With deepest empathy – why good copywriters understand everyone
While I’m quite sure copywriters are no stranger a species than anyone else skidding along this greasy flume we call marketing, I’d struggle to tell you convincingly that we’re an entirely well balanced bunch.
One copywriter I knew, for example, became so frustrated with indecisive clients that he would habitually snap improbably sturdy stationery across his own forehead. Things escalated disturbingly quickly, and soon we were regularly finding hefty marker pens smashed to pieces while the writer in question skulked around the studio with a perpetually bruised and inky brow.
But, amongst the many tics and twitches that lurk amongst the more alphabetical psyches, there is also usually a small pot of potent psychological tools – tools that allow us to counter our many frothing peculiarities with an instinctive appreciation for the human voice.
Marketing, with a tendency to poach in the milk from its own teat, makes a fetish of insularity. The way that usually manifests itself is in communications that bleat vainly about ‘us’ and regards ‘them’ as little more than spreadsheet cells and the creeping incline along an X-axis.
It sometimes feels like the only ones peering outwards from the fortress are the copywriters. Yes, customer insight is largely embedded in the marketing process, but few of us would struggle to predict the winner between a ‘core brand message’ and customer feedback that unequivocally challenges it.
What the copywriter brings to this often masturbatory affair is the ability to think about the brief, not in terms of how many we will sell, but rather why precisely anyone might want to buy.
The copywriter therefore contributes, long before they even unsheathe a pencil, empathy – a studied appreciation of who we are talking to, who is likely to listen and how we are able to help them.
The best copywriting goes far beyond simply recognising the problem and solution of a scenario, and thinks in more human terms. Our language shouldn’t be a simple exchange of one situation for a more favourable one, but should reflect the complex emotional wrappers that envelop the transaction.
Whether it’s a matter of need or want or exquisite, impractical lust, our words should share not only the state we wish our reader to arrive at, but the one in which we find them. Whether we are dealing in niggles or crises, our voice should reflect, not instruct, the way our customer is facing a challenge. Our job is to first measure the hurdle before declaring how high one needs to leap.
Because, quite frankly, copy that talks for itself is, by and large, only talking to itself. And if that’s all our words achieve then we might be better snapping pencils on our faces instead.