Creative Copywriting?
There is a difference between creative writing and copywriting.
It took me a while to come to terms with this but it's true,
there is a difference. When I first started my home based
business on the Internet I read a lot of advice about publishing
articles and doing copywriting to advertise your website. There
was always a distinction drawn between copywriting and creative
writing. I did not understand this: surely copywriting is
creative? Eventually the logic dawned on me: all copywriting is
creative writing but not all creative writers can write decent
ad copy. If you have never studied that particular branch of
philosophy, it's like all roses are flowers but not all flowers
are roses.
When I came to understand this difference, it explained for me
the reason why I can write at length on any subject (stopping is
the hard part) but tell me I need to write an advertisement and
I go all bashful and tongue-tied. Give me a subject or, indeed,
no subject at all -- just a blank page is sufficient to set me
going and I'll hammer away at the keyboard until... Until when?
Actually, I never really stop, just pause from time to time.
Advertising copy is a different matter. I can sit for ages
resisting the lure of the blank page if I know that what I need
to do is copywriting to use for advertising.
This inability to write ad copy caused me problems because I
wanted to advertise my home based business and various
individual affiliate programmes. Plenty of pre-written ads come
with most decent affiliate programmes and it is an easy matter
to copy and paste these but I wanted to use fresh material
instead of advertisements that everyone had seen a hundred times
before. I blame my inability to write advertising copy on my
upbringing: modesty and understatement were encouraged and
boastfulness was the eleventh deadly sin. It seemed to me that
writing advertisements for myself was akin to bragging.
Eventually, I overcame my distaste for self-proclamation and
tried my hand at some copywriting. When I compared my efforts
with the pre-written ads, it was obvious that something was
absent. My advertisements were dull and flat, uninspired and
uninspiring. Then I discovered the secret: copywriting is a
craft not an art. It is has rules which need to be learnt and
practised. A course of online copywriting lessons was not hard
to come by. In fact, I ended up reading several such courses on
the good old Information Highway.
Rules are fine, I have a good memory. Examples are not hard to
come by and it was easy to make a collection of snippets from
the copywriting courses. I learnt about the importance of
writing an attention grabbing headline. I can manage that, there
are plenty of examples to borrow. I got to grips with selecting
buzz words such as amazing, customised, effortless, excellent
and, the best one of all -- free. So far so good. Use sentence
fragments -- not so keen on that idea but, when you think about
it, that's how conversation goes in real life, so I'll do it.
Sell the sizzle not the steak --yeah, I get it. Offer benefits,
not features --yeah, yeah, I can do that.
Things started to look better and better as I became familiar
with the rules and I began to daydream about becoming a
copywriter (like in the film "The Guys" with that nice Anthony
La Paglia). My daydream ended abruptly when I found there was
one rule of English grammar I could not bring myself to break.
The very thought made me shudder and give up any idea of a
copywriting career. I can cope with all the fragments, buzzes
and sizzles. But I could never begin a sentence with "and".