10 tips to teach you how to create creative copywriting!

First, let me ask you a question:

Which of the following two common refrigerator advertisements impressed you more?

The focus of both advertisements is to tell consumers that refrigerators have an outstanding ability to preserve food, but the latter obviously attracts our attention in a shorter period of time and influences our consumption choices for a longer period of time.

This is the “high cost-effectiveness” brought by creativity.

In today's information explosion, our lives are surrounded by countless products, services, brands and advertising information. The consequences of information overload include not only the proliferation of useless information, but also consumers' fatigue in receiving information and distraction. How to make consumers discover your copy and your promotion in the sea of ​​information in a brief moment? In addition to spending a lot of money and promoting it through multiple channels at a high frequency (expanding your proportion in the sea of ​​information) , designing truly creative copy can help you achieve twice the result with half the effort (becoming a glacier in the sea of ​​information).

Indeed, creativity is a rather "mysterious" word. Oftentimes, it has no logic and is instead a spark of thought at that moment. However, after observing a large number of innovative advertising copy, we can discover that there are certain rules behind it, and creativity can also have a methodology. Below, this article will elaborate on ten methods that are commonly used when creating creative copy.

1. Combined with hot spots
2. Extreme
3. Visualization
4. Contrast means
5. Psychological distance
6. Emphasize the cost of silence
7. Motivational strategies
8. Leverage curiosity
9. Usefulness strategy
10. Brand personality

1. Combined with hot spots

Here’s a freestyle song for a product manager !

The first method is actually very simple and common, which is what we usually call "riding on the popularity". Taking advantage of the widespread attention that hot topics bring over a period of time can bring better publicity effects to your products or services, increase the frequency of being remembered by users, and at the same time provide them with topicality and shareability.

But you can’t just use hot spots whenever you want, especially now that hot spots are used too frequently and improperly, resulting in more and more users no longer buying into it. Therefore, before combining with hot topics, analyze the characteristics of your user group and consider whether the content of this hot topic is within the interest circle of your target users . If so, combine the copy with the hot content instead of forcing a connection. This way, you can avoid embarrassing situations where your user group is obviously middle-aged and elderly people, but the title of the tweet is "The way to keep healthy told to you in Eternal Love."

2. Extremism

The second method is the technique used in the refrigerator advertisement at the beginning of the article - extreme processing. Extremism can be divided into two aspects. The first aspect is the consequences of extremism, which is to take the functions of your product or service that meet certain user needs to the extreme and show the resulting consequences.

for example:

Online education - the child handed in the paper after 5 minutes

Snickers - Bad players become Yao Ming after eating it

The second aspect is the extreme scenario, which is to make a certain usage scenario of a product or service extreme and highlight the advantages of your product or service under such extreme circumstances. For example, Volvo Cars once filmed an advertisement in which a puppy hid under the wheel and refused to come out. The owner used Volvo's precise operating system and arbitrary braking to successfully drive away without hurting the puppy.

3. Visualization

I think everyone must be familiar with these two lines of lyrics: "My passion is like a fire!" "The moon represents my heart." The first line of lyrics equates the abstract word passion with the concrete fire, while the second line uses the moon to refer to the illusory heart. Putting aside how popular the song is, why do people remember these two lines of lyrics so vividly? Instead of I love you, I miss you, I really can't live without you. That’s because it’s easier for the concrete to form a visual image in the user’s mind than the abstract. Visual expressions are more attractive and more convincing than abstract things.

for example:

Milk tea - how much sales - how much sales - the sales volume in a year can circle the earth three times

Sports car - fast speed - how fast is it - you are faster than the high-speed train before it accelerates to 200 kilometers per hour

Community - Good greening - How good is the greening - Going to work is like walking from a forest into a steel forest

In addition, there is a special kind of visualization called price visualization , which can also be called price substitution. According to William Poundstone's view in Priceless, people's judgment of price is relative rather than absolute. Therefore, using this point, we can use certain substitutes to replace specific prices when designing copy to achieve better copy effects.

For example:

40 yuan career training course, you deserve it → The price of a movie , your workplace will be different from the past → Just the price of a bad movie, make your workplace different from the past

4. Contrast

I have mentioned in previous articles what kind of text attracts our attention the most. One is that it is relevant to me, and the other is that it is a strong contrast. Taking advantage of contrast is the forte of comedians. So, what exactly is the contrast? In my opinion, contrast is something that is inconsistent with the inherent ideas in our minds and the conventional things in society, which gives people a sense of surprise, which is what we usually call something unexpected. It is precisely because the contrast method subverts our usual thinking that it makes us more impressed and further generates the desire to explore "why it is said so".

Here are two examples:

"If you are serious, you will win"

"Everyone has fallen in love with the wrong person when they were young, but when they think about the meals they had together, they still forgive him/her."

Let’s take a specific example:

Ogilvy designed an advertisement for Volvo: Don’t rush, feel the road. Contrary to car advertisements that always emphasize the car's performance and convenient operation on the road, this advertisement emphasizes the driver's inner feelings, giving "driving" a higher meaning. If you can feel the road freely, then driving must be very free and easy, and the intention is eye-opening.

Therefore, trying to find an attribute of the product or the user experience after using the product, and then looking for another possibility or even the opposite side for the user is the key to learning contrast.

5. Psychological distance

As the name suggests, psychological distance is the distance between the consumer's heart and the product, which needs to be specifically divided according to the attributes of the product. You may wonder, isn’t it better if the distance between consumers and products is closer? So how do you explain an ad like this?

Generally, advertisements for luxury goods are of the style described above, without excessive language or even human portraits. Even if there is a spokesperson, he or she has a cold and aloof demeanor, giving people a feeling of being rejected. This is called retail rejection in the marketing field, which means to create psychological distance. This method is suitable for products such as luxury goods and high-end products. It uses the rejection of the target population to imitate the group, arouse their unattainable and always restless desires, and facilitate transactions.

There is distance and there is closeness. In daily life, most products are promoted by means of shortening the psychological distance. That is why we often see words like "our", "own", "exclusive", "common", and "your" . They speak for you, express your emotions or opinions, and the ultimate goal is to shorten the psychological distance with you and gain your favor.

6. Emphasize the cost of silence

In my previous article, I mentioned the goal proximity effect and also mentioned that people are actually more sensitive to losses than gains. Emphasizing the cost of silence is a comprehensive use of the above two points, which can help you write more creative advertising copy.

People are more afraid of "losing all their previous efforts and ruining them in an instant" than simply "failure", so you can ask yourself this question before designing: "What kind of efforts did the user make to achieve a goal or get a product, and what kind of results did he worry about his efforts?"

7. Motivational Strategy

The so-called motivation strategy, in simple terms, is to give consumers a reason. This reason does not need to be very persuasive. In fact, the demand has always been hidden in the user's body. You just need to provide them with a seemingly reasonable reason to activate them and encourage them to take a simple action.

For example, time reasons:

Today is a holiday, let's indulge ourselves and have a good meal

Today is our 67th day together, let's have a good meal to commemorate it

Today is the weekend, let's take a break and have a good meal

For example, the reason for the event:

The project was finally approved, and I had a good meal with my team members

Get a promotion and a raise, and you're at the top. Invite your parents to a good meal.

For example, the reason for benefit:

If you love her/him, take her/him to Maldives to experience the warmth of the island

For example, reasons for compensation:

You work overtime every day, why don’t you have a good meal to replenish your energy?

It's so hard for your child to go to school, bring him to XXX children's restaurant

Criticized by the leader again? Have a good meal to change your mood

For example, the reasons for the discount:

Don't miss it if you pass by, 20% off for the whole store 20% off for the whole store

Tmall Double 11 , more than 50%, miss it today, wait until next year

8. Use curiosity

Curiosity is a natural trait that everyone possesses, and all trait has this characteristic: it is difficult for them to be controlled, so cats are not the only ones killed by curiosity. Therefore, copywriting designed by taking advantage of people's natural curiosity can attract users' attention more effectively, and users are relatively more interested in continuing to read or open the copy. The contrast methods mentioned above take advantage of people's curiosity to a certain extent, but there are far more ways than just contrast to arouse people's curiosity.

I believe everyone is familiar with Bigger than bigger. Apple is an expert in taking advantage of people’s curiosity. Before the official release of each generation of iPhone, there is always some news leaking out, which continues to whet our appetite. From color to size to dual lenses, it arouses our curiosity again and again, and makes us have greater expectations for the new iPhone . When the new product is officially released, this expectation will be transformed into a strong motivation to buy.

Canon printer’s previous slogan also utilized curiosity – “impossible made possible”. People can’t help but ask how to make the impossible possible?

For example, "Smoking is harmful to health, and Crown cigarettes are no exception." People have no doubts about the first half of the sentence, but for the second half, people can't help but ask: "Is there something special about Crown cigarettes that they need to be displayed separately?"

In addition, taking advantage of people's curiosity is also widely used in copywriting titles. I think there is no need to mention the "greatness" of the UC title party , but titles like "Every mother has slept with me" and "Because I love you, I have become a rival in love with my motherland" are much more tempting than "Shocking" and "You will never imagine it".

9. Usefulness Strategy

I would like to ask everyone a question: "Why do you read public accounts ?" I think the answer can be summarized into these three points: 1. Useful; 2. Interesting; 3. Beneficial. So can we make the copy we design useful to users or consumers? This is what many marketers now refer to as media productization, meaning that in addition to playing the role of information media, copywriting can also provide certain help to users or meet their needs, and let the knowledge attached to the copywriting become evidence or support for users to purchase your products or services.

Here are two examples:

Zheteng brand freshly squeezed juice - the absorption rate of nutrients from drinking freshly squeezed juice is 50% higher than eating fruits directly

Zheteng Alpine Mineral Water - mineral water from deep mountains at an altitude of more than 3,000 meters, rich in X and Y elements that are not found in ordinary mineral water

10. Brand personality

Falling in love is not that easy, everyone has his or her own temper. In fact, not only people, but every company and its brand also has its own unique personality traits. Therefore, when designing copy, you cannot be creative for the sake of creativity and ignore the characteristics of the company's brand . In the end, it will be irrelevant and counterproductive.

So how do you understand brand personality? It’s actually very simple. If we were to imagine an anthropomorphic corporate image for Mobike , it would definitely be an image of a sunny, energetic young man. This is determined by the company's services ( shared bicycles ), the company's age, and what feeling the company wants to convey to users. Just like the copywriting or Weibo style of 360 Security Guard cannot be cute or humorous. After all, "Be sure to be careful of those nasty viruses, my friends" makes people feel exaggerated and unreliable, which does not fit the image of its security guard.

Therefore, before you use the above techniques to create copy, you must clearly analyze the type and characteristics of the company's brand personality, otherwise the results will outweigh the gains.

Conclusion

Many times, creativity does not come out of thin air on a whim, which is why experienced copywriters who have undergone a lot of practical training are more likely to write commendable advertising copy. There are certain routines to follow in creativity, but when a routine is used too many times, the creativity can no longer be called creativity. So in addition to making full use of the above ten methods, you also need to practice divergent thinking in your daily life. At the same time, you need to carefully observe life and users, and develop eyes that can discover beauty.

(Note: The brands and copywriting involved in this article are required for the purpose of writing)