How copywriting got flabby (and why marketing is the feeder)
To borrow from the barely polite euphemisms with which we deflect the unexpected chubbiness of rarely seen acquaintances, copywriting is ‘looking well’. The originality and frequency of genuinely astounding copy work hasn’t fallen away, and yet there is a distinct ripple of flabbiness around the midriff, a ruffle of chafe between its increasingly burly thighs.
It’s only partially self-pitying to remark upon the era of ‘word fatigue’ in which this particular generation of copywriters are pedalling their carefully pencilled wares. Exporting the word at this particular moment in time is not unlike trying to sell pre-bagged sand to a risk of lobsters (one of the more satisfying, if not a little sinister, collective nouns).
But, if our audience has heavy lids and a propensity for oblivion it is us, or at least our paymasters, who have gleefully fluffed the pillow.
It’s hardly an original observation that copy is everywhere. From bins in the street to an overexposed portion of a stranger’s pants, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a surface unadorned by some kind of marketing message.
Admittedly, amongst this dazzling ubiquity, a more than generous serving belongs to inspiring, intriguing, genuinely provocative copywriting. But, unlike the relationship between magnificent cheeses and my increasingly commodious face and neck, it isn’t the delicious copywriting that is producing the flab.
Instead, the guilty morsels are the messages that need not exist. The tautologous expressions. The indirect directions. The self-indulgent verbosity. The over-anxious over-instruction. The greatest erosion to our impact and attraction still arises from brands and businesses who are pathologically unable to leave a blank space blank.
Consumers (or, if you’d rather, readers) didn’t suddenly experience an involuntary recession in their capacity to notice, process and respond to a brief string of words. Instead, our industry has smacked a great deal of the curious and receptive nature out of modern human thought. And while we acknowledge this to be the age of boundless information, copywriting is still too often measured (and served) in length rather than depth.
This is perhaps a gloomy perspective. An excess of copywriting, while shrieking impotently into the minds of a willfully unseeing audience, does at least point to a market where the written word remains central to the art and business of persuasion. Nor is it to say that eyes turning away from the plod of pedestrian messages won’t instinctively turn back to the purr of extraordinary ones.
A great deal of copywriting is still turning heads, changing minds and jabbing a sharp stick into the ribs of ennui on a daily basis. It’s the other stuff that needs burning away. Now get down and give me twenty. Ok, three.
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