What is Copywriting?
Remember those advertising jingles you used to hear as a kid? I bet if you close your eyes, you can still remember one, and with vivid clarity too. Catchy wordplay has a way of permanently sticking in one’s brain. We experience the same phenomenon when we hear the super-cheesy pop song on the radio and think to ourselves, “What a god-forsakenly awful song”. Yet, it plays through our heads the entire day, in endless and unpleasant, yet admittedly mellifluous circles. Until were lying in bed, unable to sleep and desperately pleading with our animal brains to turn it the hell off.
Kiran Wicksteed
Marketing
1 Mar 2016
Jingles may be out-of-fashion, but the art of writing compelling, persuasive, oft humorous, and sometimes hard-hitting copy, lives on through us: the moleskin bearing, writer-attire clad, keyboard pianists. We went to ad-school and got our degrees in eulogising consumer products using high-concept and artistry. We studied customer-buying patterns, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs, target market segments, and the works of the greats, who left their marks on the world of writing for advertising.
Copywriters are an emotional, oft awkward, and almost always eclectic breed. We be modern-day poets with a cause. We are grammarians and existentialists. Striving to unlock the essential truth which will catapult a brand over the high walls of consumer scepticism. We weave wonderful works of advertising, with words. We entwine human truths with products. Using our endemic sensitivity to mind-read with empathy, all so we can find the most effective ways to persuade any given audience.
Copywriters are always absorbing new information. Endlessly perusing through the human lexicon, in search of the next big idea. Encyclopaedic knowledge is a massive advantage in a world where you could be commissioned to write about so many disparate topics. But, in the end we look for what products and services really mean to people rather than just their function, and conspire to drive these messages home, in the most unusual and unexpected ways.
Most copywriters face a conundrum of conscience at one point or another. They struggle to find the meaning in the dark and mysterious art of getting people to buy things they don’t need. At K&T Creative, we don’t have this problem. We work only with people we like, and want to see succeed. Our purpose is to support and enhance honest and honourable businesses and entrepreneurs, who add value to everyone involved in their projects.
So next time you chuckle at a radio ad, or feel compelled to donate to a charity after watching a television ad, think for a second, of the copywriter behind-the-scenes. A person whose life has been devoted to the pursuit of delivering to you a novel way of looking at something, or a fleeting 30 seconds of feeling — all at the behest of a brand.
