The Copywriter-history,current&future-3

During  my  forty  years  in  the  ad  business,  I’ve  learned  how  ninety  per  cent  of  a copywriter’s life is spent proving to anyone who will listen that during the other ten percent of the time he can actually write. If and when you join an advertising agency, you will discover that most of your best ideas never leave the building; they will be bucketed with  a  regularity  to  make  your  head  spin.  What’s  even  worse,  those  creative  ideas
which do see the light of day will, largely, be accredited to someone else – like the copy chief or the account director.

The fact is, if you produce something truly startling, everyone in the agency – from post room wallah to chief executive officer will want to bask in your glory; and they will dine out on the story of how they came up with your idea.
So  advertising  is,  in  every  respect,  uncompromising;  it  can  reduce  strong  men  to tears  and  even  stronger  women  to  booze  and  promiscuity  overnight.  Setting  aside evenings for a few rounds of Russian roulette should, by comparison, be considered a pretty ordinary way of life. Free-fall parachuting and barbed-wire hurdling are a walk in the wild woods compared to a job in advertising.

But the first and overriding principle of advertising – and one you must have planted firmly in your mind – is that advertising is all about selling. All about moving product: whether  that  product  be  Dell  computers  or  flat-pack  shelving.  Thus,  if  you’ve  any aversion to the profit motive, or if the word profit leaves you with a nasty taste, you are most definitely backing photo recovery software  the wrong horse. Fortunately for all of us, the copywriter doesn’t have to sell himself the way the average salesperson does. Face to face. Which, in my case, is just as well, since I look like someone who should really be playing piano in a bawdy house. Luckily, we copywriters do it behind the scenes on-screen or on paper and are, thankfully, hidden from a cold, hard world that isn’t noticeably falling over itself to buy our stuff. Additionally, whatever personal reservations you may have about it, the product is always king. At least, it always is when you are within earshot of the client. After all, he believes that his product is the greatest thing since the birth of the blues;
and because he is going a good way to providing your pay-cheque, you’d better think the same way.

Nearly  finally,  the  conduct  of  advertising  has  changed  more  than  somewhat  in  the last ten years or so. In the main, it is now researched, copy-tested, response-planned and generally antisepticised to a point where good old gut feeling and common sense plays little part. That’s what they’d like to think anyway. In reality, it still comes down to a couple of guys or gals like you and me turning their brains inside out in an effort to say something different about a product that they have said something different about every three months for the past five years.

We  will,  of  course,  discuss  the  value  of  research  at  a  later  moment.  For  the  time being, however, let’s close this item on the writer proper with a deck-clearing exercise.

I cannot, under any circumstances, teach you to write. You either can or you can’t. You’ll  know  yourself  whether  it  is  the  former  by  the  way  you  continue  to  submit manuscripts for publication despite a roomful of previous rejections. You’ll know by the way  you  everlastingly  criticize  what  you  see  written  all  around  you  –  not  only advertising, but also TV programmes, magazine articles, newspaper stories, and so on.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, you wouldn’t be reading this book unless you had a sneaking feeling that with a little encouragement you could write the rest of us out of the park.
Well, would you?
What I can teach you is this:

1.   The principles of good copywriting.
2.   The art of refining a complicated brief into a simple, but emotive sales message.
3.   The techniques for developing creative concepts.
4.   The nuts and bolts of radio and television work.

And this, I propose to do.
We  will  also  discuss  several  dozen  peripheral  matters.  Right  now,  though,  a  few specific  thoughts  about  the  advertising  business  might  be  in  order.  I  include  these because without a basic understanding of what makes it tick, the entire mechanics of copywriting will remain equally mysterious.
Stand by.

Post reproduced from:http://copywriting.blog.co.in/2010/11/30/the-copywriter-historycurrentfuture-3/

The Copywriter-history,current&future-2

The Effulgent. Those to whom ideas come easily and who can improvise with words and thoughts as readily as a latter-day Byron. They can be truly valuable – sometimes invaluable;  but  they  are  no  one’s  backbone.  And  all  too  often  they  are  dilettanti incapable, as the actress said, of hard, grinding, unflagging effort.

The  Undeserving.  Those  who  have  drifted  into  advertising  and  who  can’t  drift  out again soon enough for me. They tend to think of the whole thing as a bit of a chuckle and  really  rather  beneath  them.  They  are  in  advertising  not  because  they  like  it  or believe  in  it,  but  because  it  is  a  way  of  making  a  little  dishonest  money  until  their screenplays are accepted by Hollywood – which they seldom are.

The Troopers. Those who view the business as a worthwhile career, and one that gives  them  the  opportunity  to  spend  their  lives  doing  something  they  enjoy:  selling through writing. They are the mainstay of advertising and while they rarely win acclaim, to say nothing of awards, their work is consistently competent. This kind will attack a brochure for a small micro-engineering outfit with the same enthusiasm as they'd fetch to  a  six-commercial,  national  TV  campaign  data recovery for  Jack  Daniels  or  Jaguar.  They  are  an asset to their agency and a credit to themselves.

It has been said by others, and I agree, that too many copywriters have far too little ability and far too high an opinion of their artistic talents. Really good writers are rarer than  cabs  on  a  wet  night,  and  even  the  troopers  mentioned  above  don’t  come  easy. Ask any ad agency copy chief.
It may be worth noting that, a while ago, I ran a copywriting distance learning course. Over  eight  years  or  so,  I  trained  some  500  writers  –  most  of  whom,  incidentally,  are now  gainfully  employed;  and  a  phpto recovery large  percentage  are  making  names  for  themselves. What was obvious, however, as each of these came into my ambit, was that while the majority could write reasonably well, they were generally more concerned about what advertising could do for them, rather than vice versa. Mind you, it didn’t take me long to disabuse them of this notion.

What initial advice, then, have I to offer potential copywriters? Just this. If you are as good as you fancy you are, you will have (or should have) no trouble imposing yourself upon your agency’s executives and your clients. They should come to think so highly of your work that they are always afraid you will sulk and withdraw your services. If they don’t, then maybe you are not a very good copywriter after all.

But if you insist on pursuing the occupation of copywriter and find yourself behind an agency desk, take the opportunity in both hands. Don’t meddle. Don’t get involved in office  politics.  Push  your  photo recovery for Mac talent  rather  than  yourself.  Take  the  rough  with  the  smooth and be grateful – be very grateful – that you are probably getting more of the smooth than the rough.

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