There are fewer and fewer people who can write good copy

I must state in advance that this is just my personal feeling.

Then, based on this feeling, I will talk about some of the questions that I have seen, thought about, and cannot find answers to recently in the form of a series of articles.

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Half of 2018 has passed. During the past six months, I have had two feelings regarding the word " copywriting " that I have never had before.

The first feeling is that there are fewer and fewer people who can write copy in advertising companies.

Of course, I can’t use specific data to prove that there are fewer and fewer people in advertising companies who can write copy. Moreover, this matter itself cannot be falsified, because "being able to write copy" is an unquantifiable standard. Just think of me as a hooligan.

The reason for this feeling comes from the feedback given to me by some of my friends who are working on branding in the client's marketing department when they are executing projects, as well as some advertising companies when they are recruiting copywriters.

For example, this year I learned about a common situation where an advertising company won a project after completing the draft, but when it came to the actual execution, the copywriting process simply failed. Some of the final copywriting was revised word by word by brand personnel on the client side who were originally copywriters.

For example, I have encountered a situation where I really like the copywriting of some cases that were published and I think they are very well written. Later, when we talked about it, we found out that the copy was not written by the full-time copywriter in the advertising company that served this project. Instead, the brand’s own marketing staff found external friends to help with the project.

Then, at the advertising company, some founders would come to ask every now and then that the company's business was expanding and whether they had any good resumes to recommend for new people. Basically, they make the other party go for nothing, and then they sigh together: "It's getting harder and harder to find copywriters."

I found a part-time copywriter/editor job not long ago and received no less than a hundred emails. Although I am not looking for a senior copywriter/editor, among the emails I received, no more than 10 of them made me want to read on.

If I were to worry about the format, wording, punctuation, and attachments of everyone's emails... in the end, I would be very satisfied if I could read 3 out of 100 resumes.

A copywriter needs to ensure the readability of an email in terms of format. This requirement shouldn’t be difficult, right? But whether it is the job application emails in my mailbox or those in advertising companies after communication, at least half of them will make people lose the desire to get to know the other party after seeing the title of the email.

When director Hirokazu Koreeda of the recent hit Shoplifters first started making TV shows, a senior once said to him:

This sentence should also apply to whether you are writing copy for a specific business project or writing a job application email copy. As long as job seekers are willing to imagine, the person who sees their copy and the person who sees their resume email is sitting opposite them. How you address others, how you phrase your words, your breathing rhythm, your communication skills, what you want to achieve... should give you a greater chance of getting the attention of consumers/interviewers than others.

Perhaps, the fundamental reason for the feeling that “there are fewer and fewer people who can write copy” is not the subjective conjecture I put together above. But there is another fact that I don’t want to admit: there are fewer and fewer people willing to write copy. This is where it feels most powerless.

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The second feeling is that the boundaries of copywriting are getting bigger and bigger.

This year, Bilibili launched a very popular documentary "A String of Life". In the barrage area of ​​the film, an interesting phenomenon is that netizens are more accustomed to expressing "copywriting" rather than "narration" in the language used in the barrage.

In the past, we would call the text information that appeared in TV programs "narration", "narration", "subtitles"...

Furthermore, if you casually type the word "copyright" into the search box on Weibo, you will find that netizens have already unconsciously called the emojis they use for their idols "copyright", the text written by their favorite bloggers "copyright", and even the lyrics of lyrics, movie lines, and poems written by primary school students "copyright".

In other words, in the eyes of non-industry practitioners, the scope that the word "copywriting" can cover should be getting wider and wider.

For me, this completely overturned my previous "habitual thinking". I used to stubbornly believe that "copywriting" is a part of commercial communication, and it must play a role in promoting product sales or creating an atmosphere for product sales.

But perhaps, as long as "text" has the power of communication, it can be called "copywriting".

In addition, I originally wanted to take advantage of the opportunity that 2018 is halfway through to write an article to review the 10 sets of copywriting that I personally liked in the first half of the year. But in the end, if I used the criteria of pure advertising copy, or copy that must appear in marketing cases to filter, I couldn't find 10 groups at all. Only when I expand the scope of "copywriting" to areas beyond advertising, such as TV programs, movie promotions, musical works, and titles written by new media editors... these 10 groups of copywriting can be screened out.

In fact, for me personally, the "copywriting" that I liked more in the first half of 2018 were indeed some "copywriting" other than "advertising copywriting".

For example, these two lyrics -

For example, a heartfelt statement in a short video recorded casually by a small team from an advertising company;

For example, the commentary in the documentary “A String of Life” mentioned above;

There is also a letter written by Tencent Video to Peppa Pig on Children's Day :

Pure "advertising copy" has an impression of:

The "strange" copy in Wufangzhai's Dragon Boat Festival advertisement that personified zongzi; the copy written to the youth by Tencent Video before the broadcast of "Produce 101"; the copy in Fotile's "children are the masterpiece of their parents' lives" advertisement, especially the sentence "can't let go of them, but finally let go of them" in the context; the copy of the Dedao App that "translated" the economic principles that seem a bit far from the lives of ordinary people into language close to real life; ...

Among the pure advertising copy, if you strip away the context and take it out on its own, I still like a line from a public service advertisement on this year's Spring Festival Gala .

From my personal perspective, I have seen very few "advertising copy" in the past six months that has universal appeal regardless of the background of the advertisement itself.

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"There are fewer and fewer people who can write copywriting" and "The boundaries of copywriting are getting bigger and bigger". These two things are actually not contradictory. Perhaps when advertising companies or brands are having trouble with copywriting, they can open up their minds and try using "copywriting from outside the industry." These "copywriters outside the industry" can be writers for TV programs, lyricists for music, elementary school students who follow their intuition, or curators. Even those friends around you who can't help but want to click on his profile picture and follow his Moments every once in a while...

Maybe, after doing this, you will find that there are actually quite a lot of people who can write copy.

On the contrary, injecting "outside industry thinking" may produce better results.