In this post, copywriter Martin Williams discusses the use of the word ‘copywriter’, and whether it is coming under pressure from content mills such as Copify. He argues, passionately, that authentic, carefully developed content is the only possible basis for an effective social media campaign, which in turn drives search too. So do we need a new word to describe what ‘real’ copywriters do, as opposed to content mills?

This post presents my responses to Martin’s post (and will make more sense if you read his post first).

What’s in a name?

What really got everyone’s goat about Copify was their hijacking of the term ‘copywriting’, for instance in their tagline ‘changing the way people think about copywriting’. If they’d set up as ‘content generation services’, or whatever, far fewer copywriters would have been bothered. Equating 2p-a-word content creation with the careful, considered approach of an experienced marketing, publishing or digital professional is ludicrous, and Copify were duly called out on it.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet

For my money, ‘copywriter’ still denotes the high end of the market – right up to highly experienced creatives who can charge hundreds for a single advert or slogan. There are many different types of writer under the umbrella of ‘copywriting’, but the sense of a consultancy/service rather than a by-the-yard word factory is pretty well understood – with the possible exception of ‘SEO copywriting’, which does have some connotations of cranking out the copy I think. (But that’s not to say that all SEO copywriters are content-crankers, Andrew!)

Come for the writing, stay for the thinking

It’s this consultancy/service aspect that distinguishes a ‘proper’ copywriter from a content creator. Or to put it another way, clients pay for the thinking, not just the writing. Working with a copywriter who takes the time to engage with you, your values and your character as a business is what makes the difference between getting content and being content. And it’s dispiriting to trade under a name that implies you simply churn out the words without paying much mind to the purpose of the exercise.

J’accuse!

However, when I look at my own website, or those of other copywriters, it always strikes me that we do tend to sell ourselves short in this regard. There’s a general emphasis on ‘words’, ‘writing’, ‘content’ and so on, although the incidence of pen imagery seems to be on the decline. This rather prosaic positioning is sometimes leavened with some promise to drive sales or build brands.

We tend to push the craft of copywriting rather than its business benefits. And when we do try to force our way into the boardroom, it isn’t always convincing – perhaps because we don’t quite believe we should be in there ourselves (but that’s another story).

Let me reiterate, I include myself in this criticism. My own tagline, ‘We’ll choose your words carefully’, is typical. Why should a client care about that? What does it do for them?

Where’s the value?

If I were advising a client who was a copywriter, I’d probably exhort them to emphasise the value being added rather than the service being delivered. As with tool manufacturers who are in the business of selling holes rather than drills, it’s the ultimate benefits that sell a service, not the nuts and bolts of its delivery. Positioning as a seller of words weakens the offer and invites like-for-like comparison with low-cost providers.

Could we therefore rebrand as ‘content consultants’ or similar, just as designers might describe themselves as, say, ‘creative directors’ or ’senior creatives’? My feeling is we could, but there might not be such a benefit to it.

First, ironically, we’d lose out on people searching the web for ‘copywriter’. Online, you can’t get away from the need to use the language your client uses, and people start from a perception that they need content, so they search for the word most closely associated with their need. (Many firms developing their websites don’t even get that far, so we should be grateful.)

Secondly, we’d lose the very important emphasis on language as the tool for marketing communication, and the positioning of ourselves as the people who can take the client all the way from concept or value proposition through to words on a page. In my experience, being the person who ‘gets’ a company and can express its values in writing is a pretty good position to be in. I wouldn’t want a title that made me sound like an expensive luxury.

So, in summary, while it’s probably worth talking about the high-end stuff we can do, I think we need to keep our feet on the ground.

What the future holds

I personally think that the market will sort itself out. ‘Content’ and ‘copy’, for want of better words, will diverge more and more as clients become more literate, and there will actually be less need to differentiate, not more.

Those who just want content will get it. Those who want something better, and try to get it from a Copify, will change their approach. Those who think they just need something written will soon realise, from working with a professional, that they’re not just delegating an admin-level task that they could just as easily handle in-house. And those who appreciate the value of a true copywriter won’t be going anywhere.

‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…’

If, like me, you fondly remember being taken to the cinema to see George Lucas’ magnum opus in the late 1970s, you probably can’t read those words without a little shiver of anticipation. Appearing silently in cyan text on a black ground at the beginning of the film, they conjured up far more magic than the doughty, bisyllabic title ‘Star Wars’ ever could.

Such is the power of the tagline. Even if your company name is an emotional blank (‘IBM’), you can always bolt some words on to it to make it sing (‘I think, therefore IBM’). Provided your audience makes a lasting link between the phrase and your brand, you’ve added a new verbal and emotional ‘hook’ to your value proposition.

This article looks at a few types of company tagline, weighing up the pros and cons of each, and discusses the special case of B2B company taglines.

What is a company tagline?

A company tagline is simply a brief phrase that is closely allied with a company name or brand.

It can appear in a range of media, typically including websites, stationery, printed marketing collateral, TV advertisements and so on. Often, the tagline appears in close proximity with the company name and/or logo; in some cases it is ‘locked up’ with the logo so that graphic and phrase form a single visual unit.

Is there a difference between a slogan and a tagline? Well, in my mind, a slogan is associated with a particular product, service or marketing campaign, whereas a tagline is associated with a company or a brand. Some marketers express this distinction as ‘product tagline’ vs ‘company tagline’. So you can have several slogans or product taglines, but only one company tagline. And your slogans are likely to change more often than your company tagline, which is a key part of building equity in a brand long-term.

Every company tagline is different – or should be. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Lloyds TSB – see below.) However, there are recognisable types. Let’s look at a few of them.

Factual taglines

These taglines simply state a fact about the company.

• ‘Gaming since 1981’ (Computer & Video Games)

Whether these taglines work depends on whether the fact invoked constitutes a customer benefit. Many facts of which companies are justifiably proud don’t actually translate into benefits. For example, will I give more weight to CVG’s views on Heavy Rain because they were around to review Manic Miner? Well, I might, but someone born in 1995 probably wouldn’t – in fact, in the fast-moving games arena, being around for decades won’t necessarily establish credibility. As in other areas, longevity is a boast rather than a benefit.

Egocentric taglines

These taglines aim to encapsulate what you do or who you are as a company.

• ‘Touching lives, improving life’ (Procter & Gamble)
• ‘We try harder’ (Avis)
• ‘We’re Exxon’ (erm, Exxon)
• ‘Good with food’ (Co-Operative)
• ‘Beyond petroleum’ (BP)
• ‘We’ll choose your words carefully’ (ABC Copywriting)

In some cases, egocentric taglines can allude to a customer benefit – they offer, at some level, a promise of value. (One could argue that the P&G and Avis slogans do this.) But at other times, they’re simply corporate chest-beating (Exxon’s above being an egocentric boast par excellence). And because the best copywriting focuses on the customer, not the company, that’s probably best avoided. You want your tagline to leave at least some space for your audience to inhabit. That’s why ABC’s tagline includes the word ‘your’. Saying ‘We choose words carefully’ would be far less engaging, inviting the response ’so what?’

Benefit taglines

These taglines communicate a benefit that you offer to your customers.

• ‘Every little helps’ (Tesco)
• ‘Reach out and touch someone’ (AT&T)
• ‘Feel better, look better’ (Boots)
• ‘Discover a world of flavour’ (Unearthed)

To write a benefit tagline, you need to isolate the single most important benefit that people get when they choose your products or services. As I’ve suggested before, your selling point doesn’t have to be unique. But it does need to be compelling.

In some cases, such as Tesco above, the benefit is very loosely defined, or only alluded to tangentially. But it’s still there. The Tesco tagline positions the chain as a ‘best price’ value proposition (‘every little saving helps’) while also faintly evoking its broad service portfolio (‘every little extra service helps’).

Often, benefit taglines are written in the imperative (as with AT&T, Boots and Unearthed above) – a direct command to the reader. The unspoken postscript is ‘…by choosing our product’. AT&T aren’t suggesting that you reach out and touch someone in the queue at the chemist’s.

Abstract taglines

These taglines, increasingly popular in the post-Lovemarks marketing world, express almost nothing concrete about the company. Instead, they abstract tangible customer benefits or brand values into an emotional state or abstruse metaphor.

• ‘For the journey’ (Timberland and, bizarrely, Lloyds TSB)
• ‘See what you can do’ (O2)
• ‘I’m lovin’ it’ (McDonald’s)
• ‘Just do it’ (Nike)
• ‘Make. Believe’ (Sony)
• ‘It’s you!’ (Yahoo!)

The most obvious problem with this kind of tagline is that conjures no benefit, and therefore creates very little ‘glue’ between the phrase and your brand. So while these taglines might be striking in the context of a particular campaign, they might not give readers a lasting, memorable reason to buy from you specifically. ‘For the journey’ might prompt me to get some kit together for my outdoor holiday, but it doesn’t give me any particular reason to choose Timberland – unless I recall the phrase and the association with that particular brand when I shop.

As these examples show, abstract taglines are the preserve of companies whose brands already have strong ‘recognition’ and ‘penetration’, in marketer-speak, and they’re looking to give them an intriguing new twist to keep them fresh in people’s minds. Multinationals have enough above-the-line spend to throw so much branding mud at the wall that some is bound to stick – but that kind of marketing muscle is beyond the reach of most middling or emerging brands.

Abstract taglines magnify the mystique and aura of ‘touching’ a major brand. If you’re a sole trader or SME, they may not be so effective: you probably won’t be able to deliver an experience that lives up to the glitz, or promote the message in mass-market ‘push’ channels like TV or outdoor advertising. A plumber who sticks a phrase like ‘For the journey’ on his promotional pens probably won’t gain any new customers as a result.

Question taglines

These company taglines pose a question to the reader. The question may be rhetorical, or there may be an implication that the company asking the question can somehow help with the answer.

• ‘Where do you want to go today?’ (Microsoft)
• ‘What’s in your wallet?’ (Capital One)
• ‘Doesn’t your dog deserve Alpo?’ (Alpo, a US dog food)

Question taglines tread the fine line between intrigue and irritation. Generally, questioning your audience is risky because you’re asking them to think when they probably can’t be bothered. It doesn’t help if, as with Microsoft, the question you’re asking them is open, abstract and not directly related to your product. The Alpo/Capital One method is much better – ask a leading, rhetorical question that, when the natural answer is provided, implies or leads to a purchase.

B2B taglines

You’ve probably noticed that most of the examples I’ve given so far are B2C (business-to-consumer) taglines, rather than B2B (business-to-business). That’s because creating and using a B2B tagline is a very different – and far more difficult – proposition.

B2B taglines are fundamentally unlike their B2C counterparts because the mindset of the target customer is so different. Whereas B2C brands usually seek to establish ‘soft’ emotional connotations for their products, B2B marketing is much more focused on concrete benefits. B2C brands are often trying to attract disposable, personal or leisure income to an optional purchase; B2B is about securing budgetary commitment for a carefully considered commercial project.

While some B2B brands do have emotional overtones, they’re much weaker, rarely feature in buying discussions and never constitute an overriding reason to buy. While I might spend extra cash to get a Mac rather than a Dell at home because I love the Apple brand and experience, I’m probably going to have a harder time convincing the financial director that we need them for the whole office on those grounds.

Stripping away the emotional elements of the buying decision effectively levels the playing field between B2B brands, commoditising their products to some degree. For many high-end B2B providers (i.e those likely to market themselves using a tagline), the justification for their higher prices revolves around premium quality, better service or superior RoI. Ultimately, most B2B benefits boil down to ‘make money’, ‘save money’ or ‘save time’; they’re not about the customer feeling, believing or loving anything unique.

The perennial problem in B2B marketing is that everyone else is saying the same kind of thing and invoking the same kind of benefits, obliging the B2B firm to go into detail (e.g. with testimonials or case studies) to make their case. But that type of detail is the exact opposite of a tagline, which is essentially a broad-brush, unsubstantiated statement of a brand value.

Because they can’t encapsulate differentiation, many B2B taglines end up sounding generic, bland or non-specific:

• ‘Syncronising the world of commerce’ (UPS)
• ‘Invent’ (Hewlett-Packard)

Others end up relying on copywriting clichés that do accurately describe the benefits on offer but have lost their communicative power through overuse.

• ‘High performance. Delivered’ (Accenture)
• ‘Simplify, Automate, Secure’ (Computer Associates)

The hazard here is the same as with abstract B2C taglines – you end up making a generic case for using someone like you, rather than promoting yourself uniquely. The benefits are real, and the words are the right ones to describe them, but there’s just no differentiation to be had at such a macro level.

Many B2B taglines could be swapped with those of direct competitors, or even firms in other industries, with precious little effect. But you can still stand out if competitors have dissimilar taglines, or no tagline at all. Just don’t fall into the trap of using something crashingly unoriginal – see this post on the many firms who use ‘Our people make the difference’.

When I’m asked to come up with a B2B tagline, I often suggest that it should be informative rather than touchy-feely. If the brand is completely anonymous (e.g. ‘GHD Technology’) then the tagline can give the audience an insight into what’s being offered (e.g. ‘On-site PC service and repairs’).

It’s dull, but effective. The initial touchpoint for B2B brands is very often online – and when people are surfing, you need to hook them by confirming that they’ve reached the right place. If your brand doesn’t do it, the tagline should; visitors might not bother to hang around and discover exactly what kind of ‘proactive solutions’ you ‘deliver’, or in what area you’re hoping to ‘exceed expectations’.

By precisely positioning a B2B firm, the right descriptive tagline can turn an also-ran into a specialist player – perhaps even a unique one. Many service providers want to look big by claiming a ‘one stop shop’ or ‘full-service’ offering – in many cases, they’d be better off admitting their limits and turning them into selling points (see Let’s be honest).

One final thought – if you really love your tagline, why not turn it into a song? It worked for KPMG in 2001, when their corporate anthem ‘A Vision of Global Strategy’ became an explosive internet meme, albeit not really for the right reasons. Firms would kill for that kind of viral exposure today. Listen to the song here, or sign up to its Facebook appreciation group here.

Further reading

• List of slogans at Tagline Guru – long list of high-profile US B2C slogans
• Top 10 brand tagline trends for 2009 – fascinating details of the most-used words in brands’ taglines (also fairly US-focused)
• The Tagline Trap (PDF) – article on the perils of B2B firms attempting to imitate B2C taglines (written by the wonderfully named Gib Trub)
• Taglines: The Cheesy Way to Express What Your Business Does – article suggesting that B2B firms should not have taglines, with a link to…
• What’s your company slogan? – UK Business Labs forum where many B2B and B2C SMEs have posted their own slogans
• A nice beat, but can you dance to it? – Fast Company’s survey of corporate songs, including background to KPMG’s anthem

When we use metaphors (or similes), we compare one thing to another so we can understand or explain it better. We do this to explain it, to understand it or sometimes just to make our language more colourful.

Life’s but a shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.

Here, the core of the metaphor is the equation ‘life=theatre’, with the secondary meaning ‘people=actors’. In these lines, Shakespeare is explicitly saying that our lives are as brief and futile as a play – a meaningless shadow rather than anything real. Implicitly, he’s also saying that we have little control over our destinies, like actors whose lines are written down for them. Once the parallel is drawn, a metaphor opens up a range of ways to think about something in a new way.

Metaphors in NLP

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) takes language seriously, acknowledging that it shapes the way we think. NLP practitioners pay close attention to the words people choose. By really listening to what people say, we can learn about the way they see themselves or the world.

To an NLP practitioner, metaphors are interesting because of their limits. They illuminate some truths while obscuring others; in NLP terminology, there are things they ‘allow’ and things they ‘disallow’.

For example, we might say that a trusted friend is ‘a rock’. Obviously, there are lots of unintended literal meanings: our friend probably isn’t thousands of years old, rough to the touch or permanently rooted to the spot. When we liken them to a rock, we’re saying that they’re solid and reliable.

However, they are human, so their moods and opinions change. Since rocks don’t change, our metaphor obscures this aspect of their personality, locking them into an idea of stolidity that may be limiting (for us, or for them). This highlights the importance of ‘stepping out’ of metaphors when they are no longer useful.

Liquid engineering

Over 35? This might take you back a bit (click to watch the advert)

A good example of a strong metaphor in copywriting is the slogan used for Castrol GTX in the 1980s: ‘liquid engineering’. In just two words, it transformed an everyday, almost commodity product into something essential and sophisticated.

Copywriting metaphors like this derive their power from two sources: imagery and emotion. In general, people find it easy to grasp concrete images, and harder to understand abstract concepts. Moreover, they respond more strongly when their hearts are appealed to, rather than just their minds. ‘Liquid engineering’ equates Castrol’s oil (an inanimate object) with attentive, skilful human engineers, suggesting that it provides a similar level of care, while appealing to the customer’s desire to care for their engine and safeguard their investment.

Leaky umbrella

Castrol’s metaphor was apposite, elegant and memorable – a brilliant piece of copywriting. But it’s very easy to get drawn into using a metaphor for its own sake, or pressing one into service that isn’t quite suited to the job at hand. The following is the text of a magazine advert currently being used by a leading UK insurer:

Would you buy an umbrella, if it didn’t keep you dry?
Neither would we. So why should you pay for an insurance policy that won’t keep you properly covered? Unlike 8 out of 10 standard home insurance policies we include cover for your belongings if they are accidentally damaged or lost – as standard.

The text is accompanied by a picture of an umbrella, highlighting one of the key benefits of metaphors in marketing – they give you a handy hook to hang your imagery on when none is otherwise available. (Services are often hard to depict – it’s even worse in B2B marketing.)

Although ‘insurance=umbrella’ seems promising as a metaphor (if unoriginal), here it actually muddies the meaning rather than clarifying it. Have you ever had, or bought, an umbrella that didn’t keep you dry? How would you know that an umbrella wouldn’t keep you dry, before you bought it?

The umbrella is an everyday item, but the situation described is artificial and not one that readers will immediately recognise from their lives. As a result, the metaphor won’t have the sensual, concrete force that drives emotional impact.

Stop clevering off

Instead of providing a useful stepping-stone between something familiar and a new concept, the headline metaphor in this example is adding a cognitive barrier between reader and benefit – and therefore putting obstacles in the way of a sale. The headline is literally a riddle, and if you ask your reader to solve riddles you run the risk of them simply walking away.

Since the core benefit is easy enough to understand for anyone who’s ever bought home insurance (which is almost everybody), a better headline might be:

With [Insurer], cover for damage and loss come as standard.

Or, for a bit more spice:

What’s extra for others is standard for us: damage and loss cover included with every home insurance policy.

Of course, you wouldn’t be able to include a nice picture of an umbrella, but you would have a headline that would actually generate interest.

It’s well known that headlines with benefits outpull those without. So if you’ve got a benefit that’s easy to communicate, it should always lead your copy. If you want to connect with readers, resist the tendency for what my granny used to call ‘clevering off’.

Making metaphors work

Here are a few pointers for making metaphors work in copywriting.

• Use sparingly. Only use metaphors when they’re needed: to clarify points that would otherwise be difficult to explain or understand, to communicate a benefit or to add emotional or persuasive impact. Don’t use them for their own sake. 
• Choose carefully. The right comparison can illuminate a key point like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds. But the wrong one can quickly lead you into deep water. Be sure your metaphor is appropriate.
• Dig deeper. Sometimes, metaphors have layers of meaning that you might not want. Consider what your metaphor really says about the product, service or company you’re promoting.
• Less is more. Metaphors are like tissues. At the moment you need them, they’re indispensable. But if you try to get too much use out of them, as I’m doing here, you’ll end up in a mess. In other words, most metaphors support just one or two strong points; after that, they should be dropped.
• Don’t mix it up. ‘Let’s run that idea up the flagpole and see if it holds water.’ ‘We weren’t on the same page because they were dancing to a different beat.’ Adding metaphors together doesn’t concentrate meaning; it dilutes it. Give your metaphors room to breathe, so your reader can absorb each one fully before you hit them with the next. If they’re too close, or if they overlap, the result is ludicrous. 

Whatever branding, design or marketing channels you use to market your business, it’s essential that your copywriting communicates benefits: the good things that your product or service does (or promises to do) for your customers.

The first and foremost benefit of a product or service is meeting a need. Don’t underestimate the power of stating this to a reader. It’s particularly important online, where people are impatiently searching and seeking to confirm that they’ve found the right thing. If your product solves a problem, make sure people know it.

Then we come to ‘hard’, concrete benefits. These usually boil down to one of three things: save time, save money or (for businesses) make money. They have tangible effects that can be measured – they’re bigger, faster or cheaper. A kettle that boils water faster than competing products offers this type of quantifiable benefit.

However, people are also interested in ‘softer’ emotional benefits such as convenience, fun, style, fashion or the sense of having made a sound buying choice. For example, when you buy jeans or trainers, you’re looking for more than the optimum cost-benefit ratio – you want to buy into a brand that feels cool and appropriate for your age and style.

Fred Perry offers customers benefits including product quality, cultural resonance and fashionability

‘Quality’ might appear in both lists, since its definition is so fluid. For example, it might apply to something as concrete as ‘build quality’ in engineering – the durability, tolerance and precision of the components used to make something. But in more subjective areas of judgement, such as graphic design, one person’s concept of ‘quality’ may be very far from another’s, and affected by a range of personal or cultural factors.

We might say, broadly, that ‘hard’ benefits are more important in business-to-business (B2B) marketing, while ‘soft’ benefits appeal to the consumer (B2C). But even if you’re marketing to a business, the buying decision will always be taken by a human. And that human has emotions. So if you know who they are (either as a specific individual, or in terms of their likely profile) you can appeal to those emotions. The need to feel that the right decision has been made is particularly strong in B2B buyers – hence the saying ‘no-one got fired for buying IBM’.

You may have heard of the marketing formula AIDA, which stands for ‘attention, interest, desire, action’. These are the four stages through which a piece of marketing should (supposedly) guide its audience en route to a sale. If we look at it again, we can see that benefits are behind every one. Simple, strong benefits in a headline or slogan attract attention, while interest is generated by adding more detail. Desire is aroused when benefits are made real in the reader’s mind, and action is elicited by giving a persuasive push to the promise of a benefit.

Whatever thought structure you use, the end result needs to be copywriting that speaks directly to your customers’ needs, desires and hopes by offering something of benefit to them. If it doesn’t, it won’t bring much benefit to you.

The other day I noticed that the cars used by BSM (a leading UK driving school) carry this slogan:

Learn to drive

That’s right – just those three words. It seems almost too simple to be true, but if we unpack it we can see that this little sentence accomplishes four very important functions:

• It clearly defines the product (driving tuition).
• It communicates a key benefit of the product (you’ll learn to drive).
• It sets out a strong call to action, commanding the reader to act (learn to drive!)
• Through its basic, generic phrasing, it confirms BSM’s market positioning – the market leader, default option or natural choice.

Notice how this slogan respects its readers. Nobly declining to spin or sugarcoat its message, it gives customers some credit as thinkers and choosers, setting out the stall and letting them decide. Its simple, solid language makes counterparts like ‘For the road ahead’ (AA’s corporate tagline) sound pretentious and patronising. (Most effective slogans are simple, but not all simple slogans are effective.)

That magisterial BSM slogan in full

But is it really copywriting? After all, it’s ‘just’ a simple, everyday phrase. There’s nothing really there – no technique, no clever choice of words, no sophisticated appeal to the emotions, no carefully judged tone of voice. Was it even deliberately created? Did, perhaps, the designer just insert it as a placeholder until the real slogan was created?

It doesn’t matter. Great ideas are where you find them. ‘Yesterday’ came to Paul McCartney in a dream. And if this phrase did come from a copywriter, it was an exceptionally intelligent, brave and independent one. Someone who wasn’t afraid to put forward the right solution – not the one that made them look clever, sophisticated or hardworking. For their part, BSM deserve praise for setting aside corporate pride and brand insecurity so they could communicate with customers in the most direct way possible.

Achieving this kind of simplicity isn’t simple – nor is it easy, quick or straightforward. Pablo Picasso said, ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.’ Often, our first ideas are convoluted and confused as we try too hard to make something special, original or arresting. Then, over time and through many revisions, we discard what isn’t needed to arrive at the essential. When the answer comes, it can seem ridiculously simple. But that’s how we know it’s right.

Once political parties have been in opposition for a while, they inevitably start campaigning on a ‘change’ agenda, almost regardless of policy. It appeals to our instinct for balance. Things have gone too far; they must be brought back into equilibrium. In the last US election, this was exploited by Barack Obama with his ‘Change we need’ and ‘Change we can believe in’ slogans.

Obama and Bush both know how to exploit our instinct to balance things out

This instinct is a double-edged sword for marketers. On the downside, it can lead to losing business if your customer decides they want a change. During my stints at a contract publisher and a design agency, we often found that long-standing, apparently satisfied clients would suddenly switch to another supplier ‘for no reason’. Of course, there was a reason: they fancied something new and different, and there was nothing we could do about it.

For B2B service providers, this is a very real hazard. First you identify what works (or what the client likes). Then you repeat it, refining your approach and maybe delivering economies of scale. But then, after a while, you come to be seen as staid, uncreative or inflexible. You’re their best friend, but they’re looking for a bit of romance. So you’re left weeping softly while they ride off into the sunset with a dashing new supplier.

But the same thing works for you if you’re drumming up business. The marketing copywriter can provoke, cultivate and exploit the customer’s restlessness simply by positioning a product or service as an alternative to something: the customer’s current choice, the default option or the market leader.

In NLP this is called ‘contrast reframing’: asking the question ‘what if things were different?’ or ‘how could they be different?’Your product (you say) is great; theirs (you imply) is dull, outmoded or inferior. Simply by offering an alternative to what has become familiar, you can generate interest in the reader’s mind.

For example:

Ordinary kitchen roll is great for little spills. But Soakitup is completely different. It effortlessly mops away just about anything, from juice and wine through to sticky stuff like oils, sauces and even ink – without leaving a stain!

The alternative you offer needn’t even be better, just different. Many people will still respond sympathetically, as George W. Bush knew when he suggested that US students should ‘hear both sides’of the science v intelligent design debate. The urge for balance can be stronger than reason.

It is not daily increase but daily decrease; hack away the unessential… the height of cultivation always runs to simplicity. (Attributed to Bruce Lee)

Writing is hard. But cutting is harder. When you’ve sweated for hours – or days – to get your thoughts down on paper, the pain of deleting your precious words again can be intense. But it’s also essential.

What is the ideal length for a piece of copy? My suggestion would be ‘shorter than you think’, particularly if you know the subject well or it’s close to your heart. Whatever you’re working on – report, news article, marketing text, ad headline – there’s nearly always scope to cut without harming the message. And it’s nearly always the right move too: people rarely complain that things are too short. The key is to consider what the audience really needs to hear, as opposed to what you really want to say.

Bruce Lee had a lot to teach the copywriter

Interface Designer Mike Kuniavsky proposes six rules for web design, including ‘people hate to read’ and ‘people hate to scroll’. Although the web is essentially a text medium, it’s delivered through a format that’s hopeless for reading – a screen. We all know from our own experience how we really use the web – clicking and scrolling around at high speed, flitting between sites almost at random, only reading when we absolutely have to. So make sure you write online copy that suits these habits: make it as short as you possibly can.

Because it’s emotionally difficult to destroy your own text, I recommend saving a working version before you cut, or pasting bits you’ve cut into another document. That way you can go back to earlier versions or cut fragments later. You never will, but the backup gives you the courage to make bold cuts.

If in doubt, cut it out. Does the text still work? If the answer’s ‘yes’, you’ve got your new version.

If you’re working on something very short, like a company tagline, it’s a question of chipping away at the words until nothing further can be removed. For example, here are the last few iterations of the phrase I eventually chose to promote my own one-man company, ABC:

1. Is your message getting through to the people who matter most to your business?
2. Are you getting through to the people who matter most to your business?
3. Are you reaching the people who matter most to your business?
4. Are you reaching the people who matter most?
5. Are you reaching those who matter most?

The last few steps took several days of intermittent effort. It’s easy to turn out loads of words – it may seem counterintuitive, but shorter takes longer.

Getting the perfect phrasing is as much to do with subconscious thought as conscious effort. Often, a night’s sleep or a day away from the keyboard will allow the right solution to emerge, appearing in your mind or your notepad like it’s been there all along. And, in a way, it has – you just needed to ‘hack away the inessential’.