When you see, read or hear anything aimed at advertising, marketing or making a product look good, you experience the output of copywriting. Compared to computer programming and website development, copywriting as a technical profession is pretty old, dating back as early as the 1800s when practitioners simply created ads. Copywriters wrote materials that were meant to be printed on paper, wooden boards or canvases to showcase the benefits of different products from cure-it-all medicines to musical concerts; There were no radio, television or Internet.
Over the years, copywriting evolved into a bigger and more far-reaching field, as technology imbued the already powerful printed word with additional energy and potential. From merely dominating newspapers, billboards, and flyers, copywriting became the springboard for television and radio commercials, media-rich online ads, graphic-intensive presentation slides, stunning product brochures, company press releases and email marketing.
Pinning Down What Copywriting Is
While copywriting as a tool has been transformed by technological and socio-economic changes, its essence as an art remains the same. The printed word still lies at the heart of copywriting even when the copy-which encapsulates the advertising, marketing or PR message-is certain to undergo various iterations as it is articulated in different formats for different media channels. The copy can be converted into a dialogue for video ads, as a narration for a radio commercial or communicated through computer-generated animation.
Strictly speaking, copywriting is the process of writing the words that are used in any type of publicity, sales, marketing and advertising content. It also covers any type of communication channel, including print, broadcast and the Internet. All the written elements of any content is a product of copywriting, including photo captions, headlines, slogans, and the lyrics of a jingle.
What Copywriters Do
Because their playing field is quite broad, you'll find that copywriters write just about everything that endorses or publicizes a product, a person, an organization, a business, a service, or an idea. You'll find copywriters writing the speeches of prominent politicians and dishing out those spammy emails you get every doggone day.
You'll also find that some of the most endearing or clever slogans were hatched in the minds of the most ingenious copywriters. Apple's "Think Different," Nike's "Just Do It," Nike competitor Adidas' "Impossible is Nothing" and Mercedes' "The Race to Perfection has no Finish Line," are just some of the most memorable output of effective copywriting; transforming a few words into highly influential mantras that persuade or compel people, organizations and even generations toward a certain thought or action. The slogan "Make Love Not War" is copywriting material that encapsulates the turbulent '60s and '70s while the emotionally-charged "Power of One" video, released by Earth Communications Office and originally intended to espouse environmental causes, has been used in countless presentations as a means to endorse other advocacies. If you want to enjoy some of the top copies for product endorsement, read a Fast Company article that selected some of the juiciest ad slogans nominated by Digg users.
What really is copywriting? Given its potential and the range of channels it can be communicated through, copywriting is the act of writing the text that are used in direct mails, taglines, jingles, advertising, marketing, and public relations. As long as it serves the purpose of endorsing something, the text can take the form of blog and social media posts, online web copies, postcards, sales letters, tweets, white papers and press releases. Simply put, the products of copywriting is quite ubiquitous and may be as low down and dirty as the sleazy text in badly written email marketing or the lofty taglines that continue to influence human and organizational decisions long after they have first been published or broadcasted.
Top Traits for Successful Copywriters
Given all the things they are supposed to do, you wonder why some copywriters slack on their jobs, taking the hours breezily while others seem to have pinned their faces on their computer displays. Well, like the output it crunches out in the thousands every day, copywriting also has a broad range of practitioners. This is not to say that copywriters who are glued on their office seats and pinned to their monitors all day are the best pros around. On the contrary, some of the top copywriters are those that work outside the office and do their wordsmithing in scenic Mediterranean coastal towns or in some breathtakingly beautiful Asian beach resorts.
Regardless of their working styles, the best copywriters generally approach their work in a similar manner. Let's summarize the elements of good copywriting that top practitioners always employ:
A great copy should:
· address the target audience directly
· address their problems when endorsing a product or service
· offer a solution
· focus on the positive instead of the negative
If you ask which character traits separate bad copywriting professionals from high-grade practitioners, experts disagree on the exact number of traits but generally cite several traits in common. Interestingly, great writing is rarely one of them. What? Based on what we can glean online, most copywriting authorities including Brian Eisenberg and Gayle Leonard nominate the following characteristics as the main traits of winning copywriters:
· creative and imaginative
· well-read with an eagerness to do research
· high empathy
· good listener
· deadline conscious
· humble
· web savvy
· simple but excellent communicator
· disciplined
You can see these principles and more in this copywriting presentation.
Meanwhile, one of the leading content marketing companies, Copyblogger cites empathy as the single most important trait a copywriter should posses. Sure, topnotch copywriters should be creative and imaginative and possess uncanny communicative abilities, but without empathy, even the most-clever slogan will fall by the wayside. The art of copywriting is always deployed in a communication scenario within which a message is created and sent to an intended audience. If your message does not resonate with your audience, then your copy fails miserably, even if it took you days agonizing over how to perfect the words that make up your message. Empathy with your audience helps establish which things to include in your copy and how to get them communicated, so that your words-however simple-will find the right emotional or psychological string in your audience to spur them into action.
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