What is a copywriter today – brand builder, click maximiser, data interpreter or just a tweet machine?
Writing copy that is optimised for a ragbag of different media and a variety of different purposes can become antithetical to the idea of a single, simple brand identity – argues Bob Hoffman
There was a time when being a copywriter was a lot simpler. It wasn’t simple, but it was simpler.
We would be given a stack of documents about 1,000 pages deep – primary research, industry information, briefing documents, strategy hypotheses, meeting memos, competitive category ads, focus group transcriptions and no shortage of opinions and mandatories – and our job was to turn this mess into 30 seconds of persuasive copy.
It was a rigorous exercise.
There were some copywriters who could never master the art of rummaging through a pile of paper to find the essence of what needed to be said. There were some who were very good at finding the essence, but not very good at finding an interesting way to say it. The very best could do both.
But the burden of being a copywriter today is much less straightforward. Today’s copywriter is not really sure what she is. Is she a brand builder, a click maximiser, a storyteller, a community builder, a content provider, a conversation starter, a data interpreter, a three-times-a-day tweet machine?
How do you keep true to a brand essence when you are ‘optimising’ for so many different objectives?
In fact, in the wrong hands, writing copy that is optimised for a ragbag of different media and a variety of different purposes can become antithetical to the idea of a single, simple brand identity. The tactical invariably drives out the strategic.
When that copywriter took a thousand pages of input and reduced it to a simple, singular proposition it became pretty clear how a campaign could spin out of it. In fact, the iconic “1984” spot by Apple started its life as a print ad that never ran. The concept superseded the media tactic.
But how does a focused brand strategy survive an hourly demand for “content?” Just take a look at the drivel that is coming out of McDonald’s social media machine and try to find anything resembling a brand strategy.
There is a big difference between a being a novelist and being a copywriter. A novelist starts with a simple idea – ‘war is hell’ – and expands on it to create a sprawling landscape. The copywriter does the opposite. He takes a sprawling landscape and, if he’s any good, reduces it to a simple idea. Or at least he used to.
What does a copywriter do today?
Bob Hoffman has been the CEO of two independent agencies and is the author of the Ad Contrarian blog, where this post first appeared
Nice idea that – the transition between traditional copywriter and modern novelist. From reduction to emergence. Deserves more exploration.
ReplyToday’s copywriter is made not by his/ her ability to mine diamonds from coal. Their life is dictated by fools who know nothing of what the job requires: people with titles like project manager and HR/talent executive.
ReplyIt doesn’t matter how you define it.
ReplyIf you have what it takes, a copywriter is the best job in the world.
You are the creator and guardian of the brand’s personality and voice.
Do it right, you get to go from junior writer to CD in 4 years or less, make more money than writers in PR or publishing and get to leave the office while your art director is supervising shoots or checking art work at 2am.
On the right accounts, you chalk up air miles without having to write contact reports, tally & square the production estimates to invoices or chase clients for payments.
Effort to dollars, there isn’t a more lucrative no pressure creative job in the agency.
At least it once was.
The downside is that the fun ends the day one becomes a CD and is part of management.
“Best job I ever had?”
Were you a piano player in a whorehouse before?
“….you get to go from junior writer to CD in 4 years or less…”
sorry to tell you but in four years you don’t even learn a fraction of the skills required to be a proper CD. but don’t let me burst your bubble.
Reply“Best job in the world”
ReplyWhat a depressing thought.
“This is a good as it gets folks.”
My answer to Bob’s question “What does a copywriter do today?” is “struggle”, for reasons I outlined in an article I wrote a year or two back (below).
Nothing’s changed since then. The idiots are still running the asylum, and the real value creators – the copywriters – being gentle, sensitive folk who prefer to let their work do the talking continue to be sidelined, pigeon-holed, devalued and under-used, to the detriment of the entire marketing industry.
—
It’s been 25 years since I got my first job as a copywriter. Even then, the name seemed anachronistic, something out of the pre-TV, pre-radio dark ages. But it was in common usage, and everyone in the industry – agency side and client side – knew and valued what we did.
Now, I’m not so sure.
Over the past 15 years, the line between copywriter and other types of writer has become blurred, and entire departments of smart, ambitious marketers are missing opportunities and wasting money as a result.
Copywriting is a skillset still understood and appreciated by an older generation of marketer. They know that in agency-land, for all the researchers, analysts, strategists, planners and suits involved in developing and refining a brief, it is the copywriters (with a nod to the contributions from our dishevelled comrades across the cubicle, the art directors) who get their heads around the whole thing, absorb and digest it and generate the real value – the customer-facing hypotheses we call ideas.
That generation has moved on, moved aside or moved up. Some now head the marketing departments of large organisations, concerned, no doubt, about the increasing complexity of the challenges their teams face, but remote from the day-to-day proliferation of suppliers and dilution of talent.
Meanwhile, many marketers who entered the industry since the late 90s have never had the opportunity to work with copywriters, and so do not understand the role, or the value we create.
Why not? The breakdown began with the consumerisation of the internet and the concurrent expansion of marketing’s sphere of influence.
Waves of design, digital, experiential, social and other types of specialist talked their way into the brand-sanctum, positioned the ad agencies as old-school, and successfully diverted budgets into their own areas.
Mainstream agencies responded to the threat by bolting on their own specialist arms, with advertising losing prominence in the service proposition. The leaders of these specialists never understood the copywriter’s role, and the skillset became lost among the proliferating roles and titles.
Meanwhile, the digital revolution had gutted the business model of the print media and hordes of hungry journos migrated into marketing to pay the bills. They found sustenance satisfying the soaring demand for content from clients expanding into new channels.
As a result, a generation and a half of marketers have spent their careers dealing with specialist suppliers who have no understanding of the value of the copywriter’s generalist skillset.
They don’t know what they’re missing.
They confuse copywriters with all those other writers (technical, PR, blogger, content creator, journalist, account manager with a spellchecker), assume all are equal, and expect no more of any of them than volumes of content to push into already choked channels, never pausing to ask if this is, in fact, a good investment.
I’d argue that marketers struggling to populate an ever-expanding range of channels with material, and those juggling multiple specialists across single projects, have never had a greater need for the copywriter’s skills.
You see, most writers are paid to write more. The copywriter’s skill lies in writing less.
If you are a journalist, used to an editor assigning you to write a story to a fixed word count, that is what you deliver. If you are in PR, churning out another release, you aim to fill a page or two. If you are a blogger, you write as much and as often as you can. For these writers, volume is expected, and rewarded.
All this contributes to the glut of content. No-one questions whether more content is needed, because volume = income. Even the good stuff – because many of these writers are talented – is in surplus.
What’s the answer? Less. Actually, as any copywriter will tell you, it always was.
Copywriters don’t sell words by the kilo. We don’t set out with fixed quantities in mind, or quotas to fill.
Where other writers use shovels, we use scalpels.
If copywriters got paid like journalists, Dan Wieden would have earned $3 for writing Just Do It.
The NSW Government spent – over a few years – upwards of $5 million promoting a single word that I uncovered during desk research and wrote into a series of radio, TV and outdoor ads targeting driver fatigue: microsleep.
This single word unified a multi-channel campaign, resonated because it put a name to a shared experience, and crystallised a compelling motivator for behaviour change.
It took a copywriter’s world-view, skillset and instincts to do that.
So here’s a suggestion for marketers who want better solutions to the challenge of generating ROI in a complex, multi-channel environment: seek out agencies that put copywriters at the centre of the problem-solving team, brief them on the big picture, get them to define the storyline and then let the relevant specialists fall in behind.
You may find you get ideas of such simplicity, clarity and integrity that you no longer need to tick and fill all the boxes, and you can side-step the cost of duplicating the me-too content your competitors are funding.
You might find that less is, once again, more.
ReplyVery well said. Thank you for this.
ReplyThis is beautiful.
ReplyWith this simple, profound and accurate thesis, Alex France proves the biggest dilemma facing copywriters. It’s not enough to have a brilliant idea, there needs to be someone at the other end who is willing to buy it….or buy into it.
ReplyHave your say