FOR HEDDY’S GRAMMARIANS: Kamikaze Copy Sins vs. Proper English. It’s not a book report, it’s Ad Copy. Doreen explains why she often advocates bad grammar.

Many thanks to Heddy’s Miami Ad must-be-smart/maybe ex-English teachers who pointed out many of the Kamikaze Copy Sins aren’t cited as proper usage in the NY Times Style Book. 

I know.

Ad copy (web copy, brochures, yadda yadda), like much of the best modern literature, isn’t written in the language of Quirk’s Comprehensive English Grammar.  It starts there – but like everything else we do, good ad copy is targeted to the Prospect.  It’s a sad day for America, but the majority of people we write for read at fifth grade level.  They may have degrees, but I cannot tell you how many college graduates I’ve taught who needed a good remedial grammar class (not all of them from Mississippi or the Carolinas). 

These people (our Prospects) may have advanced degrees, write themselves, may know the rules.  At least enough to send a memo/email.  You’d think.  If you’re read commercial, business or personal emails lately, you know the majority of people don’t use spell check – let alone proper English.

Ad copy is many things.  Mostly, it’s conversational.  One of the reasons I spend so much time on the Prospect section of the KCWP* is the need to enter into a meaningful dialogue.  Not speak at them.  Concept, more than anything else, is how we draw them into the conversation.  Once they enter – once they start reading – it’s our job to keep them there.  To become so engaged, they remember what they read.

Unlike mystery, romance, fine lit, comic book and graphic novel fans, people don’t volunteer to read ad copy.  We have to trick them into it.  Keep them reading, almost against their own will.

 

Any excuse we give them – language elevated above the Prospect, technically correct but ad-excessive commas.  Long, complexly structured lines and paragraphs, run-on and compound sentences.  Excessive/poorly spaced implied subjects, repeating words too closely boring verbs too many descriptors - right down the Kamikaze Copy Sins list – is a direct invitation to stop reading.  (Good thing this isn’t an ad.)

Bank copy used to sound like lawyers wrote it.  Today’s most effective bank copy is casual, conversational.  Insurance companies, legal firms and investment come-ons are moving the same way.  Why?  It won’t work if the Prospect doesn’t read it, can’t understand it, doesn’t feel it.

Lest you think I’m a grammarphobe, I invite you join a Sunday morning newspaper read at Casa Doreen and Bruce.  My engineer hubby and I despair at the state of the English language, the stupidity media shows laying off proofreaders and editors.  Granted, we’re proudly word nerds.  Own several library dictionaries (my favorite, a Webster’s New International from the 30s).  It makes us – and a lot of other people – wonder how closely they check their facts (don’t get me started on Fox News, Dan Rather, even CNN).

More than once, I’ve threatened to leave North Carolina without him over the language we hear daily.  I seen it, thems policemans is ebbewar, no tense but the present, on and on – from day laborers and college grads (some with MBAs) alike.

You have to know the rules to break them.

Tellingly, most people don’t know when I’m using improper grammar.  I’ve written for markets, complex products as intellectually challenging as NYC, Chicago, Boston, banks, insurance, investment high tech luxury medical, dozens more – B2B** and B2C***.  Except for the occasional stickler who thinks they need complete sentences, even C level (CEO, CFO, COO, ECD, etc.) clients breeze through my consistently improper copy and compliment me on a job well done.

 

How do I get away with it?

Besides the fact sentence diagramming is rarely – if ever - taught (unless you count when I use it to give students a visual read on exactly how complex and clunky their lines are), the fact is I write targeted, motivational copy.  I spend so much time getting into the Prospect’s heads, hearts and lives, I use language tailored expressly for them.  Not for the client.  Not for my CD.  Not for my high school English teacher.

I know “…just lies there” is correct.  Why do I consistently use “…lays there?”  It’s what my Prospect – and just about everyone else – uses.  I guarantee using the proper form of the verb will confuse annoy alienate the reader to point they’ll stop reading.

Eliminating Kamikaze Copy Sins, as improper as many fixes may be, is how to keep your Prospect reading.  How to move them along through whatever length copy to your carefully drawn conclusion.  I’ve had MBA+ CEOs approve copy with no commas between lists of items, before ands (which I usually take out anyway, replaced by another comma - never a foreign-looking semi-colon), between modifiers.  Most don’t even notice.

Why?  Read Burr by Gore Vidal.

 

Vidal (who died earlier this Century) was an Ivy League word (and every other kind of) snob (his memoirs are titled Palimpsest – Bruce and I had to look it up – you should do the same).  His feuds – often about language and style (not to mention politics, economics, life) with Norman Mailer (Armies of the Night, The Naked and the Dead, The Executioner’s Song – read him, too) are literary legend.  Yet Vidal's the guy who gave me the courage to try the no comma trick.

 

I noticed how quickly I’d breeze through some of his lists, modifiers, etc.  How I’d pause, think, consider my way through others.  The reason?  The fast lists had no commas between items/descriptors.

 

His writing is so seemingly correct (in some cases it is - obsessively so), the historical fiction so accurate, no one I know who reads him for pleasure notices anything but how well written his work is.  (Mailer has his incorrect grammar tricks, too.  Try to find them.  So did On the Road’s Jack Kerouac, but his are far from seamless.)

The best writers are readers.  Read enough, study how it’s written, you don’t need a degree in English.  I always take my lead from authors, poets – not Grammarians or other Copywriters.  Authors and poets push the language envelope, live in the language of their characters, don’t think puns or clichés are worth writing down.

Thank you, Heddy’s budding Copywriters but I already knew.  I wish I could take credit for all the unseemly grammar I advocate.  Alas, I cannot.  More to the point, to find my improper grammar, you had to read it.

 

The Kamikaze Copy Sins aren’t about correct/incorrect.  They’re about things that slow your Prospect down, make them stop – or keep – reading.  About communicating in a Language of Concept**** that gets into their gut, says you’re one of them.  Even the most radical errors and omissions won’t be noticed as long as you know the rules, break them accordingly.  

Memorize the Kamikaze Copy Sins, kiddies.  Keep a list of your own.  When you're a Creative Director, maybe one day you'll pass them on like Heddy.

*KCWP:  Kamikaze Creative Work Plan

**B2B:  Business to Business

***B2C:  Business to Consumer

****Language of Concept:  tone, vocabulary, style chosen to carry the Concept to the Prospect.

As with all my posts, ©2013, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

Writing to Visual: In which Doreen asks all Kamikaze Copywriters, ADs, GDs, WDs and AEs to consider - Design Writer’s Trick or Ad Writer’s Secret Weapon?

What is Writing to Visual?  When the writer comes in after the fact.  The Visual exists before copy.  Can be a visual ad concept (picture tells all – who needs copy?), graphic/web design already laid out, even random pictures you’re handed, told Make it work.  Copy as afterthought.

 

Fortunately for Kamikaze Copywriters, without the afterthought, the visual can't work.

We still must write Prospect Centered copy supporting the Objective and Promise.  Copy taking its tone, even content – from the visual.  Instead of taking the lead or working as part of a Copy/Visual concept/team, we must follow the lead of graphics, colors, shapes, sizes.  Match visual/graphic feel, attitude, subject, reality, flow. 

These jobs aren't all that unusual.  Another writer had too many problems (personal, technical, style, whatever) to complete an assignment.  A graphic or web designer had to submit design (usually for estimating) before the client would consider copy.  Impossible deadlines.  Someone decided to do a self-promo, poster, holiday card, party invitation, whatever, based upon a visual/design they love.  The AD came up with a visual concept, write copy for it.  Your partner (AD, GD, WD, etc.) and you disagree – they want to present their visual idea with copy.  You want to present another idea with visual.

My method is always the same.  First, the KCWP**, especially Prospect Definition, Objective.  Promise.  Product understanding.  The intellectual aspects of the job sifting through my creative process.

I’ve talked about “going through and coming out the other side” before.  Usually in the context of Translating the Thought behind a headline.  Writing to visual, I use the same technique.  Staring into it, trying to come out the other side.  It’s more voodoo, gut, getting inside the visual vibe than anything else.

I stare.  Feel more than see colors, textures, expression.  If it’s a photograph of a person, who is he/she, what are they thinking?  Trying to tell me?  Can I wrap it around a Kamikaze Key Fact?

Is the image blind?  What emotional sense am I getting?  Does it have a seasonal, human influence?  A sense of humor? Sadness?  Terror?

Graphic and web designs are a little trickier.  Is the design harder edge, angular?  Is it curvy?  Does it flow?  How?  Why?  At what speed? (Think Picasso portraits - why do some women have five full rounded breasts, others one stingy pointy thing nobody wants to hold - that kind of thing works writing to design layout, too.)  What do the colors tell me?  Is negative space  blank – or peaceful?  What must it motivate (Objective)?  Digesting information?  Stopping prospects walking by a rack or table of other offerings?  Any corporate graphics/copy standards?  Concept or Illustration?

 

A true visual ad concept doesn’t need explaining.  If you have to explain it, it’s an illustration.  A true visual concept needs support, copy to carry the prospect from  visual thought to copy/product, objective.  The copy must complete the visual thought, continue its attitude, carry it to the Prospect’s motivational center.

An illustration can rarely - if ever - say it all without words. Because it’s not conceptual in the true sense, it needs words to explain, relate the visual to prospect/product.  At the same time, they must mirror visual texture, tone, tenure.  How can I translate the message into a true language of concept, matching illustrative style.  Art, photography, multi-media?

 

Example:  I was handed an illustration of a French Horn.  Impressionistic, with flowing disconnected lines, purple and gold against black.  An image made as much of negative space as colors, lines drawn.  Make a Christmas card.

 

I stared at the illustration, felt the flow of its curves, the strength and movement of the gold and purple, the night of the black.  Went through the horn and looked at it from behind, squinting my eyes until I came out the other side of those wispy suggestions of buttons, baffles, pipes.  This came out:

Now is the time for a chorus of angels,

A brass band of children

Sings trumpets of peace.

Now is the season of joy everlasting,

A horn full of magic

Makes peaceful my sleep.

Wishing you the beauty of Christmas for all your New Years

Sometimes poetry.  Sometimes not.  As long as it matches the look and feel of the visual, communicates, grabs the Prospect’s attention/interest, somehow reflects the product/client -  doesn’t matter.  This company had a spiritual bent, but wanted to avoid religion.  Christmas as warm and fuzzy national holiday.  

Sometimes I get a single strange line, which I may break up dramatically to increase affect/continue tone.  Not poetry, just copy.  Gazing through the eyes of a portrait photographer’s subject for a gallery invite.  Feeling the natural light flooding the subject.  “A picture as interview/Leaves naught but to listen/Words held loudly in light/Faces, bodies do the telling.”  Sold out show, lots of critics attending, happy client.  Some people thought “poems” would come with all the photos.  Kismet?  No. Writing to Visual.

I had to write three versions of the same copy for presentation.  Working with two ADs and a GD, the GD wanted to present strong graphic images, close-ups of body parts using the client logo in less expected ways (a hearing aid, a gold tooth, an eye’s Iris, bald head tattoo).  Visually, it was similar to something the client had seen, admired.  The GD found a way to differentiate it from something the client thought he wanted to steal.  Taking my lead from her visual and design (very little unusually displayed copy, lots of white space) my job was to do the same.

That big ear with client logo hearing aid, a huge red mouth with lapping tongue, logo gold-tooth – the images were strong, but kind of obtuse to me.  The more I stared, I got such a sense of WTF, my lines took the same approach and attitude.  The trick was not just to come up with the lines themselves, but to somehow relate copy and visuals to Prospect/Product Benefits.

Because the visuals were a twisted version of ones already in the marketplace, I felt the lines should be somewhat twisted versions of familiar/cliched thoughts too.

The hearing aid/ear?  Cleverly integrated communication for geeks:

               Why the sound of one hand clapping?

The gold tooth/tongue thrust mouth?  Many different and/or custom offerings:

               Yeah, like everyone wants plain Vanilla.

Nasty head tattoo?  Intellectual depth, original customer solutions:

               Close enough to read writing not on the wall.

Steely eyed Iris?  A history of industry-leading technology:

               Wait to see the future, it’s past.

No real concept.  Just visuals and lines I wrote to them. 

I’m not proposing these are the best lines you’ll ever read/the best I’ve ever written.  Or even close.  My using them isn’t about ego or exploiting an opportunity to sell my services.  It’s about taking you through that visual looking glass.  Trying to show you how my process  came out the other side.

There must be other techniques.  This works for me.  See where it takes you.  Do what I do, what someone else does or something completely your own – doesn’t matter.  The trick is to take your verbal lead from all the visual is – not just what you see.

 

Maybe not an ideal way to work, but in reality a necessary skill to master.  You’ll use it more than you expect.

FOR MY CIRCUS STUDENTS AND THOSE FOLLOWING ALONG W/THE CLASS:  a Writing To Visual assignment.

I intended to find copyright free images/visuals I could post for you to use, but after three+ hours with nothing I wanted to write to, I decided to give you an original thought option, too.  Instead of using my prospect/product/visual:

1.  Find a visual image – photo, graphic, illustration, whatever – that speaks to you.  Doesn’t matter what the subject is.  One you feel as well as see. 
2. Decide what kind of Prospect would be moved, motivated, piqued, identify with your visual.  Be daring – find a prospect you’ve not tried to reach before.
3. Decide upon a product/service your prospect uses/needs.  One you feel you can connect to the prospect/visual.
4. Do an ad.  Make sure you include/integrate product benefits/features in the body copy.  Be sure they’re part of the story, not a laundry list stuck in the middle paragraph.
5. Submit the visual and your copy, as per class format, by deadline.
6. Have fun!
7. HINT:  It'll be easier if you do a KCWP.**

As the image is one you feel a connection to (instead of one I chose by default), you should have more of a creative/personal stake in your results. 

 

That said, if you’re absolutely sure you can’t think of anything, here are a few images/product/prospect suggestions but I warn you – none of them got me excited.  Your work may be smarter, the assignment easier, if you find your own.

 Kid w/wig:  YCO* Children's Hospitals, Frozen meals or Minivans, product of your choosing.  Prospects:  Parents of young children, grandparents, philanthropic crowd, prospect of your choosing.

Hand on Window:  YCO* antidepressants, online colleges/universities, ambulance-chasing legal firms.  Prospects:  depressed adults, non-degreed/non-professional working adults, people/families of people injured in any kind of accident. prospect/product of your choosing. 

Future Einstein:  YCO* Science museums, pre-schools, Baby Einstein-type programs.  Prospects:  Elementary/PreSchool teachers, new parents (of infants), family tourists.  Product/prospect of your choosing.

Hot babe in cafe:  YCO* airlines/cruise lines/travel sites, health insurance, Alzheimer's Care Facilities.  Prospects:  overworked executives, middle aged children of elderly parents, family doctors/Nurse Practitioners.  Prospect/product of your choosing.

Ain't I cool:  You tell me. Maybe e-Harmony.com?  Just looks like someone I might have dated once.

Doggie loves banana: YCO* of ASPCA, Neutricks (or other) supplement for doggie dementia, low cost spay/neuter clinic.  Prospects:  high school students, owners of older dogs, new puppy owners/owners of unspayed/unneutered pets.  Product/prospect of your choosing.

*YCO - Your choice of

**KCWP - Kamikaze Creative Work Plan

As always, this blog post (c) 2013, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative.  

All photos copyright and attribution free uploaded from http://pixabay.com/

P.S.  Sorry I've been absent.  Getting older is Hell.

P.P.S.  Sorry this is so long, but as it serves as a lecture to my CC students, I needed to pack in as much How To as possible.  D.

APOLOGIES TO ALL READERS, KAMIKAZE CREATIVES OR NOT

In preparation for class today/tomorrow, I just read over my last two posts.  Found innumerable errors, typos, word variations spell check didn't but I should have.  Mea culpa.  

As I explained to my students, I was writing/publishing under fire and short deadlines.  Didn't have time to sleep on anything.  Didn't spend my usual five edits + at least one overnight away from it.  Consider it a lesson to us all.  Even the most pontificating professionals can become that old cliche Haste makes waste.

I'm not saying I'm always perfect, messed up just this once.  Far from it.  I am saying even writers as anal as I will make a mistake if we don't make time to take the time.  My apologies.  I'm human but embarrassed.  Will do my best not to repeat.  

Perhaps I should run every post past my Engineer hubby before I publish.  He takes great joy with every published error he finds (newspapers, online, at work, in conversation, doesn't matter where - his engineer attention to detail finds/snickers at them all).  On second thought, I do have to live with the guy.  Maybe I should just hire a good proofreader instead.

A thought on advertising, grammar and errors in general:  Ad copy needs to read like the Prospect thinks/hears/talks.  We must be careful not to be willfully blatant about it, but sometimes we err on the side of the Prospect being human.  Example:  It just lays there vs. It just lies there.  The latter may be the correct phrase, but lays there is the expression.  For the majority of Prospects, I'll stick with the expression.

Ad copy also breaks rules in the name of writing short, reading fast, moving the Prospect along.  I know many of you have noted I frequently eliminate commas, even between words in lists/series written in prose.  Blame Gore Vidal.  Reading his books, I noticed how he could move me through at a blistering pace.  The reason:  those missing - but technically correct - commas.  Commas are pauses.  In advertising copy, pauses become stops.

For the most part, people don't "volunteer" to read ad copy.  We have to trick them into it.  Stealing Vidal's technique is one of the many ways we can do this.  Do it right, no one (except other writers, editors, proofreaders, people like my husband) will notice.  They'll move right along, shoot through the sequence, move on to the next.

The errors I'm apologizing aren't those kind.  Unfortunately, they were just mistakes made in haste, posted in haste.  Apologized for in sincere retrospection.  

THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN: Wherein Doreen evokes the ultimate Mid Century Modern Chick Flick to answer the age old Kamikaze Copywriter question: Why three paragraphs?

Sinatra sings the theme song, cast of respected veterans treading relevancy + charming new faces – Rome, glamorous Rome.  If you haven’t seen Three Coins in the Fountain, it’s worth a rainy afternoon and a few hankies.  What’s it got to do with writing Copy?  Thorough information presented artfully enough to encourage participation by its Prospect, no matter the idealized plot (concept) and product (romance).

As is usual when I teach body copy, I’ve given the class the option (this week, at least) of writing some copy.  Three paragraphs, in keeping with Prospect, product, Objective.  Regardless the lesson, I often evoke the Three Paragraph rule.  Why ask for that much (I admit I chuckle when three paragraphs are referred to as “long copy” – if they only knew) from beginners, especially on a first (if optional) assignment? 

Three paragraphs show me a lot about how you think, where your strengths/weaknesses are.  Forces you to consider structure.  Gives room for product information/prospect benefit.  Forces segues, meaningful/memorable closes.  Encourages immediate immersion with little room for long explanations of headline, concept and/or introductory copy.

Writing three paragraphs, well crafted, is the door to the same message conveyed brilliantly in a mere three lines.  It forces you to consider where things go, what information’s important, how to tie into the line/headline without repeating it.  Teaches you the close can’t be a URL and how to keep the whole thing active, energized, motivational and memorable.

First, a warning:  it’s 2013, not the 70s/80s.  Back then, the “formula” for body copy was three paragraphs.  First paragraph, repeat/explain the headline, introduce the next paragraph.  Second paragraph, a discussion of product, including the inevitable laundry list of features/benefits like the real list of features/benefits.  Third paragraph, conclusion, call to action containing a repeat/summation of headline disguised as some sort of call to action.

This “formula” went out with cutting edge Creatives in the 70s, with the 80s for those slower to catch on but still pushing for quality.  Yet you still see it today.  Why?  It’s a logical way to organize.  Like all formulae, its roots are in logic.  Like all creative formulae, it’s boring, predictable and screams been there/done that.

Today, we don't write body copy.  We just write.  Don't talk about the product, just talk product.  We don’t have enough room/Prospect interest/good will to do it that way anymore.  Even when writing really long copy which can spread across multiple web pages, brochures, white papers and traditional media advertising.  

Repeating anything, let alone something as visible/hopefully memorable as the headline, makes today’s Prospect think been there/done that and stop reading.  If you have to explain the headline, it’s not working.  So what goes in the first paragraph?

I don’t care, as long as you don’t waste it.  Find a way to jump right into the motivational sell the headline set you up for.  Often, beginning writers will fill a first paragraph with empty b.s. that gets them to what should really be there, which they put in the second.  I always eliminate those (empty b.s. paragraphs).  When I do, it’s easy to tell it’s not needed.  Something beginners are uncomfortable with doing themselves.

What I look for is an easy flow from first to second.  Segues from paragraph to paragraph.  Language that involves me (the Prospect) right away, from word one.

The second paragraph flows out of the first.  It continues in tone, motivational sell and product information/benefits.  Streams from line to line, “forcing” the reader/Prospect from one line/one thought to the next smoothly.  Giving them no excuse to stop.  Then flowing/creating a logical, smooth segue to the next paragraph/thought.

Third paragraph flows from second.  Continues tone, motivational sell, product info/benefits.  Forces the reader to the close, which is the memorable, motivating, active and uplifting in energy and thought.  A call to action, sure.  It’s part of the last paragraph, but is only the last line when/if it makes sense and doesn’t drag down the energy of the line/paragraph/ad.

All three paragraphs must be free of Copy Sins (especially Next, Then and other words trying to disguise a lack of flow/segue), be active, visual,  conceptual and delivered in a tone/language which speaks directly and motivationally to the Prospect, bringing them to the same conclusion as you (that strong, active, high energy final line).

At this point it’s not about style as much as it’s about maintaining tone, flow, logic of argument, interest, energy.  Keeping your structure simple, logical, interesting.  Your product benefits/information the same.  Follow the Creative Process as it plays out in your KCWP.  Let your Prospect do the same.

Three paragraphs forces two paragraph-to-paragraph segues.  Gives you enough room to play.  To address product.  To engage the Prospect in a conversation within the context of concept, headline, KKF.

Three Coins.  Three paragraphs.  Presented artfully enough to encourage participation/romance your Prospect, no matter the idealized plot and creative strategy.

 

How to nail it:  don’t sweat it.  Don’t worry it.  Watch for creatively hidden redundancies.  Keep  your structure simple.  Remember three paragraphs doesn’t give you room for wasted words, boring the Prospect, b.s.ing what the product’s all about.

 

Blog Posts:  If you’ve already read these, go back and read them again.  Lots of info about writing headlines, writing body copy, editing, Copy Sins, etc.  All the stuff you need to think about when doing the Three Paragraphs assignment.  PLEASE NOTE:  Those 3^rd Q CWs attempting to write/edit on your own:  don’t worry, you’ll get lots of help, feedback.  That’s what the :45 minute skype sessions and live class touch-bases (next scheduled for week of 5/19) are for!

8/27/12:  Features, Benefits and Language of Concept (don’t worry too much about Language of Concept at this point – Features and Benefits are what we’re after)

9/11/12:  The Joy is in the Edit (what you want to do before sending me your copy)

11/24/12:  Kamikaze Copy Sins:  Assignment & Results (do the assignment for fun, but study the results)

2/6/13:  Doreen’s Top Twenty All Time Copy Remarks (read the remarks, see where they apply to what you write.  If/when they do, you know you have some editing to do)

4/14/12:  Kamikaze Copy Writing Course Lesson #1: Headlines (should help w/your line choices/edits)

4/16/12:  Tips, Clues, Edits

This post, like everything you read at kamikazecreative.blogger.com, is (c) 2013, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative 

BECOMING KAMIKAZE: HOW MANY BABIES HAVE YOU KILLED TODAY? Wherein Doreen starts explaining to all Kamikaze Copywriters, Art Directions, Designers of all Ilk why the idea you love so much fell flatter than (your favorite cliché here).

I’ve been admittedly lax about critiquing concepts behind student work.  I hold a high creative standard, focus on pushing the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan (KCWP) for smarter, more original concepts.  But writing copy – and teaching it – gets pretty myopic.  Sweating segues, commas, lazy verbs, Kamikaze Copy Sins, other minutiae, structure, trying to explain which grammar rules to ignore, which to push, which you can’t budge.  Detailed nonsense. 

It has to stop.  I’m going to have to start critiquing concept along with the KCWP and copy.  A good friend/former pupil reminds me students have a hard time telling what’s good, what’s not.  What’s a keeper, what’ll lead you to something else (better), what to jettison.  Certainly what to consider when work you thought would get into your book gets the axe by fellow students, instructors, potential employers instead.

How do you tell if work is good enough?  If it’s Kamikaze?

As with everything else, it starts with the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan (KCWP).  Look at your Kamikaze Key Fact (KKF) – the mysterious piece of what’s going on in the prospect’s world you can push pull squeeze massage blow up into The Big Idea. 

Before you fall in love with the mediocre, dismiss the KKF (or entire KCWP) as unnecessary unwieldy more trouble than it’s worth, ask yourself:

1.  Is your Key Fact Kamikaze?  Original?  Insightful?  Unexpected?  Uniquely YOU?  Prospect Centered?  Or is it something anyone could come up with.  A “first” thought meant only to get you to the next one?  So ubiquitous it’s boring? 

Answer “Yes” to any but the first six questions, you probably need a new one.  Push your KF until it’s simpler, yet less familiar.  Kamikaze.

 

Everyone knows Veterans’ Benefits are being cut.  If your Prospect’s the Military Family, Iraq War Vet or actively concerned/highly politicized citizen, this may make sense as a Key Fact.  But it’s far from Kamikaze.  So blandly topical anyone could – and probably has – tried it.

What if we push “Veterans’ Benefits are being cut?”  Twist turn push it into “Killing Obamacare may murder as many vets as the Taliban?” 

Same root thought (vets are being screwed), but the second has a new spin.  The second Key Fact is Kamikaze – not the expected, safe way most people think.  You’ve taken the original KF from Stage One/How Everyone Sees It to Stage Five/A totally unexpected way of seeing it.  You’re Kamikaze.

Karl Rove is an absolute genius at this.  Pushes ideas until they scare the bejesus out of his Prospect until sane, rational beings think “How could anyone believe that?”  Yet they do!  (Have you read Sway yet?)  Consider my example.  Yeah, everyone would agree Veterans’ Benefits are being cut.  But “Killing Obamacare may kill as many vets as the Taliban?”  Outrageous!  But for the right Prospect, it has a twisted logic that makes sense.  Is outrageously unforgettable.  Outrageously believable.  Outrageously Kamikaze.

 

2. If you can’t push pull twist your KKF into original yet identifiable thought.  If you’ve tried, your partner’s tried and it’s not going anywhere.  Can you let it go?  Move on to something else? 

I’m not asking if you can’t think of a great line should you move on.  I’m asking about the strategic components carrying you to concept.

Kamikaze Creative Strategy – especially the KKF – is the first step to greatness.  It’s also the best place to go to complete the Creative Process (blog post 3/27/13, Conquering the Creative Process) with its final step – Verification.

Unlike the Advertising/Marketing strategies we get from Account Execs, Planners, even Clients, the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan is part of the Creative Process itself.  Your KCWP is Step One:  Defining the Problem.  To quote the post “How many solutions we come up with is directly related to how we define the problem.”  The Problem the Creative Process is working on isn’t just the KCWP section called “Problem the Kamikaze Creative Must Solve.”  It’s the entire KCWP.

Re-read the third paragraph under Step 1 in the post.  Starting “…Expanding the problem…”  Re-read it again.  A Kamikaze Key Fact expands the creative process, doesn’t limit it.

 

What does all this have to do with killing unworthy ideas?  All an unworthy Key Fact can inspire is a fluke or an unworthy concept.  Reviewing the KKF is always the first step before you present an idea, no matter how sure you are it’s genius.  Flat KF?  Don’t embarrass yourself presenting unless you think someone in the room can help fix it.

Part of becoming a professional Kamikaze Creative is being able to recognize when you should kill it.  And being willing to slit your baby’s throat if it doesn’t deliver. 

I know it’s your dah-ling.  If your classmates, partner, instructor, CD, etc. all say let it go – do it.

I'm not discounting the smart support of creative dissidents whose contrarian ideas always fly high.  If they love it, thinks you can push it to something great, ignore the masses.  Keep working it, even if you have to do it yourself.  Just don't present until it's nailed.  

People – clients, AEs, fellow creatives – will kill an idea for all sorts of reasons, many having nothing to do with whether or not it’s on strategy, is good creative.  If your idea isn’t working with the group, you can’t give them excuses to kill it.  They’ll use typos, weak presentation, weak Creative Strategies, layouts, structure, etc.  Those are minor and/or subjective and can be overcome with a smart Creative Strategy everyone can agree to.

If the KKF just lays there, the idea – unless it’s a major fluke – does too.  Don’t look back.  Cut that baby loose.  

You say you didn’t write a KCWP?  As far as I’m concerned, you’re dead meat.  You deserve everything they fling at you.  You’re just blowing out lines, not concepting like a professional.  Lines that – unless they’re flukes or you got awfully lucky – will deserve all the blank stares silence and/or unkind remarks they inspire.

3.  Is it on Prospect?  Make sure the KKF – the idea line whatever – speaks directly to the  Prospect at hand, not your classmates, contemporaries, etc. 

This is a big problem for student/junior CWs.  Writing for themselves.  If what you work from – the KCWP and especially, the KKF, Promise, etc. – isn’t Prospect Centric all you’re doing is Creative Masturbation – pleasing yourself.  I know it’s accepted student books hold many good ideas conceived off-strategy, but so popular, the strategy is changed (if there ever was one) to match the idea.  Definitely not for Professionals.

Everything we do hangs on the Prospect’s action/motivation.  If it’s not conceived for them, written and designed for them, it won’t do the job.  No matter how wonderfully creative it is.

This problem is why I hold Open Creative Strategy Seminars at the beginning of every term.  I’ve seen so much student work that is conceived by and for the creatives themselves, it won’t work in real world terms.  

E your book, post it online, the CD(s) checking it out don’t know what the strategy is – or was supposed to be.  You may get away with it at first.  If you can’t create for your assigned (by client, by AE, etc.) Prospect on the job, you won’t last.

 

If your work isn’t for the original Prospect – you only think it’s good.  File it away.  Maybe someday you’ll be working on a Prospect/Product/Creative Strategy it fits.  Keep those chap books (idea journals) handy.  You never know when it may work in the future.  The point is it doesn’t work now.  Kill that baby!

4.  Be Ruthless.  Look at everything you do w/a skeptic’s eye.  It’s not enough you love it.  It must be prospect centered, strategic, original.

There’s one more key here.  It’s a doozie.  It’s about how we fall in love with something, even though it sucks (read Sway yet?).

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It happens to all of us at one time or another.  I still cringe at a line I pushed pulled defended to my almost death.  It was stupid.  The line.  My attachment to it.  My biggest – and I hope last – foray into the realms of everyone else must be crazy.  Remember the contrarian creatives I mentioned?  I'm one.  This time I blew it, too.

I still remember the line, a knock-off on Superman’s original TV intro.  Oh how I loved that line.

When my AD said “maybe we should run a few more” instead of “great, but it needs a tweak.”  When my Copy Chief said “are you too close to this?” instead of “push the line some more.”  When the CD said, “not up to your usual” instead of “hmmm…maybe that’ll work.”  I fought on.

Wasn’t until the AE (the best editor my copy’s ever had) said, “Doreen, this is terrible.  Are you (insert your favorite vice here)?” could I take a step back.  Next morning I woke up mortified.  Considered calling in sick.  Anything but face all those people who were right about a line I was so caught up in I couldn’t see it.

Could I have prevented it?  Not at the time.  That horrible line was the beginning of my starting to listen to others in aggregate.  As I developed professionally, I learned to trust others about my ideas, even when they were on Prospect.  On Creative Strategy.  That Greek Chorus of “Nays” became my big clue to sleep on it, then take another look.

Sometimes, they're right.  Sometimes they're wrong.  But putting it away, moving on to something else – anything else (Third Step to the Creative Process, Incubation), I couldn’t see it objectively enough to determine if there was a problem with the line – structure, vocabulary, unfinished idea, strategic value, etc. – or if it truly sucked.

 

Time and space are the great objectivity gods.  When you look at it cold, you just may find they’re right.  Or find the part of the line/idea that’s throwing the rest of a good one off track.  Experience can be your greatest teacher.  So can your teammates.  Listen, but don’t cave. 

Let the Creative Process do its job in your own head.  Best way I know to avoid those mortifying loyalties to unworthy work.