The power of creative copy

On the wall beside my computer monitor, I have four words written in black marker on a Post-It: Get to the point. It’s something of a mantra for the working copywriter.

Why? Because “no one reads copy”. You’ve got the first few words and the last few words of a paragraph to catch a user’s eye while she scans the page in the traditional (still relevant?) F-pattern. No one reads because they’re too busy to bother – they just want to get to the point. 

That’s what I’ve understood for… oh… since I got serious about copywriting 5 or 6 years ago.  

Problem here: I got ‘serious’ about it. I stopped believing in the power of creativity in copy. As if people can only enjoy the imagination of a Harry Potter scene or the thoughtfulness of Milan Kundera in bound hard copy. As if conversational tone should live only in a Garr Reynolds blog post. As if all the personas my client is targeting are far too busy to allow themselves to be engaged by some well-written – hell, some fun to read – copy.  

But, wait, don’t people like stories?
To date, Harry Potter has sold over 325 million copies worldwide (according to Wikipedia) – and you’ll notice that it’s not just children buying those books. I’ve read them, and so has my brother-in-law, and so have dozens of people at the office. …So we can deduce that even super-busy grown-ups are making time for Harry Potter stories, not to mention all the other fiction books people are making time to read.   

You’ll hear marketers talk about the power of storytelling… and, in the same breath, they’ll ask to cut the “fluff” and drop another product feature into the copy. You’ll hear them talk about the power of connecting emotionally with a customer immediately before they mark up a document to stuff in keywords and to cut creative copy that isn’t “consistent with” (read: identical to) corporate messaging controls.  

Maybe it’s time to snap out of it. To me, it feels like the great brands – the Apples, the Starbucks and the Porsches – don’t buy this no-one-reads-it nonsense. Maybe the Web is getting ready to allow content that works on a level deeper than what the marketing manager or product manager feels comfortable with – a level where sharp creativity meets usability meets information.   

Case in point
I visited Converse.com and clicked randomly on a persona on the home page, which brought me here: 

The copy reads: “Celebrate the 80s all over again in a party-all-night-big-city-small-world, fabulous sort of way. Chuck Taylor® All Star® Fashion is decked up in metallic stripes. Vulcanized rubber outsole for increased traction and flexibility.” The copy is spot-on for countless reasons – but here are a few.  

• Sentence 1: It’s fun and cool and tongue-in-cheek for a post-shoe-gazing era consumer who scoffs at the idea of being fabulous… while secretly hoping to be fab.
• Sentence 2: It’s a simple “this is that” construction. The writer knew when to pull back on the creativity without losing the tone.  
• Sentence 3: To appease the folks in product development and remind us that we’re talking about shoes here, this sentence says that the shoes do good things for your feet.

 Great stuff – kept short and readable. A few other creative copy bits: 

Louis Vuitton US

VW Canada

So, do you have to sell Louis Vuitton bags or Converse shoes to write creative copy? Can tax software copy be interesting and still move units? Given that it targets roughly the same people (plus a few more) that Converse does, we can imagine that, yes, it too can be creative, compelling, fun. …Is it? That’s another story.  

Make creative copy happen
How to build creative content into your site? You have to build it into your brand first – your brand needs to allow a fun, friendly tone. And that means you need a fearless creative director, trusting marketing managers and, ideally, metrics to support the use of such a tone. (That means testing content. Yay! Save that for another post.)  

Is it worth trying to make creative copy happen on your site or your clients’ sites? Consider the importance of copy in building a brand. Bland copy equals bland brand. Bland brand equals lost conversions. Don’t believe me? Read the Interbrand report on the best brands of 2007 and note the column revealing, in dollars, brand values: http://www.interbrand.com/best_brands_2007.asp  

What’s the point?
Give the reader something worth reading, and they might actually read. Still think you have to “get to the point”? If you ask me, getting them to read is the point.