Copywriting That Works!

Chapter 1: Getting Started

While not ubiquitous, it feels as if advertising is everywhere—in newspapers and magazines, on radio, TV and the web, on billboards, in subway stations, on taxicabs. Even above urinals and on washroom cubicle doors.

Before you read this book and try the exercises in it, take a moment to think about your impressions of advertising and copywriting. Perhaps a good place to start would be with your definitions of advertising and copywriting. How would you define advertising? How would you define copywriting? When thinking about your impressions of advertising and copywriting, a list of questions may include:

- Why do companies, government agencies and not-for-profit organizations use advertising?

- Where and when do they advertise?

- What is the purpose of advertising?

- What does copywriting mean to you?

- Where do you see copy?

- How do you feel about advertising?

- What makes an advertisement effective? Ineffective?

Is it different for print ads versus broadcast (radio and TV) commercials?

- Why are you reading this book? How do you plan to use it?

Advertising Defined

There are many definitions of advertising. Most of them are variations on a theme:

Meant to draw public attention, advertising is the paid public promotion of a product, service, business, organization, or idea by an identified sponsor.

While the public frequently views advertising as encompassing all forms of promotional communication, most advertising practitioners limit it to paid communications conveyed by a mass medium, such as newspapers or TV. Direct marketing, such as direct mail, is a highly targeted form of advertising. Advertising is distinguished from other forms of promotion or marketing—including publicity, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion.

The overall promotion or marketing mix elements include:

- Advertising: Print—magazine, newspaper, billboard, transit, point of sale (POS) and so on; Broadcast—radio and TV; Online—banner ads, pay-per-click ads, electronic newsletters, etc.

- Direct Marketing: Mail, Telephone, Email or Fax Broadcast

- Public Relations: Media Relations (Press Release, Press Kit), Publicity/Sponsorship

- Sales Collateral: Sales or Product/Services Brochure, Product Catalogue, Price List, Website

- Guerrilla Marketing: Social Engineering—in person or online

- Direct Sales Force

Copy is used in all forms of promotion (many salespeople follow scripts). In fact, copy is used in every major area of business, such as the writing of sales letters, brochures, business plans, websites, email, newsletters, employee communications, and so on. However, the use of copy in a document does not make the document an advertisement.

For the copy to be considered advertising copy, it must be part of a non-personal, paid communication that uses a particular medium to promote goods, services, companies, organizations, or ideas to the public or to a business audience.

The advertiser targets a specific business or consumer group, also known as the target market. Often the advertising aims for the target market’s heart—though the head and the wallet are of vital interest to the advertiser.

Target Market - A defined segment of the market that is the strategic focus of a business or marketing plan. The members of this segment possess common characteristics and a relative high propensity to purchase a particular product or service. Because of this, the members of this segment represent the greatest potential for sales volume and frequency. The target market is often defined in terms of geographic, demographic and psychographic characteristics.

The goal of advertising, generally, is to inspire action. Ad copy, however, has a hierarchical function. Before an ad (or ad campaign) can inspire action it must:

- Capture the attention of the target market

- Hold the interest of the target market

- Alter the target market’s attitude

Then, and only then, can it motivate the target market to take action—an action that is defined by the company sponsoring the ad or the advertising campaign. That action, as we shall see, is not always Buy now!

Advertising Campaign: A series of advertisements that share a single or similar theme or concept. Ads in campaigns may appear in different media across a specific period of time and use different words and images, but for the ads to be part of a campaign, its words and images must be related to a unifying theme.

While you could say that the main function of the ad is to motivate action (we will look at this more closely when we discuss the purpose of the ad), you must capture the attention of the target market first. If you do not make the reader, viewer or listener sit up and take notice, you will not be able to interest your audience. In other words, if you do not capture attention, then your audience will not read, view, listen to, or otherwise hang around to absorb your message. If you fail to interest your target market, you will not alter their attitude—move them from unaware to aware, from negative to positive, from positive to a true believer. And if you cannot alter (or reinforce) attitude, you cannot motivate readers or viewers to take action—as defined by the purpose of your ad.

The Role of the Copywriter

Can the copywriter do all of that? Given proper support by the graphic designer and media buyers, yes. It’s not an easy task but, in many ways, that is what this entire book is about.

When it comes to advertising, copywriters produce the written or spoken elements of ads. It is the job of the copywriter to compose the language of the advertisement in such a way that it makes the promoted product or service desirable or memorable—at least as far as the target market is concerned. Although they are often involved in the larger creative issues, such as developing the concept or hook on which graphic artists, photographers and the directors of commercials hang their efforts, copywriters focus on the words.

Concept is Critical

For instance, IBM ran an ad for its ThinkPad notebook computers that portrayed a ThinkPad with a deployed airbag. The headline/subhead read:

The IBM active protection system is like an airbag for your notebook.

It protects your data against accidents when you are on the road.

What is the concept? Protection. Why protection?

People who buy portable computers are often concerned about dropping them and losing data, or having someone steal them and access their data. So the concept—protection—appeals to the target market.

To illustrate protection, IBM uses a metaphor. Protecting data on the ThinkPad is compared to something most people understand: airbags. Can you see how the airbag metaphor and the image (a ThinkPad with an airbag deployed from its screen) spring from that concept?

Can you see how the concept itself is related to the concerns of the target market, the mobile businessperson?

Airbags are found in cars. Cars move. The target market is mobile. Airbags offer protection. Notebooks have data that needs to be protected. So the copy and the image, working in harmony, convey the concept or hook.

Concept: The general idea behind a slogan, pitch or advertising campaign. A general statement of the idea behind the advertisement.

Without a concept or hook, you can still have an ad. However, you will have a poor ad that does not resonate with your target market. You may also have a difficult time creating and writing an ad that does not start with a concept, because, as you will see, the hook or concept lets you create a theme that runs through your ad and connects the elements of the ad to the ad’s objective and target market.

In short, the images and words used in the ad all spring from the concept. The concept is the copywriter’s best friend.

Purpose of Advertising

Notice, I’ve written a lot about advertising and copywriting without mentioning the S word: Selling. Many people believe the purpose of advertising is to sell. But how many ads have motivated you to buy? How often have you seen an ad and immediately bought something? Not often, I’m sure. Otherwise, you would be shopping non-stop.

While the purpose of an ad can be to sell immediately, ads are often used to plant seeds that germinate the next time a consumer is shopping or in need of something. They do this by educating, informing, and building brand awareness or positioning—associating a particular image or emotion (one that appeals to the target market) with a brand, product or service.

Positioning: Orchestrating an organization’s offering or a product’s image to occupy a unique and valued place in the customer’s mind relative to competitive offerings. A product or service can be positioned based on an attribute or benefit, use or application, user, class, price or quality, image or emotional association.

Brand Awareness: The likelihood that a particular brand will be thought of and recognized (favourably) when consumers think of the product category in which the brand operates.

Ads can also be used to remind consumers to fill a need, such as to quench thirst. However, most ads sell products for which there is no need, even ads, as we shall see, that purport to fulfill a need such as the need to quench one’s thirst. Where there is no need, it is the job of the ad to create desire for the product or to create a desire for a particular emotional fulfillment and then associate the fulfillment of that emotion with the product.

Can Ads Sell You Something You do not Need?

Of course they can! When was the last time you needed chocolate? You might desire or crave it, but you do not need it. You might crave the sexual allure (emotional need) you see in many chocolate ads and you might associate eating chocolate with sexual fulfillment. However, you do not need chocolate. Look at this slogan once used by Cadbury Caramilk:

Discover the secret to pleasure.

Remember, we are talking about chocolate here. It seems that advertisers are trying to convince people that chocolate is better than sex! But, the fact is, you don’t need it. (Chocolate, that is.)

Slogan: A short, memorable advertising phrase. Examples include Coke Is It, Just Do It and Don’t Leave Home Without It. When a product or company uses a slogan consistently, the slogan can become an important element of product identification and the public’s perception of the product.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Let’s look at the role of advertising within Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Self Actualization:

Fully realizing one’s individual human potential

Esteem

Honoured, regarded highly

Love

Affection and belonging

Safety

Physical and psychological

Physiological

Survival needs such as food, air and water

The noted humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow, claimed that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs. He placed these needs within a hierarchy. Working up from the bottom of the hierarchy, individuals must satisfy a lower need before they are motivated to fulfill higher needs. For instance, the need for safety cannot be satisfied until the physiological need (food, water) is met. The need for love cannot be satisfied until the need for safety is met, and so on.

Most individuals in North America have satisfied physiological and safety needs. Some, certainly not all, have satisfied the need for love. That leaves the majority of us trying to fulfill our need for love and almost all of us working on esteem and self-actualization. Love, esteem and self-actualization are three difficult needs to satisfy. That is where advertising steps in. It promotes products and services meant to help us fill these gaps, to help us believe we are satisfying our need for love, esteem or self-actualization by ... shopping.

What about Business-to-Business Advertising?

You could argue that business-to-business (B2B) advertising satisfies concrete needs—the need to save time and money or to work more productively, for instance. Then you would have to ask if we truly have a need for business. If so, which of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs does business or capitalism satisfy?

While a discussion of that nature goes well beyond the scope of this book, suffice it to say that we do not necessarily need all or much of what is advertised. Even hard-nosed business people make emotional buying decisions. Do banks need tall towers with their logos on them? Do corporate lawyers need their rich mahogany desks and expensive Montblanc pens? It’s tough to make a pure business case for such expenditures. However, if we stopped buying, the entire economic foundation of Western Civilization would collapse.

So, like it or not, advertising has an important role to play in our society. In fact, one might be tempted to say that, as a society, we need advertising.

To become aware of the devices copywriters use to appeal to so-called needs, analyze ads. Examine them and ask: What need does the ad seem to appeal to? How does it do this? Why does it do this?

You might be surprised by how often the ad is not appealing to a concrete need, even when it claims to be doing so. Instead, it is masking a desire or craving as a need. Take, for instance, Oh Henry! chocolate bars. At the time of writing this book, there were Oh Henry! ads that posed a question and answered it:

Oh Hungry?

Oh Henry!

On the surface, it looks as if the ad is appealing to the need to fulfill hunger. But do we need chocolate, sugar, nuts and whatever other ingredients go into this chocolate bar? This ad may seem as if it is saying to the consumer: You get hungry. Here is a quick and easy way to satisfy your hunger. However, eating an apple is a quick, easy, (and nutritional) way of satisfying hunger.

What is this line really doing? Oh Henry! is co-opting Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (in this case the need to satisfy hunger) and turning the need into a desire or craving for sugar and chocolate. Desires and cravings are not needs.

I don’t want to pick on chocolate. We can say similar things about perfume, beer, designer label clothing, monster homes, Ferraris, Post-It Notes, electronic lemon peelers, any fast food, iPods, even computers and the Internet, and so on.

Some might argue that certain products fulfill needs such as love (you wear perfume to help you attract a mate), esteem (you can afford a Ferrari, you must be important), or self-actualization (you work hard; look at all you can afford; you must feel fulfilled). However, if advertisers focused solely on fulfilling legitimate needs, many companies would be out of business.

Into that reality—the reality that most of what is advertised is not needed; it may be desired or useful, but it is not needed—steps you, the copywriter!

Chapter 2: How the Ad Industry Works

It is difficult to describe how the adverting industry works, as there are so many components to it.

Beyond creative, the ad industry also requires media buyers to buy ad space and airtime, account representatives to source clients and hold their hands as campaigns are developed, plus a host of others who make the industry tick.

Most large ad agencies have creative directors, graphic artists and writers. They tend to contract out the production of broadcast commercials. Many agencies contract out other elements of ad production—including graphic art, photography and writing.

Some companies have in-house agencies that develop some or all of their advertising. Again, the production of broadcast commercials is generally contracted out. Some in-house agencies may also contract out other elements of ad production. To land work with an ad agency—either as an employee or as a freelancer—you need a portfolio or body of work that demonstrates your creative thinking and writing (or artistic ability if you are looking for a gig as a graphic designer or photographer).

100 Ideas = One Concept

Some creative directors and copywriters start into a project looking for one big idea, concept or hook on which to hang an ad. This is a myopic approach to advertising. At a minimum, clients expect three creative concepts. (This does not always apply to many small- and medium-sized businesses on tight budgets and tight schedules. Sadly, because they move so quickly and pinch pennies, they waste much of their marketing dollars.)

As any ad agency will tell you, only the cleverest ideas are presented to the client. Often, the client and agency will brainstorm variations on the ideas. The client may even reject all ideas and ask the agency to go back to the drawing-board. It is the nature of the industry. It is also, some would say, the nature of creative process. But more on creativity and the creative process