Haiku to you, too: Doreen shows you what one student can do

One of my more popular assignments - and blog posts - is the Ad Haiku.  Seems everyone loves to write them.  Very few understand how great they are for learning to write copy.

The Haiku has several common characteristics, all of which force each Haiku to express common experiences in uncommon ways.

For the copywriter, ad haiku teach:

Brevity.  No extra syllables for wasted words, verbs that just lay there, extraneous or lazy/weak anything.  No articles, prepositions.  Each word must contribute.  Each word must count.  The result should be visual (not descriptive - huge difference), evocative.

Ad copy should do the same.

Say it with Structure.  You can't write flat, uninteresting lines creating haiku.  If you do, they lose energy, run down hill, merely say it.  The fun, romance, excitement and movement of the thing bogs down in poor structure.  

Haiku are a great way to learn mixing it up, changing word orders in unexpected ways, perfecting more oblique structure for emphasis, movement, visual (not descriptive) and evocative emotional appeal.

Ad copy should do the same.

The twist (kiru).  Haiku's kiru plays the third line off the first two in a kind of "You think I have you here, no here's the unexpected place I'm taking you" manner.  The third line can be seen as the reveal.  When done well, it forces the reader to participate and the third line, is an "expected surprise."  How can a surprise be expected?  You think you know where it's going, it may take you there - but never in the boring, lay down flat way you think/expect.

Ad copy should do the same.

Below are three ad haiku written last term for the same product - The Creative Circus.
They're a bit 'insider," but work so well, with third line reveals following the second line kiru/twist, they still should make sense.  Where they're too insider, I'll provide the missing info only a current/past student would know.

knowledge has its price
thinking worth every cent, still...
cheap toilet paper

silent monolith
behind cold aluminum gates
why, hello Andrew*
(*Andrew is the Circus' head of security, he rules from the welcome desk at the student entrance.  He's also a great guy, much beloved by all, faculty and student alike.)

This last one has a name, "Norm Grey"
asleep in forum
dreams of faces who've lost names
his school sets us free

(*Norm is the Creative Circus' newly inducted into the One Club's Educator Hall of Fame Creative Director Emeritis.  He's one of the Circus' founders and has probably counseled, taught and critiqued more ad students than any other person, living or dead.)

That, my friends, is how ad haiku should be done.


Haiku(c) 2014, Reilly Schlitt
The rest of this entry, as with all posts in KamikazeCreative.blogspot.com, (d)2015 (or earlier), Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative(TM)

Happy Return, Doreen. A dose of reality, a plea to Jannie, Robert, Mitch, Cal, Keith, Reilly and Jen.

I champion a radically Prospect Centered brand of Ad Creative.  Regardless the client, product, medium - in the Kamikaze Creative™ world Prospects rule.

 

I’ve been revamping the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan™ (soon to be chapters of a self-published EBook) to reflect the shift from Copywriters as Writers to Copywriters as Problem Solvers.

Right now, it’s long, unwieldy, repetitive.  Who knows what awful else.  After wrestling it too long in solitude I no longer see what’s on the page.  Only what I meant to put there.

Needing time away from it, I did what I suggest my students do – passed it off to minds I respect.

I sent BETA versions to some of the smartest, most creative, problem solving people in the business.  All, I’m proud to say, former students.  All but those still in school eclipse The Master.  Those still in school probably will.

I’m hoping they’ll send it back like I returned their work.  Chicken-scratched, questioned, redundancies, confusions damned, typos, bad edits exposed.  Payback glee.

 

One tester pointed out some missing reality in the pages she’d read thus far.

 

I push students to make an intimate connection with their Prospect.  Urge they meet them not as demographic, but as fellow human beings they like and respect. 

I counsel read their magazines, listen to their music, watch their shows.  Learn their history.  Go to their websites, bars, churches, Monster Truck rallies.  Make the connection.  

Suggest they may be supplied with Prospect mega data from clients.  Speak of input sessions, focus groups.  Full baptism into Prospect lives, feelings, attitudes.

  

All to totally grok the Prospect.  To strategize, concept and write in ideas, viewpoints, voices the Prospect relates to.  Will engage in.  Respond to, interact.

 

I want developing ad Creatives in the habit of approaching the Prospect with deep understanding.  Teach the KCWP™ as a creative strategy document filled with Problem Solving Open Objectives and smart, risk taking Kamikaze Key Facts.™  

An internal process to lean on the rest of their careers.  The GPS to original concepts Prospects cannot ignore.  

I suspect it drives them crazy. 

Why the push to learn Prospect Centricity now?  Reality.  The kind my tester was talking about.

 

The deadlines and information you have aren't always ideal.  The client isn’t always Proctor & Gamble, with researchers, focus testers, mega marketing departments.  

The time you get to learn prospect-speak, strategize, concept, present write produce can be - well, overnight.

Sometimes you rely on what you know, what your client can tell you, what you intuit.  Experience and a few sprints around the client’s sales staff may be all you get.  Exactly why I push, preach, demand, question students so relentlessly on Prospect knowledge now. 

There will be times all you have is yourself.  You better know what to do, how to think.  How to gut your way through.

You won't get there now without the backstory.  Without a way to read the Prospect in abbreviations.  

Without a system to learn today, save your rear when reality bites tomorrow, you can only write for your peer group.  Maybe dear old Mom and Dad.  

Even on local and regional accounts, it’s not that easy. 

I returned to teaching after being shown a beautifully written, beautifully art directed campaign for AARP.  Beautifully written, designed for 22-28 year olds.

If I don’t teach you to totally immerse yourself in Prospect culture now, when you get that job with skimpy input, little time, you won’t be able to work outside your own head.  All you’ll have is people you know to draw from.  Not a gut well fed on Prospect recognition.

Where will that intuited Prospect speak come from?  Much, from the strength of your strategic process.  The rest, from life.

In truth, you’re a student.  You haven’t lived long enough, seen enough, done enough to do it well without doing the work.

Venture into unknown, uncomfortable territory now.  Make it a habit forever.  Push farther, deeper into details that make strangers – and strange situations – the gift of life’s Prospect Parade.

I believe in Prospect Rule.  Live it, write it, teach it.  Try to inspire a student’s eye, mind and gut with the mysterious oneness in a crowd of strangers.

 

Have no use for Monster Trucks?  Or the thousands of people who do?  Those people may someday be the Prospect you haven’t time or information to totally grok.   

Why do they love the ear splitting, suffocating gasoline inspired Monster Truck Car Mash?

First thought?  No intelligence.  No taste to appreciate Monte Carlo Gran Prix.

 

Generalization hides their native intelligence.  Prevents understanding, appreciating what truly amazing feats of design, engineering, fabrication and obsession a vehicle steering front and rear wheels in both directions at once while crushing a pile of cars five rows deep requires.  

Learn the process, do the work now.  Live fully, go far enough, you’ll know know how to look underneath, inside people you would otherwise never know with or without sophisticated Prospect data.  Let alone come to like them, relate to, respect.   

We can be shills, hucksters selling ice to Eskimos.  Manipulators bending strangers to the client’s will. 

Or we can live our lives fully, looking for and into those different from us for the sheer joy of it.  Talking, joining, feeling their thoughts, cares, all they live for. 

Be motivators, not manipulators.  There’s a huge difference, one a closed mind will never get.

  

Let overkill guide you, life show you the way now.  Before you’re thrown into the fire.  

It’ll teach you to motivate the Prospect.  Engage them in work that’s honest, knowing, spot on. 

My former student is right.  Reality can kill the ideal.  

Arm yourself by over plying the process now.  Get to know the wide swath of humanity before you find yourself working in the dark.

 

Nail it while you’re learning your craft, not plying it.

  

Live life fully among them.  

Let your future Prospects be your guides.

As with everything posted in kamikazecreative.blogspot.com, this material is (c) Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative(TM).  This post (c)2015, Doreen Dvorin