Why your ads are like everyone else’s - Concept, Copy, Language of Concept and the Kamikaze Key Fact: What every Creative needs to remember.

Since starting my Creative Circus classes two months ago, I’ve spent at least three (if not more) nights each week going over student assignments.  Line by line, until sometimes my red ink edits make it look like they’re bleeding to death.  As we near the end of the term, I’m amazed at how hard the students have worked, how much improvement they’ve made, how some of the slower grokkers have finally had their Eureka! Moment, improved seemingly “overnight.”

There is one note I keep adding to the edits – one I thought I wouldn’t have to write any more.  No matter how I phrase it - “What’s your Kamikaze Key Fact?”  “Is this Key Fact Kamikaze?”  “Push push push – this Key Fact isn’t Kamikaze.”  Always, on work with writing improvements, but concepts that could have come from anyone.  I know I’ve covered this in previous posts (11/17/10, 8/19/10, 10/24/11, etc.).  It seems we need to discuss it again. 

The Kamikaze Key Fact is where the concepts are.  It is something that’s going on in the Prospect’s World you can use to hang your concept, your language, your product.  Some would say the Kamikaze Key Fact is the Concept.  The truth, sometimes it is, sometimes it just points the way to your concept if you push, push, try again, push some more. 

A real life student example:  one of my student writers is working on ads for a Heavy Metal style electric bass.  He came up with the usual stuff – how the base sounds, how Heavy Metal sounds, Metal’s perceptions, musical and otherwise, what the bass looks like, etc.  At the time, he had a very mundane KKF.  Something safe about Metal, bass, the color black, that kind of thing.  His writing was getting better, but conceptually – and in Language of Concept (LOC) – it was all pretty expected stuff.

Once again, I asked, “What’s your Kamikaze Key Fact?  Push it.  Push.  Push.  Push.  What do you know about Metal, the attitude, how it’s played, what it creates that will resonate in the Prospect's life, mind?”  Then the conversation changed.  “Didn’t the FBI play Heavy Metal to try to evacuate the Branch Davidians?” I asked.  He was on it like (my favorite Southern metaphor) ticks on a poodle.  Kept pushing, adding real life applications of Metal.  His Key Fact finally got Kamikaze.  Instead of a cool base attracts more chicks or some such expected stuff, he got this:

·      “The US…(is) at war in Afghanistan.  Soldiers use Metal to get aggressive in battle, instill fear and to interrogate prisoners.”

That’s when every changed.

The work went from expected, typical, to conceptual copy so well done and unexpected, there was actually a moment of complete silence after I read it to the class.  For a taste, his headline:

·      Fifty-megaton warhead.  Now with quarter-inch jack.*

The body copy is the best he’s done.  Clearly, he was into it.  The LOC must have flowed out his fingers.  Just as clearly, the rest of the class was mightily impressed.  I was, too.

That’s what a good Kamikaze Key Fact does for you.  Gets you to places you normally wouldn’t go.  Breathes life into concepts you otherwise wouldn’t find.  Best of all, if you don’t like a KKF, if it doesn’t lead where you want, doesn’t hold up the features/benefits and LOC, push it, change it.  Work it until you get a Kamikaze Key Fact like the work it’s meant to inspire:  Original, Conceptual, Book Worthy.

Next time you write a Kamikaze Creative Strategy (and you do write one for every assignment, don’t you?), look hard at your Key Fact.  Hear my voice in your head, see my hen scratching in red on the screen/paper:  “Is this Key Fact Kamikaze?”  Even when it is, don’t stop there.  You want to innovate, standout, make a creative difference?  Push push push it.  There’s no such thing as only one Kamikaze Key Fact.  No matter how good you think they’re getting, don’t stop until you find the one that says “No one else will see it this way - this one's Kamikaze and it's mine!”

Once you have a great Kamikaze Key Fact, Concept and Copy Innovation find you.

*©2012, David Stich.  Everything else, as usual, ©2012, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative