In pursuit of short copy…but you don’t want that (really)

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Making sense of the world around us is both helped and hindered by the mass of information we can access these days. Never before have we had so many opportunities to learn and satisfy our curiosity on just about any topic that piques our interest. I love it: instant access to expertise and knowhow right around the globe. How great is that.

Overwhelming copy

But a little like Midas, perhaps, that wealth and richness can be hard to handle. The risk is we become bloated and feel overwhelmed by ‘too much information’. So, the smarter practitioners look for ways to simplify and take short cuts to the information they need. When we are communicating with savvy business decision-makers we need to apply this principle with rigour.

Short copy isn’t always best

When it comes to copy, the misdirection is a request to ‘make it shorter’. Can we use less words? The answer, of course, is yes we can. But in the cutting it’s all too easy to lose the very thing that will guide the reader to a eureka moment. Brevity is good but, to quote Roger Horberry (again), clarity is much much better.

Clarity doesn’t necessarily mean longer copy – but it might do. It could be vital to include essential details to crystallise understanding or provide examples to illustrate the point. The trick is not to include so much detail as to bore the reader ridged, to stop when they are likely to have got the message already. It’s easy enough to annex detail and explanations while still making them accessible in a sidebar or appendix.

Our goal is to persuade and move the reader though the buying process. By understanding their need for information at each stage we’re able to make sure the content we are creating aligns with this – and we don’t force feed them more than they can handle.

Spotting the good stuff: the role of the copywriter

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Before they call us in, some of our clients are in the habit of briefing a creative team to come up with a concept. They’ve seen visuals and have selected a front cover; a dps layout and a couple of variants; a set of beautifully shot images. It looks the bee’s knees and right on brand. And then they brief the content. I simplify, but ‘about 2000 words to fill this please’ isn’t too wide of the mark.

But who are we talking to? What do you want to say? How do you know that it’ll take 2000 words and who said a brochure was the right vehicle in the first place? And now they have to brief all over again.

So when should the copywriter get involved?

The best jobs are the ones when the copywriter is first in and last out – thank you Mr Horberry for articulating this so eloquently.

  • First in because someone has to ask the questions, capture thoughts and opinions and turn ideas into words; this is the natural role of the copywriter.
  • And last because writing provides continuity and ensures coherence in the final execution.

Whether for digital, print, or presentation our writers are involved throughout the creative process.

What is copywriting?

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A definition that I have liked for a while now and endorsed by Roger Horberry in his interesting book ‘Brilliant Copywriting’ is that it is salesmanship in print. This is a quote from the illustrious adman John E Kennedy. We’ve long chattered on about words that sell, but what about those that persuade and incite action. Roger is right (or is it just that I agree with him?); ‘selling’ is only half the task of the copywriter. If you take the construction of a rational logical argument based on a tangible financial attributes to its extreme you end up with copy that’s cold and pretty unconvincing. People rarely buy for wholly rational reasons and charm, humour and good ol’ entertainment all have a part to play in persuading our audience to act.

Is that a drum roll I hear? Enter the copywriter: professional persuader and story teller extraordinaire.

Key audiences for technology marketers

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What do live music bands and b2b technology companies have in common? Having creativity or innovation at the heart of their offering, perhaps? The connection I noticed the other day is rather more down-to-earth, but it’s an important one for technology marketers to crack.

Whether you’re selling music or IT, the route to the end customer is complex and it’s essential to get all the key audiences in the buying process on board.

The obvious audience isn’t always the right one

In the live music business it’s a question of influencing promoters, venue managers, loyal fans and potential new listeners. The obvious focal point for raising awareness and interest is the audience who’ll pay to come and see the gig; but there’s no point building excitement, sending tons of tweets, getting lots of ‘likes’ among potential fans — if you haven’t already got the venue managers convinced of your band’s potential so they’re raring to let your act play their venue.

Where should technology marketers focus their attention?

For technology companies the buying process typically involves the CIO and a spread of functional directors, relevant members of the IT function and often a purchasing team. It can be all too easy, as technology marketers, to focus most of your planning and marketing effort on one link in the chain, typically the budget holder. But the real task with complex purchasing chains is to look at the whole chain; to spot any weak links, fix them, and make sure that the chain is secure from end to end.

Now for the clever bit… the storytellers’ art

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I have a friend who is in movies, at least that’s how I like to introduce her hoping it boosts my street cred. The reality is not as glamorous as that first might sound as she doesn’t get to hobnob with the stars or go to many opening-night parties. This Cinderella spends a lot of time with the technology – which probably says something about why we are friends.

She told me a story about a recent meeting where they were reviewing the footage from a shoot – hours of it. Days of filming and retakes, several camera angles, different lighting positions…they would probably need to send out for pizza to help them through. At first, ‘He who needed to be impressed’ was enthusiastic: lovely; great shot; ooh I like that. After some time he fell silent and at the end said: “What are we going to do with all of this?”

The answer was a 26-minute documentary.

Just 26 minutes from terabytes of data. It could make gathering all those terabytes seem a huge waste of time and effort. But without the days of filming and the different angles the storytellers’ art couldn’t be perfected and the message would be dull and ineffective. The perfecting comes in the cutting…and that takes time and skill. Sound familiar?

There comes a time (or several times) in every working day when there is a paring down, pruning to be done and much of the earlier efforts are consigned to the cutting room floor – or the recycling bin for us copywriters.

One day I may be famous enough to remake my epic with the director’s cut but until then I make decisions about what goes and what stays on behalf of my customers, because they know what their paying public want to see: compelling stories, uncluttered by extraneous information, that deliver a persuasive message. That’s the art and science of what we do.

Why? The most valuable word in social media

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Don’t get me wrong. I can see the worth of social media sites, like Facebook and LinkedIn, as much as the next man. I get that you have to get involved or risk missing out. For example, when having lunch with a girlfriend last week I could sympathise with her situation: she was miffed at not knowing about another friend’s new baby born weeks earlier. My only advice was, you guessed it, ‘to get a Facebook account’. And the more advice like this that gets dished out, the more we feed the social-media fever. No bad thing perhaps, but it’s vital that all that advice remains connected to the need it’s given to address: that’s the ‘why’.

In my friend’s case, there was a community on Facebook that she wanted to be part of. Does your business know where its communities hang out? If that’s Facebook or LinkedIn or somewhere else, that’s where you need to play. It’s exactly the same consideration as choosing to visit a certain exhibition or advertise in a particular magazine: will people you want to influence see you there?

The role of the CIO: has it really changed?

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May you live in interesting times. Who said that? Apparently the jury is still out as to whether it is an old Chinese curse or something more modern. Regardless of its origins it can have no better application than to the role of the CIO in the information age.

Often the target of the communications we are crafting for clients, we’ve come to know this chap quite well. The job has certainly changed in recent times, moving away from managing technology to managing service delivery – quite a different beast, requiring a different skill set and outlook, to tame.

In his article this morning, Mark Kobayashi-Hillary at Silicon.com predicts the decline of the role. He goes on to predict the rise of another, however; one where IT leadership is integrated with business leadership. Surely this is the role of the CIO, to manage the strategic information resources in the same way that the CFO manages the finances.

What are your thoughts on this?