HAPPY NEW YEAR, MAY 2013 BE KAMIKAZE

Thanks so much for reading, contributing last year.  2013 should see more reader/student participation, delving into concept, more esoteric aspects of writing ad copy and hopefully, Kamikaze success - however we define it - for us all.

If there's something I haven't covered, you'd like expanded, you disagree with, yadda yadda - that's what the comment section is for, please let me know.  If you'd rather contact me directly, the best eddress for me is kamikazecreative@gmail.com.

May 2013 be happy.  And if anyone wants a very cute, but very energetic Jack Russell pup, I may know one who wants to be the only pet of an athletic owner. Ask about her. Approved homes, I'm serious this time. Stella (and I) are too set in our ways for a dog with this much energy and original thinking!

BI-CREATIVE? THE TRUTH EVERY KAMIKAZE AD, GD, WD, JOURNALIST, LAWYER AND ASPIRING NOVELIST NEEDS TO KNOW BEFORE THEY SWITCH TO COPYWRITING.

There’s a rumor it’s easier to be a Copywriter than an Art Director, Graphic Designer, Web Designer/Developer. Before you make a big mistake and switch disciplines, the Copy Diva is here to tell you it ain’t so.

I ran into a friend in the Circus Web program recently. He was thinking of switching to copywriting. We didn’t have much time, but my reply was “It’s hard. Copywriting is hard.”

Several students in my class(es) made the switch – started as ADs, GDs, WDs, then switched to Copy. Not one of them thinks Copy’s easier. Other students have mentioned they’re thinking of it. I’m all for it – for the right reasons.  

Copywriters don’t moon over words all day. We’re the ones who go to the meetings, get the input, have lunch with the client (those meetings), spend endless hours listening to voice over after voice over after another boring voice, then try to keep the client out of the production booth. In between, we get bugged to bug you about jobs trending late.  Look over your shoulder, say the way you stacked the headline doesn’t make sense, wish this was just a tiny bit lower and wouldn’t a light screen of color behind all that reverse type make it easier to read? 

We do exciting things too.  Interview engineers and bus drivers, for instance.  All of that – so the AD GD WD can direct photographers, direct directors, production, color. OK – you have to know more software. We, however, must be familiar w/ever-changing Google thoughts, SEO, SEM, Content Marketing, Content Strategy, print writing, visual concepts AND television/video/radio/voice over writing/production.

 

We must write War and Peace in two pages. No typos. Nothing left out. Art Directors may have to know the rudiments of how a product works, but knowing how it looks in/out of context is more important. They play with type and space – something most clients, AEs and such don’t mess with. Writers, are the product/client/AE detail people. We fight to keep creative vision, strategy in the face of too many “guest” editors and wannabes without buying into their shtick.

Copywriters get to learn how the product’s made, what the legal fellas will/won’t allow. We're the ones who stay awake through testing and focus groups, hear stories about the company founder. Still, everyone’s a Copywriter – Mom always loved our spelling word stories, some clients married English teachers. 

You try cramming all those features and benefits into two paragraphs – or two lines – so they’re motivating, engaging, interesting. On strategy. True to prospect. True to product. Memorable. True to concept/language of concept. You get the whole screen/page. We get two lines. Short ones.

I realize leafing through stock photos and Director reels gets tedious. At least you’re looking at pictures. Copywriters struggle to find the perfect word, split semantic hairs, rely on structure, syntax and Creative Strategy. We have to know what they all are, how to push them. All within the context of someone else’s layout. Someone else's product. And everyone’s thoughts how we should have said it. When we think it’s perfect, better shave off another twenty  fifty  three hundred words to comply with your layout, leaving no product detail, style, concept or prospect motivation behind.

While you’re moving logos and images around, we’re sifting through research, piles of product data, prospect profiles. Then joy! Another meeting – no need for AD to attend, the writer is here! All those meetings, the client still doesn’t want to pay for us to go on photo shoots.

Writing copy is harder than you think – harder than most lifelong writers who try (journalists, PR folks, wannabe novelists, poets) ever dream. You think talking to programmers and suppliers is hard? Try writing a thousand headlines on the same subject, no two alike. Even if they mean the same darn thing. It’s nit-picky work and you must constantly reinvent yourself in prospect speak.

Writing Copy is not easier than learning software that’s constantly upgrading, knowing a bit of math, if you’re at the Creative Circus, getting through Sylvia’s courses. I know it seems like it – all we need to know is Microsoft® Word®, right?  And where all those ®s  ™s  ©s go.*

 

Before you make the switch, think about these:  

Do you love to write? Better still, do you love to edit? Are you a Problem Solver by nature? Can your ego stand clients changing your copy because – well, for reasons a professional copywriter would never imagine, let alone have? I once had to change a word because the client had never “seen it in an ad before.” Another client, with two dueling consultants, would have to let the other consultant change a word for every word first guy killed. I’ve debated revisions with twelve engineers at once, written copy-while-U-wait in meetings, gone toe-to-toe with CEOs over articles  pronouns  commas and Copy Sins.  

After you’ve spent a week concepting, a week writing, done eight edits, gotten internal approvals all the way up - can you let your stuff go to whomever wants to do whatever because – heck! – writing copy’s so easy?

Knowing some of you will no doubt doubt, I gladly admit you visual/codable types have more details to sign off on, vendors to deal with, program updates to master. Enviable skills, but there are project managers, art buyers, production types and others to help. After the AD signs off on final production details suppliers don’t tell you no, change this visual because they’ve never seen it in an ad before. No, you get kudos for creativity!

 

One more thing, Creative Circus students (and others) considering the switch.  You think Sylvia made you work hard? Wait’ll you go over your work word for word with Doreen. (Sylvia and I taught a class together once – a Teams class on Long Copy.  Maybe that’s the solution!  Thinking of making the switch?  Maybe Sylvia and I should design a class just for you!)

If you really really want to be a copywriter, if, as some of my ex-AD students tell me, you care more about the words than the graphics, don’t be afraid, go for it. Here are a few quick reasons to give it a shot:

More CDs and ECDs are CWs than ADs. Agencies look to CWs as the problem solvers, which can give us more influence. Clients can become very attached to their writers, but their relationships with ADs are usually more distant, so they’re often not as proprietary about them. Everyone says there’s a shortage of writers. (Not true – there’s a shortage of great writers’ writers.) Google has made everyone aware of the value of original, prospect-centered content.  Now writers aren’t seen as dispensable/changeable on e-projects.

The decision boils down to this:  You like writing, but do you love the edit?  Making it better in fewer words (sometimes 50%+ fewer words)? Putting up with an AD, GD, WD like you? Would you like sitting in on all the meetings you miss as an AD? Spending enough time in Client Ville so they not only like you, they respect you, trust you and what you do?

As the line between many AD/CWs blurs in this age of hacking your cell, sophisticated (and not so) apps, smart phones  gps  Facebook  tablets  and who knows where else it’s going, one more thought:  being a successful hybrid CW/AD isn’t that easy, either. Small agencies and freelance clients may appreciate the combo, big agencies don’t. Master of All is Master of None kind of thing.

The real question:  What do you want? Why? Copy isn’t easy. If it’s truly what you’re meant to do, it’s not that hard, either.  

*Here's where one of those (c)s go:

(c)2012, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

WHY, ALL KAMIKAZE COPYWRITERS, ART DIRECTORS, DESIGNERS OF ALL ILK , SHOULD ABSOLUTELY EXPERIENCE GOING OVER 200+ PIECES OF COPY EVERY WEEK THAT YOU CONVEINTLY WROTE FOR ME TO GO OVER, ALL OF IT, TO, FOR KAMIKAZE COPY SINS, OF COURSE. When you see them, regardless you should know that you need to send it back to the writer of it, and, with a list of there Kamikaze Copy Sins.

You’re on your way home when it hits you.  All this Prospect rules!This and Prospect rules that.  For once, you decide that you’d decide and you decide that if your gonna decide, that you should just do  it, right their on they yard if, that is, yore gonna do it.  And so you’re gonna speak directly to your prospect and tell him that’s why you understand him you are him.  So this is the ad that too many of you experience that is him standing they're.  So, in place of that next post then this is like the ad you write…

Your as tired of all

this advertising than

we are.  And you know

are right.

Unfortunately, you wake up everyday and day and when you get home from work you know yore just going to repeat you’re day everyday and there’s no thing unique that you can do about it there in charge, first, too.  Of course ewe knew you yoreself, you’d just do it.  So you drive right in and because its so conveniently located you drive right up and you say to yore saleman, even in this economy, you want that red Porsche in the showroom in time to provide a proven drive home and say you’re the man know, really.  Regardless, you know that’s why the beautiful, amazing, and shining example has stuff like surround sound their just going to love experiencing …next, you buy something of the type of attire that every one who attains a Porsche is designed to where.

At Doreen's class in the Creative Circus, we believe, that in today’s economy,  you just allow lazy writing and bad editing because, after all, people, like the ones, who actually read ads, you will know what that means.  But that said are you quite, certain, that you found all the Copy Sins, or are you, unfortunately, totally and convincingly and without a doubt up to the task only because you took Doreen’s class so that’s why you should provide a better ending than this.

Therefore, I offer to all of you a challenge that, you won't want to pass by.  Figure out what Product this copy is figure out what the Objective is.  Then, I want all of you to post your edit of the copy in the comments section.  For at least eleven of you, you have no option.  It's your upcoming homework.  For the rest of you... I double dog dare you to give it a shot (copy only is fine, no need to get fancy)

Whew.  Maybe the shortest blog post I’ve written but for the life of me, I just can’t seem to always keep those Copy Sins coming.

How many’d you find?  How many do you, right?

Retrograde Mercury (what – again?) KAMIKAZE TIMING for Copywriters, Art Directors, Designers and otherwise normal folk.

If you haven’t noticed, Mercury is Retrograde. If you haven’t been to Kathryn’s site, go. (www.planetaryperceptions.com, Retrograde Mercury button on left.)  Once you get your head around it, you may want to book an appointment.  Kathryn and I have been friends through 4-5 Presidential Elections.  She has yet to miss, including Gore/Bush and his last one, which she called before the Grand Old White Guy Party even had a candidate.  Tell her I sent you and how you’re a poor starving student and all.  No promises, but it may be good for a discount.

If you’ve done this long ago, or are familiar with the art of astrology, you know I’ve been trying to post for several weeks and well, Mercury's been going Retrograde.  Basically it means sit still, hang on, if it’s headed for a breakdown, it will, what you hear is seldom what people are saying, back up everything.   I’ll have my next post up as soon as one of the 5-6 I’ve been playing with submits. Hopefully before it heads Direct the 26^th.

    

   

CALLING ALL KAMIKAZE CREATIVES: Open Kamikaze Creative Strategy Program next week

Next Friday, October 12th, I'm doing an Open Workshop at the Creative Circus, starting as close to 9 a.m. as I am capable of making.  I'll be going over the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan, Prospect Centered Creative and will put special focus on the Kamikaze Key Fact.  All the good stuff.  It's free, any/everyone's invited and it's the single most important skill I can give you.  Tell them Doreen sent you.  Hope to see you there.

Promise new post soon - keep checking back, I actually have subject and word doc open for it!

KAMIKAZE CREATIVE LEARNING: WHY I TEACH. True Confessions for rising Kamikaze Copywriters, Art Directors, Graphic Designers, Web Designers, AEs and non-Kamikaze professionals who ask why I’m crazy enough to raise the level – and number – of my competition.

My father believed the only reason to send a girl-child to college was to hook a high-earner husband.  In his world, a woman’s place was in the School of Education (or Nursing).  Just in case “Something happens to your husband.”  Math and Science Challenged, I had to be a teacher.  So of course, teaching was the last thing I wanted to do.

Lucky for me my mother, ahead of her times, long-frustrated by the Depression era reality even her full scholarship put Nursing School out of reach, showed me a different way to dream. 

First to BU for liberal arts, ready to transfer to the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Conference, Life (in the form of my mother’s death) intervened.  Back home at eighteen, I found my first job in Advertising.  Hired in as Gal Friday (gone with the electric typewriter, Gal Fridays did general office work more specialized Secretaries, Bookkeepers and such didn’t.  Good ones supplanted them all.) 

I was a complete failure.  Disconnected every phone call, broke the copier, destroyed any logic to two filing systems (office and “art”), forgot clients were king and was never on time for anything.  But I was funny – and I could write.  The agency’s lone female copywriter took me under her wing – mainly because she couldn’t get rid of me. 

From there I migrated back to Boston, bouncing between now-famous worldwide creative shops in their start-up phase and dying Mad Men era dinosaurs.  A kind of hybrid Gal Friday/Copywriter wannabe, still demanding time (and opportunity) from the few female copywriters I found.  Soon Copywriter was the only title I needed.

I eventually ended up in Houston with a portfolio of award winning clever and not much else.  Out of six offers, I luckily hired on with a shop just bought by Y&R.  My first day, the Copy Chief (unfortunately, a job mostly gone w/the Gal Friday, the Copy Chief approved, edited and ordered revisions of every piece of copy in the shop) waved a piece of paper in my face.  “It was so much easier before,” he bemoaned, “now Y&R wants us to fill out one of these before we start work on anything.”

The paper was a blank Y&R Creative Work Plan.  I’d been in the business 3-4 years, winning jobs and awards by being funny, punny, short in headlines; writing snappy, formula copy everywhere else.  I studied the much maligned form – looked pretty smart to me.  For the first time, I had a way to organize my input, thinking, direction.  I used it, but didn’t use it right until Y&R sent two guys out to teach us how. Eureka!  I finally knew what I did for a living.  Y&R must have thought so, too, because I got two weeks in FL for strategy school, a week for presentation school and survived two lay-offs much more experienced writers didn’t.

But growing your own Creatives is expensive – few shops had the money, personnel or foresight to take it on.  Within five years, no one was training and for most females, the route to the Creative Department was still through secretarial, traffic, admin.

I became Paul Revere, going from job to job, teaching everyone and anyone this amazing system I’d been taught.  My work got smarter, my “sell” record unmatched.  Sharing my Work Plan with AEs and clients, I got approvals before the copy was done, won awards, new accounts.  Some agencies sent me to other branches for New Business, new creative on tough accounts.  They gave me the credit.  I knew it was the form and the training that went with it.

Several years later, I found myself in Atlanta, Group Head to one of Portfolio Center’s first graduates.  She introduced me to Ron Siechrist, PC and Miami Ad founder, who asked me to do a portfolio show for the school’s 9-10 ad students.  Before long, I was teaching classes. 

For 18 years, I’ve been at it in one way or another – at PC, establishing it’s Copywriting Department, teaching at the Circus, invited by friends and ex-PC co-workers who founded it, at Emory, creative clubs and professional associations, in agencies.

That’s the how – but the why?  Certainly not the pay – last term I actually lost money commuting to Atlanta.  I teach because of what I see in classes like the one last Friday, when we went over the Kamikaze Key Fact (once again) – and I got to see the look in the eyes of more than half of the class as they finally got it. 

The warm-and-fuzzies still go a long way in the instruction business.  So does the challenge of bright young minds – some of whom I know are more talented than I am (even if – at this point – I still know more).  But the rest of the reason?

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the Advertising Industry for a long time.  I’m frustrated by how uncreative about business our creative business is.  I often disagree with what’s in the Award books.  Bemoan how slowly some of the old behemoths of the ad game catch the reality of the next big thing. 

But advertising’s kept me in challenging, meaningful work since I was 18, when teaching elementary school, nursing or motherhood were about the only meaningful work a woman could do.  The industry gave me the freedom to learn more about how this country (and the world) thinks, works, plays, eats, drinks and innovates than I ever could have doing office work.

Why teach when I can just work?  Funny, my husband asked me the same thing every Thursday when I left Charlotte on the three-four hour drive down I85 for two classes a week. 

The hours in classes + time spent with students after class keeps me on my game.  Shows me trends before they start, teaches me the language of each upcoming generation.  They prepare me for any argument a client can make trying to kill good work their companies need.  Since the e-revolution, they also keep me on the cutting edge of technology.

Running to stay three steps ahead of my students keeps my ideas sharp, smart, conceptual.  Forces me to innovate, examine the hows and whys of my work, not just the fact I do it.  It gave voice to in the Kamikaze creative philosophy and developed the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan.  Explaining to students taught me how to explain what I do to clients and potential clients, saving me endless revisions and mediocre solutions.

I know CDs, ECDs and famous ad guys (that’s the unisex “guy”) who always take my phone calls, return my emails and answer my questions as I once answered theirs.  Two of them are teaching me to find the courage to finally write that novel I wanted to write back in high school.  Some teach their own classes what I taught them.  I get important recommendations from ad names that make people take notice. 

The real reasons?  I’m still the youngest person I know.  Have more fun doing creative than I ever did.  All because my students dare me to give more when they finally grok some big idea skill or nit-picky editing technique no one else has ever shown them. 

As much as I challenge, teach and encourage my students, they do the same for me.  Today in class.  Tomorrow when I see what they’ve done with what I’ve given them – and realize I’d better start running faster, innovating harder and concepting smarter if I’m going to keep ahead – or just keep up.

That’s why I teach.  Why I ask all my contemporaries who bemoan the competition, belittle its lack of grammar, exposure, experience – why aren’t you?

You can worry about the youth quake that is most agency Creative Departments.  Feel superior in your greater experience, greater “knowledge.”  Or you can relearn the thrill and excitement this business once gave you.

How about it?  Haven’t you made a good living playing with it?  Mingled with smart, creative, witty people?  Hasn’t this industry given you the opportunity to be creative, to not be tied to a time clock, to not to sell Insurance?  So why aren’t you teaching, giving back too?  Your work will be better for it.  As long as you keep on top of it, they’ll never be your competition.  More importantly, you’ll get back more than you will ever give.

Today I'm making this challenge to my peers.  Giving this  smile of Thank You to last quarter's students, all the students who came before them.  All the students who will come after.  Peers, don't fear the "competition" until they know all you do, work in your market, steal your clients.  None of which they can do until long past your retirement.  Students, thanks for reinspiring my work, rejuvenating my life, challenging my ideas and thinking I know a bit about this biz.  I'll miss you next term, but I have a new group - and a new way of teaching (from home, via skyppe) - coming up next month.  If you see them before I do, be sure to tell them how scary I am.  They're all bigger than me.  I can use the help.

As usual, (c) 2012, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

Kamikaze Copywriting: The Joy is in the Edit: How Kamikaze Copywriters find, fix and perfect all those copy problems ADs, GDs, WDs, AEs, CDs hate.

I realize this Kamikaze Copy Course has focused on the how-tos of Concept, Input, Headlines, Content, Language of Concept, the Kamikaze Key Fact, Prospect Targeted Writing, Features/Benefits, etc.  All important to making your Copy Kamikaze, there’s one more topic I need to discuss.  Arguably without this one, the rest don’t matter. 

I have always maintained The Joy is in the Edit.  If you’ve been in one of my classes, you’ve heard me say it least a dozen times.  Unlike writers who thrill at the first rush of verbal catharsis, I find the nitty gritty perfecting of that first verbal outpouring where fun – and professionalism – come out to play. 

Editing’s a huge subject, one easier shown in person than written about in a blog.  I do have some tips, hints, steps you can take on your own, however.  Do these, you’re almost there.

1.     Check your work for Kamikaze Copy Sins.  Every word.  Every Copy Sin on my list.  Every Copy Sin you’ve added as your own personal weakness.  Highlight each one, then fix them.  Sometimes it’s an easy fix.  Sometimes the fix will make you uncomfortable at first.  The more you do without them, the more sense they make. 

Sometimes software can help – use the Finder to ferret out all those repeated words and phrases.  The Spelling & Grammar Check can help, but  - especially if you’re using any version of Word, - don’t depend upon it.  Word is terrible with advanced tenses, subject/verb agreement, homonyms (there they’re theirs, etc.).  It likes traditional style, worries about fragments, loves to add “ands,” commas, often doesn’t recognize words at all – especially those pesky ones – client/product names, industry terms (considering it’s a much bandied about term at Microsoft, you’d think it’d know “grok” – it doesn’t), slang, made up advertisingese, yadda yadda yadda.

As to the individual Copy Sins themselves, it’ll want to put most back in.  There’s some agreement, starting lines w/but, because, and, etc.  It hates the passive voice and will sometimes point out confused/overwritten/run-ons and other structure problems.  The way it wants to fix thing’s another story.  One not included in any Style Book – Kamikaze, NYTimes, whatever.

There’s no such thing as a quick software fix.  Memorize the Kamikaze Copy Sins, buy yourself a few old library dictionaries (the kind that weigh 50 lbs), dig out your old grammar texts and apply religiously.  Why the grammar text?  (Woe Is I, written for grammarphobes by Patricia O’Conner, is an even better idea.)  You have to know the rules before you can get away with breaking them.

2.     Get rid of the modifiers and descriptors.  Make your writing visual instead.  Make the reader SEE what you’re talking about.  Not just read a description of it.  Keep it active, engaging. 

3.     Forswear the “you” voice.  Went out with the 80s.  Shoulder pads may come back.  The “you” voice never will.  One of the quickest ways to write yourself into a box – and repeat words (you, your, yours, etc.) – I know.

4.     Break up those run-ons, shorten those long sentences/fragments, simplify your structure.  Structure is the Number One reason your writing isn’t working.  Here are some (but not all) ways to approach structural fixes:

Reverse the order of things.  Put the tail end of the line in front, the front at the tail.  Smooth out the in-between.

Break it up.  Get rid of commas, ands, semi-colons.  Insert periods even if only fragments remain.  Get rid of the “ands” too.  Use a comma instead.  You think “and” makes the flow more natural?  The reader thinks it’s more than he/she wants to read.

5.     Change the order of lines, sentences/fragments, paragraphs.  Really mix them up.  You may find incorrect order makes otherwise clear narrative confusing.  Confusing makes readers stop reading.

6.     Read it out loud.  If you stumble over anything after the second or third read, it’s a problem. Fix it.

7.     Hand it off to someone else to read.  Preferably another writer.  We read what we meant to write, not what we actually put on the paper/screen.  Don’t trust yourself.  If you do, no one else will.

8.     If you must rely on your own edits, you’ll stop seeing things as they are.  Start skipping words, even whole phrases, after the first few go-rounds.  Here’s a technique I use:  Change the way the page looks.  Trick yourself into thinking you’re reading something different.  Change fonts.  Do one edit on screen, another on paper.  Change the color of your printouts – paper and/or font.

Put it away before the final edit.  Sleep on it.  I guarantee you’ll find stuff you missed in the morning.

9.     Get rid of that intro/first paragraph.  About 65% of the time you don’t need it.  Don’t try to self-edit it out during the first burst of writing.  That needs to flow without interference.  It’s highly likely it doesn’t need to be there, however.  Try taking it out, see if it doesn’t put the Prospect where you want faster.

Still in love with it?  See if it doesn’t belong worked between lines in another paragraph.  Rewrite it, break it up, spread it around.  If it still seems like it’s missing, maybe it is.  Ask another writer, a very verbal AD/GD, a great AE if you have one.

10.  Get rid of that middle paragraph laundry list of features.  Turn them into benefits and meld them into the ad’s storyline.  That “feature” paragraph is almost always death to the KLOC (Kamikaze Language of Concept).  Features just name things.  Benefits are what’s important to the Prospect.  Don’t name the thing.  Don’t explain/describe/define it.  Translate it into an active, prospect-centered benefit integral to your concept.  (Related subject:  forget using like.  Big Copy Sin.  Does the car have something like seatbelts?  Or does it have seatbelts?)

11.  Revisit your headline.  Sometimes there’s a better one hidden in your body copy.  It’s often the last line, but not always.  A better headline may be lurking elsewhere.  Maybe in that list of 500 headlines you write for every assignment.  Maybe somewhere else. Find it.  Use it.

12.  Don’t give your AD, GD, WD your responsibilities.  Headline copy breaks are your decision, not theirs.  What they think looks better graphically/fits the layout better may kill a great headline, change its meaning, render it incomprehensible.  Paragraph breaks, sub/crosshead placement, bold leads, etc. fall under the same category.  Your job, no one else’s.

13.  Put it down.  Take a walk.  Go to lunch.  Sleep on it.  If you’re on a tight deadline, do something – anything – to get a thought/awareness break.  Get it out of your mind – even for just a few minutes.  Actively think about something else. 

The Incubation phase of the Creative Process (Define the Problem, Get more Input than you’ll ever need, Incubate, Illuminate, Validate) doesn’t just happen in Concept.  It happens in writing/editing too.  Use it – your next go-round will be on a fresher reading piece.

I’ve found meditation a great way to create very short mini-incubation periods.  As meditators/self-hypnosis mavens know, you can tell yourself how long to be “out.”  Just before you slip into the Now, tell yourself how long you want to stay there.  All you need is five minutes.  Twenty if you have them.  No matter how long/short, when you come you'll feel like you’ve been away for days.

14.  Don’t ever settle.  Work it until it’s perfect.  That includes making sure every technical/beneficial point of every product is 100% correct.  Nothing kills a great piece faster than incorrect – or inadequate – information.

     Go over it again after it’s been laid out and put together with the graphics.  You’ll

      probably find a few things you missed in all those earlier edits.  See #8.

15.  Make all the changes you can before the client meeting.  Clients aren’t idiots, but

 neither are they trained Copywriters.  They get hung-up on stuff like incorrect product info, words they’ve never seen in ads before, typos, fragments, etc.  If you’re smart, you’ll recognize no matter what anyone else tells you, your Client is part of your creative process.  Keep them invested in the outcome.  Make them participate, not sit in judgment.

I’ve seen too much great work killed because the client came in on it cold, got stuck on a single point/word and rejected the entire idea.  Ditto the graphics.  Treat clients with respect.  Involve them early (even if it’s just input, follow-up calls, asking new questions that come up in concept/copy and/or confirming/clarifying confusions).  If they understand where you come from – and where you’re headed, they may still kill that word you love, make you revise a product error – but they’re less likely to send you back to Square One.  After all, you’ve made it their work, too.

16.  About those client ordered revisions.  Sometimes a client will know there’s a  problem, but won’t know how to tell you exactly what it is.  In a nice way, keep asking until you’re at the heart of it.  Try editing with them in the meeting.  They may not really hate that line you love – it may just have incorrect info, be in the wrong place, confuse rather than inform.  Respect their instincts, but stay confident.  Don’t say this, but if they could do it themselves, they wouldn’t be paying you/your agency to do it for them.  Help them.  Clients are less likely to reject the entire piece when you everyone understands what the problem really is.

17.  Remember the Four Pushes.  Push the Strategy/Kamikaze Key Fact.   Push the Concept.  Push the Headline.  Push the Copy.  Then add a Fifth:  Push the AD so your copy can do what it's supposed to do.

18.  Challenge everything.  Your input.  Your strategy.  Your Concept, Creative, Copy.  Challenge your AD, your Client, your AE.  Most of all, Challenge Yourself.  Brass tacks, you’re the only one who can.

©2012, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

Why your ads are like everyone else’s - Concept, Copy, Language of Concept and the Kamikaze Key Fact: What every Creative needs to remember.

Since starting my Creative Circus classes two months ago, I’ve spent at least three (if not more) nights each week going over student assignments.  Line by line, until sometimes my red ink edits make it look like they’re bleeding to death.  As we near the end of the term, I’m amazed at how hard the students have worked, how much improvement they’ve made, how some of the slower grokkers have finally had their Eureka! Moment, improved seemingly “overnight.”

There is one note I keep adding to the edits – one I thought I wouldn’t have to write any more.  No matter how I phrase it - “What’s your Kamikaze Key Fact?”  “Is this Key Fact Kamikaze?”  “Push push push – this Key Fact isn’t Kamikaze.”  Always, on work with writing improvements, but concepts that could have come from anyone.  I know I’ve covered this in previous posts (11/17/10, 8/19/10, 10/24/11, etc.).  It seems we need to discuss it again. 

The Kamikaze Key Fact is where the concepts are.  It is something that’s going on in the Prospect’s World you can use to hang your concept, your language, your product.  Some would say the Kamikaze Key Fact is the Concept.  The truth, sometimes it is, sometimes it just points the way to your concept if you push, push, try again, push some more. 

A real life student example:  one of my student writers is working on ads for a Heavy Metal style electric bass.  He came up with the usual stuff – how the base sounds, how Heavy Metal sounds, Metal’s perceptions, musical and otherwise, what the bass looks like, etc.  At the time, he had a very mundane KKF.  Something safe about Metal, bass, the color black, that kind of thing.  His writing was getting better, but conceptually – and in Language of Concept (LOC) – it was all pretty expected stuff.

Once again, I asked, “What’s your Kamikaze Key Fact?  Push it.  Push.  Push.  Push.  What do you know about Metal, the attitude, how it’s played, what it creates that will resonate in the Prospect's life, mind?”  Then the conversation changed.  “Didn’t the FBI play Heavy Metal to try to evacuate the Branch Davidians?” I asked.  He was on it like (my favorite Southern metaphor) ticks on a poodle.  Kept pushing, adding real life applications of Metal.  His Key Fact finally got Kamikaze.  Instead of a cool base attracts more chicks or some such expected stuff, he got this:

·      “The US…(is) at war in Afghanistan.  Soldiers use Metal to get aggressive in battle, instill fear and to interrogate prisoners.”

That’s when every changed.

The work went from expected, typical, to conceptual copy so well done and unexpected, there was actually a moment of complete silence after I read it to the class.  For a taste, his headline:

·      Fifty-megaton warhead.  Now with quarter-inch jack.*

The body copy is the best he’s done.  Clearly, he was into it.  The LOC must have flowed out his fingers.  Just as clearly, the rest of the class was mightily impressed.  I was, too.

That’s what a good Kamikaze Key Fact does for you.  Gets you to places you normally wouldn’t go.  Breathes life into concepts you otherwise wouldn’t find.  Best of all, if you don’t like a KKF, if it doesn’t lead where you want, doesn’t hold up the features/benefits and LOC, push it, change it.  Work it until you get a Kamikaze Key Fact like the work it’s meant to inspire:  Original, Conceptual, Book Worthy.

Next time you write a Kamikaze Creative Strategy (and you do write one for every assignment, don’t you?), look hard at your Key Fact.  Hear my voice in your head, see my hen scratching in red on the screen/paper:  “Is this Key Fact Kamikaze?”  Even when it is, don’t stop there.  You want to innovate, standout, make a creative difference?  Push push push it.  There’s no such thing as only one Kamikaze Key Fact.  No matter how good you think they’re getting, don’t stop until you find the one that says “No one else will see it this way - this one's Kamikaze and it's mine!”

Once you have a great Kamikaze Key Fact, Concept and Copy Innovation find you.

*©2012, David Stich.  Everything else, as usual, ©2012, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

FEATURES, BENEFITS AND THE KAMIKAZE LANGUAGE OF CONCEPT: Where Kamikaze Copywriters put them, what Kamikaze Copywriters call them, how Kamikaze Copywriters make them impossible for the Prospect to ignore.

I’m beginning to see writing in the Kamikaze Language of Concept (LOC) is a more difficult assignment than I anticipated.  The problem in three parts:  first, using the Kamikaze Key Fact to find a concept your Prospect will resonate to.  Next, not knowing where to start, what the copy needs to say (again, lack of using the KCWP as your guide) and finally, discovering the right LOC – or even what an LOC is in the first place.

I can go over all that again in later posts (it was subject of post before this), but my task today must be to explain how the LOC is not counter to communicating features, benefits, content of any kind.  This all started as a Circus class assignment/discussion, beginning with an innocent remark.  “You know,” I assumed, “the difference between a feature and a benefit?”  No one spoke to the contrary, but the blank stares from half the room told me they needed reassurance.  Here it is:

·      A feature names something, lets you know what it’s called (seat belt, bleach, low deductible, changeable mop head, blah, blah, blah)

·      A feature is a descriptor, even a name.  Features can include how the thing works, what it looks like, where it goes

·      One more thing about features:  features are features.  It isn’t something like a seatbelt, it is a seatbelt.  A certain sunscreen doesn’t have something like SPF 50, it has SPF 50.  Never precede a feature with the word “like” unless your product does, indeed, have something similar to seatbelts, SPF, etc., rather than that particular feature itself

·      A benefit, real or perceived, is what that feature does for me (your Prospect)

·      Benefits are active, speak directly to the Prospect in terms he not only understands, but make him grok why this feature is so beneficial to him specifically, he must respond in the manner desired (Objective)

One is, one does.  Because they are generally named, features may be a bit harder to translate into the KLOC.  Because they are an active advantage to/for the Prospect, often stated competitively, benefits are a lot easier to work with, no matter how inventive your concept/language of concept.

Something about F&Bs I need to get off my chest.  They do not belong, as a shopping list, in the middle paragraph of a three paragraph ad.  Nor do they belong grouped together, an added thought behind wildly entertaining (or not) body copy.

Where do they belong?  Integrated throughout your body copy, integral to the Prospect, concept, product.  They are part of the story – heck, they ARE the story.  The concept, copy and KLOC are all just ways/excuses to feed them to the Prospect.

Here are some features turned to benefits for a SkiDoo (or any other water cycle)

Feature:  135 hp                                    Benefit:  70 mph max speed

The KLOC, a fast, frenzied emotional daydream of speed on water  “…135 sea horses, each straining in flight.  Seventy miles per hour into the sun, waves stand still…”

Another ad in the series, same feature; same benefit:

“…This is not gale-force-tree-bending-mind-tossing-one-hundred-thirty-five-horses of Tropical Anything.  Call it zero to fifty in five…”

Same feature, same benefit, same KLOC. 

What doesn’t it say?  There’s no third paragraph that says X Model SkiDoo has features you’re looking for like 135 horsepower, blah blah blah.

From our Ostrich insanity of last the post:

Feature:  Tender Red Meat like Beef            Benefit:  Two Thirds Less Fat than Beef

We’ve discussed this KLOC, but this feature/benefit turns up in my madness several ways:  “…Ostrich does not taste like chicken…Tender to taste and best served Medium to Medium Rare, Ostrich tastes enough like cow to moo…” and “…Now Rich White Guys can have their low fat and eat it, too…”  “…while you’re chewing the low fat…”

Same feature, same benefit, same original KLOC.

As with everything else in Kamikaze Creative Land, you must translate your features and benefits into the Language of Concept – that “voice” which best communicates your Concept (KKF) in a way your Prospect will want to read.  Spread your Features and Benefits throughout your copy, wherever it fits into the concept-conveying language and rhythm of the piece.  If you need to, write them as they are, then go back and translate them into the LOC, fine.  Just don't forget to translate them later.  The key is to keep them part of the story – not an afterthought or rigidly formatted middle paragraph. 

If the product’s your Prospect’s hero – tell them why it belongs as part of the story.  Easily digestible.  Unable to distinguish as “ad b.s.”  Not a clue “the sell is coming.”