Chapter 2. Believing In Your Company’s Products
It’s not enough to see a bottle of shampoo and describe it. Advertising is
much more subtle than that. The public demands more. If there are similar
products on the market, you have to believe that your company’s product is
better. Not only must you believe it, you must also think of ways in which
you can demonstrate it. Copywriting may be limited only to a few words on a
television advertisement, a small brochure, or an advert, all of which is very
limited in duration. Within a set space of time, you have to produce words
people will remember. There are several ad campaigns where this is obvious.
Although many adverts irritate the public to the point of turning down the
volume, their message is so clear consumers buy into the product, believing it
to be better than anything the competition could come up with.
Looking at some everyday examples of popular campaigns that have worked,
Head ‘N Shoulders is popular all over the world because their copywriters
latched onto the fact their shampoo dealt with a problem no one talked about.
Everyone else was talking about shine and color, thickness and softness, but
no one was actually promoting the idea that dandruff had a cure. Those
working on this ad campaign cleverly made a point of not only telling the
public about this issue, but of showing them with advertisements that left an
impression. You saw the scalp before and after. You learned about the new
content of the shampoo and you also learned that compared to other
shampoos, there isn’t another with the same results.
That’s a lot to learn from a two-minute spot on TV, but clever copywriting is
what lies behind the best campaigns. A copywriter needs to see an original
angle people feel comfortable with. A copywriter needs to believe in the
product because that sincerity will show in the words. But it’s more than that.
They have to come up with ideas as to why one choice is better than another.
It isn’t enough anymore to have just the brand name of a product, although
this helps, of course. Effective copywriting needs to make the consumer feel
like they are getting superb value for their money.
In the past twenty years, we have seen great changes in copywriting. There
have been televised scripts read by people who were unconvincing, cute
animals were introduced into advertising, and even instances where
copywriting was creative and amusing. Nowadays, advertising has to have
