DO YOUR OWN INPUT! How’d I forget the first step in the Kamikaze Copywriting/Creative Process + Something New: Watch Doreen edit short! (**Details, end of Post.**)

This is strange and wonderful area, doing whatever we need to do to get everything else done.  Possibly, the most important step in the process. It’s Something I’ve always loved, even when I’ve had to go it alone. 

There are huge accounts and big agencies that pride themselves in giving you what you need to create.  I’ve had boxes of studies dumped in my office, perused hundreds of white papers, websites, hung out in grocery stores, sat through endless meetings, focus groups, and phone calls.  Read trade pubs, studied competitive work, taken so many plant tours I know the difference between a horizontal milling machine and a Swiss Turn lathe.  Eaten, driven, tried and tried-on; watched and helped do.  Signed non-disclosures that make your head spin. 

I’ve also sat across the table from small account sales folk, CEOs, marketing/ad people, even admin support.  Called on their customers or hung out where I could find them.  Read the consumer magazines prospects read, watched their favorite TV shows.  I’ve yet to attend an input funeral, but I’ve yet to work on that kind of account.  When I do, you’ll find me dressed appropriately, respectfully in the back row.

Input corresponds to the first stage of the creative process:  Define the problem.  This isn’t just the KCWP-type Prospect Centered problem.  It’s a bigger picture problem *that leads to *leading to Prospect Definition, Objectives (Objective Based KCS or KCWP), Kamikaze Creative Promises and their Reasons Why.  It also gets more less expected you closer to **the Kamikaze Key Facts.  If you don’t do your job, process and strategic considerations can't hold the smart, unexpected insights great creative demands. 

Defining the Creative Problem (Process again) requires you do so in the most broadly inclusive manner possible.  (How to move from room to room vs. How to build a door.)  Input does the same thing.  The longer you write on an account, the better you learn your client’s business ***and their competition’s.  ****You bBecome One with the minutiae of Prospect studies, focus groups, consumer culture, what’s happening in the trades.  If you’re lucky, all that knowledge won’t get you stuck on the same account/in the same category forever (unless you want that.  If you don’t, at some point you ‘ll have to change accounts or category,even if it means a new job for less money – something I’ve done.)  To do great work on any account, you need to know it cold – and not be afraid to challenge others on it.

There’s an old ad cliché, The better the input, the better the creative.  Good one to write on the chalkboard a hundred times.  It’s not enough for you to know what everyone else who works on the account knows.  To find that one bit that cracks an the whole account open, exposes Prospect insights and leads to Kamikaze Creative Strategies no one else has considered, **you have to delve deeply.  You need Find that nugget of irony, contradiction, fact, and mayhem no one else finds sees – too often because they dwon’t want to ****dig for it.  Not only does this approach inspire  breakthrough creative, it can also lead to new markets, new mediums and – most fun of all – new uses for old products.

A few short/sharp insights about the Input Process:

Get to know your client.  If you show an interest, your client should give you access to everything there is to know – including the wild hair personal insights and puzzlements pointing to the info/thought nugget you seek.

Take a test drive.  Some accounts have elaborate programs that put you inside their product “experience” so you can know it the same way their Prospect does.  Other accounts think a discussion with the AE who discusses it with you is enough.  Most fall somewhere in between.  Encourage your involvement.  If it’s not standard, do whatever you have to do to be the exception, even if you have to do it on your own time/your own dime.  It will always – always ­– pay off.  Creatively first, then financially.

Don’t trust everything your client tells you.  Big client sales personnel and small client CEOs are a great source of prospect and product knowledge/insight.  Problem is, most clients – and the marketing/advertising departments and agencies they work with –believe.  Unquestioning.  If they see contradictions, have doubts, they perceive it against their own best interests to share.  Stay out of that trap.  Verify everything (final stage of the Creative Process:  Verification.  Do it first, too.).  Leave no stone unturned, even if it means what’s usually a painfully obtuse discussion with the client’s Legal department.

Never, ever, leave it up to your partner, AE, planner, client or anyone else.  They’re all part of the process but as the writer, the weight of accuracy falls on you.  I love working on technical, information rich accounts – industrial, B2B (often considered the same), high tech, that kind of thing.  There’s so much information to work with, communicating it clearly and creatively, within Prospect vernacular/Language of Concept is a writing challenge that can get me high. 

I’m know for getting it right the first time, no matter what creative context I use.  I hate rewrites, charge higher rates for being the last writer on technical pieces others couldn’t grok.  The reason:  Deep, Personal Input + Genuine Interest.  (Granted, these kinds of accounts aren’t everyone’s cup of tea – in my youth, I sometimes “ghost-wrote” them for co-workers who either couldn’t – or wouldn’t – understand them.)  It’s a personal thing but – regardless – you have to do the work whether it’s consumer, B2B, in whatever medium assigned or imagined.

BONUS TIP ON WRITING SHORT:  Forget the articles.  Xing “the” “a” even “our”personal pronouns  and other word wasters may force you to challenge your structure, but your work will be better –read shorter, get read more – for it.

Something new I’m trying:  leaving in some edited areas, with their edits.  I have to say I t drives me crazy rereading copy like this, but I’llm going to start w/the easy stuff.  If it works, maybe we’ll get more advanced later. Not all long lines should be edited down, so don’t go crazy on your copy.  Let me know if it helps.  If you don’t, this may be the first/last time I try.

*We discussed “ing” ing in last post.

**Get rid of articles where you can.

***Copy Sin:  Redundancy.  The Competition is your client’s business.

****Active is/reads shorter

Other common edits, too confusing/disruptive to share:  

Copy Sins:  Repeating same word too closely in line/paragraph/piece, except where it works for emphasis/stylistic concerns.  Repeating same info disguised by several different approaches, within any particular line/paragraph/piece.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE, I want to thank Portfolio Center Copy Head Robyn Cohen for convincing me I've been out of the classroom too long, needed to come down and do a short program for the school.  In spite of a few snafus, the four hour drive and the bullet hole in the hotel window, I had a great time.  Hopefully, Reverend Rob and I converted a few more believers to the gospel of Prospect Centered Creative.  What did it teach me?  Students haven't changed that much since I last taught at the Circus.  They still want to know, still like to yell, still like to have their thinking challenged. Oh - and I miss teaching.  Could be why April got lucky, getting my usual six months' worth of posts.  Toodles!