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