Friday, August 28, 2015

OMG! She wants me to learn print! In defense of teaching body copy in a print illiterate world

Every term I meditate on what I teach, how, its relevance in today’s ever e-ing four-inch-screen world.  I teach writing print. Don’t call me Old School for it.

Why teach writing print/body copy when life is streaming, online, in video, ten second Snaps, #140 characters?

I know my demands for adherence to format, Copy Sins, Prospect Centricity, Creative Strategy and learning to write print my very low tech/high expectation way is called O so very last century. If that’s you think, you’ve been screen staring too long.

Yes, I teach writing print copy. Yes, I am painstakingly persnickety, talk about things that happened long before you (or I) were born, bring in strange music to torture you and make you take notes on paper with (gasp!) a pen. 
 
Here are smart reasons to indulge my lunacy.

Writing print is the basis of everything we do, even if all we do is digital, broadcast. Got a favorite band, rapper, hip hop, country, punk, dub step reggae death metal whatever artist? Their lyrics all start in print.

Like movies? Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and every TV/Radio/Streaming entertainment medium there is? How do you think actors learn their lines? You betcha. Print.

The Old School pen/paper note taking? Sends a mind/body connection, rearranges your brain synapses to process information in a more open, memorable and creative way. Touch screens, keypads, speech recognition can’t do that.

If you can’t write a great line, how are those banners, websites, pop-ups, videos, tweets working for you? 

If you don’t know proper grammar, how to invisibly manipulate it, how are those corporate site and trade show brochures coming? 

If you don’t know history, literature, old and world music, aren’t culturally literate - how are you going to put your ideas in conceptual context, understand the elements and appropriateness of writing in different styles. Find a piece of music so unusual and interruptive it stops Prospects and award show judges in their tracks. (Don’t get me started on old music – read Steal Like an Artist instead.)

If you knew enough about old, you’d hear it in every new sound your generation discovers.

If you can only write in one voice – yours – better stay 24 forever.  Pray you never get assigned a bank, Depends, credit card, hospitality, AARP, Get It Up or hormone replacement product. Pray your current agers find Peter Pan and the Lost Boys – it’s not enough to age along with them – you have to see life coming before they do.

No matter the concept, format. Being able to transition from one idea, product feature, benefit without changing tone, losing logic, lecturing or worse – boring the bejesus out of them – keeps you connected.  Gets it approved. Produced. 

Writing great print makes broadcast (radio, TV, web, video) easier. Without all those Copy Sins print teaches you to find and edit, you’ll have a harder time saying what needs to be said creatively in under ten seconds, under ten minutes.

Will print ever go away, replaced by e-everything? Not in my lifetime – or yours. As long as kids and their parents share Doctor Seuss; you can’t feel paper’s texture under the screen. As long as language keeps living, writers keep writing, print will survive as the basis for everything. You’d best know to read – and write – it well. 
  
Some of you will be much better creatives than I. Many of my former students already are. But right now, today, what I know about writing print, ways you’ve not conceived, let alone explored, played with, translated, keeps me ahead in all mediums required. 
 
Writing print is the foundation, the launch pad of history, music, popular culture past and present. All give entre to Prospects' heads, hearts, guts. Teach relevance of different values, beliefs, jokes, music, speech, feelings.

An app may work fine, but it can also cut you off from the very people you’re being paid to motivate.  Without intimate, one-on-one understanding. Without the ability to write your ideas in amazing print, then translate it into other mediums here now, around the corner in the next future. You’re building your house on sand for the lack of basics.

I teach writing print. Want you to take its every little detail seriously. What I commit skillfully, conceptually, stylistically, organically to printed page can grow into any media, any message I want. Any way I want. 

And the kicker - almost every CD I know bemoans the lack of writers who can actually write.
Why I know you need to learn it, too.