Pop goes the weasel

“Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel.” Homer Simpson.

As you know, in copywriting ‘weasel wording’ usually refers to those bits of copy you’re forced to write that mean you’re not really promising / guaranteeing / saying / doing what you seem.

Apparently the phrase comes from the idea that weasels suck out eggs – leaving a hollow shell, the way weasel words make your promises sound a bit hollow.

Anyway, their existence is often necessary, for good legal reasons, and they don’t necessarily shit all over your copy (much like a well-trained weasel), they just dilute the potency of your hyperbole a little.

But sometimes they just make what you’re saying... not worth saying.

“Here’s a great USP for our home insurance: that we make a customer’s home secure within two hours of a break-in. We should do an ad about that.”

“Yeah, but what if we can’t get there in two hours for some reason?”

“Ok, we’ll say we usually make a customer’s home secure within two hours.”

“We can’t say ‘usually’ because it’s a new service. There’s no data to prove that we do it most of the time.”

“Ok, we’ll say we aim to make a customer’s home secure within two hours.”

“Well, alrighty then. We’ve got ourselves an ad campaign!”

And so the new Direct Line TV ad came to pass. Where they say they aim to make your home secure within two hours of a break-in.

Which means it’s an ad about nothing, really. ‘Aim’ indeed. Why not go further, and say you aim to secure a customer’s home within one hour? Or within one minute? You can always fail, but hey, it’s only an aim.

Hmm. As Homer also said, “Let us all bask in television's warm glowing warming glow.”

Show me the money. Twice.

I was at an all-agency meeting last week for a very large client I dare not name, craven coward that I am.

A planner and suit from the pretty famous, highly creative above-the-line agency were there, talking about the research feedback to their new big budget TV and press campaign.

I’m paraphrasing, but basically it went along the lines of:

“Yeah, so people aren’t loving the work, and they’re not really getting it either. We also think it’s targeted at the wrong audience. And there’s almost no integration between the TV and print. But we reckon by doing it all over again, for lots more cash, we sort some of that out.”

On one level, you have to admire their honesty. But on another level, you’re sat there gobsmacked. Because they’re describing the work’s failings as if someone else did it.

But no – THEY did it! Just a few months ago! For a shedload of cash!

It’s a brilliant way to double your fees I suppose. Do the job badly the first time and then bill the client all over again to put it right.

Where do I sign up for some of that action?

Give me some space

SKY SPORT NOWHERE says the sign above the pub closest to the agency office. 

Ah, finally. A secluded saloon offering sweet relief from the incessant babble of Sky Sports and the cacophony of its swooshing graphics.

A tranquil retreat with the promise of being able to hear the person you’re talking to without being drowned out by cries of OFF SIDE or THE REFEREE’S A WELSHMAN.

A calm, convivial oasis where you can relax without fear of being elbowed in the ear by someone leaping to their feet every time it looks like their team might be about to score.

A genteel drinking hole where a man can put the world to rights over a quiet pint, without risk of having that pint spilt all over your brogues by a gesticulating gimp in a football shirt.

Except it’s not, of course.

Turns out the sign’s supposed to read ‘SKY SPORT NOW HERE’.

Just goes to show – it’s not just the words you choose, but the air between them that matters too.

And it reminds me of the question, “How many times can you use the word ‘and’ consecutively in a sentence, and still have it make sense?”

How about five?

Man walks into the Rose and Crown pub. “I like your new sign,” he says. “But the signwriter’s made a mistake.”

“Really?” says the landlord.

“Yes,” says the man. “He hasn’t left a gap between the words. So there’s no space between Rose and and and and and Crown.”

Why babies try harder than you

Babies push themselves to the limit.

Take mine, for example (not literally – I’ve grown moderately fond of her).

At five months old, she can’t crawl, but she wants to. Tries like her life depends on it, grunting and straining as she tries to persuade her knees to propel her forward (even though that’s physically impossible, since her fat belly means her arms and legs are off the ground).

She puts the same effort into walking, though that’s even further off. Give her a book on astrophysics and as long as there are a few pictures, she’ll happy gurgle away and try to turn the pages as she studies it with dribbly intent.

And at bedtime, even though she’s tired and yawning and rubbing her eyes, she doesn’t want to go to sleep. She wants to squeeze a few more drops of life out of the day, see something new, learn something new, do something new.

So what happens to all that get up and go? How come humans start off so driven, so determined, so keen to push the boundaries of what’s possible... and grow out of it as they grow up?

For instance, we’re looking for a graduate or junior copywriter at the moment – and some of the prospective candidates have so little drive, they couldn’t even be bothered to check the spelling, punctuation or grammar on their CVs or covering letters. Pretty bad on any CV you'd think, but particularly so for someone who's applying to be a copywriter.

One would-be wordsmith even spelt her own name wrong (at least, she spelt it two different ways on the same document).

On the other hand, we’ve also had one candidate who speaks seven different languages. So maybe there is hope. Maybe there are still a few souls who’ve kept the energy and ambition they had as babies.

Of course, one of the reasons we lose the drive we had as babies may be the fact that we go on to have babies of our own. Take mine, for example (again, not literally).

Before we had Daisy Boo – the easiest, sweetest, most straightforward baby to look after you could wish for – I had the drive to write two books in a year, while doing a pretty demanding job. Now I’m so knackered from a day of entertaining her that I don’t even have the energy to finish this sen

"The seven simple secrets which will make your writing bloody irresistible – guaranteed"

Here's a five minute flipchart exercise I sometimes show clients. A simple demonstration of just how easy it can be to make everything you write more pleasing, potent and persuasive.

On a flipchart I write the headline:
A few techniques to minimise the shortcomings in writing designed to persuade.

Then I say, tip one: make your writing active and personal. By saying things like ‘your writing’, for example. Write as one individual talking to another individual.

So, I make a change to the headline on the flipchart. It now reads:

A few techniques to minimise the shortcomings in your writing designed to persuade. 

Second tip: use ‘hardwired words’. There are words that just seem to grab people’s attention, almost as if they’re hardwired in our brains. One example is the word ‘guaranteed’. Another is ‘secrets’. So the headline now becomes:

A few secrets to minimise the shortcomings in your writing designed to persuade – guaranteed. 

Third tip: be specific not generic. People like precision, facts, numbers, statistics. And the more tangible those are, the better. So instead of ‘Save up to 40%’, it’s more effective to say ‘Save as much as £65’. The headline gets another tweak:

Seven secrets to minimise the shortcomings in your writing designed to persuade – guaranteed. 

Fourth tip: talk about solutions, not problems. People buy solutions, they don’t like hearing about problems. So, in an anti-dandruff shampoo ad where they have one big picture, it’ll never be a picture of the problem. It’ll be a picture of someone with dazzling, flake-free hair.

So the headline gets another couple of tweaks:

Seven secrets which can make your writing irresistible – guaranteed. 

Fifth tip: features tell, benefits sell. So, when you get a credit card, ‘Fraud protection’ is a feature, ‘You can feel safe when you shop online’ is the benefit.

The changes we’ve made to our headline have already made it more benefit driven, but we can enhance it further. Firstly, by putting the definite article at the beginning. And secondly by being bolder and saying the benefits ‘will’ rather than ‘can’. We’ll also add an important, new benefit: that these secrets are ‘easy’. So now we have:

The seven easy secrets which will make your writing irresistible – guaranteed. 

Sixth and penultimate tip: make your writing lyrical and lively. Use slightly unusual language, a little alliteration, a metaphor, onomatopoeia or a play on words to make it stand out.

We can make the headline more alliterative by changing ‘easy’ to ‘simple’. And we can make it more distinctive by adding a punchy adjective:

The seven simple secrets which will make your writing bloody irresistible – guaranteed.

Seventh, final tip: ooze credibility. There are lots of ways of sounding more credible – such as quoting someone. Interestingly, it works even if your audience doesn’t know the person you’re quoting. In fact, it works even your quote doesn’t say who it’s from, but just looks like a quote. So, let’s add speech marks:

”The seven simple secrets which will make your writing bloody irresistible – guaranteed.” 

And there it is.

From A few techniques to minimise the shortcomings in writing designed to persuade to ”The seven simple secrets which will make your writing bloody irresistible – guaranteed”.

Seven simple copywriting parlour tricks. Which have made the line about 10 times better. Without being a single word longer. 

(Those seven are taken from the 25 tips explained in the 'Quick Wins' chapter of Copy. Righter.)

5 Things I Hate In Copywriting

Somebody asked me the other day what I don't like to see in copy. Impressively, I managed to keep the list down to just five things:

1. Wit. Ok, that’s not strictly true: I do like witty writing. And I think wit, wordplay, ‘a smile in the mind’ can all make for great copy and even help sell product.

But – like watching a comedian die on stage – it’s utterly cringeworthy to read copy that tries too hard to be funny. Here’s a simple guide: if you’re not witty ‘in real life’ you’re probably not witty in print either.

2. Complexity.
Too much copy seems to think a complex product / service / idea needs a complex explanation. That I’ll be impressed by long words, complicated sentences and lashings of jargon to wash it all down with.

But Einstein put it brilliantly: “You don’t really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” Or to quote advertising luminary Dave Trott, “Complicated isn’t clever. It just looks clever to stupid people.”

3. Blandathons.
Generic, same-old-same-old, by-the-numbers copy. There really is no excuse for dull, insipid copy that’s lacking in surprising facts, fascinating details and a ‘water cooler moment’ – telling the reader something new and interesting they can share with their peers.

4. ‘Passionate’.
Oh dear god. Please don’t tell me that your company is ‘passionate’ about tap washers or whatever it is you’re flogging. Next you’ll be wanting to tell me about your 'commitment to' something or other, or your ‘innovative approach’.

5. Features.

‘Features tell, benefits sell’ is the old cliché. But it’s true. As legendary copywriter John Caples said, “Don’t sell the world’s best grass seed. Sell the world’s best lawn.”

So why does so much copy tell me the feature… and expect me to work out the benefit for myself? Don’t you know how lazy I am?

Why copywriters are getting richer, even through a recession

I walked past two shops today: the first (a beauty parlour) had a sign saying Treatment’s from £15. The second, a hairdresser, had a sign saying Try our salons free consultation service.

In other words, the first shop should have given the second its apostrophe.

And there, my friends, is the problem: we’re all getting more and more illiterate.

I've seen basic rules of punctuation and grammar used incorrectly on shop signage, on BBC TV captions, in newspaper and magazines, on packaging... it's everywhere.

And if we're struggling for the basics of punctuation, you can imagine what a dearth there is of people who can not only spell, they can write with flair and conviction.

I should know: as an agency creative director, I’m always on the lookout for new copywriting talent. Yet more and more young people are coming out of university and college interested in some kind of visual / art / design based career. Fewer and fewer want to (or are able to) write.

Which is why more and more agencies like mine have to pay freelance copywriters about 50% more than we pay freelance art directors.

So the lesson is clear. If you want to struggle in a highly competitive market, become an art director. If you want a job for life, become a copywriter.

And if you want to be able to name your own price – even in a recession – become a good copywriter.