JAMES kELSo oPYWRITER
For hire, by the day, by the job, by the light of the silvery moon.
HOW TO READ COPY
When you, as a client, receive a piece of copy from your agency or copywriter, here’s what to do.
1 Put your pencil down.
2 You’re not being invited to mark the copy, like a headmaster correcting an essay.
3 You’re being invited to read the copy. Read it, top to bottom, neutrally, just as you might an item in a newspaper. Any errors you spot will still be there when you read it for a second time - with a pencil in your hand.
4 The rules for reading are simple: approve, disprove, and don’t try to improve.
Wow! That’s a bit harsh isn’t it? Is this JK showing his ugly side? (From the kitchen: ‘what side would that be?’) No, this is advice from a venerable Ad Guru, one of many to whose coat tails I have clung down the years.
But surely ‘not to try to improve’ is going a bit far? No it isn’t. Here’s why.
We’re talking writing, not content. If you spot a fact that’s been left out, of course it should be included and the copy ‘improved’. But if you tinker with the writing, you risk other damage. Words don’t carry meanings like railway wagons carry coal. They’re not interchangeable like Lego bricks. They’re more like notes in music. Change one note of God Save the Queen and the new note, perfectly good in its own right, changes the tune. Change one word in a sentence and you risk disturbing the, rhythm, the music, the flow, the euphony.
Hang on, isn’t that a bit fanciful? Euphony and all that! After all, it’s only a bit of ad copy? No. And again, here’s why.
Let’s say you object to a certain adjective in the copy and you suggest an alternative (let’s hope there aren’t too many adjectives, they’re usually a bad sign). The point to remember is the copy is not written for you. It’s written for the reader after you, the real client, your customer. And that customer may well care for the original adjective.
Ah, you say, but they may care equally for your alternative. True. But now, instead of listening to one voice, they’re listening to two. Next, your boss may want to put an oar in and change something else. Then the Chairman wants a say. Soon a whole choir is yammering in the punter’s ear. The result, as Ad Guru puts it, ‘is a piece of text that has the dead hand of the client all over it.’
Remember this: it’s not what you say that counts; it’s what the reader does, in response to what you say.
You hear examples of communication going wrong every day. Interviewers on radio demanding yes-no answers to questions that can’t be answered by yes-no; and in the process arousing sympathy for the interviewee, the exact opposite of the intention.
And how often have you heard a politician say ‘we need to get our message across’? No, Mr. Politician, you don’t need to get your ‘message’ across. What you need to get across is something subtler. You need to send a stimulus that will make people embrace your message, and make them your accomplices - a much harder thing to do.
Apple have done it, gaining an almost religious following by ‘Changing the world, one person at a time’. VW did it before them. It’s why Saatchi’s famous ‘Labour isn’t working’ was such a great poster. In that brief, the message ‘to be got across’ was vote Conservative. Reducing the message to a sub-head and sending instead, a stimulus, moved a whole country.
If you brief me by saying ‘we need to send this message’, I think go to the post office. If you say you want ‘punchy copy’, I think Muhammad Ali. If you say you want ‘snappy copy’, I think badly trained dogs. If you ask me to ‘make the product the hero’ I think, no, make the user the hero.
But if you say you want persuasive copy, I’m up for it. Can’t wait to have a go.
Among my many faults as a copywriter, the main one is not having had enough good ideas to make me rich, famous and a household name. I'm not even a household name in my own household! But another fault is I don’t fight hard enough for my copy. I give in too easily. I struggle a bit, then give way. I acquiesce. I let you have your way. I may think to myself, I don’t agree, but anything for a quiet life. I then do what I’m told, but make sure that piece of work doesn’t go in my specimen folder.
Frankly, your product or service deserves better than that.
A famous screenwriter once said to a film studio exec who was butchering his script: ‘Gosh, I wish you’d been there when the page was blank!’
The late, great Bill Bernbach, who seems to have been airbrushed out of history, taught the world powerful copy could be written in a whisper, as well as a bellow. So let me whisper this: if we work together, I’ll promise to defend my corner, if you’ll promise to approve, disprove, and not try to improve. Deal?
One final thing. Bill Bernbach also added a note to copywriters facing criticism, saying:
‘Don’t forget, it is just possible the client might be right!’