this woman’s work

(subtitle: A lesson in filling up space)

I didn’t know any of this until Julia taught me and I thought you might all be as shocked and amazed as I was by how copy is created.

1. Study already existing copy so you know what in the hell the client sells exactly.

2. The client isn’t quite sure what s/he wants and wants you to meet with sales staff to get some ideas.

3. Meet with sales staff. They sell you on stuff. You listen.

4. Put words on paper to fill up empty space indicated by client.

Seven League Boots are not ordinary boots that take you only one measly step with each foot shuffle forward! The Seven League Boots will take you a whole seven leagues merely by marching! Effortlessly cross the globe! Let them take you away, these Seven League Boots, which are for sale now today at our Fairy Tale Gift Shop! You, too, can be bigger and better in Seven League Boots!

5. Wait for criticism. They want a call to action.

6. Rewrite.

Buy our Seven League Boots and you will go far! These are not ordinary boots that take you only one measly step with each foot shuffle forward! The Seven League Boots will take you a whole seven leagues merely by marching! Effortlessly cross the globe! Let them take you away, these Seven League Boots, which are for sale now today at our Fairy Tale Gift Shop! You, too, can be bigger and better in Seven League Boots!

7. Wait for criticism. They want the copy cut and the call to action moved last.

8. Rewrite.

Seven League Boots will take you a full seven leagues with each step! Buy our Seven League Boots and you will go far!

9. Bill.

Here’s the part that blew my mind about marketing copy — you get paid for all the messing around you did to get to two little lines of copy. You get paid for:

• Meeting with the client’s sales team to hear what they think sells the product.
• Looking at the competition to get an idea of what’s working and/or looking at the client’s copy to see what they love.
• Writing the first draft.
• Writing the second draft.
• Writing the final copy.

Now compare that to writing a magazine assignment. You do the research, you call all the folks to interview, you write and rewrite and rewrite to edits and you get a flat fee. In marketing writing you get paid by the hour so if the job is harder, you get paid more. Or you charge ‘em with a best guess to how long it’ll take you, knowing how quickly you write and how big the job looks. In other words, you get paid for the amount of work you do and generally it’s a decent hourly rate.

For example, one of my very first clients? I got paid to write, “Every color you love in all the styles that flatter. You’ve got it so flaunt it! Top it off with Perfect Price Every Day tees!” This is what they told me: “The message here is color. Do a call out to the Perfect Price Every Day tees.” So basically they gave me the last line (I mean, c’mon “top it off?” See, clichés can be a PLUS in marketing copy) and I sat down and scrawled a bunch of lines about COLOR. I’d already met with them and knew how they liked to sell their stuff (all BOLD and CONFIDENT and YOU ROCK, CUSTOMER, YEAH BABY!) and I knew there were some kinds of language they hated (don’t say “fashion”) and other language they liked (say “styles). Voila! The copy practically wrote itself and I made a decent wage.

One of my early assignments from Julia was remarkably similar to an even earlier assignment. I was totally stuck. I couldn’t see how to write it without cribbing from the first assignment. And then I figured it out: I wasn’t supposed to reinvent the wheel. It was ok to crib. It was ok to repeat lines or get out the thesaurus and use “pretty” instead of “cute” and “big” instead of “large” to say the exact same thing differently. “But Julia!” I said. “That’s too easy!” And lo, I finally understood something she’d been trying to tell me for months: Yes, it is that easy. Easy does not mean you’re doing it wrong.

Just a shout out to the joys of corporate writing. (I’ll add that I’m working on a magazine article with an hourly rate that’ll end up being bupkis but I’m doing it because I want to do it. And the only reason I can afford to do it is because I’ve been working on writing web copy for a client between phone calls for the labor intensive, low pay but prestigious article. For me, marketing writing is subsidizing creative writing. It’s like I’m my own patron!)

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