HEAD BLOG

There’s a sign hanging by the counter of my local cafe which says “Good Coffee”.

Good.

Not great, not the best; just good.

The understated, happy-with-my-lot side of me likes this sign. Good is, well, good enough. It doesn’t attempt to lay claim to being the key to the one drink that will make your day or give you a story to pass on to your children. It’s just good coffee. Used in the same way as we might say that we would like “a nice cup of tea” it offers a charm which is wholesome and welcome, especially when placed against the grandiose claims of the big coffee shops.

And yet, another part of me wonders what would happen if there was a second sign next to it saying “Great Coffee”. How would that affect customer behaviour? It’s one thing enjoying the folksy charm of the ‘good’ but, given a choice under the same roof where such a decision can be clearly measured, would we stick by our simple friend or raise our aspirations?

Perhaps they know their customer is just looking for the good life.

There was a period, a long period, back in the history of advertising when certain things held true. An ad could give advice, for example, or have an opinion and the agency would be pretty certain it would be received as intended. If they made a claim that doctors smoked cigarettes because they were good for your health then you and I would simply just accept this as a fact. If the agency, on behalf of their corporate overlords, assured us that the oil pouring out of a hole in the seabed was actually beneficial to the sea life, well, who could doubt the printed word?

Authority was absolute. At least for the purposes of selling.

The change in behaviour, however, was coming. Our relationship with consumerism and the companies which provided us with product after product was bound to be affected by mass media which showed us different cultures and the impact of our actions upon them. We were given the means through which we could see, test and then question the decisions our political leaders made and we could organise like never before.

These insights into how authority operated affected our relationship with advertising. Like seeing the flaws in a parent as we get older, so were we able to see how misleading the claims of advertising could be.

The past ten years has seen change of this sort again but at an unprecedented pace. The Internet has begun to affect us in ways we were not prepared for and still don’t truly understand. It may well be decades before we adjust to modern life, if such a thing is even possible anymore.

Businesses, and the advertising agencies which represent them, have reacted in different ways. A tiny few have embraced, and appear to understand, the responsibility granted by social marketing but many still adhere to the Authority model, filling their pronouncements so painfully with jargon as to make it appear archaic.

The reasoning, I believe, comes from too much love.

The people who work with these brands all respect the process too much. If a decision is made to make bottled water from tap water then, because they understand the process then they respect the decision. It’s the same logic that swallows the line about a company’s interest being its customers so why would it ever do anything to jeopardise that interest.

The balance comes not from cynicism, however. This leads to being unable to sell what the company has to sell. A cynical creative is one not in a position to see the good in a product that might lie beyond the jargon-filled nonsense.

The balance comes from questioning authority, from demanding it to explain itself in terms you can understand and by using talking points and conversation starters, not declarations.

Many years ago, I thought I wanted to be a teacher.

The idea of engaging with young minds, being inspirational and starting my own religion and army certainly influenced the decisions I was making around that time. The application form seemed like a formality.

Wanting to capitalise on every advantage I might have in order to wow the course leaders I drafted in the assistance of my sister, already a teacher and a formidable and persuasive presence in her own right.

With her help I wrote a letter filled with the terminology of the day. She knew what boxes to tick and I wasn’t afraid of ticking them all. Attainments, engagements, inspirings – I grabbed them all.

Secret weapon deployed I sat back and waited to be called for interview.

Now, if you are with me so far then you’ll be expecting there to be no interview. You’ll expect me to turn this around and show how getting someone else to do all the work for me didn’t pay off in the end.

If that’s the case then you’d be wrong.

I did get the interview.

Within weeks I was sat in a room at Manchester University going through my application with two of the course leaders.

They asked me a question, a simple enough question:

“Why do you want to be a teacher?”

Easy.

I’d had the same question back on the application form.

I couldn’t, however, remember what I’d written. Something about shaping minds, being interested in educational development – that sort of thing.

So I started to talk.

I opened up about why I wanted to teach. I told stories of the teachers who had inspired me. I talked about my genuine, heart-felt love of English.

I don’t think I mentioned wanting to raise an army.

But I had their attention.

It was only a matter of time before I had my own school. Screw post-grad diplomas. I was on fire.

At the end of my outburst one of the teachers asked me why I hadn’t written all that in my application letter.

That floored me.

So I told them the truth.

I took a deep breath and explained that my sister helped me because I really really wanted to be a teacher and because she was a teacher she knew what other teachers wanted and why they wanted it. She knew the language used in all the literature and then copied by other teachers and so, I explained, I assumed that using all that knowledge in one massive burst of jargon would help me get an interview.

The course leaders listened and then told me one thing: that I nearly didn’t get called for interview because my application was so obviously not my own words.

It was quite the lesson.

Sometimes, when I’m reading through a website or a brochure, I wonder what the writer was thinking about.

I’m not sure it was about the job in hand because more often than not it feels as though the writer doesn’t believe in what they are selling.

Which would be fine if they weren’t a writer.

Consumers are allowed, expected even, to be cynical about a product.

Writers aren’t.

They must be the most gullible people in the world because they have the hardest job.

They need to convince themselves that a product is the best thing since sliced bread.

Sometimes that isn’t easy.

But really, when you think about it, it’s something we all do. A lot of the time at least.

Look in the mirror in the morning and within a few minutes you’ll have convinced yourself you are the best looking dog in town.

And you’re not. I’ve seen you and believe me, you’re not.

Not that it matters what I think of course. It’s your face and if you think you’re the best looking dog then you’ll find it a lot easier to convince others of that.

Copywriting is the same.

We get all manner of products thrown our way and many, on the surface, seem a little, well, rubbish.

We can’t tell the client that of course. The evil mercenary in us just wants to take the money and run.

So we have to look a little harder and find what it is the client sees in their own product.

Along the way we’ll produce a list and perhaps end up seeing more than one great thing about it.

We’ll have convinced ourselves.

Convincing others is easy.

I read copy.

A lot of copy.

I even call it “copy”, something you might only do if you read it and work with it.

Give me a bottle of milkshake and I’ll be turning it over to see what there is by way of.. you guessed it… copy.

I get a bit of a kick when I read something more than the ingredients. Although, if the ingredients are well written then I’ll even get a kick out of those.

What I find, when reading all this incidental copy – what many people might term “blurb” – is that more often than not it is just a space filler, without being honest enough to tell you it’s a space filler.

I’d love to squint at a pack to see the copy say something like:

“I don’t know why you’re reading this but thanks. The boss told me he didn’t like all the white space the designer was using and so could I do something about it. So here it is. I hope you’ve enjoyed it but don’t be too hard on the designer, white space is nice too.”

That would be fun. That would make the time I spent reading it a little bit more pleasurable because, let’s face it, if you are reading the back of a packet then either the instructions were really hard to find or else you are just a little bored and so in need of a pickmeup. Someone who will chat to you until the microwave pings or the slug pellets have all emptied out.

It isn’t difficult for a product to fill that need.

I was seventeen years old, sat in an eighteenth century manor house and receiving the sort of English lesson normally reserved for twelve year olds.

The first day of an A-level English literature course ought to have been a baptism of fire. At least the way they used to teach it. Shakespeare was a given but Pope, Eliot (T S not George) and Bronte would demand close reading and F R Leavis would show us how.

That wasn’t how it started.

After a brief appraisal of literary terms our teacher decided to start again. This time at the very beginning. Read more…

I sent an SMS to a friend asking “hey dude, how goes the good fight?”

To you, the use of the word “dude” may be only one part of what makes you react violently against my character. Add the concept of a good fight, the word “hey” and you are positively spitting.

But then, you weren’t meant to read my personal SMS. You weren’t meant to understand. Read more…

Is it though? In a word, no. The headline to this article is, it must be said, dull. It’s informative. This article is about interesting headlines but I could have written one to be a more exciting hook into the piece. Read more…