Li Jiaoshou·Top Copywriter's 5th Anniversary Sharing Speech
| The theme of this speech is: X-type copywriting and Y-type copywriting, how to reduce the "self-congratulation phenomenon" in copywriting, and write truly user-oriented Internet copywriting. X-type copywriting vs. Y-type copywriting In the writing of Internet product copy, there are two types of copywriters, one is the X-type copywriter and the other is the Y-type copywriter. What are Type X and Type Y copywriters? Let's do a small test first. These are all specific descriptions of some products. Please write copy for these descriptions. Some of them write like this, and this is what I call X-type copywriting. They are written in ornate language, making ordinary plain expressions more rhetorical, symmetrical and use advanced vocabulary. For example, the simple expression "good sound quality" can be written as "shocking sound, inspiring dreams". People who write copy in this way are X-type copywriters. They are more like linguists, rhetoricians and poets. Their daily work is to think of ideas, look up dictionaries and conceive rhetoric in order to find ways to describe products with gorgeous expressions. But there is another completely different way of writing, which we call "Y-type copywriting." Y-type copywriting is often not gorgeous, and sometimes it simply depicts the scene in the user's mind. They are often full of visuals, simple language, and directly point to interests. To express the same idea of "Work is hard, why not go traveling?", Type X copywriters would say "Enjoy life and live happily", while Type Y copywriters might say: "When you are writing a PPT, cod in Alaska are jumping out of the water. When you are looking at a report, golden monkeys in Meili Snow Mountain are climbing to the top of the tree. When you are squeezed into the subway, mountain eagles in Tibet are circling in the clouds. When you are arguing in a meeting, backpackers in Nepal are sitting by the fire with glasses in hand. There are roads that you cannot walk in high heels, air that you cannot smell with perfume, and people you will never meet in an office building." (From an Internet joke) People who write like this are "Y-type copywriters". They are not very good at fancy rhetoric, but they spend a lot of time understanding what users think and want to use the simplest and most straightforward language to influence users' feelings. They may not know much about linguistics, rhetoric, rhyme, puns and a lot of rhetoric, but they spend more time studying psychology, marketing and corporate strategy. Then, when a company wants to find someone to write copy, it will always face the choice between X-type copywriter and Y-type copywriter. But unfortunately, most of the time, companies choose Type X copywriting instead of Type Y copywriting. What we are going to talk about today is: Why should we choose Y-type copywriting? First, here is a small question: when you design a light bulb, how would you design it? Usually, people start to use their creativity first: the light bulb can be bigger or smaller; it can be brighter or dimmer; it can be changed to green; it can... But if you just use your creativity in designing a light bulb like this, you will never design a good light bulb, because you are still using your creativity for the light bulb itself. So what do truly great designers do? Kenya Hara, the chief designer of MUJI, once said: “I design the light, not the lighting fixtures that produce it.” The same is true for copywriting. I think: Copywriting is about designing user feelings, not the design of the words that create those feelings. X-type copywriters who pursue gorgeousness are doing "text design". They consider how to make the text itself more gorgeous and more well-balanced, but never consider what kind of expression is easier to accept and understand from the user's perspective. What Y-type copywriters do is "design user feelings" rather than "design the words that create these feelings." They don't use their creativity on the words themselves, but consider: what kind of expression is easier for users to feel and understand? For example, a psychologist was about to go out for dinner and saw a beggar begging. The copy was as follows: Homeless, Please Help (Homeless, Please Help Me) Then the psychologist helped the beggar change the copy, and as a result, the beggar's income increased several times in the same amount of time - he earned $60 in 2 hours. He changed the text to: “What if you were hungry?” This copy is based on the user's feelings - since it is next to a restaurant, people who are rushing to the restaurant must feel "hungry". At this time, saying "what would happen if you were hungry" can instantly affect other people's feelings. The previous sentence "I'm homeless, please help me" is still written from one's own perspective. It describes one's own feelings "I'm homeless" without considering how such feelings relate to passers-by. So, this is why we choose Y-type copywriting, which is designed to enhance user experience. The goal is to make the copywriting easier for users to understand, rather than making it more confusing. For example, in order to let users intuitively feel the "accuracy of the scale", Xiaomi's copywriting is "the perceptible weight of a cup of water". Another classic example is that in order to let users who knew nothing about the first generation iPod feel the lightness, compactness and large capacity, Jobs said: Put 1000s of songs in your pocket. What about X-type copywriters? They don’t care whether users can form a clear feeling. They focus on using their creativity and writing skills, so you see these copywritings: When you see these words, what comes to your mind quickly? When I say “holding a pineapple in my hand”, the scene of me holding a pineapple in my hand will appear in your mind, but if I say “control the future with wisdom”, what scene comes to your mind? What does it mean to "hold the future wisely in your hands"? The answer is that you can hardly associate anything. Such X-type copywriting uses gorgeous language to cover up the emptiness of content and lack of thinking. The expressions above are very fancy, but they do not express anything valuable to the audience. The so-called "enjoy life, ultimate experience" does not explain any features, differences or advantages of the product. It is just equivalent to saying "our products are good". Once there is a lack of thought and content, and only these gorgeous expressions are piled up, the value of copywriters will almost disappear, and they may even be easily replaced by robots. This X-shaped copy is so easy to write that I even made a template myself. If I could write programs, I could just write a program to replace these texts. This simple template can summarize most of the work of this type of X copywriter. First, you need to find a word related to "享", which can be: Then choose a word that can be enjoyed by users, such as "life", "journey", "future", "technology", etc. Then you can combine them flexibly, such as enjoying life, enjoying journey, enjoying the future... Then the second half sentence can be randomly arranged and combined in a similar way, and finally this "Li Jiaoshou Exclusive Product" X-shaped copywriting template is obtained: For example, by randomly combining this template, you can come up with the copywriting: "Enjoy life, ultimate experience" or "Enjoy the future intelligently, innovative design". And there happened to be a company that was very skilled in using such templates. This company is Samsung. Here are some template copy I extracted from its official website: Is this kind of copy useful? A famous copywriter once said: "What are the cheapest things in the world? Surprise and adjectives." Such "startling" copywriting created by relying on gorgeous word combinations is not only cheap, but also has no effect - users have no idea what you are talking about. I myself once did such an experiment, letting a group of people see 6 sentences related to the baby tracker. Then a day later ask them which sentence they remember. I think you all know the result. The only sentence that almost everyone remembers is "The naughty kid is hiding under the bed." As for other gorgeous and empty expressions, almost no one can remember them. If you don’t believe it, you can even look at the ideas that can be widely spread. They are almost all specific, visual, and simple descriptions, without any gorgeousness or emptiness. I think the things that are most likely to spread miracles are various rumors. If you learn from rumors, you will find that they are all typical simple, visual copywriting: White vinegar can make you ten years younger, do you believe it? Shocking! The spicy strips are actually made of condoms! Coke will rot your bones! … If these X-type copywriters were asked to write rumors, they would not even be able to write rumors well, because after they were revised, the rumors would look like this: So, how do we deal with rumors in this country? In fact, it is very simple. All you need to do is let the people who spread the rumors recruit more X-type copywriters. For example, the copy for Xiaomi's weight scale was originally "the perceptible weight of a cup of water". I think an X-type copywriter would definitely change it to: We know that product promotion often relies on word of mouth. So suppose when you are chatting with your friend, would you say: "I recently found a very good weight scale, which can help you keep healthy and be sensitive when traveling"? If you do this, your friends will definitely think you are not speaking human language. But you can definitely say, "Hey, I just found a very accurate scale that can sense the weight change of a glass of water!" So there are two types of copywriting: Type X copywriting and Type Y copywriting, and you should know how to choose. 2. Why is it difficult to achieve from a user perspective? In this case, many people will say: "It turns out that writing copy is so simple! But why can't many people still write user-oriented X-type copy?" That’s because the “user perspective” is a very difficult thing and is inherently counterintuitive. In all aspects of our lives, our first instinct is to take a “self-perspective” rather than a “user-perspective”. For example, when I was at Wuhan University, I saw a billboard like this at the delivery point when I received a package: What’s wrong with a billboard like this? I think the most obvious problem is that the express company puts "Wuhan University Branch" in the most prominent position and weakens the information of "STO Express". From the express company's own perspective, this is very reasonable. For the staff of the express delivery company, the main differences between the various express delivery points are "Wuhan University Branch", "Huazhong University of Science and Technology Branch" and "Wuhan Optics Valley Branch" - they need to distribute the signboards to different branches, so for them, "Wuhan University Branch" is the most important information and is naturally placed in the most prominent position. From the user's perspective (the student receiving the express delivery), this is very unreasonable. For Wuhan University students who are picking up express deliveries, the information of "Wuhan University Branch" is of no use. Therefore, when the people at Shentong Express wrote the copy, it was obviously from a "self-perspective" rather than a "user perspective". We always talk about "user perspective", but we often just treat it as a slogan and use "self perspective" more according to our own intuition. For example, when many people send emails to apply for a job, they name the resume in the attachment as "resume.pdf". This is of course reasonable for you, because to you, the difference between files in your computer is "resume", "PPT" or "report". But this is unreasonable for the HR who receives this resume - all the attachments he/she receives may be called resumes. For him/her, the difference between different files should be: Zhang Si, Wang Wu... For example, on the official account of a certain organization, the title of the article is written from its own perspective - "XXX celebration ended successfully", without considering what readers really want to see. The user perspective itself is counter-intuitive and not what our primitive brains inherently want to do. So even if you've known since childhood that "the earth revolves around the sun", when you face the morning sun, your first instinct will be to say: "Wow, the sun is rising!" instead of the more objective "Wow, the earth is rotating!" 3. How to achieve “user perspective”? So how can we overcome this innate "self-perspective" and achieve the "user perspective"? You can use the AB point theory to analyze your users. Assuming that point A is the state of the user before seeing your copy, and point B is the state of the user after seeing your copy, then BA is the effect that the copy can produce. The purpose of any copywriting is to take users from point A to point B. For example, these are the following scenarios: The mistake many copywriters make is that they don’t understand the user’s point A, and only think about the point B they want to achieve. For example, what do you think is wrong with the following text? I think the biggest question for people who don’t know about this product is: "What the hell is this?" Anyway, when I saw this copy, I read it several times but still didn’t understand what this product was. Even if I believe that it can provide “fashionable and beautiful photos” and “increase followers on WeChat”, what exactly is it? Is it a selfie app? I didn’t know until I searched on Baidu that this was actually a “photo printer that can be remotely controlled using WeChat”… So how did such confusing copy come about? If we use the AB point theory to analyze, we will find that the author mistakenly regards himself as point A: Users’ cognition of a product usually goes through the following sequence: first they don’t understand the product, then they develop an understanding of the product, and finally they become attracted to it. As an employee of the company, the copywriter naturally knew very well what "Weipa" was, so he assumed point A to be himself and wrote a copy that "I think it's good, but users can't understand it." For example, I saw the description of "Yidao Car Rental·Dandu Car" some time ago, and the whole text was expressed like this: I think the author who wrote this copy must be proud of his or her literary talent. But after reading the entire long copy, I still didn’t understand what this single-reading car service is. With the attitude of researching copywriting, I searched on Baidu and found out that it was a service of "placing books on the bus for passengers to read for free". In this way, the copywriter often assumes that the user's point A is himself, ignoring the fact that the user does not have the same background knowledge as himself, thus creating "confusing" works and causing a large number of "self-satisfaction" phenomena. For example, the marketer of an online coffee shop wrote “A world of fragrance, simple life: opening a new era of coffee”. They know their products very well and have deep feelings for these coffees. They feel that such gorgeous and beautiful language truly depicts their feelings about the company's coffee products and will definitely impress consumers. Little do they know that consumers have no idea what this “fragrant world, simple life” means, nor do they know what “opening a new era of coffee” has to do with their own lives. Another example is some successful executives and entrepreneurs who stand ambitiously in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of their office buildings, looking at the traffic in the distance, and feel that they have a great vision to change society. "China's XX is the world's XX." They are moved by such heroic spirit and must use this exciting sentence as product copy. Little do you know that for consumers who receive countless noisy information every day and have no idea about your company, your grand slogan may not arouse any feelings on their part - they may not have the same bumpy entrepreneurial experience as you, and it is difficult for them to appreciate the meaning behind this sentence. As a "normal person", if you just imagine how we speak in our daily lives, you will find out how unreliable such copywriting is. Consider a real-life scenario. One day you took the bus to go shopping. After getting off the bus, you walked into an alley and heard people playing mahjong. Then you push open the door and find a dozen people stopping to look at you, a stranger. At this time you suddenly said, "Turn dreams into reality." How do you think others see you? I think everyone will think you are crazy - I don’t even know you, why are you suddenly coming in and saying this! I think in real life, almost no one would "speak incoherently" like this. But when the copywriter faces the computer, he forgets about the users, forgets that the users don’t even know him, and starts talking about “turning dreams into reality”. Excellent Y-type copywriters often try to truly understand the user's A point. They will try every means to know "who they are in the user's mind" rather than "who they think they are." You should know that the copy required for different user points A is not the same. So you must understand the user's point A. For example, everyone has seen the copywriting of Evergrande Ice Spring. Do you think there is any problem with it? What this copy wants to say is "Our mineral water is of good quality", so let's analyze the A and B points of this copy. First of all, point B is very clear: we want users to buy mineral water. So what is point A that this copy assumes? Since the copy says "our water is good", the hypothetical point A should be: Then what do you think was the real A point for users in China in 2014 when the copywriting was first launched? I think the user’s real point A is not “I want to drink good water, but I don’t know which water is better”, but “I don’t think drinking good water is important”. . So for this user point A, a more appropriate copywriting idea may be to tell the user: Another example is Didi Chuxing’s copywriting at the end of 2014: It assumes that user A "doesn't feel that he should spend more money on a private car", rather than "wants to take a private car, but doesn't know which one is better". And this was probably the right point A when ride-hailing services first emerged. Conclusion There are two types of copywriters: Type X, who use flowery language but often indulge themselves, and Type Y, who use plain language but deeply understand users. Type X people often make the wrong assumption about point A and write a lot of confusing "self-congratulatory copy" with the purpose of impressing themselves. Excellent Y-shaped copywriting is about designing for user feelings, not the words that create those feelings. It must start from the user's point A, be visual, directly target interests and allow users to take simple actions. |
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