Uniquely Similar / Similarly Unique

Between the kickoff meeting and the final round a series of subtle shifts occur in the basic premise of a project's copy development. What begins as a loose set of parameters becomes increasingly specific as, step-by-step, the amount of required content expands.

I suppose this is partly born out of a collective inner dialogue that runs something like this:

Hey, it’s just another project and we’re all professionals, right? Let’s not sweat the details! We’ll deal with them when the time comes, when VP X gets back from vacation and SVP Y comes off jury duty. And, really, why reinvent the wheel?

So the meeting adjourns and everyone walks away from the table with, unknowingly, a completely different idea of how the copy will read. So seductive is this collective mindset that these differences can take several rounds to surface. If your client or Account Director is a member of the species toplinicus cannotdealiensis, the camera flash of last-minute realization may be delayed even further.

Categorical imperative? I don’t think so.
The source of the trouble? Unexamined expectations, arising from the mistaken belief that every product category has one and only one appropriate copy style. The arcana of genre rules extends to every product and service category. For many people, following them is the very essence of the copywriter’s craft. Given category A and deliverable B, copy style C is inevitable, n’est pas?

Ironically, however, the one thing common to every kickoff meeting is a request for a fresh, original approach. Taking the request to heart, an earnest Copy Creative creates a new voice for the project, complete with a carefully selected vocabulary and a custom-crafted grammar to move the key points of the engagement at just the right rhythm.

Yet, how quickly the Gods of Practice exact their terrible punishment: A searing hot boilerplate of mechanical sales ploys. The fact that none of this imposed language conforms to the stated intent of the creative brief is apparently irrelevant. And so begins several agonizing rounds.

On a scavenger hunt for meaning.
Regrettably, there’s still a larger issue at stake. Because when Copy goes through so many rounds it also means there’s also no basic agreement about the underlying message to consumers.

In a way, it’s easy to sympathize with all the players in the drama. Messaging strategy is an abstract expression of the brand’s identity. If your clients are conflicted about that identity and lack the skills to articulate it clearly, they can only resort to a continual process of writing and revision until—somehow—it just feels right.

The resulting set phrases, hammered out at such a cost, quickly become objects of unquestioning devotion.

What part of “insight” don’t you understand?
All the same, I have to ask: Of what use is your MBA in Market Research if your fresh insights are reduced to commonplace statements, handed down from generation to generation?

Or, in the words of the Bard,

Worn out phrases and longing gazes
Won't get you where you want to go, no!
Words of love, soft and tender
Won't win her

You oughta know by now
You oughta know, you oughta know by now

The power of language is a terrible thing to waste by writing drivel. It’s time to set it free to motivate, inspire and win consumer trust—openly, honestly, as one flawed creature to another.

Convergence & Coherence on the Mobius Strip

Over the last few years, the word “convergence” has gained a certain cache as a symbol of the intersection between technology and society. In our heart of hearts, it seems to me, we’re still daydreaming about “The World of Tomorrow,” a concept of the future as old as the past (see also the 1964 version).

But a visit to the YouTube presence on Facebook will quickly bring you down to earth. Suddenly, everything feels out of kilter, as if the Force of Gravity had started hanging out in Electromagnetism bars on weekends. That’s because media convergence is meaningless in the abstract, without a guiding social and cultural context. Caught in the vortex of such titanic cultural forces the content’s original meaning is quickly atomized.

A Walk on the Strip
Step back for a moment and admire this Mobius strip of promotion as consumption and vice versa. Suppose I post a video on YouTube which you share with your Facebook friends. Back on Facebook you visit the official YouTube Facebook page, comment on my video and—before you can say “grandfather paradox”—your comment can appear on YouTube proper.

All I need to do is repost your comment on FriendFeed and the continuous recontextualization of my original video is carried a step further. Is this a good thing, an interesting thing, a relevant thing? Well maybe, but I won’t know for sure until our entire exchange is recapitulated on Mashable.

Done right, I suppose, this game of post and repost as a series of ripostes could become a sport or even an art form. We’ve already seen how effective recontextualization can be with “Space Ghost Coast to Coast” of a few years back. But can it be more than a game, more than a way to tweet about making toast or make a toast to your latest tweet with a Facebook beer?

To me, that’s a key question. If, as media experts, we want clients to believe that positioning themselves next to Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager will help move the needle, we need to convince them that social networking can be more than idle chatter.

Delusion by Dilution
The mere presence of cause marketing apps on Facebook isn’t enough. We have to establish that consumers do more in social space than provide background data for future anthropologists. While YouTube’s appearance on Facebook feels as inevitable as traffic jams on Thanksgiving, it’s not a model for meaningful media convergence. It's merely the watery gruel of substance by association.

To create meaningful consumer interaction with brands we need to give consumers something to do besides gossip, share gossip and gossip about the sharing of gossip. Even in cases where we ask people to share their personal experience with a serious topic, we must give their responses shape, context and purpose.

Simply compiling vast libraries of such responses and displaying them in the order received is of little value. All it does is create a weak, generalized sense of empowerment. Like YouTube and Facebook themselves, such libraries can only function as a kind of “random access memory” for an online community.

What’s needed, as I see it, are the structures to drive user-generated content into coherent channels. The more coherent online discourse becomes, the more it can serve a real function: Not merely to help brands “keep up with the millenials,” but to shape perception and motivate consumers to take action.

Fine Tune the iTune
At a simpler level, I believe a more structured approach to online engagement would increase response, quantitatively and qualitatively. There’s nothing more discouraging, for example, than firing off a heated response to a New York Times article just to see it languish as Comment 532 of 897. Knowing in advance that their contributions will be effectively channeled to others with a similar mindset, need or personal commitment, people are much more likely to contribute, and contribute something relevant.

So as much as we continue to marvel at the impact of social media outlets on public opinion and brand marketing, it’s time we began to manage this burgeoning natural resource. Otherwise, that vital impact will soon be lost, as the sheer volume of random electronic call and response turns an ocean of cultural vitality into a desert of cultural trivia

Happy Face/Frowny Face

The more time you spend on the Best Buy Facebook page, the more it degenerates into two rather unpleasant experiences. First, there’s the overriding feeling of redundancy, which results from product pages that mimic similar material available at bestbuy.com.

Second, a few minutes on Best Buy’s Facebook “Wall” and you wonder how a brand could generate so much ill-will without addressing it internally. Having a Customer Service Rep respond in measured tones (“I’m sorry to hear you had so much trouble…”) hardly addresses the issues. At the average Best Buy, it would seem, service is below par. I don’t know how else to evaluate the sheer number of searing complaints.

So, much as I hate to say it, I think Best Buy would do better to pour its advertising budget into training its employees and repairing its service departments. What better advertisement, in the end, than to be known by word of mouth as a highly competent, reliable service provider? At the very least, stealing some space from product promotion to make room for consumer education would go a long way to reducing problems—by reducing confusion.

As it stands, Best Buy’s willingness to handle customer complaints so half-heartedly underscores what’s missing in the standard American business model. Even here, on Facebook, where one is told to expect the coming of the brand marketing revolution, a major brand misses the message: Your strength as a brand lies in your ability to speak to your customers as one real person to another.

In other words, you have to care. It has to bother you that your customers are being treated to lousy service. Hoping you can paste over systemic flaws with happy-face customer interfacers is a delusion growing out of a failure to grasp a fundamental principle: A brand’s only true product is customer satisfaction.

Clearly, here’s a company that has seriously underestimated just how “public” a public forum Facebook actually is. In digital space, comments linger, opinions are shared and their impact multiplies exponentially.

If I choose to compare the Best Buy Facebook presence with the presence created by Coca-Cola, I realize I may be accused of comparing apples to durians. As in most other respects, Coke is a brand in its own category, having built up a brand equity I doubt more than three or four other companies can match.

All the same, what they choose to do with that equity is very telling. At Coke-Facebook, the message is “Open Happiness.” It’s not a price-point or a value statement but a direct call to the human psyche. Instead of selling product, Coke sells you on a connection—to everything you love most about life.

Not that Best Buy doesn’t make a play for the same territory. It’s just that the tagline “Buyer Be Happy,” which appears fleetingly on the page link, is immediately drowned out by a garish promotional overlay. Meanwhile, the sentiment behind this tagline is simply drowned —by the complaint tsunami that daily breaches the Best Buy “Wall.”

Ultimately, this suggests that the onset of social networking and the social media that support it have not only transformed e-commerce, but commerce in general. It’s a reality change of the highest order. Brands that treat customers like faceless non-entities are finding that customer complaints now leave an indelible stain on even the shiniest of logos.

Everything Runs on Emotion

The basic premise of opening a brand channel on Facebook is simple, in a complex kind of way. It has its roots in our shared capacity to turn external objects into symbols of comfort and well-being, through association with positive emotions.

Grow up in a family where Dunkin’ Donuts, let’s say, is a the treat that routinely appears at festive events—and you won’t be able to stop yourself from associating those pink and orange Ds with happy thoughts. Even in cases where festive family events turned dysfunctional, the imprint has been made—and DD is permanently linked to a rush of emotion.

Knowing that, it’s a simple step to realize that people are eager to channel those ingrained emotions through discussion about the brand on Facebook—where they’re already sharing personal opinions, announcing milestones or proclaiming their allegiance to cherished causes.

Into this delicate bubble-dome of remote trust and distance intimacy step cautious brand managers. Those who succeed recognize the true value that digital community members bring to the table. Sure, social media marketing is, at base, still about boosting sales—and it’s useless to argue otherwise. But the task of the moment is to strengthen and expand the scope of the emotional associations consumers already have with the brand.

Many factors, including dumb luck, factor into maintaining an effective social footprint, but most of them, I’ll wager, boil down to:

• Giving consumers a voice
• Responding directly and honestly
• Acting on suggestions whenever practical
• Rewarding participation with real value

In the end, this is simply another way of saying, “drop the mask” and speak to real people as a real person. It doesn’t matter if your company lacks a charismatic leader (and Lord knows plenty of effective leaders lack the Hollywood gene). Reliably telling the truth generates its own kind of animal magnetism—especially when it costs you a few lumps along the way.

To see the process in action, read a few snippets of recent conversation over at the official Dunkin’ Donuts Facebook group page, where counter employees and customers kvetch and commiserate:

View Excerpt 1

Here customers express compassion for downtrodden workers, clearly identifying with a shared experience: Working is...somewhat unpleasant.

In another excerpt, a customer expresses affection for the brand and a appreciation usually associated with military troops or first responders.

View Excerpt 2

And then there’s that final exchange, where the conversation veers off in the direction of social injustice—hardly part of DD’s brand universe.

All in all, the level of emotion, the degree of identification with the brand and its representatives shows just as much about the power of brand advertising and strategy as it does about the inherent power of social media. Because the link these people feel is to the product and the experience themselves, not its presence on Facebook.

Undeniably, DD’s Facebook presence succeeds as a lightning rod for the wave of emotion associated with the brand. It does so, you’ll notice, by allowing consumers to interact with employees, real people. And like real people, employees have emotions of their own about their interactions with customers. The surest sign the Dunkin’ Donuts “gets it” is the way these exchanges have a free-flowing life of their own.

That, as I see it, is the “take away” traditional advertising media must grab onto as quickly as possible. Yes, a print ad can’t have interactive dialogue, but it can speak as directly and in equally human terms—provided it drops the decades-old patter of “copy that gets results.”

Because when it comes to communication, nothing refreshes like honest emotion.

Buzzwords Make Branding a Snap! It’s That Simple!

A key principle of marketing, one hears repeatedly, is differentiation through branding. From a local design shop trying to sell you overpriced business cards, to the brow-furrowing halls of Harvard Business School, the message is clear. You want to sell, Baby? Ya gotta stand out from the crowd.

It’s the topic that just won’t die. Not that it isn’t, as a principle, absolutely sound. When it comes to practical application, however, many advertisers run into a bit of a contradiction.

For example: If you work in direct mail marketing, there’s one sentence you’re destined to hear at least 10 times a day:

We have to break through the clutter!

Ironically, there’s a tendency to talk about “the clutter” as if it were some kind of natural phenomenon, like El Niño or the H1N1 virus. As if it weren’t an entirely man-made problem, brought on by the mistaken idea that bombarding people with mail they don’t want will persuade them to buy products and services they also don’t want.

I mean, if we really wanted to do something about “the clutter,” there are certainly enough marketing experts in this country, whether in business or academia, to attack the problem and arrive at a solution.

Yes, it would require a few major players to jump off the dogma-go-round that dominates marketing theory, but the upside would be that maybe, just maybe, your customers might actually start reading their mail again.

But, OK, if we accept that “the clutter” is a classic immovable object, we have no choice than to fall back into the loving arms of the goddess Differentia. And in the warmth of her tender embrace, we’ll try to sell our wares by making them stand out from the crowd.

Tangled Up in Tried-and-Trues
And yet, what words do we use to describe them?

• easy, fast, convenient (71,800 results)



• best of breed (1,650,000 results)



• best in class (3,150,000 results)



• business solution (1,820,000 results)



• your whole family will love it (576,000 results)



• don’t take our word for it (1,830,000 results)



• it’s that simple (11,400,000 results)

As the Google tallies in parentheses show, as of January 15, 2010, a great many people are currently engaged in the paradox of attempting to differentiate their offering with the exact same phrases as a great many other people.

Dig only the shallowest trench in these results and you’ll see the promise of “best,” “convenient” and “simple” is currently being applied to everything from software to suppositories. So not only are advertisers failing to differentiate themselves from competitors, they’re also failing to differentiate themselves from other product categories.

It’s precisely this lazy, boilerplate type of differentiation that has made millions of Americans throw out their mail, mute their TV and click past the infinite array of dancing skeletons in digital space. Like the elevator music of the 1960s, mechanical repetition of generic and largely unverifiable claims is now nothing more than background noise.

Can that really be anybody’s idea of differentiation? Yet year after year, the US marketing crank turns out a steady stream of same-old, same-old.

Web 2.0: “The UnClutter?”
Now, unless I miss my guess, more than one person whose opinion I value is ready to assert, in eloquent, scientific terms, that many of these issues with traditional advertising media are being addressed by the rise of user-controlled social media marketing.

Could it be that user-generated content and commentary will permanently break up “the clutter,” by allowing users to write their own cogently differentiating brand narratives based on their own specific experiences?

If so, the evidence should already be visible through branded pages on major social networking, sharing and blogging platforms. What will simple, empirical observation of these pages reveal? I mean to find out. Is a new age truly in the making, or do brands still believe they can stand out from the crowd—even in digital space—by following the herd?

Culture of Indifference

Pixel widths, white space, negative space, foreground, background, color palettes, photography, illustration, video windows, slideshow panels, buttons, bevels (inhale)…

Clearly, the number of visual elements a digital designer needs to juggle is staggering. Add to that the desire to create a memorable layout, provide a good user experience, engage consumers and motivate them to action—and we're talking about a mountain of work.

Given that, it's easy to see how many Art Directors might find it tough to also accommodate the demands of Copy. In today's typically understaffed, underbudgeted and overscheduled work environment, the temptation to give Copy “Later for that” status must be overwhelming.

Such temptation is only strengthened and deepened by the growing industry consensus: Copy as merely another category of building stock—cut to fit like carpet, poured into molds like wet concrete, swapped in and out like playing cards, and written by anybody with access to a keyboard.

Against this background culture of indifference, there's nothing to break a harried Art Director's ingrained habit: Designing layouts based solely on design principles with little concern for the Copy depth the topic, the audience or the client demands.

Shut Down the Machine.
There is a better way. Without adding to an Art Director's burden we can break the culture of indifference and elevate digital creative, making it more memorable, more motivating and more “trustworthy” in the broadest sense.

It starts with Process. Projects should never enter the design phase until everyone involved agrees on the project's underlying message. Then both schedule and budget must allow room for Art and Copy to develop a way to deliver that message. Standing up for this time is simple: you just need to show your resolve.

Start Up the Adventure.
For their part, Art Directors need to get beyond the functional requirements of “how many words” and explore the emotional climate and imagery the copy conjures up. Because copy's effectiveness is directly related to its ability to create a vivid picture in the reader's mind.

By the same token, Copy creatives must stop writing without reference to visual context. Instead, they must risk all to align their work with the messages conveyed, not merely by photography or illustration, but by the total design palette.

Of course, this temptation to merely editorialize also grows out of the culture of indifference. With the “get it done” mentality so deeply entrenched, resisting the pressure to "import and tweak" existing boilerplate copy is tantamount to career suicide.

Yet these bad creative habits are the root cause of our current state of Web-wide mediocrity. That's why Creatives of every stripe must banish the cookie cutter and resist the call to cut and paste. Lit with that commitment, the path from indifference to creativity is clear.

Connecting to Multitudes

Embedded in the career of many a copywriter is an ongoing tug of war. On one end of the rope are colleagues who believe Copy’s main purpose is to instruct and flatter. In their mind, the job comes down to endless variations on a tiny array of schematic messages:

• Do “This” now and get “That”
• Other cool people like you have already done “This”
• Read these tips. They make “This” easier to do
• Do “This,” get “That” and we’ll send more instructions
• Tell all your cool friends to do “This” too
• We really like how cool you are!

On the other end of the rope are colleagues who believe Copy’s main purpose is to be allusive and who have their own cherished list:

• Profile-Appropriate Pop-Song
• Whatever’s on YouTube
• Calvin Klein Ads from the ’90s
• Facebook!
• Hot Celebrity Wearing Jeans (We’ll fit some words in later)
• Seriously, whatever is on YouTube

And there in the middle, ropes tied to either wrist, is a copywriter who, even through the searing pain, can still grasp the pros and cons of either extreme.

Lurid and reductive metaphors aside, the issue here is that writing for adware cannot be reduced to a mechanical bag of tricks. Neither the “Copy That Gets Results” nor the "Entertain Me, I’m Bored with My Career” school of creative direction can ever produce anything more than a lifeless imitation of good work.

Simple Impulse
As I said, each ideology contains a nugget of truth, even if it’s buried under mountains of emotional, political and intellectual effluvia. The problem is, as an industry, we’ve been at this game long enough to have lost its original impetus.

The point, as I see it, is to connect and motivate. How you do it, and why, depends on the particulars. Not that there isn’t tons of advice available, but most of it is beside the point. Far more important than the top 10 tips “every writer should know” is a simple impulse to reach out to another person. Which person? That’s where the particulars come in and the particulars can only be found through direct observation.

It’s easy really, assuming you actually have talent for writing, a talent that includes the capacity to acquire writing technique. Given that, you only need to open your carefully trained eyes and look. Because just as much as any true visual artist, you’re a keen, sympathetic observer of everyday life and the human condition.

Telling Observation
Let me guess what your observations tell you: People—all people—contain multitudes [see #51]: multitudes of opinions, emotions, desires, aspirations and ornery bits of half-digested nonsense. As such you can’t hope to make your point stick without first dipping it in a very specific cultural context.

Here’s the glimmering coin that’s caught the eye of the “Entertain Me...” school. At the same time, with so much going on in the noggins of the people you want to reach, you need to give them a clear focal point. That’s the shiny bauble that’s turned the head of the Results worshippers.

Delicate Balance
At the end of the day, however, all the breathless theorizing in the world can’t alter the facts. It takes time and patience to build an audience’s trust or, for that matter, even get their attention. There’s simply no point in asking copywriters to cram every possible message from every possible angle into every single consumer engagement. Instead, brands and their agencies need to take better note of the pace at which people absorb information, learn to trust that information and therefore feel motivated by it.

If it’s true that post-digital consumers are deeply suspicious of advertising, you’re going to have to reach them in small, incremental steps and always as one “multitudinous” human being to another. Accomplishing this task requires a delicate balance of talents and skills, but don’t worry, your copywriters can handle it—as long as you stop hog-tying them with poorly absorbed dogma, political posturing and the absurd notion that writing has anything at all to do with words.

Where the Beef is Now

Over time, I’ve often been reminded of the classic catchphrase “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.” This phrase is actually just one component of an exhaustive theory of sales psychology developed by Elmer Wheeler many years ago. His “tested sentences” may have the archaic ring of pre-MTV America, but just run it through your own internal translator and I’m sure some of it will still ring true for you.

As a train of thought, Wheeler’s ideas have lost none of their relevance. The question in my mind is how to adapt his thinking for an audience drenched in advertising from the time it enters neo-natal care. At the start of the second decade of the 21st century, I’m afraid even the sizzle has lost most of its sizzle.

That’s because, as frequently happens with innovative ideas, selling the sizzle has succeeded too well. The unprecedented saturation of the world with sales messages has only accelerated the process. In the U.S. people encounter sales messages on billboards, in print, on radio, on TV, in movie theaters, on smart phones, on Web sites and even on the rooftops of yellow cabs.

Inevitably, our diligence in maximizing sales has started to bump into the law of diminishing returns. When everything sizzles, nothing does. Exhibit A? Ad-Muting. While this sport has been greatly facilitated by “remote control” the real question is: Why have our ads become so generic that consumers even have the impulse to mute them?

From remote control to direct control.
As I see it, Ad-Muting is only partly due to statistical factors like “changing demographic profiles.” What’s really going on is that people are turning away from passive entertainments like TV, and turning toward the feeling of control they experience in social networking environments.

After all, in social space you roam free, sending, receiving and responding only to the messages you choose. The only crimp in that freedom is the dawning realization that what you say in social space tends to stay in social space forever. It’s there to be cross-referenced, shared, quoted, posted, ridiculed and stolen for all eternity.

With that realization comes the commitment millions of people now feel to broadcast an emotionally invested and deeply personal digital identity.

So in 2010, I see advertising’s next frontier right through the cross hairs of that personal commitment. Instead of selling external attributes or fantasy benefits, it’s time to sell consumers a share of the brand itself, a sense that their concerns have a direct impact on the brand’s evolution.

By the same token, we can’t rely anymore on generic terms to make people feel sexier, richer or more gangstah. Instead of doling out “happy dust” we have to be more specific. We must show how the brand adds value to a consumer’s inner world of memory, desire, creativity and belief.

Make that connection and you won’t be selling a product or its sizzle, but something more powerful: A personal stake in the survival of the brand. That’s where the beef is now.