Copywriting

Sample Project 1

Students sometimes email and ask if I have any sample projects to hand that they can use for practice. This is a real project that I've done over this last weekend, but I think it's an excellent practice project.

The client's business is a complete logistics operation, fronted by a web-application. It lets people set up any or all of 10 e-stores, each selling a different kind of products. The stores are pre-stocked by a dropshipper (a wholesaler who delivers direct to your customers for you), so all you have to do is set up your e-stores using the client's system, get people to come and shop in them, collect the retail price of each sale from your customers, pay the dropshipper the wholesale price, and you keep the difference as your profit. That's it.

The 10 types of merchandise you can sell are: Gadgets; Watches; Inkjet and Toner Cartridges; Football Merchandise; Lingerie; Beauty Products; Petcare Products; Ties; Adult Products; iPod and Mobile Phone Accessories.

The client wants to put 10 new pages on his site, one for each kind of e-store. In each category, the page should carry a short introduction of about 50 words, telling people convincingly why that particular choice makes such a great online business. It should then give 5 convincing bullet-point facts/plausible assertions able to act as 'evidence' for just why that particular choice offers such a good opportunity. Each bullet should be around 20-30 words.

Nice project. It gets you thinking about 10 different businesses at once. When my client has signed off my solution and applied it to his site, I'll post a link so you can take a look at what I did.

Black coffee

Why is a cup of black coffee now undergoing a nationwide rebadge as an Americano? Those of us who like our coffee black, through a filter or out of a cafetierre know this to be the truth. You go into Starbucks. You ask for a black coffee. The Starbucker behind the counter will look at you blankly and say 'An Americano?' The answer is "No. A black coffee." ('Black coffee' was good enough for Paul Schrader when he wrote Taxi Driver, as I recall.) Why does it matter? In coffee-pedant terms, it matters in as much as the Americano thing is, apparently, an espresso (ie a steam pressured coffee forced through a fine coffee grind) with a load of hot water added at the end to fill up a big cup, wheras a black filter coffee involves pouring hot water over roasted, ground coffee beans and catching each delicious and coffee-laden drip that comes through. In a wider sense, however, it matters for a different reason: it's a malicious effort by a US company to introduce and own a word unknown in this country 2 or 3 years ago, to attempt to have that 'owned' word usurp a fine generic name with an indigenous heritage and, worst of all, to brush over the fact that you're not even getting the cup of coffee you wanted! And if writers don't fight for the language of coffee...who the hell's going to?

Bad news first

We are creative people. We make something in which we vest a part of our creative soul. And even I, who considers myself far more of a commercial tool than as any kind of artist, sees each piece that I send off to a client as something original: something 'created'.

As creative souls, we scar easily. Particularly in the first day or so after we create something, we are sensitive about how it will be received. We long for the approval of our client, partly so we will know that the job is progressing smoothly and the client is happy, but mainly because we want what we have created to be liked. Not to mention admired.

Now a client to whom I had yesterday sent the first of 10 pieces which he had commissioned, just so he could comment on the first one before I write all the rest, called me this morning.

Fortunately, I have written for him before, and have come to know his approach.

He opened with the fact that I had included a piece of vernacular expression which he felt was inappropriate to his brand tone.

ME (bit crestfallen): OK. Of course. I should have spotted that. Not a problem.

Next he told me that he really felt I'd underplayed the call to action.

ME (more crestfallen): Oh. Er...Ok. Let me look at it. I'll do it another way.

By this point, I'm just a bit sad, because I feel that he doesn't like what I've written for him: doesn't like my 'creation'.

And then, almost as an afterthought, he drops in, "But apart from those couple of things, I'm really cock-a-hoop with it!"

F****** ***i!!!!! Why didn't you say that first? Why didn't you start off by saying, "Hi Laurence. Really delighted with this. Love it. There are just a couple of little things I'd like you to look at, but overall, it's terrific!"

Even after 25 years, I like people to like the work I do for them. I want them to pat me on the head for it, and I'll do anything for them if they start off by doing that.

Point is...most clients you will work with will not be trained, professional marketers, and will not have the experience of commissioning any kind of creative work to realise that creative people (copywriters included) have fragile egos and respond best when handled with a little care. They are far more likely to simply weigh in with what they don't like about what you've done, than they are to tell you what they do like.

Don't be fazed by it. If the conversation doesn't open with, "You know, this is so awful I don't even know where to start", there's every chance that your client is very happy with most of what you've done, but just doesn't know how much you long to hear him say so.