I treated myself this week. I treated myself to £300 worth of a book series that I already own as ebooks, audio books, a leather-bound collected edition hardback, and ratty paperbacks I bought with my paper round money in 2001 that I think my mate Sam lost when she moved1.
I’m not feeling flush. I bought them out of my inheritance from my gran, who died a few weeks ago.
I did her eulogy.
Didn’t say fuck once.
I did her eulogy, because it was my job, and she wanted me to do it, because she knew I was a good copywriter.
And it got me thinking.
I didn’t always want to be this.
I didn’t want to be a marketing writer, an advertising strategist, a some-time (mostly unpaid) public speaker and a salesman in print.
I wanted to be a roving reporter. I wanted to travel the world’s seedy bars and nightspots, not just its conference centres and business parks.
I wanted to write about weirdos and weird drinks, not necessarily ancillary insurance services.
I wanted to be Ford Prefect.
I’ve thought it before. In meetings when someone explains why their SaaS idea is different to the nineteen I’ve written about in the past ten months.
Before going on stage.
While being booed off stage.
After recieving the ninth round of amends.
I didn’t want to be this.
I wanted to be Ford Prefect.
The book version, as a preference. David Dixon from the BBC series if that wasn’t available. The radio version if needs be, or Mos Def if it meant getting out of a particularly bad meeting.
I’m only doing this job because I wanted to be Ford Prefect.
I wanted to write for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Or the next best thing.
So I did, for a time. As a teenager, as a University student. I wrote for the BBC’s hitchhiker’s guide project h2g2.
It taught me a lot.
How to write for an audience, not just yourself.
How to handle feedback from others.
How to fight your corner when that feedback’s wrong and you know it.
How to pitch for a job as a junior copywriter2 and land it.
I learned why I write.
Because I’m not a poet. I write to inform. To persuade.
I write because if you can inform and persuade people, they’ll pay you to write more.
And much like Ford Prefect, I write because I’m fucking great at at, and not much good at much else.
Maybe, then, that’s the key.
Maybe you don’t need a copywriter who wants to be David Ogilvy or Fay Wheldon or Howard Gossage.
Maybe you should trust someone who always, deep down, wanted to be Ford Prefect.
Because Ford Prefect, at least, knew how to cut the shit and boil things down to a key message.
Huh. Turns out Douglas Adams invented Message First. Who knew?
Something mint - something French
God, that was all a bit meandering, wasn’t it? A bit personal? A bit confessional? A bit like someone who’s taken too long off because of family shit trying to get back on the horse?
You know what isn’t any of that?
This.
Two lines and a CTA. Print perfection.
IT DOESN’T MAKE YOU MORE ATHLETIC
But it does support performance and improve hydration.
That’s how you get to the point.
Step one, take the piss by destroying an objection put into the customer’s head by shit marketers.
Step two. Give an actual, reasonable benefit.
Step three, let them know they can disponible it in en pharmacie.
Bish, bash, bosh.
Clever, them Francophones.
She claims she either never borrowed them or that she gave them back. I 100% know she had them, and I’m equally certain I never binned them.
In the words of my old h2g2 sub-editor, copywriters are the “tawdry little whores” of the writing world. Yeah. Whores get paid too.