sure. But even golden copy isn’t gold. You’ve got more ink in your pen. More ideas in your brain. You’re not wasting nonrenewable resources.