’Tis the season for (sigh) Christmas copywriting
Now, if you’re a copywriter with any shred of self-respect there should be no way you’ve made it past that headline. (Which, on reflection, is probably not the most sensible way to prove my point.)
Anyway, for those of you remaining, it can’t have escaped your notice that Christmas has plunged its frosty thumbs into our eyeballs – eyeballs that have only recently been cleansed of scooped pumpkin flesh and bonfire ash.
And amongst the flickering, shimmering hoo-ha, most copywriters I know regard Christmas as, professionally at least, a rather discouraging time.
Christmas, for not entirely convincing reasons, seems to herald a flutter of unusually tired and obvious lines, not unlike the monstrosity that greeted you at the top of this column.
On Twitter, ‘Christmas Copy Bingo’ has become an annual game amongst copywriters – merrily ticking off one entirely predictable cliché after another until you win the prize of profound professional despair.
Sit yourself on a fleshy lap in the gloomy grotto of Christmas marketing and you’ll soon spot the kind of thing I mean.
‘We’ve got Christmas all wrapped up’ is probably the chief offender, followed closely by such flabby acts of resignation as ‘Our Christmas crackers’ or ‘Fill your stocking…’.
Year after year these dusty apologies seem to find their way into expensive campaigns and elaborate windows that have, in every other way, made more of an effort to be creative.
And I find it desperately hard to believe that the copywriters responsible for such lines believe they are being compelling and imaginative by using these words – leading me to suspect that this may be a case of twitchy clients demanding a more obviously ‘Christmassy’ approach.
This of course could be deeply unfair. But, I challenge you to talk to any other copywriter you admire and find a positive, or even neutral, view of the lazy copy that’s liberally dusted over this strange season.
Ordinarily, grumbling about derivative copy can be waved away as the eternal copywriter’s grievance – the frustration that our most surprising, different (and, yes, surreal) ideas have again been left on the shelf like a deformed action figure on Christmas Eve.
But in this case, it goes further than simply being annoyed that clients aren’t choosing the best work. In this case, bafflingly, clients are not only failing to choose good work, but electing to not even choose new work.
Perhaps the demented twinkling that so starkly illuminates this time of year has just highlighted an issue that probably takes place all year round.
Anyone who survived Halloween with little more than a vigorous egging by local teens, almost certainly came across some variant of ‘Trick or Treat’ in a piece of marketing material.
Likewise, copy ghouls such as ‘Keep Calm And…’ and ‘50 Shades Of…’ are almost admirably persistent in the face of the cavernous distance between now and when those cultural references felt relevant.
But, as soon as the Christmas trees and tubs of Bounty-heavy chocolate selections begin to appear, the same old copy invariably emerges too – reheated like a Boxing Day bacon-wrapped chipolata and every bit as congealed.
No, while the chestnuts may not be roasting in fires, open or otherwise, they are defiantly sizzling in shop windows, adverts, catalogues and Tweets. Same time next year everyone?
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