COPYWRITING

Why does advertising need clever words? With so many brand names being promoted
one could argue that there is too much choice! That is where thoroughly planned
copywriting comes into picture.

What does copywriting achieve?

Copywriting – supported by evocative images – explains the benefits of a product or
service to an individual and then allows that person to make a considered decision based
on facts, aspiration and association.

The simplest definition of copywriting is: it is the art of converting or translating

clients brief on product/service into a selling proposition to defined target audience
through mass media.
But before you write a single word you have to consider your general approach to
copywriting. If your attitude is wrong, then however much you write, whatever good
words you use, your readers will know that you are not 100% committed to
communicating effective message.

Like a wooden stool there are 3 supports to provide creative stability to your copy.
Remove one support and your creative argument and integrity topples over.
1. Involvement – between the consumer and seller(usually through creating an
empathy in a desired lifestyle).
2. Reward – in terms of personal gain, to a consumer for purchasing a product.
3. Fun – the third vital element which concerns ‘you’ the writer more than the
consumer. ‘Fun’-refers to “enjoying the job” of writing. Without it, no matter
how serious or frivolous a product may be, the conviction behind your words will
never become apparent to the consumer.
Getting to know what makes people listen,…read,…continue to watch,…what you have
to say…that you can write effective copy. Hence as a first step, it’s a good idea to look at
the basic ingredients of copywriting. It is:
50% information, 15% inspiration, 25% personalization, & 10% perspiration

An important aspect of this balancing act is to understand your audience. You have to
adapt your style and tone of voice to establish a rapport and hence credibility with your
intended reader, viewer, listener and so forth. This is equally important whether you
address a buyer of soap-suds or the managing director of the board.

A copywriter should know that – most advertising techniques which worked 50 years ago
still work today. Consumers will buy products whose advertising promises them value for
money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.

News, curiosity and self-interest have always been powerful factors in making good ads.
Words such as announcing, New, Now, Free, Yours, Quick, Easy, and Last Chance has
never lost the pulling power. People are still interested in health, wealth, popularity,
comfort and security.
The most difficult things a copywriter discovers in the study of advertising are facts, for
example:
What kind of advertising headlines attract the most readers?
What kind of pictures get the most attention?
What sales appeal sell the most merchandise?
What kind of advertising copy is most effective in selling your product or service?

It is easy to get opinions on these questions. It is hard to get facts. Too often men/people
state opinions, Not facts. And in many cases, the opinions are not even boiled-down
opinions of large group of people. They are merely personal opinions.

Hence in planning an advertising campaign, the first step a copywriter should take, is to
clear the decks of all opinions, all theories, all conjectures, all prejudices.

He must remember that there is just one justification for advertising: Sales! Sales! Sales!
that are immediate, sales that are abundant, sales that are profitable.

It has often been said that the greatest crime an advertisement can commit is to remain
unnoticed. The principle job of an advertisement is to sell goods. Therefore, you should
use layouts and illustrations in which salesmanship comes first and art second.

It is an old rule but good rule to write every advertisement as if it were the first and last
word on the subject. Do not depend on the reader having read any previous advertisement
for the product you are selling. Do not assume that the reader will learn from future
advertisements the selling arguments that you fail to include in today’s advertisement.
Make every advertisement a complete sales talk. Bring in every important sales
argument. Put every important selling point into every advertisement.
What is a Copywriter?
According to Oxford English Dictionary, a copywriter is ‘ a person who writes text for
advertisement or other promotional material’. Refining it further a copywriter is a sales
person who manipulates words within communication media. A particularly effective
copywriter is someone able to balance and integrate the marketing and sales principles of
a specific industry sector with provocative writing that explains the benefits of product or
service. The literary style may be informative, persuasive, subliminal or combination of
all three.
How is Copywriting Related to Sales Process?
Copywriting is NOT just the art of eloquent writing. You must consider copywriting as
primarily a selling skill.
A copywriter needs to possess an above average degree of original thinking. This enables
them to assimilate various pieces of information into finely tuned message. Which boils
down to the fact that a copywriter needs to make your product or service:
Attractive Interesting Desirable Actionable = AIDA
 Who Makes a Good Copywriter?
Those who have remarkable ability – to pin-point, in words and pictures, the key benefits
of a particular product or service. They interpret those benefits convincingly, concisely
and with originality, through text, pictures, sounds or images.
A good copywriter needs to possess or develop certain qualities:
1. Has an insatiable curiosity about how and why things work?
2. Looks at a word or situation and conjures up images to match?
3. Is worldly wise
4. Sees both sides of an argument
5. Is often asked for his opinion
6. Part teacher, part confidant, totally interested in what makes people ‘tick’
7. Has a good imagination
8. Can take a logical approach to technical matters
9. Has a good sense of humor.

IMPORTANCE OF HEADLINE
The best headlines are the ones that offer something. The headline “Corn gone in 5 days”
or “Money back” offers something that certain readers want and want badly.

This in order to impress your offer on the mind of the reader or listener, it is
necessary to put in into brief, simple language. You have got to catch his eyes or ears
with something simple, something direct, and something he wants.

On broad analysis it has been concluded that there are four important qualities
that a good headline may possess. They are:

1. Self- interest
2. News
3. Curiosity
4. Quick, easy way.

Hence try and follow ………

FIVE RULES OF WRITING HEADLINE

1. First and foremost, try to get self-interest into every headline you write. Make
your headlines suggest to the reader that here is something he wants. This rule is
absolutely fundamental of good headline writing.

2. If you have news, such as a new product or a new use for an old product, be sure
to get that news into your headline in a big way.
 3. Avoid the headline that merely provoke curiosity. Curiosity combined with news
of self-interest is an excellent aid to the pulling power of your headline, but
curiosity by itself seldom enough.

4. Take the cheerful, positive angle. Avoid when possible, headline that paint the
gloomy or negative side of the picture.

5. Try to suggest in your headline there is a quick and easy way for the reader to get
something he wants.

However do not make your headline so short that it fails to express your idea properly.
Brevity in headline may be an excellent quality, but it is not so important that all else
should be sacrificed for it. It is more important to say what you want to say – to express
your complete thought even if it takes twenty words to do it.

Get the big point of your advertisement into your headline. Use your headline to a
hook – to reach out and catch the special group of people you are trying to interest.

Next to sit down and write beginning for an advertisement.

The experience copywriter knows that the most important part of an

advertisement is the beginning. The opening sentence must be good or reader will lose
interest.

(FACTS): Here are some of the thing you should notice about the various
Reader’s Digest opening:

1. They are fact packed

2. They are telegraphic.
3. They are specific.
4. They have few adjectives.
They are curiosity arousing.

How to Avoid Mental Hazards (while writing copy)

The mental hazards hat discourage writers is he knowledge that their copy will be judged
by the following critics:
• The copy chief
• The account executive
• The advertising manager
• The sales manager
• The MD / President
• And perhaps several other officials
Each has his own ideas about copy. Trying to please all is a formidable task at any given
point of time. If you want to write enthusiastic copy, you must banish critics from your
mind entirely. Ignore them. Forget them. Write the way you want to write.
And write fast. Get steamed up. Make your copy sizzle. Put all the power of a runaway
locomotive into it. Later go over it in cold blood and cut out the things your critics will
object to. In this way you can produce copy that is both lively and acceptable. If you
write with the prejudices and preferences of other people uppermost in your mind, you
will produce copy as correct as schoolchild’s essay, but utterly lifeless.

This same plan helps you overcome two other mental hazards:
1. The things you are not allowed to say about the article you are selling.
2. The things you must say as a matter of advertising policy.
Believe in what you are writing. Use a process of self-hypnotism. Get excited! Get
worked up! Tell yourself you have got the biggest piece of news to tell since the man
walked on moon. Remember that enthusiasm is as contagious as measles. It spreads from
speaker to listener, from author to reader.

Then start to write. Write fast. Write furiously. Write as if you had put all your thoughts
on paper in next few minutes or loose it forever. May be first few paragraphs will sound
impossible. Never mind. Keep on writing. Somewhere, somehow, you will produce a real
selling copy. Some of the things you write will work on the emotions of your reader in
subtle ways perhaps unknown to yourself. Unconsciously you will produce little touches
that arouse and stir to action.
Action – that’s the vital quality that the emotional copy possesses and that ‘reason why’
copy lacks. ‘Reason Why’ appeals to reader’s intelligence and makes him nod his in
agreement with you. But emotional copy goes deeper. It gets into those lower portions of
the brain where love and hate, and fear and desire are.

Both types of copy are important. Skillfully combine the two and you will make the
reader get up out of his chair and start for the store.

How To Build Great Campaigns?

1. What you say is more important than how you say it What really decides
consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, and not its form.
When you build a campaign your most important job is to decide what you are
going to say about product, what benefit you are going to promise.
The selection of ‘Right Promise’ is vitally important. Do not rely on guess work.
Another technique is to prepare series of ads each built around different promise.
Then run pairs of ads in the same position in the same publication with an offer
Buried in the copy.

2. Build your campaign around a ‘Great Idea’ or else it will flop.

3. Give facts: Consumers are interested in facts. The more facts you give – the more
you sell. However give facts interestingly, enthusiastically. (But collecting facts is
hard work).
4. Do not bore people into buying. The average family is exposed to more than 2000
ads a day. Hence people have developed a technique o skip ads, go to bathrooms
 during TV commercials. The average woman/consumer now reads only four of
the ads which appear in the average magazine. They/she glance at more, but one
glance is enough to tell them/her that ad is too boring to read. Thousands of
brands, similar products are fighting for space in their/her mind. If you want your
voice to be heard above the ear-splitting barrage, your voice must be unique. It is
your business to make your clients’ voice heard above the crowd.
5. Be well mannered but do not clown. If people do not buy from bad-mannered
salesman, and if advertisement is a salesmanship in print. Be sure they won’t buy
from bad mannered advertisement either.
6. Make your advertising contemporary.
7. Committees can criticize ads, but cannot write them. Ads seem to sell the most
when it is written by solitary individual.
8. If you are lucky enough to write a good ad, repeat it until it stops pulling. Please
do not make a mistake of discarding/discontinuing the ad before it looses its
potency.
9. Never writ/release advertisement which you wouldn’t want your own family to
read it. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine. Do as
you would be done by. Good products are and can be sold by honest advertising.
10. The Image and the Brand. Every ad should be thought of as a contribution to
complex symbol which is Brand-Image. What a miracle it is when a manufacturer
manages to sustain a coherent style in his ads over a period of years! Every ad,
every radio program, every TVC should NOT be a one-time shot, but a long-term
investment in the total personality of a brand. They present a persistent image to
the world, and grow rich in the process.
The manufacturer who dedicate their advertising to building the most sharply
defined personality for their brand get the largest share of market at the highest
profit.

Plan your campaign for years ahead, on the assumption that your clients intend to
stay in business forever. Build sharply defined personalities, year after year. It is
the total personality of a brand rather than any trivial product difference which
decides its ultimate position in the market.

11. Do not be a copycat.