I’ve previously written on the topic of lying with statistics, an easy though dishonest way to manipulate your marketing message because consumers assume if it has lots of specific numbers attached to it, it must be true.
This week we had a great example of statistical manipulation in the new report “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2011″ which was jointly issued by the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the noble-sounding Trust for America’s Health. Here’s the meat of it:
“Twenty years ago, no state had an obesity rate above 15 percent. Today, more than two out of three states, 38 total, have obesity rates over 25 percent, and just one has a rate lower than 20 percent. “
My god, that’s shocking. No wonder newspapers and TV reporters coast to coast have picked it up more or less verbatim. But stop and think about it.
Suppose we went from zero obese states (which we’ll define as a state with an obesity rate over 20%) to 10 or 15 in that twenty-year period. That would be front page news. But this report said we went from zero to 49 states. From not a single state having a high obesity rate, to every state except one in this category.
Or, let’s look at super-obesity states (which we’ll define as a state with an obesity rate over 25%). Twenty years ago that definition would not have even registered, since every state but one was under 15%. Now two out of three states are in the mega-colossal, super-obese category.
Sure there are a bunch of fatties around. But don’t these statements seem simply incredible on the face of it? Could it be that in those 20 years…..
…. Somebody had changed the definition of obesity?
I’m not saying obesity is not a problem. Of course it is. But look how easily the statistics can be manipulated and how hungrily the mass media will gobble them up.
One of my favorite direct mail letters of all time came from someone called the “Scripps Center for Executive Health”. The first few paragraphs go like this:
Dear Mr. Maxwell:
In the next 30 seconds, someone will die of a heart attack. In the next 53 seconds, someone will have a stroke. In the next 60 seconds, someone will die of cancer. All in the U.S.A. And have I mentioned that about one-third of all deaths from cardiovascular disease occur prematurely, before age 75.
Hello, Mr. Maxwell… I’m still trying to get your attention.
Let’s face it. We men tend to resist health advice rather stubbornly. If you agree, remember that the difference between my male stubbornness and yours is what I’ve seen as a physician. So if you think you don’t need what I’ve been writing you about, here’s one more wakeup call:
You need a wholeperson picture of your health.
This letter is wrong on so many levels, but most of all it’s the voice. The writer starts by throwing cold water in the reader’s face although he can’t resist being a wise guy with the “have I mentioned”. After shouting at me in the indented subhead, he puts his arm around my shoulder but I am going to push it away because I don’t feel like being friendly with this person who was so recently pummeling me. Too late, he reveals something that I would have no way of knowing—he’s a doctor. Then he morphs into a new age healer with the deadly invented word “wholeperson”. At this point I threw the letter in the trash—though fortunately I retrieved it so I could share it with you.
A letter is always “from” someone and if you don’t keep your voice consistent you will give your audience one more excuse to head for the exits while your play is still in its first act. The most common error (you see this in television infomercials, too) is to build rapport with a personal and emotional tone, then break the spell with a hard sell call to action. Or, to speak to the reader in a human, personal way and suddenly switch to jargon or legalese.
On the other hand, you can help your cause by adopting an appropriate persona such as the subject matter expert, the fellow enthusiast, or the kindly mentor (this is the character that often sells product to a senior audience, and it may be what my wholeperson writer had in mind before the letter went off the tracks.)
Other media can have a voice too, even if it’s a catalog or informational website. The writer is the friendly, approachable tour guide, anticipating the reader’s needs and questions. And an occasional aside can make it more interesting: I once did a catalog of repetitive sports fan merchandise (the same bobblehead or jersey, repeated with a description for every team you could imagine) and it helped keep the interest of the reader to invent a copywriter who was the owner’s assistant, making his own comments on the items.
One of the side benefits of tough economic times is that fewer clients are asking for “edgy” work. Edgy we’ll define as “different for the sake of different” but it is also has an element of cool. It’s a special request of marketing managers who want to be able to show around their work and get the compliment, “ooh, that’s edgy!”
So what’s the problem with edgy? Good creative grows from a solid understanding of product and audience and a calculated plan to put the two together, which may or may not produce something never seen before. If you’re selling an insurance product it’s not likely that it will meet the edgy test without being irrelevant and ridiculous. But maybe you could sell a new movie in an edgy way… or maybe not.
In the great article on Pixar in the May 16 issue of the New Yorker, John Lassiter remembers the first time he pitched the movie “Toy Story” to executives at Disney. “They said, first, ‘You absolutely can’t have “Toy” in the title, because no teenager or young adult will come see the movie.’ And second, we had to make the characters ‘edgy.’” Can you imagine Woody as a bleary has-been with a Nixonian 5 o’clock shadow? That’s Disney’s “edgy” version which was ultimately tanked in favor of the thoroughly traditional cowboy who is now part of movie iconography.
Anthony Lane, the writer of the Pixar article, advises dramatists to “avoid anyone who talks about edgy, apart from a practicing mountaineer.” Same goes for those mini-dramas we call advertising. Most creative briefs have a section about the voice of the copy, and it’s fine to request a fresh and unexpected tone and the copywriter will do their best as long as it doesn’t compromise the core marketing message. But please, no “edgy”.
I would guess that relatively few people spring from the womb and say, “I’m going to be an ad copywriter when I grow up”. More likely you have an aptitude for writing and you discover copywriting as a way to make a living, or else you are asked to write copy as part of another job and discover you’re good at it.
I came from the first group. I went to film school to become a rich and famous screenwriter, but I turned to freelance copywriting as a way to support myself until I got my big break. I actually did apply for the proverbial “job in the mailroom at J. Walter Thompson” but I didn’t get it; my first assignments were writing sale catalogs for department stores. I liked the challenge of finding a way to say something meaningful about a product in a paragraph or two, but it never occurred to me that I was actually selling something.
After a few years of this, I went into one of my department store clients, The Broadway, to see if there were any copywriting assignments coming up. There weren’t but the direct mail advertising manager had just quit and so I was offered that job. For the first time I became accountable for my results—defined not as whether the designs were pleasing and the writing clever, but how much we sold on a per inch basis. It was a revelation, brought home to me when Jan Wetzel, the VP of marketing at our company, took me around to various stores in the chain on the first day of the sale and we watched customers waiting in line to pay for the very same products we had featured in our catalog.
I had a couple of other “suit” jobs, including one where I was the ad director of a company that sold tools by mail. The orders came in by phone so I could see when we had a hit because the switchboard would overflow to the receptionist and she’d be too busy to say hello. I found myself excited about coming into the office on the first day after a new mailing hit, to see if this would happen. Again, a link between copywriting and results. Amazing.
I could only take the suit for so long and eventually I went back to freelancing and buried it in my back yard. (I assume it’s still there, at the intersection of Occidental and Westerly Terrace in Los Angeles’ Silverlake district.) But I had learned the life lesson that successful copywriting is not about gratifying yourself and maybe winning an award or two with a clever concept or turn of a phrase. It’s all about making something happen—and the more significant your impact, the more a knowledgeable client is likely to pay you for your work. It’s copywriting that gets results.
Once upon a time, copywriters and creative directors would present their work in person. I know that concept sounds quaint, but it provided an element of control and stage management which is impossible when you simply click “send” in your Outlook. Here’s how to get it back.
1. Insist on a live meeting to “discuss” your work when it is ready for client review. Nowadays this will be via conference call, very occasionally with a visual hookup. Send over the files beforehand—to avoid technical problems from slow downloads and spam filters—but ask reviewers not to open them till the meeting.
2. In your live meeting, start by recapping the creative assignment. Often you will simply repeat elements of the creative brief which is fine because nobody but you has looked at it in some time. This sets the stage and lets people know they are about to see a product they have already “approved” because it is what they asked for.
3. Tell them what they’re going to see. Rough heads? Concept copy? Thumbnails? You can go as deep or as shallow as you like but the key thing is that everybody needs to understand what they are looking at, and what is not yet available because you haven’t created it.
4. Present the work. Presumably you have at least 3 concepts. NEVER lead with your best concept because some folks are still getting up to speed or are distracted. If one of the concepts is considerably worse than the others (maybe because it’s what the client asked for) don’t lead with that either. So inevitably the first concept is the middle-of-the-road option. After that I would gauge the reaction. If they’re really with you present your best idea next. If they are still getting up to speed present your worst now so it can be rejected. This sounds like a complicated formula but when you’re in the moment it is almost automatic.
5. Ask for feedback–but keep it brief and controlled. Get a couple of comments—it doesn’t really matter if they are minor or major—and answer them in such a level of detail that the client believes you really have thought through every possibility (you have, right?) and to keep on drilling you will keep everybody here all night.
6. Close out the meeting by describing a process by which reviewers will now go off and consider the material according to the schedule and the creative brief. If you’ve properly laid the groundwork, nobody will feel like they are entitled to come up with big objections or wild what-ifs at this point. They had plenty of chance to respond at the meeting, and to raise objections after the fact makes them look bad in front of their peers. (Of course, sometimes the “main” client doesn’t show up for the meeting and plans to answer after the fact; if this is the case with your meeting you have the choice of rescheduling the meeting [and probably getting a second no-show] or keeping your fingers crossed and hoping for the best.)
7. Go in the bathroom and throw up. Just kidding! But one of my early agency employers actually did this after every client review. I think he was insecure as to whether the work truly was any good and presented on adrenalin (and probably other mood enhancers) which ultimately did him in. If you do a good job to begin with, and know your stuff, you will experience a sense of accomplishment, not nausea.
(Actually I did know some of these because I had spent time as an advertising “suit”, which required me to apologize way too often for tardy or sloppy creative.)
1. Be on time. Advertising is a business. If you are late on a deadline, it impacts other people throughout your client’s marketing operation and may cost a lot of money. Don’t do it. Exception: sometimes being late is unavoidable. Maybe you have a personal emergency, or maybe the project turns out more complicated than you expected. Talk to the client as early as possible and see if you can get an extension. Make this the very rare exception rather than the rule.
2. Follow the brief or other instructions unless you have raised a question at the startup meeting and gotten very clear approval to go in a different direction. The creative brief, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, is a contract between you and the account team. Violate it at your peril.
3. Cultivate a reputation for reliability. Do what you say you will do. Show up at meetings on time, be organized, don’t keep calling the client because you forgot to ask about something you need for your research.
TIP: if you achieve the above three things you will stand out in the client’s mind as a better choice than 95% of other creative practitioners, including people who are more talented than you but can’t escape the label of “flaky creatives”.
4. Understand how freelancers get paid. Be aware that some clients pay so fast it takes your breath away (these will become your favorites… why can’t others learn how big a difference it makes?) and others will intentionally pay you late as part of their cash management. Over time you will develop an instinct for which is which. If somebody is deliberately slow-pay your options are building in extra fees to compensate for the aggravation, finding another client, or simply living with it.
5. Remember you’re a copywriter, not a lawyer or accountant or collection agency. Don’t insist on elaborate contracts, penalties for late payment and similar practices of big companies because you can’t afford to hire real professionals to enforce these practices without raising your rates, plus your clients will just get irritated and go elsewhere. The best way to insure you won’t get screwed, or sued, is to deliver quality work that makes people value you as a business partner.
6. Bill as soon as you can, and certainly as soon as the project is done. Clients tend to pay faster when the project still has a warm glow in their hearts. Plus if a client is going to stiff you or slow-pay, the sooner you know about it the better. Note: In over 20 years of freelance I have encountered only a couple of real crooks. If you choose quality clients and deliver quality work, I predict your experience will be similar.
7. Be sensitive to potential competitive conflicts. Never work for two direct competitors at the same time because it’s a clear conflict of interest; you are trying to take business away from yourself. Never, ever go directly to an agency client’s customers asking for work, even if those customers approach you to do so. The agency will be enraged, may sue you, and at best your reputation for loyalty and integrity will suffer.
8. Never ever lie. Not about your experience, not about your research, and especially not about the originality of your work. Marketing is a surprisingly small world, and getting more so with the network effect of the internet. I once had a freelancer present to me a package I had written as part of his own portfolio. Needless to say, he did not get work from me.
We’re in the middle of a series of posts in which I cover the business aspects of copywriting as I teach them in my class for the Direct Marketing Association.
In the early days of the class I teach for the DMA, many students had their tuition paid by their employers. More recently, most are paying their own way and are specifically interested in how they can make a living as a copywriter. I describe three pathways with which I have some personal experience:
Work for an agency. This is the glamorous choice, especially when you’re looking in from the outside. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a team working on an edgy campaign that turns a new product into a household name with the help of a massive creative budget? Problem is, you have to be pretty senior and pretty well connected to have a meaningful role in the big work. If you’re new to the business you can expect to start at the bottom, work as a proofreader or copy editor first, put in long hours and not make very much money until you prove yourself.
But there are lots of personal perks to working with a major agency, which I’ve done at various times both as a contract worker and in my occasional forays into a salaried position. A good agency truly is the big time in terms of complexity and challenge of projects, and creative is genuinely respected—as opposed to just getting the job done or making the client happy. If you’re lucky you’ll learn from the best pros and if you’re good you can go far. Don’t expect job security, though…. your position is only as safe as the account roster.
Work inhouse on the client side. Many companies have a marketing communications department inhouse which is responsible for turning out marketing materials and possibly working as the liaison to an outside agency, and many big companies will have a copywriter on staff. One benefit of working inhouse is that you get to know your product or service deeply, in a way that an outside agency never could. And you may work with many different types of media—print, collateral, broadcast, digital as well as less exciting internal communications.
The drawback is the same as the benefit: you’ll be pigeonholed into your product category and it may be difficult to escape that if you want to go elsewhere. And, you may get bored eventually. But if you’re looking for job security an inhouse job is probably your best choice.
Be a freelancer. This is the only work I personally am suited for, since I get bored working on the same product for long periods of time without a break and I don’t seem to be good at being an employee. Fortunately, I’ve been able to make a living as a freelancer.
Getting started as a freelancer will almost certainly entail some financial sacrifice compared to working for agencies or inhouse, since it takes a while to build up client relationships. On the other hand, if you don’t get a great job offer right away (and you probably won’t) you may have no choice. And you may be able to get tryouts, either as a vacation fill-in or to handle overloads, while you are waiting for that perfect full time job to materialize.
Because you are a business owner as well as a creative practitioner, the financial considerations for being freelance are unforgiving. You have to be a self-starter and you have to be able to make yourself sit at the keyboard when it is beautiful outside and everybody else is going to the beach or the mountains. You also have to be able to handle cash flow irregularities, and keep left and right brains separate so you don’t get mad at a client that owes you money and compromise the quality of your work.
If you can put up with all that, the benefit of being a freelancer is that you have more variety in your assignments and to a degree you can pick what you work on and whom you work with. You can set your own schedule which doesn’t mean you avoid long hours but does allow you to choose when those hours are spent. And, once you build up a stable of clients who like you, the financial security is not bad. A recession causes all companies to cut marketing budgets and you’ll be the first to hear about it, but hopefully you are disciplined to put aside a good chunk of your proceeds for this inevitable rainy day.
The “book” is your portfolio of completed copywriting assignments, presented with a narrative from you about what the objective was for each project, how you approached it as a creative problem, and how the result performed in the marketplace. It’s hard to get copy assignments without showing a nice fat book… but without the assignments, where do the components of the book come from? Here are a few ideas to break the logjam:
1. Seek out “meat and potatoes” assignments as a vacation fill-in or rewrite person for a good agency, to learn the basics and prove yourself. You’re not trying to win awards here, just demonstrate you know the nuts and bolts and can follow creative direction intelligently.
2. Do spec (unpaid) work for SELECTED clients. It’s okay to do spec work for an agency, not okay for a small business that will look at it as free creative. (If they didn’t pay for it, they may not value it.)
3. Look for projects that pay very little but will end up as a great sample for your book. A local business or creative boutique marketer may offer these.
4. It’s not a total waste to answer help wanted ads or craigslist posts, but you should treat these mainly as a way to hone your skills writing sales letters. Many ads are placed by HR departments that don’t have the skills to evaluate a copywriter’s ability. In other cases the ad is placed by the creative department, but then they’re overwhelmed with response and have no systematic way to evaluate them.
5. A better idea: target a specific agency, company or even creative director and then create a letter writing campaign aimed at that target specifically. A classic example of this is Lee Clow’s “hire the hairy” campaign that got him a job as creative director of Chiat-Day. (Clow has a beard.)
6. Create a “master piece” like a medieval craftsman: pick a product and then write the best promotion you can to sell it. Knock yourself out, since no client is going to edit your work and nobody will complain about potential production costs.
7. Do pro bono work for a community group or nonprofit. In addition to a sample for your book, you’ll get points for supporting a worthy cause.
Two marketers contacted me to say “thank you” yesterday. The first was Starbucks, who wanted to thank me for being their customer with a free mini-dessert celebrating their 40th anniversary, if I made a purchase between 2 and 5 this afternoon. Then, the folks at Time-Life Books sent a thank you to me just for being awesome and for motivating and moving them with my “passion”. The subject line said simply, “thank you”. Nothing being sold here.
If a real person was thanking me in person, I’d find the Time-Life message much more sincere. But this is marketing. I found myself thinking, “dude, if you like me so much where’s the offer?” And the Starbuck’s message, cleverly built around getting trial for a new product at a slow time of day, was much more appealing.
Starbucks thanks you.
Time Life thanks you.
That’s the reality: the only way for a marketer to say thank you, and be appreciated for the gesture, is to include a gift or offer of some kind. Maybe charities are an exception. One of my favorite outer envelope lines was on a WorldVision mailing asking for a mini-sponsorship for a Third World child. The teaser: “Gift enclosed. But not for you.”
