How to write valuable copy?

Copywriting is an important part of brand promotion and publicity. The author of this article proposes that copywriting is worthless. There is no copywriter with a monthly salary of 30,000 yuan. A copywriter who can only choose words and compose sentences is only worth a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan. So the question is: since copywriting is not valuable, what is valuable? How are those valuable copywritings written? Let’s see the author’s analysis for you.

I entered the industry with a copywriting background, and now I work as a client. I try my best to resist the urge to modify the copy, but I have still modified or written some copy.

Nowadays, many copywriters make light of important matters, but even more copywriters write them as if they are joking and think they are making light of important matters.

A few years ago, I heard the godfather of industrial design Liu Guanzhong borrow a line from a poem:

"Go beyond the image and find the center of the circle."

This sentence shocked me greatly at the time. Later I looked it up and found out that it was from a poem in the Tang Dynasty.

The inspiration this poem can bring to the advertising industry is: a copywriter who focuses too much on words cannot write good copy. Even if you get stuck in creativity, you won’t be able to come up with any good ideas. Only by going beyond the signs of things themselves can we better understand things themselves and hit the key points.

1. Copywriting is not valuable

What I want to say today is: copywriting is not worth money. There is no copywriter who earns 30,000 yuan a month. A copywriter who can only choose words and compose sentences is only worth 3,000 yuan a month. The reason I want to write this is because I have encountered a lot of this kind of copywriting in my career.

Those who work as new media copywriters may be able to be a little clever in their writing, use a few homophonic puns, and have a few rhymes, and then they call themselves copywriting masters and start chasing hot topics. In fact, they cannot even use standard punctuation marks and do not know how to divide paragraphs.

Those who write traditional advertising copy call themselves poets, but they may not be able to tell the difference between the fourth and fifth generation Chinese poets, nor do they know the difference between the Misty School and the Nonsense School. They don’t know any other poets except Gu Cheng, Haizi and Bei Dao . Then they immerse themselves in the few words and phrases they have, trying to write advertising slogans that will last forever.

So what I want to tell young people today is:

• Those hot-spot copywriting (text) that seem clever may actually be of no help to the brand . They are rootless and should not be imitated without permission.
• Those copywritings that are truly regarded as classics and have changed or helped brands grow have strong logic and purpose behind them. They are actually written by strategists. Don't be fooled by them and don't imitate the surface text without authorization.

So today’s question is, since copywriting is not valuable, what is valuable? How are those valuable copywritings written?

2. Only strategy, no copywriting

Since I used to be a copywriter and I still write frequently, I often receive requests from relatives, friends, colleagues and bosses like this: "Not bad, help me write a copy", "Not bad, help me write a slogan", "Not bad, help me think of a brand name", etc. Whenever I receive such a request, I resist the urge to break up with this person and refuse with a smile. If I really can't refuse, I will ask questions again and again until the other party feels that this is a big project and feels embarrassed to ask me for help.

After working as a copywriter for three or four years, I began to switch to the strategic direction, because copywriting often left me at a loss as to where to start. How should I write? In what direction should I write? Is there any focus? Usually the brief simply asks for a sentence of copywriting.

Since the strategies are all so poor, why don’t I make the strategy myself?

In fact, after I switched to strategy, I still did a lot of copywriting work, but doing copywriting as a strategist made me more relaxed, and I feel that I wrote better copy.

Why write copy? Why do strategy? Why advertise? Why do marketing ?

Marketing serves business and is for greater business ambitions. Advertising is done to build a brand, and advertising is a part of marketing. The purpose of sorting out strategies is to find direction, and strategies are for better advertising. So the purpose of writing copy is to express the strategy clearly. The copy is ultimately facing consumers, and the copy that is published ultimately serves business goals.

Hegel's theory says:

There is no love without reason, and no hate without reason.

Applied to advertising, there is no copy without reason, everything has a purpose.

Therefore, copywriting is actually a communication strategy with consumers. The purpose of writing copywriting is to make clear what the brand strategy is, to tell consumers what my brand perspective is and what my prejudices are. There is never any pure copywriting.

For example, when Uber was just starting out, they said that Uber broke the class barriers between drivers and passengers, that it allowed for social interaction , and that there were endless possibilities. The CEO worked part-time, Uber recruited programmers , and discussed financing . Later, Shenzhou Special Car said: We don’t socialize, and nothing will happen except safety.

One talks about social interaction, the other talks about safety. These are completely opposite views. It depends on which one consumers will pay for. As for what the slogans of Uber and Shenzhou Special Car are, no one remembers. I don’t even remember what copy these two brands wrote for these two viewpoints, but I remember their communication strategies.

In the Internet environment, it is difficult to have a classic copy that can be circulated, and the meaning of copy has been eliminated by the fragmentation of the Internet. The current way to do branding is to sort out brand strategies, output brand views, and establish brand image and tone based on brand views and values, rather than a certain sentence of copywriting.

3. Strategy is direction and perspective

The analysis of the strategy has been elaborated in detail in many previous articles, so I will not repeat it here and will only give a brief summary.

I believe that brand strategy is to discover opportunities and problems through discussion and analysis of market environment, consumer insights and brands, and based on this, to refine the best consumer communication strategy. Find a clear and distinct brand perspective for the brand, make the brand's voice unique in the market environment, and shape long-term brand effect and brand genes.

To put it more emotionally, strategy is to find the value and meaning of a brand's existence and why the world needs such a brand. What is the vision of this brand? For example, Alibaba ’s vision is to make it easy to do business in the world, and MOMO’s vision is to connect the people who should be connected. This is the meaning of their existence in this world.

The value of brand communication and advertising is to make more people believe in the meaning and value of the brand.

In daily operations, many times, we ignore the importance of strategy. Whether it is Party A or Party B, there are very few Party A who can write a clear brief, which leads Party B to think that this is normal, and when they receive a normal brief, they feel it is abnormal.

At the end of last year, we convened three advertising companies for a competition. To my surprise, each company praised us before starting to present their proposals. They said: "We are very surprised by the brief this time. Your brief document has been circulated throughout our company. It is very rare for us to receive such a professional brief from an Internet company."

In fact, our brief elaborated on the annual market strategy and future brand direction. I think this is what Party A should do. However, my work experience with Party B tells me that Party A's brief is usually one page of Word, which roughly explains what they want but not what they are. This can easily lead the advertising company astray.

When I was working on strategy for the second party, I often encountered this situation: after a pitch brief was received, the strategy department developed the strategy on one line, and the creative department came up with ideas on the other line. When both sides were almost ready, they merged them into one PPT. Usually, the strategy department would make the logic of the previous strategy part consistent based on the situation of the creative department.

It’s okay if I meet a creative director who is good at strategic thinking, but if I meet a CD who only cares about creativity and has no strategy, I usually know that this thing will not work before the proposal is made.

So now as a party A, I will tell my advertising company that strategy is very important. I hope that my advertising company can communicate with me tirelessly about the strategy before making a proposal, so as to focus on the direction, and at least ensure that you are working in the right direction. First sort out the direction of the advertisement, and then proceed with the creative and copywriting work. Instead of giving creative ideas after getting the brief, each person comes up with 20 ideas and we slowly select them. I think this method is a waste of time.

4. Copywriting skills and basic skills

Finally, let’s talk about how to write copy. I have always wanted to write an article specifically on how to write good copy. I have been thinking about this for a long time but have not come up with a methodology, so I finally wrote this article today. Pure copywriting is just a skill, and the soul of copywriting still has to start from strategy.

But even as a basic copywriter, I am still disappointed with the young copywriters I have met recently in terms of their understanding and expression of strategies. It even makes me wonder if their creative directors have read these copywriters? How can you just write it for fun? Yes, this is a great disrespect to words.

Here is a summary of several copywriting skills and basic skills for reference:

1. Clarify the purpose

Before you start writing, know why you want to write and make plans before you act.

Have you understood the client’s brief? Is the direction given by the strategist clear? Is the strategic direction qualified or just a sham? If you don’t even get a direct brief on the strategic direction, then you can discuss it more with the team to at least ensure that everyone has the same understanding and focuses on one point.

2. Read repeatedly

This is the most important and most easily overlooked. Copywriters usually like to focus on the literal meaning to prove that the brief text includes all of the client's brief requirements, with this meaning, that meaning and another meaning.

When I come across this kind of copywriting, I would tell you to read it once, read it out loud, and think about whether it is a human language. Usually this kind of copywriting does not flow smoothly when read out. It is recommended that copywriters read the copy several times, read it several times, and read it repeatedly after writing it. Perhaps they can read out a meaning different from the literal meaning. Every word has a soul.

When reading it aloud, first make sure the sentence is fluent. Then you carefully savor the temperament and emotion of this sentence, the tone, length, punctuation and other aspects of each word. Is every hidden message in this sentence helping you express your strategic point of view? A copywriter who can only write literally is only worth 3,000 yuan a month.

3. Convey temperament

The so-called temperament is what we usually call tonality. In addition to the literal message, what tone do you want your text to convey? Each word conveys a different temperament, and different word combinations convey different temperaments.

Why do some people say that a person's appearance after the age of 40 is shaped by himself? Why don't people think Jack Ma is ugly? The temperament of words is the same as that of people. For example, when Zhang Zao expressed his sadness, he wrote:

“Whenever I think of the things I regret in my life, plum blossoms fall all over Nanshan Mountain.”

For example, during the 35th National Day military parade, Peking University students shouted the slogan "Hello, Xiaoping".

4. Convey emotions

In today’s text conversations, if emojis are banned and punctuation is strictly enforced, how do you convey emotion?

I suggest that copywriters who make money by writing give it a try. Strictly use punctuation marks in online conversations and prohibit the use of emoticons to see if they can still express themselves accurately. If we go a step further, the use of "exclamation marks" and interjections such as "hahahaha" are prohibited. After this, are you still able to convey emotions in daily text conversations? (I have previously written an article titled "Farewell to Exclamation Marks" to explore this issue)

In the past few years that I have been working as a client, I have seen very few copywriting that contains emotions. This is inseparable from the impact of mobile Internet . Even writers who make money by writing copy rarely engage in serious writing.

To convey emotions, you still need to read your copy several times to show the emotions conveyed by each word. In a sentence, what tone of text to use, what punctuation to use, how to break the sentences, one more word or one less word, whether to rhyme or not, all these elements constitute the emotion of a sentence, and consumers will be invisibly infected by the emotions you create.

To sum up

There is no pure copywriting, no copywriting masters, and no great copywriting. There is only great strategy and the expression of strategy. It’s just that copywriting comes to the fore in the end. Don’t be fooled by copywriting masters.

Strategy is direction and point of view. Strategy is to find the strongest core of a brand and to find the meaning and value of a brand’s existence.

Copywriting is about expression, expressing strategic ideas more accurately and timely.

When expressing strategies, good copywriting never just stays on the literal meaning. Every detail of a good copywriting conveys a temperament and an emotion, thereby expressing strategic ideas more accurately.

I wish you more valuable.

This article was compiled and published by @杨不坏(Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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