 The beauty and challenge of working in any creative field is that there is no right answer. Almost any idea can be a great idea or a horrible idea, depending how it works out. So your success as a creative often comes down to how much your team can help you execute your ideas successfully.
My first two jobs in advertising, I found myself working for great mentors. They taught me so much about writing and about advertising in general, and made sure my ideas turned into something successful. Each mentor was extremely smart, and they would never settle for anything that wasn’t as great as it could be. They were also incredibly patient and were willing to work with me to improve my skills. At my third job in advertising, that completely changed.
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 Knowing these 5 types of headlines will make it easier than ever to write the most important copy. The only copy everyone reads
One of the hardest things copywriters do is write headlines. Even for veterans of the ad industry, it remains the greatest challenge, especially in print. In a print ad, the headline has to grab someone’s attention and interest them enough to want to find out more. It if can get across the purpose of the product, all the better.  Writing in the voice of a brand is a special skill that can take years to master. When doing any kind of marketing writing, voice is one of the hardest things to get right. Without voice, your writing will be less memorable and less likely to hold someone’s attention. In creating a voice, however, you have to be certain that it makes a connection with your audience, and sends the right message about your brand.
When learning writing in high school, you’re told to write in your own voice. When it comes writing online, that becomes even more true . Emails, status updates, tweets, blog posts - most online writing is written in the voice of the writer. But your voice as a writer is not the voice of your company’s brand.  Think before you write. For many years, I was a copywriter in ad agencies that specialized in pharmaceutical advertising, writing copy about prescription medicines. Outside of any feelings anyone may have about that industry, it was a great challenge for any writer to wed hardcore medical science with the soft fuzziness of marketing.
One aspect of this industry that can be hard is that every piece of marketing that goes out to consumers is heavily scrutinized by a cadre of internal experts. This is done to make sure that all the information that they put out about any medication is completely accurate and balanced, making sure that any possible side effects are clearly indicated. So my copy was always heavily edited.  You can't write for someone without knowing who they are. My first job in advertising was for a website called Home Made Simple. It supported some of the biggest products in home care. It was owned by Procter & Gamble and is what marketers call a lightly branded site. Kind of a Martha Stewart Living that just happened to mention Dawn, Cascade, Febreze, Swiffer and Mr. Clean over and over.
It was content marketing before that term had been coined. I'm revealing how old I am, but we sometimes referred to it as an ezine - an ancient term from the early 2000s. The site's target audience was women, 28-45. The type of woman who does the shopping for her home, and does a fair (or unfair) bit of the cleaning as well. We had come up with a fictitious editor for the site who was supposed to represent the idealized version of our audience. Her name was Julie B. As the primary writer on the site, I was, for all intents and purposes, Julie B. |
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