Sad words: copywriting for an unhappy subject
Copywriting, by its very nature, is an often insincere medium. So, given a topic of genuine human tragedy, it’s understandable that the machinery of copywriting can feel inadequate.
In a week where the horrifying images of drowned refugee children have been grimly ubiquitous, it’s perhaps relevant to think more profoundly about how marketing, and in particular we copywriters, are addressing such subjects.
The copywriting of sadness tends to take two distinct forms, which we can crudely divide into domestic and faraway unhappiness.
British marketing surrounding subjects like cancer research and treatment most often steers towards a place of defiance – an uplifting spirit of joining together in ‘the fight’.
In some instances this is done through the act of celebration. By championing the fundraisers, the carers, the scientists and the courage of the sufferers, copywriters often address the sadness of cancer very much through the prism of hope and action.
Slightly less frequently, such messages centre around the despair of loved ones who have lost, or are fighting the loss of, someone dear to them. Their stories, genuine and touching, are empathy triggers – not so much a call to arms but rather a nudge towards contemplation and compassion.
The other, albeit rudimentary, segment of this kind of copywriting applies to concerns less immediately within our reach – namely the global disasters, famine, war and illness afflicting vulnerable communities in distant places.
The almost universal, mainstream treatment of such messages is rooted in emotion, often teetering into sentimentality. The grave voiceovers for appeal adverts often spell out, in the frankest terms, the plight of their chosen cause.
They are also equally clear about how much difference even a meagre donation can make. (And though comparative value is a frequently blunt tool in copywriting, to illustrate the exchange of a few pounds for a life saving mosquito net is undeniably persuasive.)
Charities behind such concepts and language are sometimes (quietly) accused of manipulation, even emotional blackmail. And yet, if we were in their copywriter’s shoes, how would we convey a human tragedy so vast and senseless in a way that a detached western audience can begin to comprehend? How do you make someone believe that there are people in the world who, amongst their many other deprivations, have no choice in the course of their own existence?
Communicating such unfathomable misery is one of the copywriting tasks that, understandably, reaches beyond the usual business of ‘selling stuff’. But while true human feeling should lie at the heart of these messages, a compelling prompt to action should still be our goal. Writing simply to inspire sadness, anger or fear is, not to be unkind, the business of tabloids journalists, not copywriters.
I’m not sure there is a right or wrong way to properly express unhappy subjects through copywriting. Deferring the question of media ethics for the moment, those pictures of a drowned child, with no words at all, have inspired the kind of collective compassion that tends to manifest itself first in shame, then in rage and then in significant action.
Copywriters treat these subjects sensitively, but they also must treat them with the same focus and purpose that they’d treat any brief demanding a particular response. Whatever words we chose and whatever tone we take, the message ultimately has to fulfil one single aim – to help.