Copywriting Is — the lost chapter
A preface
You may have heard (probably from me) that I wrote a book about copywriting called Copywriting Is: 30-or-so thoughts on thinking like a copywriter. If you have managed to get your hands on it, and your eyeballs into it, then I have nothing but enormous thanks for you. If you haven’t — there will be a link shortly and I shall be checking.
However, this piece isn’t necessarily just another lazy attempt to flog a few more volumes. It is a little, but I recently made a discovery in the dingiest corner of my laptop’s catacombs — a lost chapter from Copywriting Is.
There are, of course, a few chapters that were chopped from initial publication — some of them cheerfully by me, some ruthlessly by the editors.
But this is one that I simply, and hopelessly, mislaid — and it never even had its chance to sit beneath the hungry red pen of the fine folk at Gasp Books.
There is not a lot I can do with it now — other than toss it out into the copywriting world for anyone who might like to see it. I hope you enjoy it.
AB
Copywriting Is… Praise
Or, if you can’t say something nice, say something nice anyway
One of my guilty alphabetical pleasures is to read Pauline Kael film reviews. Not that Pauline Kael is anything other than an astounding writer — actually she’s (yet another) hero of mine.
Rather the guilt comes from her occasional tendency to ‘pan’ a film. A panning, in case you can’t guess, is basically a trashing, a slamming, a dismembering or any other equally violent dismantling of the film.
These are written with piercing wit and, at times, a cruel brilliance — for example she dismissed one film by poor Jeanne Moreau as a ‘wrong-note sonata’.
And while I enjoy them thoroughly, the guilt comes from my squeamishness at the puncturing of creative pride, regardless of how well earned it may be. It’s the same meekness that makes me reluctant to criticise terrible copy when I see it in the world. There are, I always imagine, honest writers behind the work and their vision for something better could (and probably was) snatched out of their hands by other, non-creative forces.
But while Kael’s ‘pannings’ are a lesson in how to brutally undermine a cynical or otherwise dishonourable creative endeavour, the naked harshness of any sort of creative feedback is something I’ve never bought into.
In fairness to Kael neither did she, really. ‘Panning can be fun’ she once said in an interview ‘but it’s also show-offy and cheap — it isn’t sustaining’. If it’s possible, I admire her all the more for those words.
In copywriting, or marketing in general, some senior figures try to spin a virtue out of vindictive creative feedback — especially when aimed at those who are still learning the way.
The flimsy excuse for this is that the ruthlessness of the critique is simply honesty — or rather a generous conferring of honesty that is the only possible way for young writers to learn.
This is, by almost every meaningful measure, poppycock. Honesty in creative feedback is inarguably the most valuable thing new writers can ask from experienced ones. But to dress that honesty in anything demeaning or destabilising is an old-fashioned game of power and control and, sadly, suppression. You have not taught a young writer how to write well, you have made them afraid to try.
A great deal of senior creatives in the marketing world will not agree with me here — it may be quite uncomfortable for them to look more closely at the philosophy behind how they ‘nurture’. Thankfully though, I am not quite alone in my view that compassionate criticism is the true path to creative growth.
Bonny Siegler, in her wonderful book ‘Dear Client: This Book Will Teach You How To Get What You Want From Creative People’ she observes:
‘Creatives are more often than not sensitive souls, a quality that helps us create great work. But this quality also means that we work better with people who are trusting and positive.’
Of course, the natural objection to such an approach is that nobody gains anything from a wholly cuddly attitude to creativity. If the work is not good enough — and much of the time it won’t be, at least to begin with — then it is actively damaging to soften all the blows.
But there is nothing stopping any senior creative from turning a poor beginning into an encouraging second attempt. We wouldn’t be doing our job if we failed to point out the flaws, but surely we’re abdicating an equally important role as creative mentor if we don’t also point out the glimmers of hope. In any creative process, redemption must always be on the table, otherwise why would any of us willingly go again?
Rarely will a young writer bring you a piece of work that doesn’t bear some redeeming features — whether it’s the thinking, the phrasing, the research or simply the sincerity with which they have approached the task. If we choose not to acknowledge the good that has gone into a bad first effort, then we are simply conditioning these writers to abandon their positive habits along with the negative ones.
Despite what the cult of Machismo Marketing may have taught you in your own developmental years, there is no shame or weakness in giving praise — just as young creatives should never feel that it’s immature or needy to want it.
Show me a creative, of any level, who doesn’t thrive on praise and I’ll show you a bear who shits on the moon. I could, however, easily show you a load of senior agency figures who ask for ‘fearless’ creative from their juniors while simultaneously ruling them through fear.
Of course, it can go too far and cause young copywriters to become a blockade to their own development. As Joseph Heller (a former copywriter himself) wrote in his novel ‘God Knows’: ‘the person who wants praise will never be satisfied with praise’.
When we are learning our alphabetical business, we can’t take praise, or its absence, too seriously. But when we are teaching good young writers how to be great ones, we can’t take praise seriously enough.
And if you’d like to see the 30-or-so chapters that I didn’t carefully mislay, you can pick up a copy of the book here
