If you say your product is better and it’s not, you’ll be found out. If you say your product does something it doesn’t do, you’ll be sued. If your product is the best on the third Wednesday of every month, don’t convince people it’s always the best, you just have to convince people that the only day that matters is the third Wednesday of every month.
A poignant, honest line will feel bigger and live longer.
Nobody likes a liar. Your ad may be smart, even funny, but it will never make you feel warm if you’re lying. You will do a lot of disgusting things in this business, but nobody can make you write a lie.
Issue to work around:
Your client makes a luxury car, but they don’t fit in the luxury category.
* * *
Reframing until you win:
No matter how much they pad the seats, some of us will never be comfortable in a Lexus.
MAKE THE SOLUTION MORE INTERESTING
THAN THE PROBLEM.
The telltale sign of a student ad is that it focuses on the problem. For example, a print ad for Thompson’s Water Seal might show Lincoln’s log cabin leveled to the ground with the line “Wetness can ruin.”
The ad may be cute, but the takeaway is a fact I already know and tells me nothing about why I should buy the product. “Oh I get it, the product does the opposite of what I’m seeing??” Uninterestingly, I also know that Water Seal seals out water.
AESOP, HEMINGWAY, SHAKESPEARE. THEY’RE DEAD; FEEL FREE TO RUMMAGE THROUGH THEIR STUFF.
Ads are a terrible place to look for inspiration. For starters, they’re already ads. They’re also dull and have been fattened at least one round by a client. And most of them, even award winning ones, are not very impressive.
Literature is a great place to look for reference. It is rich with intriguing language. Trees don’t blow in the wind, they wave their branches. Winter isn’t cold, it climbs into your bones and settles its icy body. Use their tricks, dig up their secrets.
A line:
The most advanced electronic braking technology like Traction Control, ABS, and brake-force distribution.
* * *
A story:
The machines have taken over and they’re fiddling with your brakes.
It’s in the name. You’ve wasted an entire page to tell me that the product doesn’t do what you showed me, but does do what the product name is. Great. Thanks.
Focus on the problem:
Made without gross artificial ingredients with names you can’t pronounce.
* * *
Focus on the solution:
Start with the finest ingredients.
Stop.
Metaphors, for example, are a great way to make your headlines interesting. All the greats do it. If you’re talking about soft skin, you’re boring. If you’re talking about the delicate face of a far-off princess, you’re interesting. Make your headline grand. Make it about a bigger truth. If your headline only exists within the ad, your ad will feel small.
Remember, a headline is a story. It goes somewhere.
LIKE, STUFF, AND THINGS.
Take these three words out of your headlines and your headlines will be better. Real authors rarely use them.
LIKE
I’m sure your teachers yelled at you in high school for using this word where it didn’t, like, belong, but that’s not my issue with it. Similes are just not as cool as metaphors. They’re “like” the thorn in the rose of your headline. They make me want to rip my eyeballs out “like” grapes and mash them into wine. Lines without “like” are more interesting.
Take the following line: “The X3000 sports car is powerful like a lion.” This line reads smarter as: “The lion under the hood of the X3000 sports car.” Find ways to write out “like” and you’ll be happier with the result.
STUFF
This is a great word to use in copy if you want to come across as flaky. If your plan is to sound like a dipshit then “stuff” is the word you want.
THINGS
What are the things? If there is no answer then the word doesn’t belong there. If the “things” are something specific then why don’t you use the word of what the things are?
FINDING
THE LINE.
Move a step further or a step closer. Overstate, understate. Find the balance, skew the balance. Push your headlines in all sorts of different dimensions.
If you’re selling whitening toothpaste, you don’t have to say, “your teeth will be bright like light bulbs,” you can say, “James, your smile is needed at the lighthouse.” Sometimes you’ll have moved too far away and your line will mean nothing—“James is in the lighthouse. Buy toothpaste”—and you’ll need to move closer again.
Sometimes a line written one way is terrible, but you move a word, kill a word, switch a word, and it’s brilliant. If it feels like there’s an idea there, keep noodling. Maybe you’ll find it.
Line:
A color printer for the price of black and white.
* * *
Stepping further
Millions of colors for the price of two.
WRITE A LOT.
KEEP A LITTLE.
You’ve got to write body copy. Body copy is often where people hide their natural headlines. They bury them somewhere between line 8 and 12. Try and write a lot of long copy and you might just recognize a line that will become the new headline.
And don’t erase. Keep them there, even if only to remind yourself that one direction doesn’t work. Maybe you’ll look back on it later and it’ll make you think of a new thought. Maybe it won’t, but at least you can point to it and tell your partner or CD:
“I’ve totally been working, I mean, look at all these words.”
First line:
Pause live TV. Never miss a game winning basketball moment.
* * *
Line found in copy:
And with one second left, he goes to the kitchen.
“I LIKE PUNS.”
I was meeting with a well-respected copywriter many years ago when I was a student and he paused in the middle of reviewing my book. A look formed on his face not unlike the kind you’d make after being wrapped in a warm blanket, and he said:
“You know what? I like puns.”
Puns are basic. Easy. Cheesy. And frankly they can be lame. But sometimes that’s just what is called for. Not even intelligent puns. Bad puns. Painfully bad. So bad they’re funny again. Played right they can remind you of childhood jokes you read on Popsicle sticks. And by being young and playful they can work magic by making a giant evil mega-corporation seem like a big toddler that you just can’t stay mad at. Not an easy trick.
However, I’ve also found that behind most pun-lines, there are real headlines trying to get out.
When you find yourself looking at a pun that just seems too perfect to be true, scratch it out and keep writing. More often than not, the reason the pun works is because there’s a truer and deeper thought to your concept. There will be a brilliant line that accomplishes the same effect that you thought only the pun could. And when you find it, it’ll feel amazing. And you’ll realize how much smarter your ad feels. How much smarter you feel.
Plus, the entire industry is pun-phobic and you can now safely show that piece to a creative director who read somewhere that puns are bad and thus won’t even look at an ad that has a pun in it.
Line:
With this much power, you’ll love it more than your family.
* * *
Yes, a pun:
“Sweetie, I can’t get you a pony because I got 360 for myself.”
NEVER LET PEOPLE GUESS THE NEXT WORD YOU’RE GOING TO RADISH.
Some writing is so liquid smooth that any attention paid to it slips right off. I’ve heard them called “Teflon ads” or “creative wallpaper.”
Break the language. If you’re writing a line a certain way because you think it’s the right way to say something, it’s the wrong way to say something.
When you’ve been studying advertising for a long time it becomes easy to know what the “right” word is. You know exactly what needs to be there for the client to be happy and for the meeting to be short. It’s better to take the extra time and struggle to throw in a bogey. It rattles around in people’s skulls and gets stuck.
BATTLES RAGE WITHIN
THE HEADLINE.
To create tension in an ad you must create opposing forces. Sometimes the tension exists within the ad, contrasting good and bad, two ideas forced together that don’t belong or are naturally contentious (hot and cold, angels and devils, engineers and rock stars). Sometimes the tension exists between the ad and the viewer, a sensitive topic, a challenge to the viewer or controversy. Sometimes the tension is created between the viewers, two opposing sides that people choose from that will make them enemies. Tension is intriguing; it gives people a thought to react to. It also gives them an excuse to care.
Dull line:
Take your work out of the office with a mobile broadband card.
* * *
Line with tension:
The office is no place to work.
THROW A WRENCH
AT YOUR BRAIN.
If you’re having trouble it’s easy to think it’s because the assignment is too hard. Maybe it’s because it’s too easy. Try messing with yourself. Forbid the use of some letter of the alphabet. Or try not to use the word “the.” As much as we love and desire freedom, we also need structure and rules to be productive. Ideally, you’re the one making the boundaries and rules. That way you’ll bitch about them less.
Restriction free boring line:
We want to show the world that America still makes great cars.
* * *
Writing a patriotic car headline without mentioning America or car:
Proof our fag was still there.
WRITE WITH
YOUR ERASER.
Editing isn’t just about taking out the unnecessary words; sometimes it’s about taking out words that are part of the meaning and seeing if the line evolves. Take a boring line and chop at it. See what words you can yank out.
Also, see if you can yank out punctuation. Smash two lines into one line. I hate it when I see lines with this structure: “Product line. Joke line.” I could write 1,000 of these in an hour for any product and not one would be stellar. Seriously.
Here’s five I came up with in 30 seconds.
Time me:
It’s the fastest processor out there.
Cheetahs buckle up.
The fastest processor on Earth.
Jupiter, you’re next.
Lightning fast processing.
Thunder not included.
Blazing speeds for processing.
Check your smoke detector.
Fast processing. No brakes.
Condensing, shortening, and editing isn’t about making the copy less to read, it’s about making any length of copy more interesting to read. If you’ve written 100 headlines, try rewriting them by crossing out words.
HOW TO CHEAT LIKE A PRO.
Writing a brilliant headline takes time and thought. A luxury you will not have at 3 a.m. with the CCO awaiting your email. What can you do?
Fortunately there are some sneaky little copywriter tricks. They’re not as effective as real, thought-out lines, but they work in a pinch.
1. You find a well-known saying and twist it.
Here are two examples of how you might tweak classic sayings to be about a wrinkle cream:
“Start acting your younger age.”
“Make your long story look short.”
* * *
2. Be bland, then play with it.
This: Great signal in Kansas City. becomes: KC’s drenched in our sweet and tangy signal sauce.
* * *
3. Take the crappy line from the creative brief and make it not shitty.
Some planners think long and hard about a strategic line. There will already be a great idea there that they are PRAYING you will use. Re-write it to be palatable and not only will it coast through internal meetings, but people will think you’re super smart for listening to them.
* * *
4. Big/Small, High/Low
Clients love this shit. It’s cheap, but it works. Find some parallel you can make in the language between opposites. You can do this with just about any brief, any client, any offer. For example, a bank wants you to talk about their low interest rates on their platinum cards. Your line can be “Small rates. Big deal.” Or “Pay a little, get a lot.” If you’re working on a car you could say “Roars like a lion, priced like a lamb.” Or “Giant horsepower. Tiny price.” These lines almost always sell.
* * *
5. Duck. Duck. Goose.
You have two thoughts quickly and one longer thought.
“It’s adjective. It’s It’s going to change something product
There’s also a variation on it that’s
“word, word, word,
Once you know this you will start seeing these lines everywhere. They’re super simple and lots of agencies live by them.
other adjective.
the way you something
forever.”
twist.”
VENI, VIDI,
VICI
I’m not a fan of taglines. Firstly, I like taking out elements that aren’t necessary and taglines are rarely necessary. Secondly, a lot of taglines exist to explain the joke because the headline and the visual aren’t cutting it. They’re clean-up lines. They’re there because the rest of the communication has failed.
A tagline should be able to anchor an entire company. You should be able to put it on business cards, new employee handbooks, on delivery trucks, and then finally, yes, on ads. Look at any taglines you write. Would you hang your empire on it?
LOL IS IN THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY.
OMG, HELP US.
In high school we all learned the proper forms, structures, phrasings, etc., for “good writing.” We learned how to set up a thesis, support it with three main points, and then summarize it in the conclusion. This is useful to know, but it is no longer the best way to communicate. Just as art styles change and evolve, so do writing styles. We’ve evolved beyond the basic structures a while ago. People absorb information differently. There are non-linear ways to present thoughts now. Tangents have become not only acceptable, but expected. “And” can start a sentence. Flow and style mean as much as being proper and organized. People want to be entertained when they read. The Language Police have been disbanded.
It’s kind of an exciting time to be a writer. English is going through a major change. It’s becoming flexible (even more than it always was). The writers have gotten fed up with the status quo of writing. Which is pretty sweet.
You’re the new generation defining this language. Play around with it. Be modern. Put periods where they don’t belong. Shorten words. Use LOL and OMG in your copy. start sentences with lowercase…use unnecessary ellipses (or even parentheticals). Use punctuation to change meaning. Play. The English language is not a stationary creature, it’s an amorphous blob that you can mold and mess with. Have at it.
IT’S TRUE, NOBODY READS YOUR COPY.
Somehow the lie has spread that people don’t read anymore. Yet in a given day a person will read online news, blogs, twitter, instant messages, emails, signs, menus, presentations, online articles, to start. Then they go home to read a book and relax. At the very least they’ll search through the descriptions of various shows. We read from morning to night. We probably read more than any generation on the planet, ever (take that, Renaissance). No matter what anybody tells you; words are here to stay. We have not and will not regress to hieroglyphics on my watch.
What is true is that fewer people read poorly written ads. The standards have gone up quite a bit. The problem of course is that for the most part copywriters have not kept up. We’re still writing in the same voices and styles as the 1950s. We have not gi
ven people a reason to read what we write.
Art directors are killing it. We’re slacking. Come on people, let’s do this!
NOTHING SURPRISES YOU
TWICE.
A headline is interesting and engaging. It shocks you, stops you, makes you think. Body copy is no different. All too often body copy is treated as an explanation for the headline. This means either the headline isn’t clear enough or the body copy is redundant. Neither is desirable for a stellar piece of communication.
A better way to think about the relationship between headline and body copy is as title and story. The title hints at what you’re about to read, but doesn’t tell it to you. Romeo and Juliet isn’t called Accidental Teen Love Suicides Because of a Series of Misunderstandings.
Think of body copy as its own concept. Start over when you get to it. Write many paragraphs, just as you would headlines. Not just one. Sometimes you’ll end up taking part of one paragraph and part of another. Sometimes you’ll scrap them all because you think of a new direction. Sometimes one will just clearly be the winner. Maybe it’ll even be the first one, but you’ll never know unless you write a bunch.
The easiest way to pair body copy with headlines is to write the long copy part first and then go back and think of a headline that represents the theme of it.
YAY !
STORY TIME!
It’s bedtime but you’re not tired. All you want to do is go outside and play flashlight tag with the neighbor kids. What could focus your mind away from all of the fun in your kid-life? A story.
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