At first glance, the Apple iPad just seemed so optional – another expensive device, another charger to plug in, another possession to be honoured. And the benefits were so marginal.

But having thought about it a little more deeply, I’m beginning to see what all the fuss is about. And I think it’s crucial to look past physical features and understand the experience offered by the iPad – and how important it could be for the digital marketing of the future.

Experience is everything

Because the internet is dominated by technically literate (and highly prolific) bloggers and commenters, much early online reaction to the iPad focused on its technical features (or lack thereof). Stephen Fry (in this post) was one of the earliest technophiles to guide doubters towards the actual experience of using the iPad, rather than an actuarial dissection of its spec-sheet. ‘The moment you experience it in your hands you know this is class,’ he wrote. ‘This is a different order of experience.’

He was absolutely right. Laundry lists of features or functionality are not the point. I don’t buy an electronic product because it’s achieved a particular technical benchmark or offers tons of features relative to competitors. I buy it because it’s going to change my life for the better by offering new, fun or cool experiences. Not just in terms of using the product itself, but also in terms of the real-world context of my experience.

Apple and the digital life

History teaches us not to bet against Apple

Apple has always understood that people buy experiences, not features. Its products are brilliantly designed and ergonomically peerless, but they are much more than mere museum pieces or geekboy fodder. They are ‘insanely great’ because they offer new, compelling digital experiences that normal people want in their lives. Often, they do so without being particularly innovative in technical terms.

Consider the iMac. It delivered functionality that people could easily get elsewhere. It wasn’t innovative. It wasn’t even particularly cheap. But it presented personal computing in a brilliant, compact design and made it utterly fun and accessible. It was a runaway success because it repositioned computing as a cool leisure activity ‘for the rest of us’. The iMac experience laid the groundwork for Apple’s majestic and still-unfolding umbrella marketing concept: the ‘digital life’.

So, what experience will iPad users be buying into?

Focus

At the core of the iPad experience is what we might call ‘focused digital browsing’. The iPad puts content at the centre of your experience in a way that a computer or phone doesn’t.

Phones are about mobile communication first and foremost, and clearly not ideal for reading. Computers, because of their functional design (and ubiquity in the workplace), orient us towards accomplishing tasks whenever we use them. Their versatility also provides myriad distractions from reading. 

Contrast that with the iPad, which can only run one app at a time, and isn’t a computer by any stretch of the imagination. Its mono-functionality deals a decisive blow to the fragmented, bitty concentration of today’s web user. No email or instant messages will intrude while users encounter content; the chances of having it read and understood properly just got a whole lot better.

For websites, copywriters might feel that longer, more involved text is appropriate, just as it is when writing advertisements for similarly ‘captive’ audiences in venues such as the Underground (US: subway). There might also be less emphasis on ‘interruptive’ marketing, or on trying to get users’ attention on a more general level. With an iPad, we can be much more confident that the audience is already attentive.

By the same token, PDFs and e-books will surely become much more important as marketing tools. Although they’ve always been important and viable, I don’t know anyone who reads them for pleasure. Scanning a product manual to find a key fact, yes. Working through a marketing guide page by page on screen, no. Not for me, anyway. But if the iPad takes off, I could well be recommending PDF brochures and e-books to my clients as important ways to build links with iPad-using customers.

Touch

The physical aspects of the iPad experience are fascinating. The user will probably be holding the tablet in their hands, like a book. Instead of clicking and scrolling with a spiky little black arrow or a tiny white hand, they’ll be caressing the screen with their very own fingers – literally touching the content. Ergonomically, the experience emphasises involvement, intimacy and closeness – as distinct from the remote, measured stance of the computer user sitting upright and using a mouse.

This might lead to more sensual, involving marketing content, aiming to capitalise on this ready-made intimacy between reader and medium. Perhaps we’ll also be trying to make on-screen shapes, colours, textures and words physically appealing – using images of objects that people like to touch (shiny levers, velvet curtains, polished wood). Over time, more sophisticated interaction through touch is sure to emerge (certainly through apps), but it will need to complement content if it’s going to work on a marketing level and not seem gimmicky.

Comfort

The iPad user seems very likely to be comfortable: probably at home, at leisure, in a comfortable location of their choice such as an armchair or sofa. Unlike readers at office desks, they’re not wishing they’re somewhere else. In fact, the urge to prolong pleasure is likely to keep them exactly where they are. They are ‘voluntarily captive’, and once again this might mean we can target them with longer, more involved marketing messages.

With the iPad, content really will be ‘beamed in’ to the leisure heart of the home. There may be the potential to allude much more directly to the user’s environment when selling particular products – sofas, for example – or, more generally, to capitalise on an existing mindset of leisure and reflection. For many products, the iPad is likely to put the user in a much better ‘buying place’ than a work laptop or even a machine set up at a home workstation.

Embeddedness

Some people feel the iPad threatens the paper book, but I don’t. Again, we must remember that people choose experiences, not products. An example: I might well buy vintage sci-fi in paper form, so I can read it in one of the four classic non-digital reading venues: beach, bed, bath and bog. However, I’m much more likely to get a business title in e-book form, so I can scan, search or quote from it more easily.

Instead of making a one-time, binary decision about which medium or device I’ll use to view ‘my content’, I’m selecting content and medium together to create my reading experience in a much more sophisticated, plural way. And this is how things always pan out. Just as only the most cutting-edge digital evangelist has ditched all their CDs and MP3s for Spotify, so only a handful of readers will switch to e-books exclusively. If old ways still appeal, users preserve their choice.

So even if the iPad takes off big time, we won’t know whether or when our audience are using an iPad to view our digital content. They’ll choose the channel that suits them at the time. But just as podcasts came to be strongly associated with iPods (even taking their name from them), I believe that some occasions, tasks, product types and market segments will come to be very strongly associated with tablet use.

For example, if you owned an iPad and did your weekly shop online, it seems very likely that you’d want to walk round the house with the iPad, checking what you needed and adding items to your basket as you went. It’s easy to imagine how other online selections or purchases could be supported by this kind of ‘around the home’ iPad use: contents insurance, home improvements and so on.

In the early days, we’ll probably just want to test on an iPad, and perhaps provide some content that’s flagged as being ‘especially for iPad users’. Later, we’ll probably plan, write and design digital marketing content in an iPad version – or even design exclusively for iPad. And at that point, I might have to consider buying one myself…

Every so often, a marketing contrarian will float the notion that customer testimonials or ratings aren’t worth featuring in your marketing, because they so transparently serve your own interests. I find this astonishing.

Let me qualify that. I’m not talking about quotes or ratings presented in a manner of your own choosing. Quotes included on your website or in your brochure are clearly open to editing, manipulation or even fabrication. And obviously, they’re selected too – you don’t seek or publish quotes from clients who weren’t 100% happy.

However, reviews submitted at third-party sites can be completely beyond your control. Every time I invite a client to review me at FreeIndex, I’m making myself a hostage to fortune. Of course, I choose the ones I think are happy, but for all I know they’ve been holding back on a reservation about the timescale or the price. In fact, anyone can review me at FreeIndex, whether I invite them or not. And the pages rank highly.

In fact, it’s arguably far too easy to post negative reviews. Have a look at this profile for a copywriter on Touch Local. She’s rated one star on the strength of one anonymous, invisible review, submitted via a one-page form (you can see it further down the page). Who did that? A customer? A competitor? A drunk teenager?

Assuming it’s not genuine, presumably, the onus is on her to notice the rating, approach the site and attempt to have it rescinded – or, failing that, gather enough positive reviews to bring her average up.

Even if it is a genuine rating, it seems like a raw deal – particularly since she’s contributed to the viability of the directory by submitting her details and may even be paying for priority listing. All that marketing effort and/or outlay has ended up harming her prospects instead of enhancing them.

What do you think? Has democracy gone too far?

Recently, the UK has been plunged into controversy (in some quarters, anyway) over whether the use of the word ‘paki’ by Strictly Come Dancing contestant Anton Du Beke was offensive or not.

On one side, the (largely conservative) nay-sayers argue that ‘paki’ is simply short for ‘Pakistani’, and hence a purely descriptive term, like ‘Brit’. How could anyone be offended by an affectionate term for their own nationality or origin? It’s political correctness gone mad!

Liberals point out that the term ‘paki’ is much more than that – a divisive, culturally loaded term with profoundly offensive connotations and clear overtones of contempt. Applied indiscriminately by whites to people of colour from the playground to the workplace, it has caused decades of hurt and offence, often accompanied by violence and intimidation. 

Much debate has focused on whether Du Beke is ‘really racist’, or whether he ‘really meant’ what he said. We can never know another’s state of mind except through language (spoken or otherwise), and speculation is fruitless. Most likely, this was a thoughtless comment, rather than malice.

But intention is a complete red herring. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so meaning is the ear of the listener. The meaning of a word, or a text, is defined by its context: the culture, values and linguistic conventions around it. As NLP teaches us, ‘the meaning of a communication is the response that you get’. The same word can have very different meanings depending on how, when, where and by whom it is used.

So the real point is whether people were offended. I don’t know any Pakistanis, so I can’t ask them. But the much-decried white liberal hand-wringing over this issue is real too, if arguably less important. If you call my mother a ‘fat cow’, I will be offended on her behalf. Who can say what types of offence are legitimate, and which are not?

Conservatives would no doubt argue that their views are legitimate too, and they’re not offended by ‘paki’, so what’s the problem? In the end, it comes down to motives and values. Why would you want to use language with the clear potential to offend and inflame hatred? ‘On principle’, perhaps, but the real reason can only be to voice racist sentiments in a disingenuous way.

But in the end, throwing around abstract terms like ‘racist’ is less important than people’s feelings in the here-and-now. We all have to get along. What critics scornfully term ‘political correctness’ is simply what used to be called ‘being polite’.

There are probably as many definitions of copywriting as there are copywriters. My own definition of copywriting is as follows:

Copywriting is the optimum use of language to promote or persuade.

Now, let me unpack the elements of this definition.

First, copywriting is all about finding the optimum way to communicate. The professional copywriter is always looking for the right answer: the right length of copy, the right structure, the right tone, the right choice of words. Diligent copywriters are convinced that there is a single best solution, and they’re driven to find it. Like Coleridge, they want to achieve ‘the best words in the best order’.

What is copywriting?

Next, use indicates that copywriting is a ‘useful art’: a creative activity with a practical purpose. In contrast to ‘pure’ creative writing – writing principally to entertain, or provoke thought – copywriting is all about achieving a particular outcome in the real world. We might enjoy reading (or writing) great copy, but its raison d’être is to do a job. The value of copywriting is the extent to which it succeeds in its purpose.

Language is the raw material of the copywriter. Notice that I didn’t say ‘writing’ – copywriting can include any carefully chosen language, including broadcast media or one-to-one communications like telephone scripts. It may also include visual language as well as verbal: the copywriter will often want to influence context and presentation (typography, design, imagery) to heighten the impact of their copy. Because the medium is the message.

Most copywriting exists in order to promote something: products or services mainly, but also new ideas (as in rebranding exercises) or points of view (as in political marketing). The copywriter’s goal is to communicate the strengths, advantages or benefits of whatever they are promoting so their audience buys into them – whether literally or metaphorically. (Promotional copywriting’s evil twin, ‘knocking copy’, aims to denigrate a rival product, service or idea.)

Persuasion means getting people to think, feel or act in a certain way. Effective copywriting leads the audience by the hand across the stepping-stones of reading, thinking, feeling and acting – in that order. It’s all about using intangible tools – words and thoughts – to achieve an outcome in the real world. And this, ultimately, is the fascination of copywriting: making things happen with something as insubstantial as words on a page.

I think copywriters are getting too scientific. In our anxiety to sit at the top management table, we’ve started to talk the language of sales and marketing – targeting, RoI, metrics – and position our words as another cog in the commercial machine. Direct-response copywriting is all about using words precisely to get a specific reaction from the audience, and approaches such as NLP can lead us into a mechanistic view of the writer-audience relationship (I say this, so you’ll do that). Finally, SEO imposes further discipline on us, twisting our words with tags so they’ll please the Googlebots.

Of course, this is largely what distinguishes copywriting from other writing – it must fulfil a practical function, not just provide entertainment for the reader or an outlet for the writer. But copywriting is still writing, and what makes it good can’t always be reduced to a formula. So I’d like to talk about some of the things you might look for in a copywriter that can’t necessarily be quantified or analysed, but still might make a big difference to your bottom line.

• Stories. Stories enchant us with a power rooted in childhood, or perhaps even the collective unconscious. They’re utterly compelling to listen to (or read), and they help us understand complex events and relationships with simple words and concepts. Good storytellers will always be able to command attention and make sure a message sticks. In marketing, stories can lead listeners from their situation to the course of action you want them to take (for example, by describing the typical experience of a satisfied customer of yours).


Guinness’ white horses: poetic, ineffable, brilliant

• Mystery. A good copywriter should be able to give reasons for every decision they make. Yet there are some choices that just can’t be justified rationally, even though they’re right. Slogans like ‘Who knows the secret of the Black Magic box?’ or scripts like that of the Guinness surfer ad resist being interpreted or decoded; they just are. This may be because they resonate with both the conscious and the unconscious simultaneously.
• Poetry. How do you choose between ‘light’, ‘glow’ and ‘radiance’? If you’re like me, you know which one is right in a given situation, but perhaps can’t explain why. Copywriters sometimes have to fall back on a sense of le mot juste to get them through – but they’re always aware that there’s a choice to be made, and that there’s always a right answer.
• Music. A good piece of writing needs to have a consistent pace and a recognisable structure, yet within that it needs to be dynamic, flowing and vivid. A good copywriter knows how to vary the length of paragraphs, sentences, phrases and words to preserve forward movement while retaining the element of surprise – just like a gifted melodist.
• Sensuality. Which tastes better – (a) cheese on toast, or (b) rich, creamy Double Gloucester melted over warm, crusty granary bread? The copywriter knows how to use the language of the senses to fire the reader’s imagination. This helps to make the course of action you want them to take (e.g. buying a product) more compelling and appealing than their current reality. Experienced copywriters know how to bring this type of appeal even when selling intangibles like B2B services.
• Tone. This does get some attention, but not nearly enough. Looking at marketing projects in isolation, it’s easy to forget that your audience usually gets a sense of your brand gradually, not at a stroke. Their experience stretches across multiple ‘touchpoints’(your website, your adverts, social media) and may involve several interactions before they buy. A copywriter can make sure the experience is consistent, congruent and confidence-building, no matter how disparate it is.

I studied literature and worked in publishing, so some of this is perhaps personal bias. But I think copywriters shouldn’t be afraid to come out and say that what they propose is right aesthetically as well as rationally. Good clients would respect it, and the world of marketing would be more interesting for it too.

The other day, a client facing a big marketing setback confided to me that he was going to go home, have a glass of wine and try to think it through.

I nodded sympathetically. Many’s the time I’ve combined work with leisure by doing some copywriting over a drink in the evening. A drop of something can often loosen up the flow of words, particularly when something expressive or colourful is required. (However, it can also cloud the judgement, so I always wait until the morning to send the results to the client.)

Newsflash: drugs were involved in the making of this record

No-one who enjoyed Under Milk Wood, Sgt. Pepper or Kubla Khan could deny that alcohol and drugs can enhance the creative process. Some of our greatest cultural works had their genesis in altered states. And they reached even those who never touched anything stronger than tea.

Yet I’m not sure how my clients would react if I revealed that their copywriting had been done under the influence. Even those who liked a drink themselves might be disquieted. And if I told a client I was going on a week-long acid binge to get ideas for their slogan, I’m pretty sure they’d be looking for another copywriter. (Not that I ever would, I hasten to add.)

The serious point I’m making is that although we know of many factors that boost creativity, we often deliberately exclude them from the corporate workplace, however acceptable they might be elsewhere. We might grudgingly allow a few pictures over a desk, or a radio on in the background, but these are intrusions of leisure into the world of work, not deliberate attempts to stimulate our minds. Even something completely wholesome, like spending some time in a natural environment, is only allowed in the rigid structure of the corporate ‘away day’ (if at all).

Those in the creative industries often make more effort to stimulate creativity through the working environment (although one suspects that it’s also partly for show). In my view, all work is creative – not just marketing, but every other business function too. We all have innate creativity that we use in solving the problems of our day. Why don’t we do more to stimulate it in the workplace?