speaking in clicks

[September 29, 2009]

Over time, playwrights, philosophers and psychologists have written volumes about human motivation. They’ve found eloquent, even beautiful ways to record their observations. What they have not been able to do, however, is quantify them.

As a result, advertising, the business of motivating people to action, runs neither on science nor on research data masquerading as science. It depends, rather, on an intuitive grasp of what makes people tick—because there’s still no solution to the human equation.

Faced with this logical vacuum, many jet-lagged execs take refuge in scientific jargon. “Push the envelope,” for example, comes from Engineering and offers distinct advantages. Saying it endows the user with the swagger of a B-movie astronaut—and is way easier than giving coherent creative direction.

Trouble is, there are no shortcuts. Each project has unique constraints, including the existing branding, your audience, the budget and your client’s expertise. So whatever “pushing the envelope” means to you, it has no direct bearing on completing the project, much less motivating your audience.

Another metaphor borrowed from science is “the box.” Asking for an “out-of-the-box” solution invites creative paralysis. So deeply revered is this paradigm, Creatives soon succumb to the pressure. Fearing for their reputation, they first build a rationale, then scramble to find a creative concept to match.

The results can be devastating. Present concepts completely divorced from a client’s culture or experience and your credibility is shot. While you’re touting originality, your clients are texting second-tier vendors for estimates on stock design templates. In a matter of hours, they’ll replace your bold vision with a knock-off of last year’s campaign, featuring “refreshed art” and “a few copy tweaks.”

How much better to build on your clients’ strengths—and build their trust. When the results roll in, your clients learn they can walk away from the tried and true without losing their identity. From there you can introduce them to real creative concepts. “But is that ‘edgy’ enough?” I hear someone yell. My question is: What does this military metaphor accomplish?

Now, I realize these slogans are meant to encourage innovation. That’s a good thing. But innovation doesn’t come from slogans. Instead of searching for “the edgy, out-of-the-box idea that really pushes the envelope,” build your concepts from the raw materials in front of you: The product, the competitive landscape, audience insights and your own observations about the human experience.

As I see it, innovation grows from insights fueled by direct observation of what’s real, vibrant and “blood simple.” That’s the stuff you see on the street, in the school yard, at weddings, funerals, hot-dog stands—and places further down on the food chain. So the next time someone asks you to push the envelope, sit back in your chair and tell them to get real.

[September 25, 2009]

Check any quotations source to see how preoccupied Western culture is with creativity. People devote entire books to it. Despite the place creativity holds in our society, however, I doubt we do enough as an industry to nurture and protect our own creative resources.

I say “protect” because creativity, a byproduct of our subjective experience of the world, is as fragile as everything human. Now, relax. Admitting your own fragility doesn’t make you any less of a hip-dope-sick-this-century-cow-person. It’s a simple reality, and one you face whenever a loved one ends up in the ICU.

Despite our cultural fixation on creativity, we also have countless cultural habits destined to discourage it. Creativity is routinely suppressed by:

•Authoritarians: “Stop fooling around and do your homework.”
•Realists: “You’ll never make any money at it.”
•Skeptics: “Who do you think you are, Picasso?”

It’s also discouraged by cultural stereotypes like the “dissipated artist,” the “misunderstood genius,” and the “thin line between madness and genius.”

Oh, please. If you spoke in such reductive terms about any other group of people you’d be socially ostracized and, in some cases, subject to criminal prosecution.

Yet creatives hear and internalize these clichés every day. Ironically, a recent study at UC San Diego shows that, contrary to stereotype, healthy habits, like getting enough sleep, have a measureable impact on creativity.

Then there’s the word “genius” itself, the single greatest barrier to fostering creativity. Your friendly neighborhood skeptics tell you only geniuses are creative. If you’re not one, they say, you’re just wasting your time. Not coincidentally, skeptics are also the people most likely to claim they know genius when they see it.

Fortunately, in the last few decades, psychologists seem to have established that creativity is not actually dependent on genius. They’ve discovered the roots of creativity in our early development and suggest a direct link between creativity and a capacity for play. To be creative, you simply have to have been a child.  

Now, as I see it, play is essential to our creative process. And like children’s play, the process is highly structured. First, “let’s pretend…” defines a flexible set of guidelines. Next, rules pop up (“that’s not fair”) and need to be observed—but only if they make the game more fun.  

The thought of children at play leads me back to the need to nurture and protect our fragile creative resources. Have you taken a look, lately, at the sleep-deprived creatives whose work load you just tripled? They’d be a lot more productive if you gave them time to experiment and play—plus a little love and attention.  

That’s because, in order to conceive something fresh, vibrant and motivating, creatives need to make themselves fragile again, as open and vulnerable as children. They don’t need marketing theories or webinars or brainstorming or imperious glares at the clock.

What they need is a safe place to play.

[September 22, 2009]

A few years back, I was lead copywriter for a client in the financial sector. One day, he requested a direct mail package that would “break through the clutter” to boost acquisition. Now, generic business objectives like this were an occupational hazard we faced every day. All the same, we had way too little to go on. While the client had drawn up a detailed list of product benefits, the closest thing we had to a messaging platform was “Act Now!”

Nor could we fall back on the national brand campaign, recently launched by a prestigious general agency. Like most mid-level marketing managers at his company, our client vehemently rejected that campaign—based, apparently, on stray bits of focus group data.

When asked to expand on his project goals, our client responded with a few lines of explanation, a new list of product benefits, and told us the project was easy, just “Marketing 101.” To illustrate, he sent over a diagram a lot like the one I’ve sketched out below from memory:

As with every cliché, “Marketing 101” is spoken without real thought, but we were stuck with it. Despite our attempt to clarify the client’s intentions, we now had to reconcile conflicting demands: “Break through the clutter” yet conform to standardized “Marketing 101” ideals. Our client wanted a piece unconventional enough to stand out in a mailbox, yet conventional enough to fit snugly into a rigid conceptual template.

Next, the project went through several tortured rounds of revision, as our client worked out his marketing message little by little, word by word, sending over bits of Copy “for inspiration,” photocopied from earlier mailings.

With persistence, we finally produced a piece the client was satisfied with: a Frankenstein’s monster made of spare parts from several previous campaigns. When it was deemed a success we were relieved, until the client averred that its success was due to the live stamp he’d stuck on each envelope. “We have studies showing this always produces a bump,” he said matter-of-factly, adding “Good work.” Why then, I wondered, did we need all those rounds?

Today, I’d also wonder why anyone would pay six figures for a campaign so predictable they could build it themselves—with a pair of scissors and a glue stick. And while this story may give you a chuckle, it’s as relevant now as back in the day. Substitute “CTRL-C” for the scissors and “CTRL-V” for the glue stick and you have business-as-usual for countless projects at many a digital agency in 2009.

Despite the rapid evolution of marketing in the last 10 years, something fundamental is unchanged: We’re still too willing to manufacture what clients ask for instead of creating what they need. It’s time we moved on from Marketing 101 and established a new curriculum. Better yet, let’s throw the school books out the window.

[September 18, 2009]

Once a Web site’s navigation is functionally sound and its architecture delineates an intuitive user path, there’s still another aspect of the user experience we should consider. We need to ensure that the site cuts a clear profile in the user’s imagination.

How well people use a site, and how often they return also has a lot to do with how they feel about the experience. In that sense—though I’m hardly the first person to say so—every Web site has a distinct human personality. That’s because whatever appears in digital space is infused with its creators’ worldview, bias and life-rhythms, whether it’s a casual Snapfish gallery or a tuxedoed corporate showroom.

Critical to creating an appealing and motivating digital personality for your brand is striking the right tone. Good Copy design can give your site real “profile,” something users will remember and want to say in touch with. By “Copy design” I mean the specific way the brand realizes its message on screen. I recently found a modest, but effective example of Copy design at Sony.com.

The process begins as soon as you dial them up: “Believe that anything you can imagine, you can make real,” reads the loading message. Already, Sony is influencing our perception of its entire product line. Combined with the tagline “make.believe” this helps us view Sony products as useful, fun and kind of magical.

Sure, it’s a tactic—but it helps. As I wander through the site, I feel the presence of this playful personality everywhere. A few examples:

• Blu-ray Disc: Stream Machine
• Handycam: Sharp Shooters
• Disc Burners: Burning Desire
• Voice Recorders & Microphones: Talk to Me

As usual, context is a key part of the copy’s collective impact. A wealth of design elements come together to create a quiet, thoughtful voice for these phrases. The more time you spend on this site, the more this invitation to play emerges as the core message, the basic value statement for the brand.

Of particular interest is the absence, for the most part, of strident, blinky calls to action. While the phrase “act now” may actually appear somewhere, it’s certainly not what the brand is leading with. Why? Because doing so would be out of character.

Ultimately, you come away from Sony.com feeling as if you’ve had a conversation with someone memorable. Yes, this is still classic advertising and yes, this is quite literally a monologue, since I can’t input “LOL” on the Disc Burner page.

All the same, the site’s conversational tone and the consistency of its voice still elicits a feeling of connection. Sony may not be able to hear my response, except, perhaps, at the cash register, but I definitely have one—a specific response to a specific individual who just happens to appear in digital space.

[September 15, 2009]

When today’s Nielsen numbers have faded and the latest Google analytics have gone to gigabyte heaven, there’s one thing that remains. It’s always relevant, fresh and forever impervious to fads, trends or whatever the word “cool” means in your hometown.

It’s the Idea.

Now, even without a scientific study, I’ll bet that the word “idea” fits snugly in the ranks of the Top 10 Vaguest Words in the English language. So, to be clear: by “idea,” I mean the carefully crafted piece of intellectual property that’s the backbone of all creative work.

Maybe the thought of crafting an idea seems foreign to you, because you’ve always imagined that a creative idea is something blurted out in a cold sweat by a “genius.” That is, after all, what happens in the movies.

In reality, a usable creative idea grows out of ceaseless observation and a talent for distilling observation into text and image. This is the process that leads Creative teams to find hidden connections in dreary reams of data, day in and day out.

It happens in a flash: A puff of smoke emerges from the snack room as a Creative makes a leap of imagination. But just as surely as a state fair magician has something up his sleeve, anyone who claims that a creative idea “just came to me,” is playing to the balcony.

Smoke & Mirrors
What starts as a white lie has serious consequences. It perpetuates the illusion that creative ideas are the product of mysterious forces. Yes, there’s talent involved, but it’s the application and refinement of talent that produces results.

That’s why I see the popular corporate parlor game we call “brainstorming,” as a complete waste of time. Blurting out metaphors over cupcakes is simply no substitute for skilled creative work.

Pressured to perform, people from all different disciplines resort to chatting about attractive features of existing campaigns. Pressured to conform, even the bravest are reduced to nodding and smiling—as senior executives vigorously promote “thought starters” of their own invention.

Under these conditions, brainstorming can only produce, at best, the raw material for a creative idea. Whatever nuggets come out of a brainstorming session still need a lot of work, including the effort it takes to cross them off the list.

Leaving it to Chance?
Ultimately, off-the-cuff remarks are no better at generating usable creative ideas than they are at managing agency finances or mapping out an effective new business strategy. All three take time, patience and expertise. What’s more, as key components of your business model, they simply can’t be left to chance.

“Brainstorming” does just that—by taking creative ideation out of the hands of those most qualified to manage it. If you disagree, why not invite your junior art directors to your next budget meeting? I’m sure they’ll have plenty of cogent, innovative ideas for financial planning, picked up, no doubt, from the upcoming sequel to Wall Street.

[September 9, 2009]

In the lifetime of every American copywriter, lurks a dark and troubling shadow that creeps into the creative process and begins an un-Godly reign of terror. Aided by its sibling demon “We Just Need a Few Tweaks,” the monster claims its victims with cruel and inexorable precision.

“The client wants to pick up the existing copy, so we just need you to Wordsmith it a Little.”

So says the unsuspecting AE, unaware that uttering this phrase is a tell-tale sign of demonic possession. Here begins a cascading descent into mediocrity and ballooning cost. It’s a scourge only the most valiant Copy Creative can combat—and only at great personal risk.

“Wordsmith it a little:” I shudder to recall the countless creative concepts I’ve seen, writhing in agony, as their messaging strategies were painfully eroded by a thousand ill-conceived copy revisions.

Keep it the same, just change it.
The nightmare begins with a client’s request to contain costs by recycling existing copy. To the inexperienced, the untrained and the indifferent, that seems simple enough—except that this copy is:

• Stylistically inconsistent
• Riddled with redundancies
• Scribbled over with contradictory internal comments
• Photocopied into an unreadable smear

On receiving this incoherent mess, the copywriter is jolted out of the monster’s lulling sleep and demands a client meeting. Too late. Despite the need for a total rewrite, the client now expects the existing copy to be preserved in tact—“with just a few tweaks.”

Such a cavalier attitude toward the creative process might make you wonder if copywriters need a hairdresser’s license to practice their craft. “Just a little off the top, the client’s in a hurry,” croaks a chorus of doomed AEs, their heads spinning around like weather vanes in the wind.

A madness feeding on ignorance…
Like many a social menace, “Wordsmith it a Little” grows out of misinformation, in this case the myth that copywriting is primarily about choosing the next word. This monster quickly seduces an average of eight people into obsessing about words through multiple rounds—without first agreeing on the message those words should convey.

…takes its toll in cost, quality and reputation.
Later, glancing at the balance sheet, you may wonder how “such a simple project” ate up so much money. The answer lies in the management decision to treat Copy like an object, or worse, like a bargaining chip. This circumvents the creative process, plunging the project into a vortex of inefficiency that quickly overwhelms both the schedule and the budget.

I’m here today to attest that incurring multiple extra rounds, due to anxious word-noodling, is an extremely irresponsible way to craft a message to consumers. As to the quality of that message, is it any wonder your client roster has recently been haunted by a ghoulish Roving Eye?

[September 8, 2009]

The well-worn phrase “Content is King” reminds me of the classic elementary school joke, in which our internal organs debate who should be in charge.

It also reminds me of the current mania for reducing a discussion of complex marketing issues to rigidly functional terms.

At this late stage, I’m surprised anyone still sees content as “modular.” As if doing great work has ever been a Lego^®-like affair, a matter of snapping components together until you finish the project and can settle down with some milk and cookies.

My other problem with “Content is King” is its implication that content and context are separate entities, rather than different sides of the same coin. It suggests that Web sites, for example, are best created by pouring content into a pre-fab design template, like concrete into a roadbed.

Yet, even in social networking environments, where it may appear that content is everything, members can’t connect without an infrastructure that actively encourages participation. Without its infrastructure, Facebook would be no more than a gigabyte-gobbling stack of e-mails.

In that sense, the Facebook user-experience, its context, plays an integral part in giving the content its meaning. It’s what turns a laundry list of status updates, video links, photo galleries, chat windows and branded apps into a living community.

From this it’s clear that citing content as the benchmark for success is not only misguided but also a bit silly. It conjures up images of accursed webmasters, doomed to rove the ‘net in their insatiable hunger for a good “feed.”

On the other hand, it also goes a long way to explaining why online researchers encounter the same phrases over and over again. As of today, September 8, 2009, a Google search for “Take the stairs instead of the elevator” yields 181,000 results.

Based on that data, it seems a more appropriate catch phrase might be “Content is Clone.” Led astray by the delusion that audience retention depends solely on finding the right block of copy, many people are building their Web presence out of borrowed value.

This issue is even more critical, now that content is not predominantly text, but a rich counterpoint of text, video, animation and widgetry. As I see it, this broader definition of content empowers us to perceive user-experience as a seamless interchange between content and context.

So, as comforting as it might be to know “who’s in charge,” setting content on a pedestal severely limits your ability to connect with your audience. Online or offline, anything you wish to say can only be heard collectively, in the context of the total conversation. But here I’m in danger of evoking another reductive slogan.

[September 4, 2009]

When workflow mounts up, it’s easy for a “get it done” mentality to creep into every corner of an agency. The focus then shifts from meeting the client’s business goals to manufacturing the object the client requested.

But whether a client wants a banner, a Web site or the next installment in the Widget- of-the-Month Club, an agency must be more than a manufacturing plant. That is, if it actually aspires to serve a client’s business interests.

That’s because an agency’s only true products are the connections it makes with consumers.

The way I see it, the only reason clients pay agencies gobs of money is to acquire and retain a viable customer base. Despite appearances, they’re not actually paying for Web sites, or any other “thing” itself. They’re paying for a consumer engagement strategy, a motivating messaging platform and a compelling creative idea—of which the “thing” is simply one external expression.

Realizing that is the difference between “getting it done” and “getting it right.”

So instead of a Manufacturing Model, agencies need to adopt a Connection Model, a move that impacts every aspect of workflow. Once you focus on connection, for example, you’ll schedule transparently, making it clear that every creative round and client comment will be carefully weighed in terms of its ability to connect with consumers.

Of course, if the centerpiece of your new business strategy is “We’ll do it for Less,” the Connection Model is not for you.

When it comes to creative development and execution, the Connection Model weeds out everything mechanical, picked up or “tried-and-true.” If it holds no value for consumers, out it goes. That’s only to the good: There’s nothing more depressing than the sight of talented creatives mindlessly copying someone else’s work.

In fact, this buzzard-like appropriation of “best practices” is one of the main reasons many clients may question the value of agency work. Why exactly should they pay agency fees, when a team of freelancers can cut and paste as well as anyone can? We’re not the only ones who can Google-up pre-fab CSS templates, freeware JavaScript buttons and royalty free stock art.

Today, clients can even pick up freeware social networking platforms and get all the “hot content” they could ever need. So if we validate the idea that their goal is simply to build a “thing,” why should clients believe they need expensive Strategy, Account and Creative expertise?

Unless we lead by example, and constantly define why “getting it right” actually matters, we have precious little to support our continued existence as a profession. In this sense, adopting the Connection Model is not only essential to the survival of an individual agency, it’s also crucial to the survival of the industry.

[September 1, 2009]

The “writing” in “copywriting” is misleading. It causes many people to assume that copywriting is primarily about “writing” itself. Based on that assumption, they conclude that copywriting, journalism, PR and creative writing all require exactly the same skills.

In reality, copywriting is a separate discipline, as distinct from these other fields as they are from each other. It requires specialized training, experience and a unique set of talents—only a fraction of which involve the mechanics of manufacturing prose.

Training.
Copywriters need exposure to art, music, dance, literature and science—anything to help them see “life, the universe and everything” in a broader perspective. They need to grasp as many realms of human experience as possible.

That’s because, at any given time, a copywriter may need to write intelligently about pasta, banking, fleas & ticks, bottled water, women’s health, childhood diseases, dairy products, “and more.” A degree from Google News is not enough. You actually have to know a thing or two.

Experience.
It takes savvy to reach a compromise with your team without compromising your message to consumers. It’s something you can only learn by experience. Experience also teaches you how to collaborate with clients. I’ll have more to say about that in a later post.

Talent.
A copywriter’s talent is a knack for recognizing the deep structure in human communication. Copywriters read a brand’s underlying message and instinctively translate it into emotionally compelling Copy. It’s a talent rooted in key personality traits.

One of those traits is empathy for the human condition. Another is an ear for pacing, rhythm and color. After all, a good copywriter, like a good musician, needs to encapsulate a world of thought and feeling in a few aphoristic phrases. Copywriters also need a vivid visual imagination, to help art directors break the spell cast by tidy-minded “best practice” gurus.

Why the Confusion?
Since copywriting has such distinct characteristics, I can’t understand why so many industry professionals believe that “a writer’s a writer.” Maybe it’s because copywriters sometimes mimic news articles or create fictional narratives to promote a product, sell a service or celebrate a cause.

What we need to realize is that an advertorial or info-tainment piece is only the shiny wrapper on a branded messaging strategy. It may be deeply touching or deliver valuable information but it only exists to make the brand more memorable, more “real” and more trustworthy.

Striking that balance between format and deep structure takes a rare combination of talent, skill and experience. That’s the main reason your cousin’s nephew, who’s “good with words,” is not necessarily destined for a successful career as a copywriter.

[August 28, 2009]

As I visited the US Web sites of major fashion brands, I found, as expected, a distinct sense of style. That is, each site had a distinctive look, making a world of difference with subtle twists of scale, proportion and color. When it came to Copy, however, these sites ran the gamut from blank to better-than-average.

The Calvin Klein home page assumes users are already sold. No doubt many of them are, but in a landscape chockfull of respected designers it seems unwise to count on that. After all, brand recognition consists of more than logo spotting.

In this case, it also consists of satisfying consumer’s expectations of Calvin Klein as an arbiter of fashion. “Define the Season” tells me nothing. Doesn’t the Master have anything fresh to say about fashion trends beyond “My jeans are cool, but you knew that”?

Taking a different approach, Donna Karan, greets visitors with a message celebrating vibrant fall colors.

Now, I doubt there’s a single US copywriter who hasn’t contemplated the Fall/Season: Fall/In Love metaphor at one time or another. But “Fall in Love with Color” at least reveals something about the DKNY POV. As a result, I do feel more included, even though this is not exactly where I’m planning to shop.

In contrast, Kenneth Cole takes the phrase “brand narrative” almost literally, guiding users through the site with pithy commentary. Under the umbrella theme “Make the Most of Wearing Times,” the site positions Kenneth Cole as a brand for people with a tad more perspective:

• Mens Clothing: The World is Changing (and So Are We)
• Womens Clothing: Generate Your Own Electricity
• Accessories: Don’t Let Your Baggage Hold You Back

This approach parallels CitiBank’s “Live Richly” campaign, another example of what happens when a well-crafted messaging strategy is allowed to unfold, unfettered by Marketing Anxiety.

Ultimately, Kenneth Cole’s headlines serve a larger purpose—as a lead-in to the company’s charitable program, “Awearness.” Like “Live Richly,” they reveal effective Copy as a powerful tool for shaping and controlling the subtext of brand positioning.

“Is Copy dying?” As evidenced by this casual survey, many industry professionals do seem indifferent to this crucial discipline as a tool for connecting with consumers. Yet, on the more successful pages, I found Copy had lost none of its ability to shape perception and position a product succinctly for its audience.

In my opinion, it comes done to this: Copy lives when a brand has a coherent message and the courage to convey it honestly and memorably, based on an apt observation about the human equation. That’s the key difference between Copy and “writing.”