Somewhere along the line we copywriters have given the world the wrong message. That’s pretty scary, when you consider our main function in professional life.
So how’ve we messed up? Well, people expect us to ‘do a little polish’ to rescue their sometimes dire homebrew copy. Now, I’m not denigrating their copywriting efforts. I’m not a bricklayer, a financial adviser or a designer of autoclaves, so my efforts at doing their jobs would be equally – probably more – dire.
The problem is that’s not what the best copywriters do. And, as a profession, we’ve not explained what we bring to the table.
Away from work on the glossiest and shallowest consumer items, we engage and understand with our clients, their products, their customers and their needs. We dig deep, research and develop messages, and prioritise and structure what we need to say (and even those working on perfume and all that stuff need to know a lot about their client and their client’s buyers).
Only once we’ve figured out what we have to say, do we think about how we’re going to say it.
So please don’t expect a ‘little marketing sprinkle’ will solve the problem. It probably won’t.
