How I see copywriting very differently now
Personal notes on my early days as a copywriter
Having to transition from journalism to copywriting was neither hard nor easy. If once you’ve experienced to be in this same position, chances are, either you’re tired of spending time on the road and wanting to find a more office-like job, or that you simply want to explore a whole new different world of professional writing.
But are the two of them really different from each other? My answer is ‘yes’.
Although they are serving the same purpose, which is to tell stories, I realized that each of the creative processes has some major differences to deal with in practice.
And, as a person who did not(and still) really understand about copywriting, let alone advertising strategy, taking this job is like opening a pandora box.
There are many things that cannot be unseen once it was opened, except that it all happens in a good way.
Let me share with you some of them.
It’s all around us
Anybody who lives in an urban environment — possibly elsewhere too — could hardly avoid the presence of ads. Whether it’s printed or digital, as long as the world still has a commodity to sell, it’s impossible to get rid of ads and copywriting from the course of marketing strategy, so to speak.
Starting from a giant soda billboard ad in the downtown of New York, to an influential political propaganda poster in the street of Pyongyang, copywriting plays its versatile role in various storytelling agendas.
A good copywriting, Google says, persuade people to take an action; buy the product, join the trend, etc. While in my own words, a good copywriting makes sense of what doesn’t.
The thing is, many people will not see through this part. Unless they are really obsessed with semiotics or…ads, copywriting seems to be just a made-up term to define what people do when writing some basic and catchy taglines or jargons for various marketing purposes.
It’s not that easy
This was honestly my very first impression towards copywriting, “what’s really difficult with making short writing for ads, right?” Wrong!
It might not always be packed with a bunch of interviews, like what’s regularly done in journalistic writing, but this job certainly has some trickiness of its own.
Gladly, I managed to overcome most of them so far — thanks to the internet.
The truth is, any ads that you see right now being displayed were all taken from stacks of briefs where all the boring corporate terms for a campaign are placed.
The clients certainly will not advertise their products using the language of that brief. They need someone who can interpret it into something more engaging, user-friendly, easy to understand, but still in an accurate and relevant manner.
As I said earlier, a good copywriting makes sense of what doesn’t. It bridges two types of logic; the client’s and consumer’s, hence a copywriter has to be able to make a thorough assessment, have tons of empathy, and good writing skills.
It’s more when it’s less
When you are used to writing for an editorial piece, I assume it’s natural if you have developed a certain sensitivity to value more long-form writing. The logic is, facts require proper explanation. Fair enough, don’t you think?
But it’s all played the opposite here in copywriting. They call it, “the shorter the better”, “less is more” and so on. The point is, length does have an important role in determining which is the so-called good copywriting.
That was even the main concern of some employers while they’re interviewing me for this job. Apparently, being good at writing is not enough. This job demands me to also be creative and, most importantly, concise.
People — generally — will not scroll for ads. In fact, ads are known to be annoying most of the time. Especially as printed media such as magazine and newspaper has been crumbling down in the recent decade, ads are getting a relatively smaller and mixed space with the main content on the internet.
While there’s a good reason to make an even more concise copy, this, at the same time, has allowed ads to get more creative options to get displayed to the public.
Beyond all that, I think I made a pretty good start on the job.
Hi, I’m Iqbal. Thank you for reading this! Let’s have a conversation about copywriting as I want to know more about it — or anything at all. If you’re on Twitter, please say hi to me at @dwihariantos.
