Body Copy Truth

I cam across these classics from Tim Delaney today. I was reminded of a truth:

Only about 2% of the general public will ever read your body copy. (If you're lucky.)

But over 98% of creative directors will read your body copy when you're interviewing for a job.

Creative directors want writers who can write.

So if you're a writer, use your book to prove it.

Writers, Be a Word Nerd

My mother corrects my grammar. Still. If I send an email and incorrectly use I as an object, she will let me know (I did the other day, and she let me know about it).

Odds are, you don't have my mother. But hopefully you have someone who has instilled in you the importance of understanding how to write well. (I'm speaking primarily to writers here, but art directors who can write are awesome.)

Great art directors know their craft inside and out. They get off on serifs and kerning and leading, and it irritates them if you use the words "font" and "typeface" interchangeably. But for some reason, a lot of writers place less importance on their wordsmithing. "I suck at drawing" is a terrible reason to become a copywriter.

You have to love words.

You should get all giddy when you hear a great line of dialogue.

You should actually enjoy reading books like the one above and not feel like it's torture.

If you see a word that you don't know, you should look it up.

You should write. A lot.

You should have favorite authors, favorite books, favorite sentences.

When you read and you come across a great sentence, you should stop and consider what makes it a great sentence. How is it constructed? What is the author doing? What choices did he/she make in writing the sentence that way?

I'm not saying you have to be able to diagram a sentence (though it can't hurt). And I'm not saying that everything you write needs to be grammatically correct. But like design, there are mechanics to writing. There are reasons a sentence is strong--conscious decisions that are made in its construction. If you want to be a decent writer, you need to have, at the very least, a working knowledge of these things. Ideally, you obsess over them.

Be a word nerd. We like nerds.

2013 Radio Mercury Award Winners

The Radio Mercury Awards have just been announced. Click here to listen to the winners.

Radio is still a writer's medium. It's awesome to have an A-list director and a crew of 100 working on your TV or video spot. It's really cool to see top designers and programers bringing a web site or an app to life. But it's equally amazing to sit down with a small team of a producer, a sound engineer, and some great talent to pull off something like this.

Headline Tips

A friend of mine recently asked if I have any tips for writing headlines. I'd never stopped to write any of them down. But here's my incomplete list of headline tips. Like all the advice on this blog, these tips are only sometimes true. Sometimes they will help you write great lines. And sometimes they will be wrong and lead you down paths of lameness. But most of the time, they'll be mostly true.

1. You’ll write 100 headlines for every one worth keeping.
2. Sometimes great body copy can come from the 99 lines that you threw out.
3. You can make your line stronger by removing every word that’s not absolutely necessary.
4. If you have an unusual visual, go for a straight-forward line. If you have a straight-forward visual, put as much character and personality in your line as you can.
5. Finally, we should all stop writing headlines that begin with “Finally,”
6. Avoid the “It’s like a (blank) for your (blank)” formula. This has been done to death.
7. Take inspiration from the Communication Arts Advertising Annuals. Over a decade later, I still think the 1999 and 2000 issues have the best collection of headlines.
8. Headlines are often easier to write when you have a visual in mind – or better yet, a specific photo or illustration tacked to your wall.
9. Don’t believe the platitude that negative words like “not” and “don’t” should be avoided.
10. Write the way people talk. Not the way companies or mission statements want people to talk.
11. Puns are not punny. See?
12. If you’re not having fun writing, you’re not in the right job.

Plagiarize Yourself

If you have a good idea that the client doesn't buy, don't throw it away. Keep it in a file somewhere. If it's really a great idea, you'll find a home for it sometime in your career. Aaron Sorkin's built an amazing reputation doing just that. Even when his copy's produced. Works for him.

I Can't Say Negative Words Aren't Bad

There are those who believe you shouldn't use negative words in advertising because it will repel the audience and decrease sales.

This philosophy isn't concerned with subject matter, but actual words. Words like not, shouldn't, don’t, and even but. These words, some believe, should be strictly avoided.

This is nonsense. Don’t buy it.

Here is a positive statement: I LOVE to hurt puppies and kittens.
Here is a negative statement: People who hurt puppies and kittens are NOT good people.

Generally, I think sentences are more interesting when you replace the word “but” with “and.” But as the following statements demonstrate, it doesn’t always work.

Here is a positive statement: I lost all of my money, AND I had to declare bankruptcy.
Here is a negative statement: I lost all of my money, BUT I won the lottery the next day.

Since the One Show’s book, Advertising’s Ten Best of the Decade, 1980-1990 is within reach as I write this, let's go old school for a minute and look at some classic ads that never would have survived the Don’t Use Negative Words philosophy. (Apologies for the Dutch-angle scanning.)

Chances are, had you not been looking for them, you never would have noticed the "negative" words in these ads. You'd merely have seen them as clear and interesting pieces of communication.

Some may say, Fine. But isn't it better to try and write headlines that don't use negative words just as a precaution? Maybe. But your job as a writer shouldn't be to avoid using certain words. It should be to write clear and compelling copy.

We all gotta learn something

I was just flipping through the Communication Arts first ever Typography Annual and came across this quote from one of the judges:

"We need to teach designers to be better readers. Once they respect the text, they'll want to set it well."

- Stephen Coles

I buy that. Here's my open question to you readers: What do copywriters need to do to better respect design and art direction?

You’ll probably forget this headline because I didn’t take the time to make it as short as it could have been.

One of the biggest “I’M JUST A STUDENT” banners you can wave is having headlines that are way too long. If you’re a copywriter, you need to learn to edit without losing meaning or interest. If you’re an art director, you need to do the same. The words may not technically be your responsibility, but it’s still your ad. And a too-long headline can bring it down.

Let’s say you’re doing ads for a paint store that delivers the paint right to your home once you've selected a color on-line. You could start with a headline like this:

You can paint a whole lot more when you don’t have the paint department getting in your way.

Okay. I get it. Kind of interesting. But can you trim it?

You can paint a lot more when the paint department’s not in your way.

Much shorter. But are the words “a lot” really necessary?

You can paint more when the paint department’s not in your way.

Do you have to use the words “You can” at the beginning?

Paint more when the paint department’s not in your way.

Let’s get our Hemmingway on.

Paint more without the paint department in your way.

Paint more without the paint department.

And how about this?

Paint without a paint department.

I'm not saying that's the absolute best one. But it's a little more interesting than the original. And certainly more succinct. You could argue that there’s more character, and more of a voice in some of the longer lines. Maybe. Sometimes longer lines will give you the voice you need. But I think there's plenty of character in the shortest line.

More often than not, headlines should be short. And writers and art directors need to be able to take long thoughts and edit them down to something someone might read and remember, even if they weren’t paying attention to begin with.

Carl Sandburg and Manifestos

We've written before about manifestos. A well-written one can be a powerful opening to a meeting. Couple it with the right art direction, and a great manifesto can sell a campaign, even if it never appears as a print ad or in the voiceover.

As a writer, you need to know how to write a great manifesto. As an art director, you need to be able to imbue those words with meaning, making them even more relevant. They may not be ads, but they can help you make and sell better ones.

Here's a poem I recently found by Carl Sandburg. I think this would make a great manifesto. Maybe for Corvette. Or Gulfstream. Or FedEx. (Any other ideas?) It's about the right length. What really works for me are the cadence and the imagery. Read it out loud. Poetry, like manifestos, is meant to be heard.

The silent litany of the workmen goes on –
Speed, speed, we are the makers of speed.
We make the flying, crying motors,
Clutches, brakes, and axles,
Gears, ignitions, accelerators,
Spokes and springs and shock absorbers.
The silent litany of the workmen goes on –
Speed, speed, we are the makers of speed;
Axles, clutches, levers, shovels,
We make signals and lay the way –
Speed, speed.

The trees come down to our tools,
We carve the wood to the wanted shape.
The whining propeller's song in the sky,
The steady drone of the overland truck,
Comes from our hands; us; the makers of speed.

Speed; the turbines crossing the Big Pond,
Every nut and bolt, every bar and screw,
Every fitted and whirring shaft,
They came from us, the makers,
Us, who know how,
Us, the high designers and the automatic feeders,
Us, with heads,
Us, with hands,
Us on the long haul, the short flight,
We are the makers; lay the blame on us –
The makers of speed.

(I'm not expecting any takers on this, but if any of you art directors want to art direct Sandburg's poem and submit it, we'll post it, tweet it, link to your portfolio and sing your praises.)

The New Yorker, iPhones, and Experimentation

Here's a video of a cover for The New Yorker created on an iPhone.

Consider how much detail the artist puts into what is eventually obscured. He makes a nice little crosswalk, a cue, and a couple taxis. Then covers them up with a hot dog stand and silhouettes in the foreground. That doesn't mean he was wasting his time.

I've seen a lot of portfolio students resist experimentation with tag lines, headlines, certain visuals and even media because they didn't think they'd be necessary. They have an idea of what the ad should be, so they stop working as soon as all their requirements are met.

The truth is you won't know if your ad needs a tag line until you've spent some serious time coming up with a sheet of the best lines you can write. And as much as you love that visual you came up with, you'll never know if it's the best until you try to come up with at least three that are even better.

Put in the time and effort to paint that crosswalk and those taxis. Who cares if they're covered up? It doesn't mean you wasted your time. It only makes the finished piece better.

Patton

Here's a short piece that has great copy and great art direction.

[The link to this video was removed. But you can watch it here.]

Simple message. Simple images. Simple brand positioning. So clear and deliberate, you either hate the guy's guts, or you sign on as a lifelong follower. No wonder this show won Best Picture.

Caveat: Before you decide to "pay homage" to this by ripping it off, you should know Nike and Dennis Hopper already did.

Thinking Visually

A copywriter in his first semester, on his first assignment came to me for advice. He was trying to do a campaign for Invisible Fence, a kind of invisible barrier for dogs. One of his ideas was to show a patch of ground the dog had mischievously dug up. The dog would be next to the big hole smiling innocently.

"The dog is smiling?" I asked.

"Yeah," said the student. "See?"

I looked at his Sharpied sketch. Sure enough, the dog was smiling.

"Would this be a photograph?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"What does a real dog look like when it's smiling? Not a cartoon dog. A real dog."

Pause.

"Oh."

He hadn't learned to think visually yet. Thinking visually isn't just coming up with a cool image and putting the client's logo in the corner. It's the ability to know exactly how an image is going on a page or a screen.

In portfolio school, some of my classmates had an idea for a TV spot that opened on a marshmallow.

"How are you going to know it's a marshmallow?" asked our professor.

"Because it's a marshmallow."

"How will I know it's not a pillow?" asked my professor. "Or a cloud?"

"Because it's a marshmallow! It will look like a marshmallow because that's what it is!"

But sure enough, when we saw that marshmallow on film, it was surprisingly hard to tell it was a marshmallow. Maybe Pytka could have pulled it off. But not us. We hadn't learned to think visually yet.

For more tips on thinking visually, read this article by Hal Curtis.

Emulation

Years ago I read an interview with Dan Wieden. He said for years he'd been trying to write like Whitman (or was it Faulkner?) and hadn't got it right. Maybe Wieden's new Levi's campaign fulfills that desire in some small way.

Today, I came across the I Write Like site which purportedly analyzes writing and compares it to other literary greats. A few paragraphs from one of our AE's documents came up with Arthur C. Clarke. Repbulicans and Tea Partiers might be thrilled to know Obama's Inauguration Speech came up as being George Orwellian. Text from a Sarah Palin speech I found online might have been penned by Dan Brown (minus the cliffhangers). Here's what I received after plugging in a block of text from my journal:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I've never read any of his work. I'll have to swing by Barnes & Noble tonight. Any recommendations?

My point in bringing this up is that it's good to emulate. It's good to have heroes. It's good to try to write or art direct or crack jokes or present to clients or play bass or start companies in the same way that some other great person is able to. Not forever. Just until you're able to find your own voice. (And we've got plenty of time to practice finding our own voices. I just read this morning that Carl Sandburg didn't become famous until he published "Chicago" at age 36.)

Who do you write like?

Poetry

Copywriters should read poetry. Frequently.

Unlike most prose, poetry is less about telling a story and more about using language in unexpected and creative ways. Poetry avoids cliches. It evokes images. It leads you down a path you hadn't planned on traveling.

And isn't that exactly what you want to be doing as a copywriter?

I love Sandburg and Rilke and Basho. Shakespeare's a given. Two of my contemporary favorites are Robert Hass and Billy Collins. Go read a collection. It will make your pen fantifluous.

Try this when you're stuck

Copywriters: the next time you're absolutely stuck with your copy, try this.

Go pick up a novel of a writer whose style you admire. Say it's Gabriel Garcia Marquez - he's about as unmarketing-speaky as you can get. Open to any page. Now copy the words of the page into your own notebook.

When you're finished, start writing what you need to say about your product. You'll find you're doing it in an entirely different voice.

You can do this with Hemmingway and Steinbeck as easily as you can with Dan Brown and David Sedaris. Go ahead and try some poetry. Works with Sandberg and Billy Collins, too.

Art directors: Do the same by taking out a big book on fine art. Or photography. Or design. You don't have to recreate each painting. But you can try. Sketch out the composition. Study the shadows and the colors. Spend a half hour with a particular style. Then jump into your layout while it's fresh in your brain.

Small trick. But it works. And it's much better than staring at a blank page, or just writing and laying out what you think the client (or the awards show juries) expect.

A Cautionary Tale

I once knew a creative team where the CW was a little more adored and befriended by agency leadership than the AD. Not sure why. Just the way it was. (It wasn't me, by the way.)

At one point, the AD was frustrated enough with the situation to talk to our ECD about it. Hoping to convey her neglected value, she even said, "That [redacted] campaign we just did? [It had just appeared in Archive.] That was all my idea! I did the whole thing - he just changed one word in the tag!"

The reason I know she said that was because within a week, almost everyone in the creative department knew she had said it. That she would claim sole authorship on some work, however accurate, seemed, as one coworker put it, "so unprofessional."

A couple morals to this story:

1. I have never heard a story about a creative who complained about anything to an ECD to their benefit. Complaining just doesn't get you anywhere. Not even when it's about your clients.

2. You can create an entire campaign on your own. But if you're part of a team, you did the work as a team. A little humility is a good thing. (And if your partner's not doing his or her share, it will show. You don't have to put up any red flags. Your CDs are probably more aware than you know.)

Part of being a good creative is being a great partner

Once, another copywriter asked me how I was getting along with my art director. I told him we worked well together. Sometimes we got in some arguments about the work, but we were always respectful of each other's opinions, and were quick to apologize to each other if the debate got too heated.

I took some pride in being able to argue with my art director. I felt it showed we both cared about the work. And to some degree, there might be some truth in that. But his reply made me see things differently. He simply said, "I don't want to have to fight with my art director."

I've since found, that if I'm arguing with my partner, it's either because one of us is being stubborn (which can be remedied). Or because we have drastically different tastes (and if you don't respect their taste, you should consider a change).

The Work Makes the King

Hugh Mcleod drew this. It appears in Seth Godin's book The Dip. And it's very true.

Except in advertising. At least the creative side. At least in agencies that care more about producing great work than about politics.

Creative advertising really is a meritocracy. If you have the best ideas, you get recognized. And the more you're recognized, the more control you have over where you work, with whom, and on what accounts. That's not to say you get a blank check, and can call your clients idiots. But being in demand gives you a little more control over your destiny.

So if you find yourself in this king/pawn situation, it's probably because someone isn't focused on the work.

Illustrated by Copywriters

Sometimes it's nice when an art director can write. Sometimes it's nice when a writer can draw. A lot of writers can draw. Not all, but some.

If you're a writer, and you've ever doodled anything, good or bad, please consider submitting it to Illustrated by Copywriters. It's a little side project I'm working on.

Thanks.

The Importance of Seconds PART 1

Here's an idea for the media folks (feel free to take this and run with it): The 33-second spot. And as a corollary, you can do the :17. I'm serious. Copywriters across the country would be pitching in their own coin to help the client buy them.

But odds are, as brilliant an idea as that is, nobody's going to take me up on it anytime soon. So here's my advice, something I've learned through painful experience: TIME YOUR DAMN SPOTS!

Aside from a pen and paper, a stopwatch might be your most valuable tool. Get one. When you write copy, BEFORE you present it, read it out loud and use that stopwatch. If it's over :30 cut it. Actually, if it's over :25, cut it. Allowing for a decent pace and pauses will give it character in the end. And when you read it, don't read it with the goal of hitting :30. Read it like you want it to be read by your announcer or actors.

I can't tell you how many times a writer comes into my office with a half page of copy for a :30.

"How long is this?"
"30 seconds."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"You timed it?"
"Yeah."
"Out loud?"
"Well, kind of."
I pull out my stopwatch.
"Read it. Out loud."
They do. They read fast. As they get close to the end, they get faster and faster. They stop breathing and the last couple sentences come out like they're speaking in tongues, "andforminationvisitourwesiteatredna dot com!"
"34 seconds."

This is so simple to do, but it happens all the time. Or, maybe more often, they write a nice script that clocks in under :30, and when the client makes them add stuff, they're so enamored with their original copy that they don't cut any of it.

Cut it. It will be painful at first, but suck it up and get over it. Learn to love that pain. Half of good writing is good editing.

Believe me, there is nothing more embarrassing than being on a set, ready to roll, with actors and crew and client and a director all standing by, and having the script supervisor tell you that she keeps clocking your script at :32, and you having to edit your script right then and there. That's pressure you don't need.

Stopwatch, my friend. Stopwatch.