CALLING ALL KAMIKAZE CREATIVES - COPYWRITERS, ADS, WDS, CDS, SOMETHING NEW TO TRY: ADVERTISING POETRY: The Last of Doreen’s 1stQ 2013 Style Assignments

Where has Advertising Haiku taken us?

The point of advertising Haiku is to force you into writing short/grokking every single word, every single syllable, to use a twist to prepare the reveal, then a takeaway strategically important to the carefully chosen prospect/customer.  Haiku force you to develop the twist, bringing the product home in most unexpected ways.

 

The point of advertising Poetry is to use copy/content in unexpected ways, unexpected words, unexpected structure and – if you do it right – to unexpected results. All within a highly calculated emotional/non-emotional structure carrying your message to the heart of the Prospect, not just the head.   I’m not talking about quoting Cummings, Blake or Emerson in an ad.  I’m talking about writing ad copy in the Style of Poetry.  Original Poetry¸ written just for advertising.

Real Poetry takes pride its consumption and acclaim is limited to a few journals, minor publishers and prizes.  In truth, even Dad’s old Vietnam/WWII Mom Sonnets and the tortured diaries of teenage girls have much larger markets.

One of the most important things to remember when discussing Ad Poetry vs. Pure Poetry: Ad Poetry does not spring from the heart.  It has no freedom of word, format, application.  Ad Poetry may seem like a tough one.  In truth, it's many, many times easier to write than Real Poetry.  You still have to write it, but your KCWP gives you all you need.  No deep, personal retrospection or Loved One required.

Like every other writing style, there are hundreds of different approaches you can take to writing Ad Poetry.  You can do fun, limericky sassy stuff so catchy, people repeat it to each other, giving it bigger, more sociological import.  Kinda like jingles, Got Milk?, Where’s the Beef?, Taste the Rainbow and other iconic ad lines used to. 

You can use free-form ad poetry to express a Prospect point of view and avoid punctuation/paragraphing.  Break your lines so the reader is pushed to the next one visually as well as verbally.  Make short copy look longer, longer copy, shorter.

Ad poetry can create an image, a feeling, a perception regular ad copy can’t.  It can set aside lines to remember.  A good enough rhyme + snappy message can keep ad copy playing in the Prospect’s head for weeks – even years (I still hear jingles and ad lines from childhood, don’t you?  They’re GRRREAT!)

You can do couplets, sonnets, lines that rhyme, structure that flows.  Make it too pretty, too pastoral, too girlie – the entire piece may fail.  While men respond well to ad poetry, waxing too poetic over sausage or deodorant will get it ignored.  Make it fun, funny, clever, unable to ignore, you’ve got “I need Calais before I see Alice.”

When do you use ad poetry?  Like everything else we do, that’s up to the Prospect and how you want him/her to respond.   What products will carry it?  Done right, for the right prospect, just about anything.  The trick is to match the level of poetic sophistication to Prospect, Objective, Product, Promise.

 

Ad Poetry isn’t for every writer any more than it’s for every prospect.  In all my years writing ad copy, I’ve used it exactly once (if you don’t count the rhymes I used to help Exxon mechanics and Arby’s kitchen workers remember their Safety Rules).  My CW friend who won The Nation’s poetry prize never used it in copy at all.  Use it or not, it’s all about how you solve the problem.

Strangely, this is a great era for Ad Poetry.  Poetry Slam is almost a national sport – or at least a large minority pastime.  The US Poet Laureate reads at all the Presidential (and many state) Inaugurations.  The brevity of web, e-communications and availability of guerrilla/ambient media in unprecedented amounts and ways leads right up to Ad Poetry’s economy of words.  One of the most popular unsolicited magazine submissions, The New Yorker to Reader’s Digest, is poetry.  So why don’t we see more of it in advertising?

Simply put, ad creatives aren’t thinking of it.  It’s another way you can use Style – the kind of ad styles we’ve been exploring – over formula to break through the clutter.  Still, too many creatives stick to the tried, true and SEO-mongered.

 

Here it is, end of the term – and here’s Doreen, asking you to take your biggest creative risk thus far.   If Ad Poetry is so great, what’s the catch?  If an ad poem of any kind is only 95% on, the entire piece fails.  Why?

People expect more from poetry than text.

When you take a creative risk (and a risk is merely doing something you haven’t done before), they’ll find any excuse, any little thing to kill it.  Absent advertising strategy, Ad Poetry turns into Bad Poetry.  Who needs – or wants - to wade through that?  Too long, too emotional, too silly, it won’t be read.  Too sophisticated, too complex, too intellectual, the same thing happens.

It’s Advertising – not Real Poetry. There’s less tolerance for length, flowery language, love hearts flowers.  Like Real Poetry, Ad Poetry is visual, thrifty and can say things in ways you’d never get away with using another style.  You can get deeper, more personal using Ad Poetry.  More reflective.

You can also be bawdy, mystical, over-intellectual (as long as the Prospect’s right for it), less formulaic.

 

Can you tell it’s something I wish more of us would try – and make work?

Here are examples from poet/consumer advertising advocate Ilya Vedrashko, whose blog, "MIT Advertising Lab," was named "Best Blog of the Year" by Fast Company magazine in 2005:

http://www.webexhibits.org/poetry/explore_21_media_examples.html

This one’s a Brit site, but good stuff.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2009/dec/02/rise-poetry-in-advertising

"Two prominent adverts, both of which lean heavily on the emotional appeal of poetry, are currently airing on our {Brit} screens – a David Morrissey-narrated ad for McDonald's ("the Gothy types and scoffy types and like-their-coffee-frothy types were just passing by"), and a Pete Postlethwaite-narrated ad for Cathedral City cheddar cheese ("On the A47 it's cheese with cucumber / It's lunchtime for her as the rest of us slumber"). In recent years we've also seen poems used to advertise the AA, Waitrose, Center Parcs and the Prudential. But what do poets feel about this unsteady dance with commercialism?

"Nick Toczek has also written a poem for an advert (the Prudential again: Our kids, who've grown and flown the nest, / Now only phone us to request / More cash on loan, their tone depressed"). He welcomes the exposure that advertising offers poetry.

“My Prudential poem is still the most recognised of all my poems. It took me 20 minutes to write, was broadcast 5,000 times and earned me £5,500."

"Jim Bolton, the creative director at Leo Burnett, the ad agency that produced the McDonald's advert, says that many viewers probably don't even think they're hearing poetry. "The McDonald's Favourite ad is not a tricky poem. But there is a certain cheekiness of McDonald's using poetry. It is not something people might expect."

This is W&K Levis TV, with a poem VO and a response:

http://adland.tv/commercials/levis-go-forth-pretentious-poetry-capital-p

Read more at http://adland.tv/commercials/levis-go-forth-pretentious-poetry-capital-p#T8Q7dc4WXOijjGkt.99 

The current Bulmer's Cider ad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7fKmx0Fhfk

http://www.readthismagazine.co.uk/onenightstanzas/?tag=poetry-in-advertising

There are broadcast pieces above, but you can also think print, web, radio, direct, promotions wherever you can write copy, you can write Ad Poetry – as long as it works for your Prospect with your KCWP.

Doreen’s Top Twenty All Time Copy Remarks: For all Kamikaze Copywriters, taking my course or not. If I don’t write these on your copy homework, learn where to write them on your own!

I want you to understand something.  Just because I write something on your paper that appears below doesn’t mean I’m singling you out.  More than likely, I wrote the exact same thing on twenty papers the same week I wrote it on yours.

 

Now about what appears below.  Writing copy – like writing anything else – is an exacting dance between saying what you (client/product) need to say and how the Prospect (reader) will best take in the information.  Optimally, how the Prospect will take it in so it is impossible for him/her to forget.

 

It doesn’t matter what I put here, the b.s. meter seems to have run out no matter what medium you use – “New” media (now 20+ years old, w/apps gone mainstream and I had a student point out to me she wasn’t even born when whatever reference I was trying to give her not even mobile’s very “new” anymore) or Traditional.  People do not volunteer to read ads.  Fell flatter than insert cliché! Here.  Even if it’s for a product they have or see an upcoming need for.

  

The current fashion is student writers as problem solvers skilled in concepting and producing web, video, social, even print, radio, TV, collateral, direct, promotions, product sheets.  They seem to forget Copywriter ends in “writer.”  At least during the hiring process.  They don’t look for student writers who can – dare I dream it – actually write.  They’ll let you learn on the job – maybe with a mentor, maybe not.  But that’s an entirely different blog entry. 

This one is to tell you the only way to learn to write is to write.  The only way to learn to edit is to edit.  The only way to be proud of your work is to become adept at both.  The time to do it is now.  Before you’re lost on the job.  Before your boss catches on you didn’t do all the edits you needed.  Before someone says “great idea, too bad do all the edits you needed.  Before someone says “great idea, too bad you can’t write.”

Here’s where all this style stuff I’ve been torturing you over comes in.  If you cannot analyze and dissect recurring patterns in language, pick up its syncopation, slang, fashion and position in the hearts and minds of your current client’s current prospect, at best you’ll be like those Will Farrell beer commercials.  Funny.  Wildly smart funny.  But ultimately done for himself, not for the prospect he mostly makes fun of.  Doesn’t sell beer, but Will’s having lots of fun practicing the art of Creative Masturbation.

Style is also an old reliable trick to dress up a less than Kamikaze concept. 

Style can also turn a really great ad into something living long after its original intent.

Learning to write in styles will help you learn what you do and don’t want in your more personally conceptual work.   Allow you to experiment.  Fill your book with campaigns so diverse, you’d never guess the same writer wrote them all.  Except for one thing:  they will all have a certain personal creative point of view, a certain way of playing with punctuation, a penchant for getting to the heart of a prospect with a very few well-chosen words.   Something from you they can’t get from anyone else.

So listen up, see (James Cagney – or was it Edward G. Robinson?  Film Noir).  Here are some highlights gleaned from student body copy homework.  Very few of these things deal with style.  All of them deal with writing better, representing  the types of errors, omissions  confusions and misconceptions we writers very often never see in our own work (even if we’re comparing them word-for-word against the Kamikaze Copy Sins.)   They’re in no particular order.  Read them over, then read over your own copy.  Consider them your own Doreen-in-a-list of things to ask yourself before I even see the copy.

These read a bit thin – you try to make your joke, mention [the product] & be done – but there’s a disconnect, believe they may need a transitional line between the two.

Close!  Good shot!   Needs appetite appeal     Off strategy.     Better more visual (word)

Big energy dip – last sent should be strong, memorable.  If possible, pithy.     Cliché!

You need to better familiarize yourself w/Advertising Objectives and their terminology

Much better!     This is product’s problem, not the prospect’s!

This structure is so poor I had to read it three times to figure out what you’re trying to say.  Still not sure.

Who R these people (prospects), inside?  What emotional/threads run through them all u can use to hang KKF/concept on?

Never start a head line w/”Being _____,” ask I’ll give you a gazillion reasons!    Lighten up!  Tone change!

Prospect benefit, not a Creative Objective

Don’t worry so much about getting it out – make it visual, interesting – make me want to read more!

You’re talking down to prospect    Where did this come from?   Try changing order

Nice – but tone a bit elevated 4 prospect…sounds like trial by fire – make it appealing

This is tourism – should be visual, put me in picture!    Stop writing ads and just start writing!

Too Addy    Inaccurate benefit   Logic of meaning problem   Redundant.  See it?

Is there a better way to say this? Maybe structural to deliver more irony?    Good! Make it active and memorable    Need stronger close     Simplify    

TRANSLATE THE THOUGHT      Y bring this [idea] in at all?      You’re talking down to prospect

Nice – but tone a bit elevated for prospect      Don’t repeat words too closely    Play with it!

Use structure to say expected things in unexpected ways.      Don’t be so heavy-handed

Get into inner landscape of what diverse new [prospects] have in common, not just {subject].  May find a gem in there, never know

These are internal (KCWP), to help us concept – bullet points, lists, simplify 4 yourself so you can always find what you need.  Also 4 clarity – densely structured lines are usually difficult to understand.  Be simple – be good to yourself!

What inner stuff – thoughts, emotions, common experiences – do they share?  That’s where the key to motivation is.

Competitive info must compare these co’s and their promise/features/bennies w/ [product] – can reveal neat little copy points, inspire new uses 4 existing products, new markets, 2!

Not working.  Tricky.    This is not true.  Don’t make blanket claims like this unless you can back them up

Never start a line w/”just like…”poor structure!     Good work!    Clarify benefit    Punch up

Competition is Real & Perceived – real maybe other products/companies.  Perceived is…anything that helps your [prospect] [do the same thing/respond as you wish]

Don’t just describe prospect, go inside.  That’s where the KKFs you can use 2 motivate R.  Drill baby drill!

How to write headlines:

1.       Write a line as simply as possible, what you want to say

2.      Translate the thought (not words) based upon prospect knowledge and promise

Would like to know more about product   Try to get into their heads/hearts

Great!  Except where’s the [product] except in lst para?  It needs to be integrated into story

Perfect! Good! Done!   Simplify.  Get real.   Translate the thought!    Tone change.  More visual.   

Clarify some references or rework not to confuse   Inject a little product    Very skimpy work plan    Great!   

What do they have in their lives in common, connecting them, exposing motivation keys?

Love it.    Check your product knowledge!    Better word   Insert product    Energy drops, should increase!

Copy Sins!  Order- simplify, have fun, don’t B so heavy handed – you can nail this one!

You have nothing here (KCWP) to indicate the style you chose will resonate w/your prospect

(KKF) Product focused, not prospect focused   Change Order.     (KKF) Too close to products

Do you really mean to use this word?    Need strong close.  Nice V.1 – keep trying, digging 4 words

Tone change.    Copy Sin    Break up.    Simplify    Poor word choice    Structure.  Translate the thought.   Not needed

Where’s the close?  Should be memorable, high energy, instead it winds down to nothing

Would you rather do something “like” surf, or would you rather surf?    Change order

Simplify – restructure, get rid of “you” voice     “You” voice – see Copy Sins

Stop writing ads – just start writing-editing editing editing – maybe little more writing – absolutely more edits

You need a stronger argument than “we believe”   Change of intellectual level/vocabulary expectations

(Closing line/paragraph) Rewrite.  More visual active, end on high note     I keep thinking somehow, somewhere, we need to let them know it’s a $300 item - at least imply it isn’t cheap!

What unites them?  What do these very diverse emotional individuals have in common besides finances?  Anything?    PUSH – IS THIS KAMIKAZE?/ WHERE IS IT REFLECTED IN CONCEPT/CW?

This is important, but is treated by structure as minor    Yawn!    Weak.    Not a visual verb.

Rethink this – just don’t rethink 2 hard.  If you want to spoof, you must lst know the source – what’s your Key Fact?  Is it Kamikaze?  Cool.    Grammar or typo?    Very, very close.  What can you do to push it over the top?

BO-RING  Too many Copy Sins, tone changers – what?  You skip my class 1Q and forget all I taught?

HEDGED   More visual.  No repeated words.    Copy Sin – Change structure   [Not KKF] Prospect def.  Prospect def.

Wasted words.  Translate the thought, not the words.    Break up.  Simplify.   Stop trying to write ads and just write.

1.  Stop overwriting.  2.  Stop writing ads.  3.  Write. Jump right in.  4. (and)  NO! WARNING YOU’VE NOT DONE A PROPER EDIT AND MISSED THIS 99.5% SIGN OF A RUN-ON! 

SEGUE    Way too complex structure – simplify    Logic problem    Let down ending   Try reversing order. 

What do you think?     Y is this a benefit?  Promise is a benefit -  Inner commonalities tying the emotional cord   

APPITITE APPEAL=ZERO    Very nice.  Very nice.    Good start  PUSH    Copy Sins     Stop writing ad – say it!    

Yawn! Need stronger close!  (Competitive Information) a little more detail, a lot more comparison    I don’t believe this one.

Where were you when we did this in class?    Lazy structure.  Push yourself.  Good.  Good.  Cliché. Push.

The idea of style isn’t nec 2 parody – it’s to use it as a way in to a potentially resistant prospect

Cut the BS, just get 2 it    Smooth out, it’ll work.  BLAH.    Great.  Work on it.  Nice. Nice. Good!    Not so personal – bigger picture  

You haven’t wowed me yet.  Put all that cultural literacy and just plain literacy 2 use.  You’re the only one who can make it happen.

Dismissive (of product)  DUH!  CLICHÉ!  Too generic    Wasted word.   In and out of tone   

Not true – some do.  Use structure to increase the power of copy.  Too much bad taste, not enough information, humor.

You can do better than this.  Less time w/giving me extra work, more time nailing this as you should have done last time!

(Fortunately at beginning of line) Copy Sin.  Reverse.  Shorten!  You used same structural device in all – and it’s not that great a device

Cut out 25%-35% of words.  Mix up your devices.  Give me more…    Trying too hard – overkill

PUSH.   YAWN.    Your point?    Clichéd device    Yech.  Blah.  What?  Weak!    Copy Sin of highest order (that)  

Blah blah blah – just jump into it    Know where you’re going, but never got there  NO! NEVER! Blah!

RU married to this hedge?  Adds nothing, takes away plenty (tend to)    AWK STRUCTURE.  COPY SIN.  NO STRUCTURE.  COPY SIN. CLICHÉ.  COPY SIN.  COPY SIN. Tone change from informed to stupid

I see where you’re trying 2 go w/this, but lazy editing, clichés and copy sins from someone who knows better wastes my time.  Edit them out.  Resubmit, make them sound like you care.

Off brand voice – too feminine    Expected – push!    Even your tone    This is too generic.  What r u selling?

No, the only thing to prove is 2 yourself.  Pump up, more important, personal, passionate.

Good thought, but just stuck it in the end.    Good line but long way from last mention     Redundant. Tired old ad device. 

This starts a totally different discussion – y not get rid of front, start here?    Good line but long way from last mention

Breaking up run-ons creates emphasis    Break into 2 parts – write it as conversation, not lecture

Blah!    Redundant. Tired old ad device.    This starts a totally different discussion – y not get rid of front, start here?

Breaking up run-ons creates emphasis   Break into 2 parts – write it as conversation, not lecture

You love to complicate your structure – simplify it instead.    Fab-u-lous!

Start by jumping into it, don’t worry about introductions and working up to it.  Hit it right out of the chute.

Good.  Some/same problems w/structure and overwriting.  The strongest ideas are the simplest.  Same goes w/copy.  Think of it as a conversation between you and your prospect.  Add a little warmth, so I’m not surprised by the sweetness, pain of your last, very powerful, line.

Stronger word.  Excessive “ands” Tone changes    R U writing text or ad?    Integrate product more

This is all over the place. 

1.  KCWP   2. What do you want to say?  Say it.  3. Edit extraneous or limit 2 one line. 4.  Killer wrap     Don’t be discouraged by all the notes – you’ll get there.    Not enough product.

Unexpected and original direction – nice!    [Kamikaze Key Fact]:  this is really a Prospect Definition.

See any commonly pulled  threads?  I see a few biggies:

1.  Integrating the product into the copy, using a specific style or not
2. Difference between KKF and Prospect Definition
3. Structure, order, Copy Sins, Wasted words
4. Weak closing lines, Run-ons, Redundancies
5. Inabiity to maintain a constant tone, whether writing in specific style or not

There are more, but these last five, expressed in many ways in the bigger list of comments, are the ones I most wish Santa would remove from the student copywriters’ bag of bad habits and misconceptions.  This doesn’t begin to address the continuing problem of Kamikaze Creative Work Plan aversion/ misunderstandings.  About as big as it gets in my book.

That said, I wrote a secret message in this blog text for my students.  Homework for the live classes on the 14^th & 15^th (will be at Creative Circus, in Atlanta – give me shout if you’d like to meet, join one of the sessions, take me to the Ritz for lunch) will be to find it, put it together, honestly put down the numbers of times you had to read this to find it (all).  First person to get it write and list it in the Comments gets a gold star, maybe something more useful if I can think of anything (an (extra) hour of copy/concept help?).  Hmmm….maybe it’s time to check out all those strangely appealing stores on Cheshire Bridge…!

(YES, I know there are more than 20 remarks.  Creative license – considered counting for the correct number, but some repeat, some appear in different forms, some just are.)

As always, ©2013, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

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

THINKING AND WRITING IN STYLE: Kamikaze Copywriters, make sure your ADs, GDs, WDs read this

There are two kinds of Style.  The first is a technical-anthropological-cultural-sociological phenom created within the collective conscious.  The second, a personal expression of who we are and how we articulate our vision of ourselves to the world.  This week we’re going to focus on the first, Style as expressed by the collective conscious.

As a Kamikaze Concepting Creative, there are some truths you need to grok before we can start:

Concept can be expressed with Style

Style is never a Concept.

There are many different advertising styles. In TV alone, there must be thousands across the decades.  Think Drill Sargent, Animation, Late Night TV (Sham Wow, Valuable Collectibles, Hair Goo, Yelling Car Guy), Slice of Life (Smart Kids/Stupid Parents, Dumb Dad/Smart Mom/Smart Kid, Horny Teen, Lawnmower Lust), High Tech (digitized synthesizer music, techie images, references,flashing LEDs, etc.), Talking Food, Talking Babies, Talking Animals or inanimate objects, Rock Video, Police Interrogation, put your least favorites here _________. 

You could hardly call any a Concept.  Yet all are used for products of every size, shape, function. They’re merely vehicles for driving the client’s message home. Treatments, translations.  Style.  Most fall under the category of Monkey See/Monkey Do.  As a rule, they’re painful to watch, so similar, even the most ardent viewer couldn’t tell you who/what the spot is about.  Many wouldn’t remember seeing them at all.

On broader terms, ad styles include Industrial Financial Editorial Fashion Pharma Children’s Corporate High Tech Senior Medical – almost as many as there are categories. What they all have in common - trying to motivate a specific market.  All well and good, but to truly attract, affect and motivate, style must be relevant to your Kamikaze Prospect and fall out of your Kamikaze Key Fact/Concept: Iinner commonalities among highly diverse people, all categorized by one external characteristic.

Other styles define the decades from which they spring.  20s Flappers, 30s Dust Bowl, 80s Disco.  90s high tech, 70s punk/post-punk and today, the Great Recession.  Decades can be defined by music, fads, circumstances art fashion advertising.  Style can also be localized (the beach, a particular city, wilderness, Wall Street, Texas), popular culture (comedy, amusements, dances, food, transportation, class, fashion, music, industry, circumstances, popular TV/movies, etc.).

I knew a creative team in Houston, working on a catalog/installation guide for drill pipe and connectors, who swept all the big award shows in their category (brochures, direct, promotional) with what would normally have been a dry, boring manual.  Their piece mimicked – in copy and graphics – the military/WWII General Patton.  I’ve done the same tapping into cowboy/cowgirl rodeo culture, Film Noir murder mysteries and 30s movie newsreels.

The thing about this kind of style:  as much fun as it can be, it also requires semantic and visual accuracy to a degree that sent us all to (pre-internet) libraries (public, military, film, history, etc.), had us renting movies, listening to music we might not have otherwise discovered, attending sporting events, even visiting VA hospitals and retirement homes, VFWs, Am Vets, etc. 

You can’t fake it.  To work, you must be spot-on accurate.  As soon as you miss something, hundreds of people with nothing better to do start writing letters to the client (and sometimes the agency, if they’re ambitious) gleefully pointing out inaccuracies, anachronisms, misquotes and bad examples.

What can working in an established cultural style do for your creative?  Normal Rockwell illustrations and period design + copy got one Circus grad and his art director a big fat Athena check.  If your style is one your Prospect resonates to, is compatible with the product, it’ll show dividends for the client, as well. 

  

Writing in culture driven styles can be lots of fun.  One of the most hilarious days I’ve ever spent banging out copy was doing Rodeo-Beer-Babe-Promotions.  Freelancing in Chicago at the time, my considerable mastery of rodeo speak really wowed them, even though it was merely stuff I’d picked up living/working in Texas.

What determines which – if any – Cultural Style you can use to dress up a strong concept or In place of one?  As always, it starts with the Prospect.  What Prospect commonalities suggest which Cultural Style?  Does this style work with the Kamikaze Key Fact?  Will it support the Promise, make a rational connection to the product?

Are there pitfalls?  As with all copy, one of the biggest problems is falling in/out of tone/language of concept (the Cultural Style’s lingo becomes your Language of Concept).  You can’t fake it.  Using all the stylistic terms you know in headlines, then reverting to mere conversational or expository writing won’t cut it.  It gives the Prospect – and award judges – an easy out to dismiss the work as dilettante, sloppily/lazily done. 

It may be perfectly fine for the graphics to attempt subtle updates to compensate for changing media and production requirements.  The copy, however, must stay true to voice, true to vocabulary, true to structure.  If not, you’ll loose your audience as soon as you break down into Today Speak.

This Week’s Assignment

For my Advanced Circus students (and anyone who wants to give it a shot), I’ve devised a sort of reverse-engineered Cultural Style assignment.  You have your choice of One (1) of the styles listed below.  Determine what Prospect, then what Product, could be best tied conceptually to the style you choose.  Write a KCWP (Kamikaze Creative Work Plan), then submit KCWP and copy by 9 a.m. Thursday, 1/24/13. That’s one piece of body copy, with headline, written in the style you chose from the list below. Accompanied by the KCWP which inspired it.  Body copy must be at least three paragraphs long.

For my first-time Circus students, this Cultural Style assignment is optional.  If you want to give it a shot, be my guest.  Regardless, you must submit three paragraphs of body copy (preferably w/headline), either new or something you’re working on in a teams or other class, by 9 a.m. Thursday, 1/24 (if your skype session is on Thursday), 5 p.m. Thursday 1/24 if your skype session is on Friday. Even if it's something from another class, it must be accompanied by a supporting KCWP.  Submitting the advanced Cultural Style assignment is, again, optional.  The only one that counts is the required copy.

Any non-Circus class readers/writers who want to give it a shot, go ahead.  Have fun.  If you’d like me to take a look at it, I’ll do that on a first come/first served basis as time allows if you submit it in English, as a separate Word doc. (or pdf I can copy to word for edit).  I can’t promise an immediate response, but do promise to go over it and make comments, then return to you as soon as my schedule allows.  The styles listed are pretty much USA – if you do one from another country, please also send me some background on the style you use.  You can email them to kamikazecreative@gmail.com.  Use subject line:  Non-student Cultural Style Assignment.

CULTURE-BASED STYLES:  CHOOSE ONE

1920s-30s – Flapper Culture (Gatsby, Thin Man, F.Scott and Zelda, Prohibition, Al Capone)

1920s-30s – Depression/Dust Bowl (Margaret Burke-White, WeeGee, Grapes of Wrath, New Deal Propaganda)

1940s – WWII (Music, War Machinery, Fashion, Cultural Norms/Social Changes, Military, Allies, Celebrity USOs/Stage Door Canteen)

1940s - Film Noir (Cinematography, Stars, Stories, Fans/Cinemas, Dashiell Hammett, Bogart & Bacall, Ida Lupino, Black/White Film, B-Movie Stars)

1950s – Happy Days (California – Cars, Stay-at-Home Moms, Music, Fashion, Popular Culture, Leather Jackets, Ladies Home Journal, Automatic Washing Machines, TV, Doris Day/Rock Hudson)

1950s - Beat Generation (NYC – Long hair, Black leotards/turtlenecks, Poets (Ginsburg, Ferlinghetti), Coffee Houses, Goatees, Literature (Kerouac)

1960s – Hippie Culture (Woodstock, Communes, Organics, Long Hairs, Underground Newspapers, Weed, Jane Fonda, Mini-Skirts, Carnaby Street, Beatles, Motown, Pop/Modern Art)

1960s - Vietnam (War, Protests, Veterans, War/Warrior Culture, Music, Choppers, My Country Right or Wrong, The Great Society)

Whatever your choose, be sure to check out the movies/movie stars, news, fashion, food, transportation, art, magazines/literature/ newspapers, advertising, new products introduced.  Because we’re all writers here - the slang, literature, film dialogue, etc., will help you stay in voice.

Good luck.  Have fun.

 

As always, ©2013, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

WHAT THE JAPANESE POETS KNEW ABOUT KAMIKAZE COPYWRITING: In English, for all Kamikaze Copywriters, Bi-Creatives, Ads, GDs, WDs and others who want people to read things they’d rather not.

Ad copy should be a lot of things – visual, active, interesting, relevant, conceptual and, no matter how many hundreds of words you need/think you need – read short.  That last one – reading short – is too often where things go wrong.  You see lots of “short” in ad, web, direct, promotional and other forms of commercial writing.  Most of it’s like a bad date.  Clever, hopefully compelling greeting (headline), attractive looks (design/visual) get you interested.  Body copy – whether two lines or two pages – so dull you forget why you thought you should ask him out in the first place.

 

It’s almost as if the writer - regardless their title - wants you to stop reading at the headline.  Or someone with a bigger title approved their concept and headline, then said Better put in a line or two about product, even though it doesn’t matter if it gets read.  Even though, in ad copy, you need the prospect to remember something, then somehow act/respond. 

 

What the classic Japanese Haiku Masters knew – and you need to learn from them – is how to get – and keep – a reader engaged.  Even if it’s only three lines, five syllables + seven syllables over five.  They were (and modern aficionados/writers still are) highly visual, conceptual and - through a device called kiru - force the reader to participate. 

Kiru is a haiku’s most important technical/conceptual detail, the twist the turn the juxtaposition of thought.  In ad writing, Kiru isn’t the concept.  It’s the device lying in wait, revealed in language rolling out of the concept, to deliver the KCWP’s (Kamikaze Creative Work Plan’s) Promise.  In simple terms, the point the Prospect absorbs the big benefit the product holds for them.

Modern form haiku, which does not strictly adhere to the 5-7-5 format, still requires Kiru.  Visual, evocative, as much about mood and attitude as they are about words, experience, conjuring up theater of the mind.  Same as we modern copywriters must deliver – forgive the term – content. 

Sounds good, right?  Isn’t that why we write?  Another subject.  Why Advertising Haiku?  To get our minds around the art of saying much with little. Deft in bending the prospect in our use of language, tense, meter, tone, syntax and especially, kiru.  The twist that turns poetic skill to trick unwilling readers into reading – and identifying with – the manner in which a client’s product will make their life better.

Last week’s Circus class focused on the art of writing short.  Yet another of our copywriter tricks.  I’m attaching it below, and invite anyone reading to join us.  Students will be posting their assignment in the Comments, so we can all enjoy – and learn from – each other.  I’ll post my comments briefly, and my students and I will go over them in detail via skype.  Have fun – join us.

Advertising Haiku

When you think of ad copy, think short.  It doesn’t matter if it’s an ad, a TV spot, video, web page, brochure, corporate white paper, social media or an entire site.  No matter how long it is, two lines or two long, detail-packed corporate web pages, copy should read short.  Long and elegant, poetic with complex structure works great in classic novels.  In ad copy they slow the reader down instead of moving the prospect quickly from point to point, feature to feature, benefit to benefit. (Think Poe and Dickens got paid by adding words.  Ad writers get paid for eliminating them.)

A slow reader is a thinking reader.  We want a feeling, doing reader.  To motivate, no matter what the style/Language of Concept, you can’t ask them to make a decision.  Especially if it means they need to consider what your write thoughtfully over time.  You don’t have to give up style to write short.  You don’t have to give up timely, relevant content.

What you do give up is excessive commas, run-on sentences, complex structure and clause after preposition after clause.  Empty descriptors, clunky structure, unnecessary articles, prepositions.  Instead, you use the style, the Language of Concept, to carry the reader’s interest quickly through sparse, clean messaging, a logical order and expression of your conceptual connection from KKF (Kamikaze Key Fact) through completion.

Keeping all this in mind, your first assignment is to write three advertising Haiku.  I’m sure most – if not all - of you are at least familiar with this form of Japanese poetry. I’m attaching a compilation of definitions, a few samples, etc., garnered from the internet.  (For my Circus Students, refer to the handout.  For everyone else, refer to the internet.)

This is not a throw-away assignment.  It will teach you about writing visually, writing short, writing with style and always, within the context of your prospects’ lives’.  You must match the five-seven-five syllable, three line format.  Be sure to include kiru, the most important technical/conceptual detail, the twist the turn the juxtaposition of thought.  The thing your prospect’s mind will bend to, forcing participation, attention, moving the prospect where you want him to go.  Just like a good concept.

©2013, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative

HAPPY NEW YEAR, MAY 2013 BE KAMIKAZE

Thanks so much for reading, contributing last year.  2013 should see more reader/student participation, delving into concept, more esoteric aspects of writing ad copy and hopefully, Kamikaze success - however we define it - for us all.

If there's something I haven't covered, you'd like expanded, you disagree with, yadda yadda - that's what the comment section is for, please let me know.  If you'd rather contact me directly, the best eddress for me is kamikazecreative@gmail.com.

May 2013 be happy.  And if anyone wants a very cute, but very energetic Jack Russell pup, I may know one who wants to be the only pet of an athletic owner. Ask about her. Approved homes, I'm serious this time. Stella (and I) are too set in our ways for a dog with this much energy and original thinking!

BI-CREATIVE? THE TRUTH EVERY KAMIKAZE AD, GD, WD, JOURNALIST, LAWYER AND ASPIRING NOVELIST NEEDS TO KNOW BEFORE THEY SWITCH TO COPYWRITING.

There’s a rumor it’s easier to be a Copywriter than an Art Director, Graphic Designer, Web Designer/Developer. Before you make a big mistake and switch disciplines, the Copy Diva is here to tell you it ain’t so.

I ran into a friend in the Circus Web program recently. He was thinking of switching to copywriting. We didn’t have much time, but my reply was “It’s hard. Copywriting is hard.”

Several students in my class(es) made the switch – started as ADs, GDs, WDs, then switched to Copy. Not one of them thinks Copy’s easier. Other students have mentioned they’re thinking of it. I’m all for it – for the right reasons.  

Copywriters don’t moon over words all day. We’re the ones who go to the meetings, get the input, have lunch with the client (those meetings), spend endless hours listening to voice over after voice over after another boring voice, then try to keep the client out of the production booth. In between, we get bugged to bug you about jobs trending late.  Look over your shoulder, say the way you stacked the headline doesn’t make sense, wish this was just a tiny bit lower and wouldn’t a light screen of color behind all that reverse type make it easier to read? 

We do exciting things too.  Interview engineers and bus drivers, for instance.  All of that – so the AD GD WD can direct photographers, direct directors, production, color. OK – you have to know more software. We, however, must be familiar w/ever-changing Google thoughts, SEO, SEM, Content Marketing, Content Strategy, print writing, visual concepts AND television/video/radio/voice over writing/production.

 

We must write War and Peace in two pages. No typos. Nothing left out. Art Directors may have to know the rudiments of how a product works, but knowing how it looks in/out of context is more important. They play with type and space – something most clients, AEs and such don’t mess with. Writers, are the product/client/AE detail people. We fight to keep creative vision, strategy in the face of too many “guest” editors and wannabes without buying into their shtick.

Copywriters get to learn how the product’s made, what the legal fellas will/won’t allow. We're the ones who stay awake through testing and focus groups, hear stories about the company founder. Still, everyone’s a Copywriter – Mom always loved our spelling word stories, some clients married English teachers. 

You try cramming all those features and benefits into two paragraphs – or two lines – so they’re motivating, engaging, interesting. On strategy. True to prospect. True to product. Memorable. True to concept/language of concept. You get the whole screen/page. We get two lines. Short ones.

I realize leafing through stock photos and Director reels gets tedious. At least you’re looking at pictures. Copywriters struggle to find the perfect word, split semantic hairs, rely on structure, syntax and Creative Strategy. We have to know what they all are, how to push them. All within the context of someone else’s layout. Someone else's product. And everyone’s thoughts how we should have said it. When we think it’s perfect, better shave off another twenty  fifty  three hundred words to comply with your layout, leaving no product detail, style, concept or prospect motivation behind.

While you’re moving logos and images around, we’re sifting through research, piles of product data, prospect profiles. Then joy! Another meeting – no need for AD to attend, the writer is here! All those meetings, the client still doesn’t want to pay for us to go on photo shoots.

Writing copy is harder than you think – harder than most lifelong writers who try (journalists, PR folks, wannabe novelists, poets) ever dream. You think talking to programmers and suppliers is hard? Try writing a thousand headlines on the same subject, no two alike. Even if they mean the same darn thing. It’s nit-picky work and you must constantly reinvent yourself in prospect speak.

Writing Copy is not easier than learning software that’s constantly upgrading, knowing a bit of math, if you’re at the Creative Circus, getting through Sylvia’s courses. I know it seems like it – all we need to know is Microsoft® Word®, right?  And where all those ®s  ™s  ©s go.*

 

Before you make the switch, think about these:  

Do you love to write? Better still, do you love to edit? Are you a Problem Solver by nature? Can your ego stand clients changing your copy because – well, for reasons a professional copywriter would never imagine, let alone have? I once had to change a word because the client had never “seen it in an ad before.” Another client, with two dueling consultants, would have to let the other consultant change a word for every word first guy killed. I’ve debated revisions with twelve engineers at once, written copy-while-U-wait in meetings, gone toe-to-toe with CEOs over articles  pronouns  commas and Copy Sins.  

After you’ve spent a week concepting, a week writing, done eight edits, gotten internal approvals all the way up - can you let your stuff go to whomever wants to do whatever because – heck! – writing copy’s so easy?

Knowing some of you will no doubt doubt, I gladly admit you visual/codable types have more details to sign off on, vendors to deal with, program updates to master. Enviable skills, but there are project managers, art buyers, production types and others to help. After the AD signs off on final production details suppliers don’t tell you no, change this visual because they’ve never seen it in an ad before. No, you get kudos for creativity!

 

One more thing, Creative Circus students (and others) considering the switch.  You think Sylvia made you work hard? Wait’ll you go over your work word for word with Doreen. (Sylvia and I taught a class together once – a Teams class on Long Copy.  Maybe that’s the solution!  Thinking of making the switch?  Maybe Sylvia and I should design a class just for you!)

If you really really want to be a copywriter, if, as some of my ex-AD students tell me, you care more about the words than the graphics, don’t be afraid, go for it. Here are a few quick reasons to give it a shot:

More CDs and ECDs are CWs than ADs. Agencies look to CWs as the problem solvers, which can give us more influence. Clients can become very attached to their writers, but their relationships with ADs are usually more distant, so they’re often not as proprietary about them. Everyone says there’s a shortage of writers. (Not true – there’s a shortage of great writers’ writers.) Google has made everyone aware of the value of original, prospect-centered content.  Now writers aren’t seen as dispensable/changeable on e-projects.

The decision boils down to this:  You like writing, but do you love the edit?  Making it better in fewer words (sometimes 50%+ fewer words)? Putting up with an AD, GD, WD like you? Would you like sitting in on all the meetings you miss as an AD? Spending enough time in Client Ville so they not only like you, they respect you, trust you and what you do?

As the line between many AD/CWs blurs in this age of hacking your cell, sophisticated (and not so) apps, smart phones  gps  Facebook  tablets  and who knows where else it’s going, one more thought:  being a successful hybrid CW/AD isn’t that easy, either. Small agencies and freelance clients may appreciate the combo, big agencies don’t. Master of All is Master of None kind of thing.

The real question:  What do you want? Why? Copy isn’t easy. If it’s truly what you’re meant to do, it’s not that hard, either.  

*Here's where one of those (c)s go:

(c)2012, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative