COPYWRITING ELECTIVE - DAY ONE
To introduce us to the topic of Copywriting, guest lecturer and Copywriter Paul Burke talked us through his ideas about writing, how he got to where he is, his practices, and some of the projects he’s worked on. One of my favourite things about this industry is the people - in Fashion, everyone was a Certain Type of person, and you felt like you had to be the same Type to be accepted. Everything felt fake, but I guess that you inevitably end up walking like a Barbie with a stick wedged up your ass at all times. In the advertising industry, I’ve yet to meet someone that isn’t just themselves, unashamedly (even if sometimes, they should probably be a bit ashamed) - it makes the advice they give so much more valuable, because you value what they’re saying and them as people. Their experiences seem attainable, not isolating.
For the most part, Paul’s advice revolved around the process of writing - how to gauge timing and pace, how to know when you’re finished, and the basics like knowing correct grammar.
One of the pieces of advice he gave in his talk that stuck with me the most was the following:
"Always make the most of the brief, get the brief as early as you can and work as late as you can. You should finish when the brief is finished." - it counters everything everyone has always taught me throughout school about not going to the wire (not that I ever listened to that in the first place). If you don’t use all the time available to you, you never know what could have been, you’ve never produced the best work you can because you’ve settled on the first good idea.
FIRST TASK: INTRODUCTION TO TONE OF VOICE
The first task we were assigned was to choose a brand to semi-personify - to do this, we were to extract key aspects of their ethos and turn them into personality traits under the prompt of ‘Your brand turns up at a party - what tone of voice would they use?’
My group chose Apple, because we’re clearly generic as fuck with limited imagination. 2-3 other tables also chose Apple, but just know that we definitely chose it first, I can prove that, 100%.
For our homework, we were tasked with making a portrait for our brand - in all honesty, I didn’t do it, because I’m shit at drawing and everything I drew didn’t look like Apple the brand at all. It did, however, look vaguely apple-the-fruit shaped. Vaguely. If you squinted.
My ideas for Apple’s dirty little secret stemmed more from physical things about their products. I chose ‘low battery’ to translate to low-social battery, a direct correlation between the fault of their products where the battery is fucking shit and dies before you have a chance to wait for your app to load. All those movies where the call cuts out in crucial scene and the poor protagonist doesn’t get to say goodbye to their dying love? That’s because they were using Apple phones.
My second idea for Apple’s dirty little secret was ‘exclusivity’, which could extend to being a bit bitchy and cliquey, only hanging around certain kinds of people. This pertains to Apple’s ever growing agenda to make their product solely compatible with other Apple products, such as removing the headphone jack, and making it so that only Apple headphones are able to be used on Apple phones, unless you buy an adaptor.
SECOND TASK: ELECTION SELECTION
Our second task was also group based, looking at the difficulty of naming in branding. We were told to create a Prime Minister candidate as groups, giving them a full name, and a personality. Our group went with Theodore (Ted), and completely fucked ourselves over with that name choice (which I suggested, whoops) - Ted is an American name, a lot of people in the UK wouldn’t get behind him, he doesn’t sound British (which I mean, Ted Heath anybody? Maybe it’s just ‘Theodore’ that was the step too far). Paul’s advice was that if he was an Ed, he’d have been much better. Other than that he was a solid candidate. As his mother, I feel ashamed for ruining his chances with my naming abilities.
It turns out that naming things (and people) is fucking hard - the slightest mistake (such as a T) can completely change the vibe of your product/person/brand, and can unravel everything else you’ve succeeded at. Your successes aren’t worth anything if the name doesn’t work, you need that stamp on the package to tie everything together, and if it’s wrong then the contents don’t happen, because it won’t get delivered.