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The Interruption Game – the difficulties of making a copywriting entrance

By Andrew Boulton |

September 28, 2016 | 3 min read

In your now bulging record of deceased buzzwords and marketing mind-fluff, I’d imagine there is a consecrated little mound of earth under which the art of ‘Interruption’ is wriggling sullenly around.

Ahem

Interruption, for a time, was the gleaming beacon of modern copywriting – a vorpal sword of communication that could poke a profitable hole into any armoured codpiece of apathy. So to speak.

But, seemingly as swiftly as it became the thing we should all be doing, it became the thing we must all avoid.

Interruption, it turns out, is as annoying from a brand as it is from a shoddily wired car alarm. Worse even, seeing as every marketing message in the world was suddenly intent on getting in your way, slowing your progress, derailing your thoughts.

But, like all great ideas, it wasn’t especially new and, like all terrible ideas, it wasn’t especially wrong.

Interruption, though largely unlabelled, has always been an inherent twirl in this gaudy prance we call copywriting. The fundamental principle of stopping someone in their increasingly hasty tracks is the very genesis of copywriting as a profession. The only flaw has been that, characteristically, the industry has made a fetish of the ‘what’ instead of making a virtue of the ‘how’.

Asking your copywriter to interrupt a customer’s day is not a brief, it’s rather the platform on which a clear objective and a compelling message must rest.

And what hastened the gasping, withering death of ‘Interruption™’ was how arbitrarily that particular cudgel was wielded. Rather than tickling a solution under the nose of a clearly defined need, interruption became an exercise in shouty excess – where too often the act of intruding upon a customer’s consciousness was seen as the winning, rather than the opening, move.

Impact is undeniably important in copywriting, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory if you seize attention you’re then able to do nothing with.

Copywriting is, after all, an exercise in balance and compromise – understanding how to shout and whisper with the same voice. It’s also about extracting ourselves from the bubble just long enough to understand what compels (and indeed, repels) the actual people whose actual attention we’re endeavouring to earn.

Competition for that attention is what gave ‘Interruption’ its brief time in the spotlight. And while providing positive punctuation to a customer’s daily experience remains our pot of inky gold, the best contemporary copywriting favours a politely intriguing cough over a giddy squeal. Anyway, isn’t it all about ‘Storydoing’ these days?

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