Every word counts: tips on writing powerful, persuasive copy for complex projects
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Sally Harper, copywriter, British Heart Foundation Visit the CharityComms website to view slides from past events, see what events we have coming up and to check out what else we do: www.charitycomms.org.uk
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Every word counts: tips on writing powerful, persuasive copy for complex projects
- 2. Roy Plomley was onto something
- 3. “No tear in the writer, no tear in the reader” – Robert Frost
- 4. What’s the object of your affection?
- 7. It’s dangerous to play it safe
- 8. OOOOOXOOOOO
- 9. Square peg, round hole
- 12. Start by showing you’ve done your research
- 13. Show the process
- 14. Use evidence
- 15. But also show you’ve assessed the risks
- 16. Listen
- 17. And finally, be proud of your discipline and your expertise
- 18. Things to read and listen to Daniel Kahnemann, Thinking Fast and Slow Anything by Dave Trott Andy Maslen, Persuasive Copywriting Hidden Brain Hot Copy Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational David Kelley and Tom Kelley, Creative Confidence Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think John Hegarty, Hegarty on Creativity
- 19. Any questions?
- 20. Thank you
- 21. Getting ahead in your comms career 20 June 2019 London #CommsCareer
- 22. Visit the CharityComms website to view slides from past events, see what events we have coming up and to check out what else we do: www.charitycomms.org.uk
Editor's Notes
- Introduce myself. Getting noticed is the first hurdle. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to use cheap tactics like this one. Today we’re going to talk about getting noticed, and how if you want to persuade someone to do something, emotion matters more than anything else. There’s actually a story behind that Barry Manilow pic too [talk about experiment involving Barry Manilow t-shirt and how people are never paying as much attention as you think they are] Ok just quickly so we have a rough idea where we’re all coming from today, can we go around and say where we work and what the best thing about it is.
- I want to talk a bit about Desert Island Discs. It’s one of the longest running, most popular radio shows of all time, and the person who came up with it was Roy Plomley. It’s a show that makes a-list Hollywood actors cry and politicians spill secrets – it makes people open up and tell stories and it’s the music that does it. Normally I do an exercise here where I ask everyone the name of a song that means a lot to them and we listen to some great music and people say why they chose their song. We don’t have time for that today but the point I’m trying to make is that in writing, we need to emulate many of the qualities that music intrinsically has. The way it evokes memories and feelings, connects with us, understands us. It has rhythm and repetition, it’s a pleasure to hear. Whether you’re writing something happy, sad, angry, whatever – if it doesn’t have any musicality it’s less likely to connect. The reason this show works is because of the power music has to connect with us. To enhance experiences, trigger memories and emotions, change our mood in a moment. It speaks to our core – and this is what the best copy does. It has rhythm, it’s a pleasure to read or listen to, it makes us feel something. It connects and opens us up. If copy doesn’t connect on a human level, it’s not going to persuade anyone to do anything. So how do you write copy like this? Well, we can take a hint from Robert Frost. Which leads me onto…
- So that brings me to this quote. What Robert Frost was getting at here is that if we don’t put some of ourselves into our writing, then how we expect anyone else to be moved? This doesn’t mean everything you write has to sound like a dear diary entry but it does mean you have to come at things from the point of view of your reader. Understand your audience and tap into the emotion that would stir them to action. Maybe it’s grief, maybe it’s humour, maybe it’s nostalgia. But start with emotion. Persuasive copy is not about what you want to say, it’s about what your reader wants to hear.
- In the spirit of putting ourselves into our writing, I’d just like to do a quick exercise. I want everyone to think about an object that means a lot to you, something that you would be devastated if you lost. Has everyone got something in mind? Now get into pairs and tell each other about the object. What it is and why you chose it. Now you’ve all discovered something a bit more personal about each other, I want you all to think about where you work and what your organisation’s precious objects would be. [give BHF examples] and once you’ve jotted down a few examples, I want you to pick one and write a 5 line piece about just one of these objects. The only criteria is that each line has to start with either ‘With this’ or ‘Without this’. [explain further if needed] The point of this to demonstrate how we can build warmth towards our organisation. We have inside knowledge about why our charity is so great but so often we fall back on phrases like ‘life changing’ or ‘life saving’ without getting into specifics or giving people something they can really visualise. Those phrases they lose all their power, including their power of persuasion.
- Now I just want to look at a couple of examples I like and see if you like them too or if you don’t, why not? Who remembers this campaign? Ok so not everyone loved it, it was slightly divisive in the way it used listener data, but it definitely got noticed. It had personality and it was personal, it felt absolutely current, it had a confessional feel to it and it tapped into all kinds of emotions – the exhaustion of parents on their 900th listen of a song about sharks, the exasperation of people who couldn’t wait to see the back of 2018, the hyperventilating over excitement of the royal wedding. In both cases, there isn’t a call to action but the target audience feels warmth towards the brand, like they ‘get you’ – and if you want to persuade someone to do something or trust you, this is where it has to start. Sometimes people panic if the CTA isn’t upfront and all over the shop, but shouting the loudest doesn’t make you more effective or more persuasive. We all need to think more long term about ROI – it’s been proven that brand building is more effective for attracting and retaining customers so when we’re trying to persuade people to do something we need to get them to like us first and not just focus on the ‘oh we have a shiny new thing we have to get 1000 sign ups for by next month’. Mention Patagonia brand.
- Or how about this one? This is another example I like because it shows that emotion doesn’t have to mean pulling-at-the-heart-strings or making people feel guilty, it can be light hearted, knowing and empowering. It’s kind of counter intuitive because it’s celebrating single life and tinder is a tool to help you meet someone but in a crowded marketplace of apps, you’re more likely to download the one whose advertising doesn’t make you feel like crap – and I think this is where eharmony have got it wrong. They use something like ‘every 3 minutes someone falls in love on eharmony and it kind of smells of desperation and creates a weird sense of time pressure. Which is not what single people need.
- And this is all very much on the same theme as what I’ve already said but I want to talk about ‘playing it safe’ – screaming calls to action, heavy handed repetition, mimicking another brand’s really successful campaign. It can feel safer to do these things, to follow a tried and tested routine. But don’t get sucked in, because the truth is they aren’t safe and they aren’t persuasive. Safe creative doesn’t get noticed, therefore safe creative is a waste of money and a massive risk. You don’t need to lead with the main information about whatever it is you’re selling – the information should come after you’ve got people interested, it’s only there to reinforce what they’re already thinking. Which hopefully is something like ‘I’m excited’ ‘I’m intrigued’ ‘I’m scared, in a good way’. Get noticed by leading with emotion. Who feels like charities play it safe too often?
- Which one do you notice? It’s a clichéd thing to say now but the expression ‘zig when they think you’ll zag’ still holds true. Look at what everyone else around you is doing and commit to finding a different way. I’ll give you an example from the British Heart Foundation. We are primarily a research charity, funding research into all kinds of heart and circulatory diseases. The way we normally describe our research is ‘groundbreaking’ ‘pioneering’ ‘world class’ – I’ll be honest – all those phrases you’ve heard a million times before. So I want us to change things up, be a bit more honest about how research actually works. Some of it’s dull, some of its repetitive, and sometimes you have to fail a thousand times to take a tiny step forward. It’s the not the sexy stuff, but it’s honest, and it gives people a real, concrete reason for why we keep needing money, why we haven’t fixed everything yet. It shows the need and it gives us an opportunity to talk about to stop research from being a faceless catch all to sum up what we do.
- You’re job as a copywriter isn’t just finding the right words to fit the brief, it’s interrogating that brief from every angle. If you’ve asked to create a poster to persuade people to say, recycle more, don’t just get to work coming up with a headline – think about whether a poster is even the right way to do this, is it the most attention grabbing format? Where will they go? Will they be seen? Could you suggest a better medium? I’ll give an example from a recent brief we received – make more people at funerals tick the gift aid box when they donate in memory. We were asked to create a new form and a new envelope that gave more prominence to gift aid. Sure, we can do that. But is that alone enough? We’re talking to people grieving, on one of the worst days of their life. They don’t give two hoots about gift aid. But if the message comes from another human being, the person giving the service say, it can at least be delivered in a more sensitive way. So we wrote something that the funeral director could say about gift aid that would explain in simple terms why a tick of the box matters. We’ll test if it makes any difference, but I’m pretty sure a human being is more persuasive than a paragraph on a form. Tell story about the bridge built in Buenos Aires instead of a marketing campaign.
- [if there’s time] So I’d like to end by seeing if in pairs, we can fix this ad. Do whatever you like with it – just make me want to sign up. You can make it a radio ad, explain how it would work as video, keep it as a print ad – whatever you think will work best.
- Then once you’ve written the brilliantly persuasive, insightful copy – you need to sell it in to your client. We don’t have time to get into this in much depth so here are just a few tips that I find helpful.
- Reference the brief, what it’s asking for, who the audience is and what you know about the audience. Parrot it back to them.
- Talk them through your approach, it’s ok to mention things you discarded and why – it shows the logical steps you’ve been through to arrive at the strongest idea.
- If you can, provide examples and evidence that support your approach. Lots of useful behavioural economics case studies. E.g. if they are asking you to add a load more info and choices that will muddy the message, pick a page at random from Daniel Kahnemann’s Thinking Fast and Slow and chances are you’ll find a case study that supports not giving consumers too many things to choose from and too much info – it’s just the way our brains work and it’s proven by science. You can also provide evidence about how long average attention spans are these days… but on the flipside, if you’re pitching a powerful 4 minute film but the client is insistent no-one watches anything for more than 30 seconds, there are case studies for this too. Yes we have short attention spans, but if something is good enough – people stick with it. Just think of Bohemian Rhapsody!
- We’re all guilty sometimes of falling in love with our own idea and not being able to see beyond what we think is so brilliant about it. But if we want to persuade people to get on board, they don’t just need to be dazzled, they need to be reassured. Show that you’ve explored any potential pitfalls, and you’ve thought about how to mitigate them or avoid them altogether.
- Of course it’s important to deliver your idea with conviction and confidence, but you also need to be able to listen to feedback rather than just waiting until the moment you can speak again and hammer home your point. If you can’t respond thoughtfully to feedback then it’s more likely resistance will harden. Remember they are also experts in their field too.
- I think is particularly important if you’re working in house. If you’re asked to write something, you’re a copywriter. You are not a proof reader. You are not a journalist. An editor. A traffic manager. A print production person. You’re job is to know how to write effectively and that is more than enough. It can be difficult to say no to people asking us to check their grammar and spelling or whatever other random requests you get but if you want your ideas and your expertise to have any weight, you have to stick to your guns and be clear about what is and isn’t your job. Writing deserves more respect.