Alan Barker

How do I write copy? Let me count the ways...

An interesting conversation on LinkedIn in the past couple of days, started by Peter Whent. He posted this headline from MailOnline:

Peter remarked:

You could have used a copywriter but you chose not to.

The flurry of comments included this from Jonathan Staines:

This headline was written by a journalist in a high-pressured newsroom, not a copywriter. They are two very different types of writing work. A copywriter has more time to compress the message into as few words as possible. News journalists don’t. Trust me, I’m married to one! I’m not suggesting it’s not a very good headline but some poor soul had about 3 minutes to write it.

Which got me thinking. Copywriting and journalism: two very different types of writing work?

Maybe. But we call both 'copy', don't we? And, intriguingly, these two meanings of the word - marketing copy and journalistic copy - arose at roughly the same time.

Rewind to the late nineteenth century.

The telegraph had been invented in 1837. Samuel Morse had developed his famous code in 1838. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. By 1880, journalists were using these new electronic technologies to dictate stories down the line to newspaper offices, where copy-editors would - well - copy them.

The OED lists the first journalistic use of the word 'copy' in 1886, when Oscar Wilde wrote:

Miss Broughton has been attending the meetings of the Psychical Society in search of copy.

And here's George Bernard Shaw, a mere three years later:

Those Socialist speeches which make what the newspapers call ‘good copy'.

Lee Tracy as Hildy Johnson in The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Image from Wikipedia

Very quickly, this meaning of the word ‘copy’ transferred from journalism to advertising. The first OED listing of the word ‘copy’ meaning the text of an ad first appears in 1905, in a book called Modern Advertising:

The design and 'copy' used in the four-inch advertisement may involve just as much time.

Note the scare quotes around the word: obviously still a novel usage at this point.

For the rest of the twentieth century, these two senses of the word 'copy' continued, more or less separately and in parallel. Journalists wrote copy but not, on the whole, advertisements; copywriters wrote marketing copy but not, on the whole, news stories. (Both, of course, wrote headlines.)  David Ogilvy and the Mad Men of the 1950s probably never wrote articles - although Ogilvy's famous long copy for Rolls Royce bears a superficial resemblance to one.

But over the last twenty-five years, electronic media and the internet - the descendants of the telegraph and the telephone - have merged these two streams; the resulting turbulence has generated a whole host of different kinds of copy.

Call it 'content'.

Copywriters now produce press releases and advertorials, instructional guides and case studies, blog posts and thought leadership - all of which demand journalistic skills. They also write social media posts and tags, and even - yes, indeed - ads.

I suspect that journalists are also increasingly having to write copy that draws on the skills of marketing. Who writes the teaser copy on a newspaper's website? The standfirst that invites the reader into an article? The tweets and LinkedIn posts promoting their latest column, or the blurb on the back cover of their latest book?

We're all writers, and we're all doing different kinds of writing work. The top skill required of copywriters in 2024? I'd say: versatility.

I work as a copy editor, proofreader, and training consultant. I run CIM's Copywriting Masterclass.  Book your place here.

 

When long copy sells

This ad in the Sunday paper caught my eye.

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I was first alerted to the virtues of long copy by Andy Maslen.  Many of the ideas in this post are his. 

The consensus on long copy is that it doesn't work. 

And it probably doesn't work at the two far ends of the buying journey.  People with no interest in buying electric heaters will not read this.  But then, they probably wouldn't read any copy about electric heaters.  And the customer primed to buy one will probably find long copy irritating. 

But, for the in-betweeners - the prospects who are considering buying and need to know more - long copy is just what they want.

They want to be convinced (and their objections to be dispelled).  They want information.  And they want a bit of respect.

Long copy that can deliver persuasion, information and respect can be very successful.

Does your proposition have any of these characteristics?  Long copy might be the answer.

1. Expensive: When your offer carries a high price tag, you’ll sell more with long copy.  The long copy increases the reader’s commitment to part with more money.
2. Information-rich:  When selling online education or some other form of knowledge product, the more informative your copy, the more you’ll sell. 
   
3. Feature-rich: When what you’re selling has loads of features, you’ll need a lot of copy to explain them all, plus the express benefit of each feature.
4. Controversial:  If your reader has doubts or objections, long copy can dispel the doubts and overcome the objections.
5. Innovative:  If your product does something new, you’ll need to provide your reader with a lot of benefit-oriented information.

This ad has other features, beyond its length, that seem to break the rules of copywriting.

The headline, for starters, looks like a disaster.  It's not about the product, or its benefits, or even about the customer.  It capitalises randomly.  It uses shouty all-caps and then - horror! - underlines them. 

The lead-in text, too, with its inconsistent use of bold and italics, is a mess.  The picture caption is a mess.  And the body text, though not badly done, has moments of wobbly grammar and syntax.

All this, of course, might be a double bluff.  The amateurishness suggests honesty: "we overruled the we-know-best agency upstarts, and did our own thing."

And it works - kind of.  I certainly read this, from beginning to end.  So it must work.  But then, I'm just buying a new house and have a passing interest in domestic heating solutions...

Writing for non-copywriters

'Words that Sell' was a conference in Bournemouth on 18 May 2012, organised by Brian Jenner of the UK Speechwriters' Guild, and Richard Spencer of A Thousand Monkeys - both of whom did a great job.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I ran a session called 'Copywriting for non-copywriters'.  Here's a slide version:

Download UKSWG_Copywriting_slides_slideshare_v1

Actually, one of the interesting insights of a very insightful day was that the word 'copywriting' seems to be becoming rather old-fashioned.  We're all writers now, as Sarah McCartney noticed.  (She's decided to call herself a scribe - good idea.) 

Lots more interesting ideas at the conference; I'll try to cover more of them in future posts.