Unwritten Rules of Copywriting

Posted by mark March 16th, 2007

SOURCE

The Unwritten Rules of Copywriting : A Guide to Better Press, Poster, TV, Radio and Web Site Advertising
Author: Gettins, Dominic.
eBook ISBN: 9780585379494
ISBN: 9780749431419
Subject: Advertising copy.

RULE ONE: KNOW YOUR TARGET MARKET

WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?

The first goal is to visualize your audience sufficiently well to be able to address him or her in a natural way.
Pinpoint the people you’re talking to.

RULE TWO: DO RESEARCH

One of the other ways to get to know your target market is to read the papers and magazines that they read, or to watch the programmes they watch.
MEDIA
MONEY
PRODUCTION METHODS
SUBJECT MATTER

RULE THREE: ANSWER THE BRIEF

Having loaded your mind with information, you need to think seriously about producing some ideas. However, apart from making a note of any ideas that occur spontaneously, you should otherwise hold back.

The reason for this is to ensure you’re saying the right thing.

Say one thing and one thing only.
The particular message to be conveyed is normally presented in the form of a brief. This might included the proposition or promise, along with a few words on tone of voice, target market, factual support and various kinds of guidelines and mandatory requirements.

PLANNING

Context

Be aware of the market information and circumstances that created the brief.
You need to be something of a weather balloon. Raise your point of view above the day-to-day pressures, into the general forces that are acting on your client and your client’s market.

What are you saying?

Endlines

Having decided the all-motivating message, the next job is to seek the right expression.
It must relate to its present context, yet last as something for salespeople in the field to pin their colours to
Needs to carry what you want to say with the maximum possible distinction in the shortest possible number of words, not only to stand out from the rest, but also to stick in people’s minds.
Given so few words (usually) to play with, you need to try permutations of words, then analyse their subtle differences in meaning to find a word or phrase that clicks.

Planning conclusion

The manufacturer’s background may be worth investigating, but the best end result is likely to be a simple demonstration of this proposition.

TONE OF VOICE

Impacts on the identity of the company itself.
In organizations where the corporate or brand tone of voice is clearly understood, it’s a positive force for a company because it helps all its workers ‘live the brand’ as one marketing manager puts it.
The benefit is a clear and intuitive understanding by all staff of the goals and approach of their organization.

CAMPAIGNS

Discussing the bigger picture fully and deciding on or reconciling yourself to where a brand is going and where it needs to go.
Enables you then to produce advertising on a theme that will stay relevant in years ahead.
Holy Grail of advertisers.
It opens an exclusive channel of communication between you and your audience. Whatever you say, you have an immediate platform from which to say it.

This is where advertising and propaganda part ways. With a campaign, in which each execution sets out to demonstrate the campaign line, it is essentially saying that the proposition or promise is so true that it can be demonstrated again and again. Each individual execution adds to the stockpile of proof and deepens the relationship with the viewer. Some large advertisers do however use the techniques of propaganda, where a single execution or phrase is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as orthodoxy. Certain advertisements have been repeated almost in exactly the same form for decades. I’m thinking here of those for soap powders, medicines, cosmetics and shampoo brands of the sort owned by giant multinational companies. Being accepted as orthodoxy, or brainwashing as it could be known, is expensive, as the message really does have to be pretty constant. To be fair, such companies depend on steady and predictable growth rather than short bursts of brilliant success interspersed with possible failure. They have excellent products, vast research departments and global operations employing thousands of people. They don’t like unpredictability and are prepared to pay the price. For propaganda to work you have to simply outgun conflicting worldviews, and as the media environment becomes more unwieldy even the biggest of the multinationals have been found doing more interesting work.

RULE FOUR: BE RELEVANT

You are now in a position to write ads. You know the background, you know who you are talking to, you have information from the brief about the current imperatives and the direction you are travelling. You need nothing more. If you produce ideas using research into these areas you are certain your ideas will be relevant. Other areas might strike you as interesting, or fashionable, but whatever you write has to be there for a reason.

Don’t put things in on a personal whim, for example, because you find it funny or you saw it on TV last night.
Nor should you try to steer your copy round so that you can fit in a particular joke or clever form of words.
Nor should you put things in to fill up space or time.

Likewise, if you’re working in print and you feel you’re rambling on, donate the space to the picture. Or even to the surrounding white space. This is where the expression ‘Less is more’ actually means something. The more you leave out the more important the remainder appears and the more powerful it looks on the page.

Some things that seem obviously relevant should still be left out because they’re redundant.
Avoid saying the same thing in words as you’re saying in pictures.

Check the ticket of every fact you include. Does it have the right to be there? Is it there just because that’s the way it’s always done? Is it an important part of the product? Even if it is, is it an important part of the reason to buy the product?

METAPHOR

Advertising by metaphor often appeals to creative people (or to people trying to look creative) as it seems to make the subject or product appear important and deep. The trouble is it can also look self-conscious. What’s worse, it can also imply that the client is not prepared to speak directly.

When you consider the creative alternatives, it may seem that to bed your idea in reality is boring. However, you don’t gain much by using clever comparisons. The clever comparisons that do work often turn out on further examination to be not so fanciful after all.

RULE FIVE: BE OBJECTIVE

The rule is to find an objective fact that you can use as a reason to buy. The nearer you stay to relevant facts the less your words sound like puffery.

The ‘Need I say more’ approach is very persuasive and the best way of achieving it is with an unarguable demonstration.

RULE SIX: KEEP IT SIMPLE

There is a further distinction here to make between simple and simplistic. By that I mean that just because you have produced something simple does not make it good, for the obvious reason that it may be simple and unoriginal, simple and irrelevant or simple and boring. In those cases, simplicity isn’t the problem, something else is.

Keeping it simple, then, is all about judgement. It’s about being clear headed and ruthless enough to judge when your work is not good enough.

Be brutal. Let’s say you’ve produced a poster for a local solicitors’ firm. Ask yourself whether your poster would be intelligible to someone driving past at 40 miles per hour. If your answer is, ‘How could it? It’s for a solicitors’ firm!’ you’ve answered wrongly. You have to hypercritical.

Eschew surplusage. -Mark Twain

This quotation contains everything you need to know about the art of copywriting in the shortest possible number of words. Ultimately, keeping to this one can enact all the others:

Know your target — don’t waste time speaking to the wrong people.
Research — say only what is important.
Answer the brief — don’t waste time straying off-brief.
Be relevant — get rid of everything irrelevant.
Be objective — get rid of everything subjective.
Keep it simple — avoid all complication.
Know your medium — use the medium efficiently.
Be ambitious — don’t waste opportunities.

The phrase ‘eschew surplusage’ is, as you’ve probably noticed, also an over-compressed form of words, which wittily reinforces the point. This in turn makes it easy to remember, and shows the value of originality and, not to put too fine a point on it, talent.

TWENTY THINGS TO AVOID

While you’re getting there, it’s instructive to consider what exactly it is that you need eschew. Here are 20 things to avoid.

1. Complicated tenses

Especially conditional and passive tenses. Write something as you feel it should be said, then try and convert it into simple, declarative language. Once you’ve done that, you may find that you’re left with something very boring. If so, it can only be because the content is boring, so start again and say something interesting.

2. Complicated constructions

Embedded clauses (sentences within sentences) aren’t against the rules, but even a slightly complex piece of embedding is probably better off as two separate sentences. Again, write it as you feel it should be said, then try breaking it into simpler components if necessary.

3. Stresses

If you must underline, use italics or bold letters for effect, the effect obviously isn’t strong enough in what you’ve written alone. Exclamation marks, inverted commas and hyphens, where not demanded by grammar or convention, are probably being used lazily to imply tone of voice. Better to re-write so you don’t need them. Inverted commas in particular tend to look very weak when used in this way.

Why do standard letters from companies often pick a line out in bold? Does it mean the rest of the lines aren’t important? If you think the important line might be lost, get rid of clutter to the point where you feel it will be read without being emboldened.

4. Clichés

Clichés are phrases people have heard many times before. Why say something that’s been said before? There may be exceptions to the rule. A cliché may be poetic or apposite, have fallen into disuse or it may have some special character. It may introduce a note of familiarity into a difficult subject, but don’t worry. Fair or unfair, kill as many clichés as you can. They are not an endangered species.

‘A night to remember.’ ‘Family entertainment.’ ‘Go for a spin.’ ‘Up and down the country at this moment in time the winds of change are blowing.’ They are everywhere and it’s a good idea to kill as many as you can. It’s always nicer to hear something you haven’t heard before. If you can’t say something without a cliché, there must be something wrong with what you are saying.

Clichés can of course be legitimately subverted. I mention this because so many people use subverted clichés when writing newspaper or newsletter headlines that it would be inhumane to imply this was bad practice, but tread warily. As with puns (see the section on humour in the next chapter), subverted or cleverly modified clichés are usually just poor jokes.

5. Mini clichés

Mini clichés are inevitable. They are small phrases of no particular distinction, but so useful that they are greatly overused, eg, ‘on my way’, ‘as a matter of fact’, ‘here goes’. But compare these sentences:

The very occasional minor cliché can give a comfortable quality to a sharp, innovative piece of writing, but any more and it reads like mud.
One or two minor clichés can give a comfortable quality to take the edge off a sharp, innovative piece of writing, but any more and before you know it, it reads like mud.
The first one is clear of these mini clichés, the second has three. ‘One or two’ is comfy, ‘take the edge off’ is a bit wet, ‘before you know’ is pure stodge.

6. Long words

The only reason for including a long or little known word should be where absolute precision of meaning is vital. If the audience doesn’t know the word, what’s the point of being precise about the meaning? It’s surprising how long words cumulatively spoil the apparent simplicity of a sentence, or the timing and delivery of a line of dialogue.

Adopt a habit: every time you come across a long or fancy word in your writing, spend 15–30 seconds searching your brain for a one-syllable version. For example, even when I used ‘the very occasional minor cliché’ above, a moment’s thought could have shortened it to ‘the odd minor cliché’.

(Obviously when detecting these unnecessarily long words your sensitivity may be adjusted a little according to your audience. But not much.)

7. ‘-ing’ words

‘-ing’ words are bad. They’re not very bad, but it’s worth it to keep an eye on them. The one syllable they add to a word combines with the extra layer of complexity they usually bring to make them a valid target.

Compare these sentences:

This is part of the thinking behind avoiding ‘-ing’ words, as it’s surprising how using them can make writing unexciting.
This is why you should avoid ‘-ing’ words. They gum up your sentences.

There’s not a great difference between them in normal writing situations, but usually, if you’re a copywriter, you’re not in a normal situation. You may, for example, be writing for an actor to perform. If you were an actor, which of the example sentences would you rather perform in front of a thousand people? Which could you put more emotion into?

8. Dull words

Try to use active, exciting words. It’s another way of passing more information in a short space. It’s not that words like ‘went’ or ‘cut’ are that boring, but it misses the opportunity to say much about how a person went or cut. ‘Slid’, ‘bounced’, ‘waddled’, ‘jetted’, etc tell you more about a person than ‘went’; and ‘hack’, ‘dissect’, ‘bite’, ‘saw’, etc tell you more about an action than ‘cut’. By putting information there you may be able to leave it out elsewhere. Tony Antin, in Great Print Advertising, has a tip for headlines which is to arrange your line so that the most interesting words are at the beginning. This isn’t, however, an excuse for floweriness. Which brings us to…

9. Showing off your talent

What you say should be so interesting that the reader/viewer/listener is not aware of the cleverness of the writer. It’s true of most great ads. They work like machines, and appear to be written by machines. This is no coincidence. They often come from very well run organizations.

Flowery or over-written scripts are particularly bad if they are, like ads, intended for frequent repetition.

10. Showing off your knowledge

This is possibly an even more serious crime, at least in advertising. If you are writing dutifully on behalf of your client it is to be expected that your talent will show through accidentally to those who recognize such things. But any display of knowledge other than of the product, accidental or otherwise, is undesirable. Even using such words as ‘obviously’ indicate that what follows is obvious to the writer when it may not be to a reader. At the other end of the scale, a lapse into mannered use of Latin or French is the worst kind of pomposity in an advertisement, and should only be considered if your target market wears some kind of crown.

11. Those things you do

Most people have writing habits that show up in the use of certain words and phrases. These words and phrases are likely to be perfectly acceptable in themselves, but may be evidence of a personal style that is undesirable. From the consumer’s point of view the copywriter does not exist. The ad is a communication between them and the company concerned. Some of the great creatives do have personal styles that meld with that of the companies they become most associated with, but that is a genuine relationship, where they become the voice of a company in the same way as does that company’s CEO or Managing Director. But unless you, like Richard Branson, are the voice of the company, go with Bob Levinson, who said on this subject:

The writer who attempts to put his agency’s mark on the client’s copy or — God forbid — his own mark should pay with his job. And his severance should be that of his writing hand.

12. Bad dialogue

Avoid the following:

Names. For some reason, when people first write dialogue, their characters constantly name each other in every line. It doesn’t sound as natural as you think and it isn’t always necessary to name people at all.
Long speeches. Break up long speeches with short replies from others.
Children. Don’t give them adult words and sentiments to say.
Directions. As with exclamation marks and underlining in prose, you shouldn’t need directions in scripts. If you think you do need them, something’s wrong. Such things as character, delivery and emotional state should be self-evident. If not, re-write.

If you wish to create a naturalistic effect in dialogue, try and observe the way real people talk. Record a conversation and transcribe it. See how pregnant the words are with information about those talking, their state of mind, their personalities and their relationship with the person they’re talking to. Read your own script out loud. Are your words as rich with information? Or do you hear just your own voice trying to bring the subject round to the product in an awkward fashion? The goal is not to copy real speech, but once again to use word choice to pass more information about the person speaking.

13. Words and sentences

Avoid these. Actions speak louder. See your job not as a writer of words, but as an avoider of words. Adopt the habit of chopping something out completely if it isn’t working. Not as your last resort, but your first. Even if it is working, try cutting it out; it may improve things. People don’t wait for a full stop to stop reading. If they’re bored they’ll turn the page or flip channels after a few words. Get to the point. Once you’ve made it, finish, or make another one.

‘Kill your darlings’ is a well-known saying, apparently, in writing circles. The idea is that if you find you are personally in love with a joke, word or a line, a warning bell should go off in your head, to say cut it out and replace it with something better, or leave the hole. Maybe the joke, word, line was implied anyway. Maybe it changes the tone of the piece too much. It’s strange, but it works, if only because it forces you to be hypercritical.

14. Abstract words

If you must have words, keep them as concrete as possible. It’s just simpler to read about dogs, cats, plants, cheese, socks and the world of solid things than it is to read about suspicion, care, imperturbability and germination.

15. Mistakes

Don’t make them at all. Get used to re-reading what you write purely for grammar and punctuation. Check spelling with patience. Sometimes when you’ve got a hangover, any word can look odd. Don’t be too proud to look it up or to ask someone where a comma goes.

You can take certain liberties with grammar where there are positive benefits for comprehension. Advertising has championed the verb-less sentence. Like this one. To the purist, they represent what is wrong with advertising copy, but all these liberties are only taken in the interests of reader-friendliness. You mustn’t think they’re mandatory. Don’t break the rules of grammar for the sake of it or, even worse, to make something read like an ad.

People often start writing copy by mimicking ads they’ve read before and churn out verb-less sentences, subjectless sentences, sentences beginning with ‘and’ or ‘because’. It can be horrible. In comparison, it’s far better to be a purist. If you feel it’s lowering your high writing standards to break rules, don’t do it. Grammatical writing doesn’t have to be dull. After all, the rules of grammar are there for reader-friendliness in the first place. Don’t forget that people read far faster than you write, so what you write as a deftly phrased, three-word, verb-less sentence can completely lose its meaning when read at full tilt. The guarantee of a grammatical sentence is that it is self-contained, so your reader needn’t wonder what part of the previous sentence it refers to.

If you do employ a little grammar-perversion, make sure you re-read it several times, coming to it cold as often as possible, so that you know it doesn’t trip up your reader.

16. Sloppy layout

Avoid your copy or script looking ugly or unstructured on the page.
Your script or piece of copy should be a polished diamond on the page. It should be easy to understand and easy to use as a working document for actors and presenters.
Don’t cram your writing up too tight.

Airy line-breaks and wide margins make things easy to digest for a reader who may be stressed, ignorant, not concentrating, or drunk. (It’s possible.)
They also leave room for legible marks and comments by those who use your copy, such as actors, directors, typesetters, clients, sound engineers and many more.

17. Unintentional repetition

In press copy, avoid using the same word too often in the same piece, especially within the same paragraph. ‘And’s and ‘if’s don’t count. And intentional repetitions don’t count, as in the use of ‘count’ in the sentence you’re reading now. But most words do count. It’s amazing how tawdry it is to repeat a word like ‘however’ within four lines of saying it the first time. If it’s not intentional, it’s sloppy.

In dialogue, however, repetition is a valuable tool:

John: It’s amazing how tawdry it is to repeat a word like ‘however’.
Jane: I wouldn’t say ‘however’ in the first place.
John: What would you say?
Jane: I’d say ‘nevertheless’.
John: I wouldn’t say that.
Jane: Wouldn’t you?
John: No.

Ok, it’s not Alan Ayckbourn. But the repetition of ‘however’, ‘say’, and ‘would’ creates a sensation of flow in the speech, even though it isn’t realistic. Realism is not as desirable as you’d expect. Normal speech isn’t constructed to put across beautifully simple ideas with ingenious clarity, so it’s not always helpful to copy normal speech rhythms.

Some intentional repetitions could bear some scrutiny too. The technique of mindless repetition to make people remember what you’re saying is crude, and not as good as having a memorable idea.

18. Adjectives

Even adjectives can spoil the tone of straight-talking copy.
It just sounds like boasting. Adjectives can be difficult to avoid, as the whole point of most copywriting is effectively to boast about a product. But it’s better to say ‘Wipe-easy Toilet Rolls have a smell of pine,’ than ‘Wipe-easy Toilet Rolls have a heavenly smell of pine.’ One sounds like a selling point, the other, a sales pitch. Even when they’re not pitch-type adjectives, chop them out anyway.

19. Ambiguity

Once the grammar is simple and everything is perfect, don’t forget semantics:
John went to see the teacher in a wheelchair.
Everything is simple, but who’s in the wheelchair? Even if you think it’s obvious from the context, iron out the ambiguities. A moment’s confusion for the reader may not be disastrous, but it’s very lazy on your part. Unlike some of the above, ambiguity is utterly avoidable.

20. These words

Expertise.
Value.
Incredible.
Look!
Quality.
Bonanza.
Second-to-none.
Giveaway.

There are many others. They usually add nothing to an ad apart from a cheap glaze.

Simplicity is an end in itself.

RULES SEVEN: KNOW YOUR MEDIUM

RADIO
POSTERS

PRESS COPY
Linking
Humour
More on press copy
WEB SITES
TELEVISION

RULE EIGHT: BE AMBITIOUS

END OF RESTRICTIONS
IDEAS ON IDEAS

BE ORIGINAL

In The Western Canon, Harold Bloom wrote, ‘one mark of originality that can win canonical status for a literary work is a strangeness that we either never altogether assimilate, or becomes such a given that we are blinded to its idiosyncrasies’. He’s saying that great literary works often create something so strange that instead of rejecting them, we do the opposite and suddenly feel that we can’t imagine life without them. They are both strange and commonplace at the same time.

Posted in Copywriting

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