3 things that copywriting is definitely not
A desperately misguided buddy of mine once said to my face that copywriting was ‘not rocket science’. Naturally I beat him to death with a bag of miniature cheeses. But as I sat there, staring down at his broken corpse, crumbs of Stilton dancing sorrowfully across his shattered ribcage, something dawned on me. The poor fellow was absolutely right, copywriting is not rocket science. And here are a few other things that copywriting most definitely is not...
1. Copywriting is not the BBC
Not in the sense of producing terrible programmes with gigantic women ceaselessly falling over, but in the sense that copywriting has no interest in, or obligation towards, ‘balance’. Balance may have an inescapable hold on the BBC news but in copywriting impartiality is as unimportant to us as brushing the Hob Nob crumbs from our keyboards every once in a while.
Copywriting, unlike journalistic writing, is gloriously unencumbered by a need to tell the whole story. Be under no illusions of objectivity, we are telling the story most favourable to our clients. And it is our job to tell it with enough authority to leave a reader with no reason to try and understand what we’re not telling them. It may seem a little trite, but half of all copywriting is choosing what not to say.
2. Copywriting is not your newspaper column
I once wrote a powerful and moving treatise on why we should discount ‘Jurassic Park 2’ as a recognised part of the canon. Eloquent and persuasive as it was I happened to be, at the time, writing a proposed television script for a particularly drab yoghurt and therefore my dinosaur themed musings were entirely inappropriate.
Copywriting, painful as it may be, is not a platform for own rumination or self indulgence. We leave all our intellectual, emotional and Triassic baggage at the door and concentrate on the craft of saying people’s unexpressed thoughts, and suggesting other people’s unacknowledged desires, in a magnificent way.
3. Copywriting is not art
Gasp! It’s not art? But, by gosh, we’re creatives!
Indeed we are creatives, but creatives with an unequivocally commercial purpose. The market is our muse so, accordingly, we sell our creativity and, in turn, our creativity sells. And in such a paradigm it’s impossible to hold pretensions of artistry.
And this is no bad thing. The very best copywriters have a magnificent understanding of both human desire and commercial intent. This in itself is a rare and remarkable ability but one that is unattainable for anyone who can’t (or won’t) distinguish the persuasive arts from the pure arts.
And, of course, copywriting is not rocket science, bringing us back to my pal with the remnants of a particularly fine Gruyere smeared across his smashed mush. He was, of course, perfectly right, copywriting is not rocket science. It’s far more important than that.
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Andrew Boulton is a copywriter at Together Agency. He kills people with small cheeses.