Steve Jobs killed copywriting? - Ecademy

Someone sent me a copy of their brochure today to critique and it makes a fatal error that I see again and again. Here's how I know.
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On the 4th July 1984 I was handling the advertising for a university newspaper part time.

We had this idea for a headline for a press ad that curved. In 1984, the only way to do that was to typeset the text, print it to bromide paper and go into the darkroom, set of some metal blocks, sticky tape the bromide to the blocks and twist the paper into the shape you wanted. Three hours. That's why no one did it much and why most people used a thing called Letraset.

At 4pm, my printer, Mike, rang me and said, "Andrew you need to come and have a look at this."

Mike's company had just purchased an Apple Macintosh IIe 128K computer with an external 20Mb Rodime hard-drive. (Why would anyone need 20Mbs?!!!). It was running some desktop publishing software called Pagemaker and a font styling package.

Curious to see what 'a computer' and DTP could do I gave Mike the task of producing our headline. He did it 8 seconds!

He then showed me how to layout an ad ? and a whole newspaper page on screen.

"Wow!"

Mike said, "Yeah ... I think Steve Jobs just killed copywriting."

Up to this point in time, you wrote your ad copy, sent it to a compositor to be typeset, then bromided. Then you cut the bromides into galleys and pasted them onto printers lay-up sheets. You used Letraset and a burnishing tool and ? and ? and.

What happened next in hindsight was predictable. When I started in advertising the rule was clear: write first, design second. You had to do it this way because it was too expensive to send something to a compositor and bromider with errors and typos. So your copy was read and proofed by a proof reader for errors and a copy editor for sense.

The copy had a structure which I still follow to this day. What was drummed into me was message first. People talk about David Ogilvy's ads - the look, but Ogilvy was a copywriter first. He never went anywhere near design unless and until the message was right.

The Mac turned all that on its head! It reversed the order. The focus leapt to looking good first ... and hopefully message second. The Mac possibly contributed to making compositors, typesetters, bromiders, proof readers and copy editors redundant over a very short five year period.

Desktop publishing promised 'anyone can do this' and you could - mechanically.
So VERY quickly people embraced DTP - first the industry and then the domestic user.
And it was awesome technology. What took us days took hours or moments.
Then came laser and bubble jet technology so it DID look great.

But the focus shifted from the message to making pretty shapes. My friend and mentor Reg Moffatt from the NABA wrote a great guide to advertising called Not just making pretty shapes. His concern was that art of copywriting was trampled under the exodus to design brilliance.

Daniel Starch pioneered the testing of what works in print back in the 1920s and we still haven't bettered his methods. I was taught split testing and Starch Testing is the tool of choice (what is noted, seen and read most).

What Starch Testing continues to prove nearly 100 years later is that people DO look for the offer no matter how it looks.

Starch Testing provides compelling evidence for long copy ads for example. If someone is interested they want to read as much as they can get. Fact. Still.

When I ran an ad agency I refused to take artists into client briefings because they think in images, not words. They immediately went for how it might look instead of how it might sound.

For example, you can test this yourself. If you have to write anything, once its written tape it and listen back to what you wrote. In advertising, the ears are called the BS detectors. If it sounds like crap - to you - it probably is crap.

So lets draw this rant to a close with some simple suggestions that work if you are going to produce anything intended to pitch or sell or compel.

Separate out the messages from the design. Never, ever try and write and design at the same time.

I wrote this blog on a word processor, Time Roman, 12 pt double spaced. (Universities suggest the same because the 'air' between the lines literally gives you time to digest what you are writing and reading. And time to think.)

So write your message first.

I would suggest you Google search any tips on copywriting propositions. I have a set of copywriting rules I stick to. I wrote to this structure because it is centred around the reader's needs ? not mine. That is the heart of copywriting.

Design is about impressing the reader and often about cleverness and approval seeking. Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, my mentor Jim Alexander, Drayton Bird were all message centric. Message first. Design second.

The design supports the message always.

If you are focusing on how it looks you are headed up a blind alley. I have seen great looking brochures no-one reads. I have seen clients produce amazingly designed brochures that produce no commercial result. Award winning designs too. Zero enquiries. Zero sales.

(For your reference I have a background in reading psychology - how people read. What they read and what they wont read and why. Very happy to speak at any function about the good old days of Message or the Renaissance of the Message).

Write first. Tape it. Is it on-message? Does it sound right to you? Stay away from Quark and InDesign and Photoshop etc until the message is crafted.

Hope that helps.

Andrew Priestley

I am a business coach and I have a background in organisational psychology. I help SMEs running established businesses to win the leadership game. The typically end up with more reliable productive staff, a performance strategy and more profits.

Source: http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=179350

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