The Copy (and it's writers and clients)

The Copy. What I call "The Copy" is what most mortals can achieve doing after a few years and a bit of luck. It's pretty much like "The Cool" sans....well The Cool. This means sitting on an agency or as a free lancer, working for respectable clients, albeit with a limited budget and aggressive timelines. It mean instead of having a few months to update or even invent a brand identity, you have 2 weeks to come up with a company's campaign web site or subway poster campaign, writing and proofing 3-5000 words, with the aim of increasing the sales of selling tooth paste, dinkey toys or laundry detergent. If you are lucky that is. Because most of advertisement isn't even about launching campaigns, contests or new project. Most of all it's just about the company or product wanting to remind the market that "Hey, we still here and we are still producing that chocolate flavored milk that you used to like!" These customers will also typically supply you with Style Guides, and will be very conservative about how you implement it, Basically these customers want their ad campaign to blend into the general message environment of every day life, working mostly on an unconscious level of their target audience. Possibly supply a bit of entertainment while waiting for the commuter train. Or simply relay the message that their outlet off the highway has the best prices on last years Mac Books or Nikon cameras.

And still, if you are lucky, you will be part of the creative process from the outset, from idea to production, working in contact with AD:s, Photographers and so on. If you aren't lucky, some company executive, usually a Marcom of the client, has decided he is copy editor material and gives you a text to "sexy it up". This usually never works because marketing and advertisement are related, but distinct arts. And when a marketing director gives you a text, it's because he believes he is a great writer, and will be decidedly unhappy when your "sexed up" version contains none of his original wording. You need a lot of patience and no ego at all if you are going to take these gigs. If you aren't lucky you may also receive a style guide and a fact sheet and nothing else, and have nobody come back on your questions until one day before deadline. Or you may receive a fixed design with text boxes and pictures and being asked to fill it with text.

"Deadline?"
"Tomorrow. The Marcom has writers block, it's a mess, and the agency won't take our call since we decided to go with the Marcom's happy frog design instead of theirs!!"
"Fact sheet?"
"No idea, but I'll send over a bunch of PDF:s I found on the Marcom's PC!!"
"How do I get in touch with said Marcom?"
"No idea, but if you get hold of him tell him to get in touch!"

Klick. You're in for a long night. Especially when you go to the server and find a bunch of uncompressed Indesign files, 36 GB each.

Being a copywriter isn't half as glamorous it's made to be. Not even a tenth. But it's often great fun, and it's the hallmark of a goof copywriter to be able to make something interesting out of a tooth paste ad campaign or a web site for a card board box manufacturer. Tooth paste spraying over a victorian mirror to the booming sound of Beethoven. In slow motion. Pirates setting sail over their card board boxes to the roaring sound of the canon balls and the tempest! No. The client is not going to go for that. In fact he'll be insulted if you mention it. But you had a great time thinking about it. And in a toned down version, it might be the beginning of and idea.

"The Cool"

Yesterday I promised to supply an explanation to the name of this blog, which would also describe one possible take on the 3 levels of the Copywriting trade at the start of the digital millennium. I will keep this promise, albeit in installments, seeing as I wouldn't want to bore any readers I may have, nor myself, by posting novel length diatribes. Keeping in mind that the cut-up is a rather rough one, here we go, starting with the heavenly level of Copywriting.

"The cool"

Most young and hopeful copywriters, fresh out of Advertising School (or in my case, fresh out of a bus garage), dream of ending up at a famous and very cool advertising agency, working for customers with world famous brands and all but unlimited advertisement budgets. Best case scenario, these world famous companies will also have a taste for innovative market promotion, wanting to portray themselves as young, hungry and aesthetically brave, as opposed to companies who feel a more conservative approach is preferable, merely looking to reinforce a brand identity already hewn in stone, who will seek to cast their promotions forms clearly demarcated by historically set parameters. Should you land such a job fresh out of school (or bus garage, believe me i did not), then you can consider yourself lucky. Working for such an agency, the projects you deal with will be well planned, excessively budgeted, and given a generous time frame. Let's say for instance that a beer brand wants an Ad Campaign. After initial contact with the client and brainstorming ideas with the creative team that may include Creative Directors, AD:s, other Copywriters, Graphic designers and so on, you start researching the subject.

Note book at hand, you read up on previous beer campaigns, about the art and history of brewing, the sociology and semiotics of beer drinking, how it's been portrayed in popular culture over the ages, and any other angle you find interesting. Every time a novel thought pops up in your head you jot it down, and every once in a while when you see ways to connect these ideas, pictures or sentences, you work on flow charts and sketches for a blue print, which polished form may or may not end up in the campaign. Between this and testing your ideas with the others working on the campaign, getting frustrated, and killing a scary amount of darlings, you will eventually end up with a few proposals, and in the end with a customer green lit campaign that will make a killing for the customer, and a profit for the agency.

And if you are talented and hard-working, you may even have managed to produce the highest level copywriting, what I call "The Cool". "The Cool" can be supported by graphics, TV Spots or directors, but it's most famous expression is the tagline, a concentrate of the brand message, formulated in such a way that it cuts through the constant media buzz that surrounds us. and sticks. But "The Cool" is not just any tagline or slogan. The perfect one is the one that will stand the test of time, that will find new audiences in new generations and that is open to reinterpretations in new campaigns and by new advertisers. "The Cool" will be remembered for years to come, spoken about in bars and agencies, rehearsed at Advertising Seminars, and in many iconic instances, will actually survive the product or even the company advertised. My current favorite is Carlsberg's "Probably the best beer in the world", that's been around since 1974 and has been reinterpreted and re-imagined in a host of ad campaigns, in medias ranging from Newspapers to Internet video spots. But there are host of others, such as "The best a man can get", "Think different" or "Don't leave home without it". Can you nail the brands?

It's.....a carousel!

Unfortunately, very few of us mortals will ever end up with these agencies or clients. There are basically two reason for this, one reasonable and one not very much so. To begin with, competition to work in these agencies – or any agency nowadays – is murderous. And if you're good, chances are that someone else is better or more qualified. The other, not so appealing problem, is that Advertising Agencies are their own brands and sub cultures, tending to place high importance on hiring people the believe will contribute to the brand as well as culture. Hence, being young, hip and good at selling yourself may be equally important to being good at what you do. Being good at selling yourself is however a different art from selling with text. Obviously, it is perfectly doable to reach "The Cool" without the super agencies or the big budgets, but is certainly helps. For most of us, including me, aiming for "The Copy" or "The Content", the subject on future posts, is a more worthwhile undertaking.

Further reading can be obtained by googling "famous taglines". Although at least half of the ones usually listed has nothing to do with "The Cool", and should rather categorized under headlines such as "Awful", "Heinous" or "Ghastly".

Until then.

The Cool, the Copy and the Content

Dear reader,

My name is Ofer. I'm an Orthodox Jew and a Copywriter and 7 months ago, at the age of 40, I decided to switch countries, from Sweden – by an ex girlfriend dubbed "the Polar Hinterland of Hip" – to Israel, a country that is anything but – still though, I wouldn't live anywhere else. In Sweden I had a small business, still have by the way: www.cblind.se, but with the move came a certain loss of contacts, as well as customer momentum, and I'm finding myself in a situation of – by now a bit desperately – searching for employment or new gigs, or both. In the meantime however, I thought that I'd use the unusual amount of spare time suddenly on my hands, to start a blog documenting my thoughts about the craft of copywriting and selling via text, as well as my ideas on the ad business in general, it's ups and its downs, it's nowadays explosive spread into ever new medias and platforms, and the changes that this engenders. Basically, this is a blog about the ad men circus in the digital millennium, and about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

If you can put together copy like this architect
 put together these houses, you are good.

In my next post I thought I'd start out by explaining the name of this blog, which also constitutes The 3 Levels of Copywriting, as I see them roughly emerging in the digital village: The Cool, the Copy, and the Content.

Until then. Drive carefully.