HEAD BLOG

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.