WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH STYLE? - or - HOW A GOOD ASSIGNMENT GOES BAD: Doreen puts all Kamikaze Copywriters on Alert: Stop writing ads – start writing.

Let me put it this way.  Last style assignment, One Hit.  Sixteen misses.  The misses showed the following trends:

• Tone changes, often none in selected style
• Run-ons (hint: all those “ands” – take them out, break up the lines, restructure)
•  Where’s the product (this is a course on ad writing, not writing writing)
• The answer to most writing problems is structure (hints:  try reversing order of clauses, mixing up order of information from para to para, then attack those lines for Copy Sins, readability, tone, etc.)
• What did you mean to say?  (Sometimes the writing is so disorganized and/or product free, I have no idea what it’s supposed to be about)
• How is this writing in any way/shape/form written in/to reflect the selected style?  One or two words do not a Style make.  The entire piece should reflect the era you’re trying to use.  Still not sure?  See the one hit, which I’ve put at the end, compare it with what you did.  If you still don’t get it, we can talk Thursday.

It’s the last one that surprised me the most. An assignment requiring me to live in someone else’s skin, to speak someone else’s language – the discovery of all the clichés and truths to spoof, warm and dress up often boring features and benefits – how much fun is that!  I thought this would be a less expected way to stretch and challenge you as writers.  I tried to inspire.  Guess it’s time to talk process. 

There is a process.  It’s not necessarily my process.  It’s not necessarily a process you should emulate. It’s just one way of doing it you can try, see if it helps, makes your life easier.  What does the process do?  Hopefully, it’ll give you what you need to take another, completely unrelated shot at it.  This isn’t your expected rewrite – you still must rewrite last week’s assignment (and do a better rewrite on what you handed in last week).

Keep in mind we are retro-fitting this assignment.  You normally wouldn’t be looking at a few styles, choosing one, then bending everything else in the name of whatever era/sociological phenom you decided on.  No, normally you’d be doing your input, writing your KCWP, concepting from the KCWP (and especially the KKF), then writing in the appropriate voice/Language of Concept.  This time, however, we start at the end and move foreward.

Pick a style from last week's list.  Do yourself a favor and choose one you either know a great deal about (first hand is good), have a special interest in or have special access to relevant insights.   When I say relevant, I don’t mean Wikipedia.  DIG.  Art, lit, fashion, history, the whole magilla.  The more you know, the better it’ll be.  Always loved big band music, the intensity of WWII, the lonely freedom women gained so long as the men were on the front?  Did you wish you were there to march with Susan B. Anthony or Margaret Sanger?  Be one of those cool cat poets on the podium as part of the Beat underground?  Here’s your chance.

• Got your Style?  What Prospect does it speak most strongly to?  Does it touch a certain prospect’s fantasy life?  Another’s patriotism?  Glory Days?  Look deep into your style, then retrofit your prospect from those it speaks to.       
• Take one more step.  What product/service might your prospect desire/be motivated by Style to consider differently than before?
• Learn everything there is about the language, look, attitudes, heroes, music, comedy, everything held in the style’s/decade’s cosmic conscious.  Use this to feed your growing expression of your chosen style verbally, with pushed structure and occasional risks, talking about product to customers, sales staff, C-level managers and all?  Go vintage clothes shopping, try on period pieces, put yourself into the style in every way possible.
• Don’t write an ad.  Write something else, something bigger, something carried by style but not buried by it.  However you pair your style with your prospect, however you integrate your product, keep reminding yourself you’re not you.  You’re Al Capone, one of Hendrix’s groupies.  Tears are falling as you wave your hubby good-byeas he leaves for to fight the Hun.  You can out-disco Travolta.  Put yourself into the style, even if you have to play dress-up to do it.
• Edit Edit Edit.   Look up some terms in a slang dictionary, then edit it some more.  That reason your 30s era flapper would buy the product?  Make sure it corresponds to the today’s modern reader, yet keeps her soundly in the roaring twenties.

LAST WEEK’S GREATEST HIT

Headline:

She came in like a light draft on Sunday morning. Another dame in distress. But then came her scent.

That smell, while it paralyzed me, floated through the room and breathed life into this dank stale office of mine.

She told me the particulars of her case. I didn’t hear a word of it. I said yes anyway, nodding like the fool I am.

“What do I call ya?” I asked. Getting up to leave, she turned back to say, “Mademoiselle.”  Like that, she was gone. *Her scent still lingering.

CHANEL Coco Mademoiselle

 A true femme fatale.

*My one suggested edit, “The memory of her scent still lingering.”

As an aside, I apologize for the lateness of this post.  Yesterday was technical problem Monday – I wrote it Sunday, was going to do final edit yesterday, the document was nowhere to be found. Learned quite a bit about Windows and PCs (mainly I want my Mac back), then gave up and tried to re-create it this morning.  Not your fault – this assignment – do your normal edits + write one more ad w/style from your choice of last week’s list, as long as it’s not in the same decade (EX:  You did a 50s Happy Days before, you can’t do the 50s Beats this time.  Use another era.)

  

Because I’m late with this, you have the option of our going over your continuing rewrites this next Skype go-round and moving the deadline for this assignment to 5 pm Friday. I'll go over it, send it back, then we can discuss next week.   If it’s not in my inbox by 5 pm Thursday, you will not be given credit for the assignment. 

As usual, (c) 2013 Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative