5 More Ways to Better Your Copywriting.
July 30, 2018Words truly have a magic quality. They mean many things and they can take you on journeys and draw out emotions that you sometimes don’t expect. They make us laugh … and cry. They can inspire the best and worst in us, and empower a generation to … not just do good, but strive for greatness.
In part two of this copywriting adventure Wildfire looks at some other ways to approach copwriting. In the previous essay we looked at many ways to communicate your message. How to use structure and punchlines. Employ headlines, sub-headlines, qualifying lines and words, throw away lines and catch phrases. All these elements like corporate taglines, calls to action, sign off lines, Branding statements, positioning lines, flashes, price points, copylines, pull-out headlines, quotes, testimonials, terms and conditions, plus just plain old informative copy and text – It’s a lot of things to consider.
So again, with all this fancy terminology, how do clients and creatives team up, partner with the agency and write great copy?
We Storyscape it! Find the story that holds this communication together so it’s memorable and punchy and delivers an idea that resonates with your target audience.
Below Wildfire demonstrates 5 more ways clients can master the basics of Copywriting:
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1. Write With The “Big idea” or The “Billboard Slogan” in Mind!
I’ll keep this one to a few quick lines. All great big ideas should be “short and punchy.” The english language is so diverse. In saying this, a good copywriter should find “The line” that rolls of the tongue and makes such a poignant point that it has that profound quality that makes you think twice. This is how you express your big ideas! This is how you create your “Billboard Slogan!”
Like a billboard, keep it to 10 words or less!
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2. Write As If Using “Verbs” Not “Nouns”.
Professionally, one of the biggest mistakes you can easily make in advertising is when a copywriter is either forced to or just uses or writes a straight up “marketing premise” or “marketing line” with no real vernacular or fun to it. It’s bland, has no poignancy, and is lazy writing. I guess you can if the marketing line grand and relevant and has some sparkle. If it’s pure strategic gold, then do employ it straight up.
But normally marketing direction and development are “the products”, “the benefits” or “the nouns” of marketing a product (The 5 or 7 “p’s” of Marketing). Advertising takes a different view or direction. Advertising strategies try to put these in action, demonstrate the premise, engage the imagination. Advertising copy is about elevating the idea making it “a verb” putting the product into scenario that highlights marketing strategy and by putting these “nouns” in action “adds value to it” creates the magic and taps into the customers psyche. Marketing should be the subtext and underlying strategy that everyone gets from your entertaining, profoundly clever and engaging copywriting.
I like to think that marketing and advertising strategies are both powerful entities in their own right. But they have duel purposes. Combined and working in partnership they have explosive chemistry. If Marketing has powerful “nouns” and advertising has the right “verbs” the combination of the two makes a “powerful sentence.” A volatile cocktail of imaginative fire-power, that will catapult your products to “the top of mind” in the imagination of your consumer or your target audience.
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3. Employing ‘Concrete Poetry’.
Back in design school I was given an assignment to do what was called “Concrete Poetry”. This was employing either fonts and typography to create a creative feeling around my poem. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about think of the sex pistol posters and writing. Using random letters torn from the pages of a newspaper to illustrate the destructive commentary and anarchy of “Punk Rock”.
Another way people create concrete poetry is by using emoji’s or illustrations instead of words. Like classic stickers “I love NY” using a love heart and now the very common place use of smilie faces in text messages. Concrete poetry is the graphic combination of images, font use, words and graphics to create a headline that has character or gives the reader an artistic sense of the premise or sets the tone of the advertising or communication.
Use words like “Visual Poetry!”
Concrete, as in employing a pattern, or shaping the typography of the words and poetry into an arrangement of linguistic style. Using elements in which “the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning” than verbal significance.
It’s just an idea, and it’s pretty out of the box! But as designers, art directors and copywriters strive for “originality” and “conveying meaning” and “graphic impact” the art of concrete poetry has a real thought provoking aesthetic. It’s true to both art directors and copywriters but as it relates more to the visual than to the verbal art, then there is a considerable overlap in the kind of product to which it refers this style of writing and you could say it truly “marries both visual and written together”.
Many advertising creatives and Television commercials have employed a style of Concrete Poetry over the years and animated graphically, headlines, and punchlines, and tag lines to explore the visual vernacular of ideas it was an art that for my personal interest didn’t want to leave out of a copywriting list.
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4. Using The Vernacular.
Using speech to convey your premise. Nothing is catchier than a great “one liner!” they stand out in movies, go viral, get reused and spoofed and last for years in people’s imaginations. If you are just telling a person about your product you are lecturing to them. If you are propelling the product or the premise or the idea in the vernacular or in the language that the audience relates to and they are taking up your language and engaged in the words then they are doing the advertising for you. If you can attach the ideas and concepts to your brand of product so much so that people adopt your copy lines as their vernacular to describe their want or need then you are on a winning advertising line. Tag lines are great for this and even product names can become household names. Think of “Hoover” vacuum cleaners, “Coke” is and always will be Coca Cola. American Express “Don’t leave home without it!” or like when CUB’s Victoria Bitter (VB) expressed thirst “For a hard earned thirst there’s VIC! That big cold beer is VIC! Victoria Bitter! Matter of fact I’ve got it now!” Anyway I think you get the picture. Writing has to be as friendly as your mate, your friend your lover or pet dog. You have to speak to people with emotion and passion and sometimes it doesn’t seem to make sense until you put all the pieces together.
Yet, putting a casual spin on a serious marketing proposition is a surefire way to get your message across. Finding a spoken rhythm to your language will get your message out there and into the language of the day. It get your copywriting used and reused time and time again. It helps position your brand and helps you quickly climb the ladder of competition in the customers mind to build brand loyalty and awareness. It also builds confidence and shows you speak from a place of confidence rather than coming across as patronising.
It’s about finding a “tone of voice” too! It’s like creating a subtle body language with the context of your words to deliver the emotive premise of your idea. There is an art to this, but if you only write with nouns and facts and stats and don’t get into the abstract nature of creative copywriting then you’ll never elevate your brand to great heights. It will always be run of the mill.
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5. Telling Your Story.
Finally, copy writing is all about telling a story. So you have to be setting a scene, exploring the problems people face and using your product to become the solution. There are many approaches to storytelling: Use of contrast, conflict resolution, juxtaposition, opposites, quality, timelessness, risk, courage, talking about supporting a cause or charity. An emotive story with compassion, love, action, graphic impact, suspense, horror, thriller, mystery and intrigue, sagacity and sarcasm. Use a cinematic story or history, character stories, presenters, sponsorships, use of associations and authority or credentials, Awards, celebrations and anniversaries, Milestones and accomplishments. Highlight partnerships and takeovers, innovations and science, breakthroughs or science fiction, fantasy, parody, analogies, humour and comedy. Take your pick, find your story and tap into your audience.
Not all, but a lot of marketers and clients these days, don’t seem to want either spend “the time” or “the money” exploring their product’s story. Is it because they don’t know how? or they are too caught in the “sales”, “discounts” and “gimmick” trap?
Developing these stories and investing in them over the long term. Consider the stories I have highlighted above. They bring emotions, personality and abstract ideas that bring to life products and services as if they were human. There is a connection then that a target audience can relate to and believe in. There is a communication that underpins the brand to the consumer.
It has nothing to do with ‘price’ or ‘discounts’ or ‘selling short’ your brand or product in any way shape or form. If a client can’t see the value in these stories and doesn’t want to invest in their brand story only their sales and discounts then really they are just acting like followers not leaders of industry. I guess in a way their story isn’t worth selling. But every product has a story and every premise has a way to better it’s position in the market using stories. So we hope to inspire this within our clients.
At Wildfire we hope to prove that copywriting is about “value adding through story” and writing. What these stories do is create a ‘depth of character’ that truly over time “endears your market” to the brand and gives your brand ‘value’, ‘self worth’ and ‘pride’ in the product that you as clients stand by.
Copywriting is about telling all of these stories and more. Employing all of these in our ideas and our strategies to harness the human emotions in our audience to see your products being used and desired in their everyday lives. At wildfire we understand this human attraction to brands and products that’s why we like to call our perspective on advertising “Creative Storyscaping.”
We hope these nine ways have inspired you to think differently about the power of words and copywriting in the future. Invest in your brand story and you will create certainty of your marketing and advertising outcomes.
