Blame The Copywriter, Not The Copy

Lately, I’m see­ing a lot of posts in pub­lic forums and blogs these days about peo­ple get­ting sick and tired of see­ing “crappy,” “hypey,” used-​​car, Ginsu-​​like, looooong copy.

Some of them come from guru-​​bashing naysay­ers who hate mar­ket­ing, which I always take with a grain of salt.

But some are intel­li­gent, mature, and com­mon­sen­si­cal. They are inter­est­ing because I believe that, while neg­a­tive feed­back does have its place, it’s often misplaced.

Here’s why. They blame long copy when all too often it’s not the copy’s fault. More impor­tantly, it’s not because of the length. Let’s get some­thing clear off the bat: long, Ginsu-​​like copy does work. It has always worked. It will always work. And it’s here to stay.

But (and it’s a big “but”)…

Peo­ple object to them not because of what they say but how they say it. Take a look at the web. Noticed how it’s being used right now by many wannabe copy­writ­ers or naive mar­keters? Tons. They are the cul­prits — not the process.

(Actu­ally, their lack of sales and writ­ing skills is the culprit.)

There’s an inter­est­ing point to make in all this.

Some peo­ple are mud­dy­ing the facts with sec­ondary objec­tions that are mis­lead­ing — although some of these objec­tions are appro­pri­ate, as some saleslet­ters are indeed too long, bor­ing and hypey. But they are con­fused with the real issue, here.

There’s a dif­fer­ence between short copy and brief copy. Between long copy and long-​​winded copy. Between pithy copy that may still be long and short copy that’s curt, leaves the reader hang­ing, and doesn’t tell enough to make the sale.

Back to The Point...

In its defense, some have used the excuse that the sale is the ulti­mate result. Noth­ing else mat­ters. And that those object­ing to “crappy” copy are not prospects, and make the error that the copy is not meant for them and there­fore they have no right to object.

Yes and no.

We can all say that “con­ver­sion is queen,” and that “some­one who objects is usu­ally not tar­geted for the offer.” In some cases, that may very well be true. But in many cases, I beg to dif­fer. And I’ll tell you why in a moment…

But I also believe that, most of the time, the obvi­ous, “hypey,” used-​​car approach used in copy has really noth­ing to do with the hype itself but every­thing to do with the fact that the owner (or the copy­writer) doesn’t know how to sell. Period.

Why do brazen, used-​​car sales­men have such a stigma, when some have shat­tered sales records sell­ing and even reselling cars over and over to the same peo­ple? Like Joe Girard, for exam­ple, the Guin­ness Record holder for sell­ing the most cars?

You see, it’s not the approach. It’s the people.

Specif­i­cally, it’s the lack of sales and per­sua­sion skills.

Hype may have a neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion. But when used prop­erly and blended with inter­est­ing, riv­et­ing copy, as well as pow­er­ful sto­ries (I call this “sto­ry­selling”) and tar­geted to the right peo­ple, is often dis­re­garded or ignored.

In fact, when hyper­bole is used prop­erly, most read­ers will look at hype as “pas­sion,” “car­ing,” “empa­thy,” “per­son­al­ity,” “con­ver­sa­tional,” etc. Not “hype.”

When peo­ple object to crappy copy, they’re not object­ing to the fact they are using long, hypey, direct mar­ket­ing. Even though it may seem that way. They are object­ing to the poor sales­man­ship on the part of the writer or marketer.

Specif­i­cally, on their poor use of long, hypey copy — and not the pitch itself.

You see, use this approach prop­erly, and peo­ple will down­play the hype. But use it improp­erly, and you will lead peo­ple, includ­ing prospects, to see right through it and con­clude that it is indeed just a bunch of hype. And there­fore, a load of crap.

(And by exten­sion, they’ll also believe that the prod­uct and the busi­ness behind it are just as crappy. Nat­u­rally. I call this a “UPA,” or an uncon­scious par­al­leled assump­tion.)

It's Psychology, Pure And Simple.

For exam­ple, some peo­ple point out copy that say things like, “to be hon­est, Ms. Prospect…” “frankly, I’m puz­zled,” or, “I’m going to be flat-​​out truth­ful with you, Mrs. Prospect, and tell you some­thing [that’s going to blow your socks off],” blah, blah, blah.

And they equate this tac­tic to be the sign of poor copy.

As you know, I used to be a sales trainer in a for­mer career. Sales train­ing says you should never to say, “to be hon­est,” “to be frank,” or “to be truth­ful with you.” Because, uncon­sciously, prospects will think you must be dis­hon­est if you need to say it.

They think, “Gee, was he dis­hon­est until now?”

Like in sales train­ing, they tell you that instead it’s best to say, “to be can­did with you,” “to be open with you,” “to be forth­right with you,” or “to be more to the point with you.”

They’ve been teach­ing this in Sales 101 for ages!

But that’s seman­tics. In my opin­ion, I believe you cer­tainly can say “hon­est” and so on, as long as you are not per­ceived as try­ing to “pull a fast one.”

If you are and, more impor­tantly, if you appear gen­uine, empa­thetic, and pas­sion­ate, then it becomes part of a nor­mal, nat­ural con­ver­sa­tion — not a bla­tant, hypey sales pitch, where any­thing you say makes you look incred­u­lous or suspect.

Any­way, it’s just one very small exam­ple of poor sales skills. Which trans­lates into poor copy. Which inevitably leads to these kinds of objections.

Now, to The Other Points.

Per­son­ally, I do think much of the copy on the web these days down­right suck. I’m not talk­ing about the typ­i­cal bland, pro­fes­sional, cor­po­rate­s­peak that makes you yawn. I’m refer­ring to some people’s dis­mal attempt at long, hard-​​hitting, “grab-​​their-​​money” copy.

Often, it’s under­stand­able. It’s an attempt by the mar­keter or copy­writer to “copy” the Ginsu-​​like style of hard-​​hitting copy for their own offers.

Whether they’re swip­ing or mim­ic­k­ing them, if they don’t under­stand the prin­ci­ples of good sales­man­ship, they often do it all wrong. In the end, it’s those kinds of saleslet­ters that make all long, hard-​​hitting sales copy look bad.

For exam­ple, they pack their copy with adjec­tives, superla­tives, adverbs, and carnival-​​barking, snakeoil ver­biage that makes you cringe in hor­ror with every pass­ing sentence.

You know the kind, right?

“Get my super-​​fast, heart-​​pumping, stun­ningly lightning-​​fast, jack-​​hammer-​​powered, amaz­ingly sweet, orgas­mic, googley-​​eye-​​inducing, whiz-​​bang wid­get right NOOOOOOWWWW!!!”

Some peo­ple say it insults their intelligence.

It’s not the fact that it insults prospects’ intel­li­gences. It’s the fact that, if we feel it does, it means the writer didn’t do his job, didn’t know the prod­uct well enough, and laced their copy with superla­tives because they don’t know how to write or how to sell.

I once inter­viewed my friend Gary Hal­bert, one of the best copy­writ­ers in the world before he passed away. And he said it best. To para­phrase, he said some­thing like this:

“Copy that tries to make a freakin’ explo­sion is going to turn peo­ple off and makes the pitch so unbe­liev­able sim­ply because the writer doesn’t know what the heck he/​she is doing. Period.”

Then I inter­viewed John Carl­ton, who said some­thing sim­i­lar. It all comes down to pas­sion, per­sua­sion, influ­ence, psy­chol­ogy, and the power of sto­ry­telling — oth­er­wise, it ends up with superlative-​​laden, used-​​car ver­nac­u­lar that makes you want to puke.

Bottom Line, It Comes Down to This...

• Know your prod­uct.
• Know your audi­ence.
• Know how to sell (i.e., how to con­nect the first two).

The web has made it pos­si­ble for the pro­lif­er­a­tion of wannabes, or mar­keters who don’t know their prod­uct enough (from their prospects’ per­spec­tive, that is) who attempt to write copy that mim­ics cheesy late-​​night informercials.

Let me repeat it: the Ginsu approach does work when it is used properly.

(And in many, many, many cases, it is not.)

In that inter­view men­tioned ear­lier, John Carl­ton talked about pas­sion and sales­man­ship in copy­writ­ing. Peo­ple who use this kind of adjective-​​laden copy are sim­ply not skilled in sell­ing, and haven’t truly woken their “inner sales­per­son” to sell really well.

Usu­ally, there’s no hook, no empa­thy, no eye-​​grabbing copy, no real ben­e­fits, no rea­sons why, and above all, no story. So, since the writer didn’t do their job, they often resort to adjec­tives and adverbs sim­ply because they have noth­ing else to work with.

I could go on and on, but I am get­ting sick and tired of poor copy — par­tic­u­larly poor copy giv­ing good copy (and good copy­writ­ers) a bad name. I see this all the time, with my copy cri­tiques as well as some of the offers I come across on the web.

It’s not poor copy.

It's Poor Selling.

Now, some­one also said that, while we can bitch and com­plain about crappy copy, it really boils down to under­stand­ing two dif­fer­ent mar­ket­ing approaches — i.e., a marketer’s choice of approach to fit short-​​term or long-​​term goals.

That is, they can choose between the get-​​your-​​money, go-​​for-​​the-​​jugular, aggres­sive direct mar­ket­ing kind, and the relationship-​​driven, good-​​customer-​​service, warm-​​fuzzy, brand­ing kind. (And thus, there’s copy that appeals to both, respec­tively to the hard-​​hitting hype, ver­sus the soft-​​selling edi­to­r­ial style.)

My take? It doesn’t have to be a choice, really.

I agree with the spirit of what they said. Since direct mar­ket­ing is so quick, direct, and mea­sur­able, it is an oppor­tu­nity for peo­ple to jump in, hit ‘em hard, and make a quick buck — and for some, run out of town. (The lat­ter is a true snakeoil salesman.)

But, I just want to point out some­thing, per­haps not to dif­fer but to clar­ify. An my point is that, while it’s true in some cases, it’s not true in all the cases.

Many direct mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies who use hard-​​hitting copy and aggres­sive sales approaches have also cre­ated strong rela­tion­ships, solid brand equity, great cus­tomer ser­vice, and pow­er­ful name recog­ni­tion for them­selves, too.

But they achieved it as a byprod­uct, not as a dis­tinct goal.

They sim­ply decided not to spend mil­lions of dol­lars on ad agen­cies to build their brands, take huge risks, or work really hard (and wait a long time) using soft-​​sell tech­niques to cre­ate the much-​​needed word of mouth.

(Why? Because brand­ing, pub­lic­ity and relationship-​​building is risky busi­ness, because it’s not account­able, jus­ti­fi­able, or as mea­sur­able as direct marketing.)

And “short-​​term” direct mar­keters, as they were referred to, who use hard-​​hitting, seem­ingly “hypey” copy are not just in it for the quick buck.

Granted, some are. And granted, some com­pa­nies have indeed taken the low-​​key approach and suc­ceeded amaz­ingly fast with­out using any hard-​​hitting copy.

But they suc­ceeded for many other rea­sons: they’ve cre­ated a highly in-​​demand prod­uct or a new prod­uct with a great twist. They’ve used niche mar­ket­ing, buzz cre­ation, viral mar­ket­ing, or guer­rilla mar­ket­ing. Or they’ve devel­oped a cult fol­low­ing, etc.

Take Google, For Instance.

They “did” it with almost no adver­tis­ing or hard-​​selling.

But just after their record-​​breaking IPO hit Wall Street, the Chief Exec of Mar­ket­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tions — also said to be the brain­child behind Google’s mar­ket­ing suc­cess — is resign­ing over dif­fer­ences with the com­pany, who’s now look­ing into going “Madison-​​Avenue” style of million-​​dollar ad-​​agency advertising.

Now, some­thing impor­tant needs to be said…

Build­ing rela­tion­ships should be the aim of every mar­keter. But I think there’s a dis­tinc­tion between cre­at­ing rela­tion­ships as a byprod­uct of good cus­tomer ser­vice ver­sus relationship-​​only mar­ket­ing that strives to cre­ate a brand name and image.

The lat­ter is often expen­sive, time-​​consuming, and risky. Of course, it may indeed work. If the long-​​term, brand-​​focused busi­ness is lucky enough to make it work, the suc­cess shifts into cruise-​​control, and no longer requires a lot of work, time or money.

(How­ever, that suc­cess is not per­ma­nent. There are main­te­nance costs involved. Because they even­tu­ally will have to fight off com­pe­ti­tion, spend more money to keep the brand alive, pen­e­trate new mar­kets to keep rev­enues lev­eled, etc.)

As for direct mar­keters being strictly “short term,” I don’t think so.

Maybe it’s a short-​​term approach in terms of results or cam­paign efforts. And maybe it’s true in some cases. But not all direct mar­keters have the goal of stay­ing short-​​term… of mak­ing a quick sale and bail­ing out like some snakeoil salesman.

How many direct mar­keters out there have used hard-​​selling copy, and cre­ated great brands and name recog­ni­tion, and even used their con­trols — their old yet ubiq­ui­tous, hard-​​hitting ads — for years and years? Lots. Mucho lots.

Look at DAK, Ronco, Ginsu, TimeLife, as well as saleslet­ters and ads that are old and still run­ning to this day: oldies like the Charles Atlas ad, to fairly new­bies like Jeff Paul’s advertorial-​​style saleslet­ter, “Mak­ing $4,000 a day at your kitchen table in your under­wear.” (Which is still run­ning, what, for over a decade, now?)

About the Author

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