WHY WRITERS DO IT BETTER
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An all-too familiar conversation:
"Wow, it’s so much better than the copy Tim did."
"Yeah, I’d hope so. Tim’s an account manager and I’m a writer."
As a writer, it’s amazing how often you surprise people with your ability to write. Not just that, but your ability to write well.
If you’re from an agency environment, you’ve likely heard the phrase 'everyone's a designer' and you’ll have seen designers suppressing eye rolls when someone with absolutely no background in design tells them what something should look like.
It’s a very similar situation for copywriters, except that pretty much everyone you work with, from academic papers to budget reports, has written to some capacity in their lifetime. However, just because you can put a comprehensive sentence together, doesn’t mean there is no place for writers in your business.
Copywriters can be brutal beings (with other people’s words, don’t ask to read the second draft of our novel).
You believe in your product and you believe that customers will only ‘get it’ if you put out an accompanying 50-word explanation. Copywriters know that simply isn't the case and we will come along with our red pens of doom and cut out the stuff that we know your customer, frankly, isn’t going to care about.
More often than some would care to admit, our concise explanation is better. It’s because we’re removed; we weren't putting in the late nights, early mornings, coffee runs etc that went into designing it.
We’re just there to explain the product and you can never underestimate a fresh pair of eyes and a new perspective.
On top of being too involved, you're surrounded by countless examples of bad writing. And the likelihood is, you don’t know it. Copywriters do, because we look for them. We look for the good examples but we look to the bad as the barometer of what not to do in our day job.
We won't bring you mediocre or bland copy, we stay away from overused or meaningless phrases (I’ve spoken about these copy nightmares before) because we see them all the time. We can't not see them. We’ll happily cut our friends off mid-sentence to point out awful copy or an errant apostrophe. We know they categorically don’t care, but we never let that stop us.
You should be using our overbearing and often snobby behaviour towards terrible copy and grammar to your advantage. Get in touch and let me answer the question you probably haven't been able to phrase yet.
