Jul
30

Why Copywriters Gotta Put Up With Shit

Filed Under CopyWriting 

John Carlton recently wrote about TMZ and went into a little rant about dirty-laundy crap like that.

Upon reading it, I thought: “Gee, why is he getting irritated about it? Why does he even waste his time with stuff like that?”

Well, turns out I needed a reality check.

I avoided the media gossip, the scandals, the celebrities. I didn’t watch TV, barely listened to radio and seldomly read newspapers.

Now – that’s good if I’d be a monk trying to find inner peace, or a higher-state of being, living a hermits life in search for nirvana.

(And in fact – I’m known among my friends to be strangely disengaged and ignorant about TV shows, celebrities, hit songs and fashion trends).

But I’m not trying to be a monk. I want to get into advertising. And advertising happens in the midst of… Amy Winehouse being released from hospital (and I don’t even know who the hell she is!), Alicia Keys signing up to sing the next James Bond song and Miley Cyrus agreeing to be Hannah Montana for yet another season (hurray!).

I guess I was really naive to think that there’d be a way to really get into copywriting without being hip to what’s on people’s minds (and underestimating how much of the stuff that is on people’s minds is celebrity gossip).

John often writes about getting out there and making friends with all kinds of people, and living life to the fullest. Well, I always THOUGHT like I’m making friends with “all kinds of people” because most of my friends have kind of outlandish interests and hobbies and lifestyles.

But what I missed is that “all kinds of people” INCLUDES Mr. John Smith who get’s up five days a week, puts in his hours for The Man and sedates his mind with Entertainment Tonight and TMZ. The guy who’s getting a 46″ flatscreen TV to watch the superbowl. The guy who buys a new car so he can keep up with the Joneses. The guy who’s scared shit when “another deadly terrorist assault” is being predicted.

I had a childish idea that being a copywriter meant being able to understand people out of the ivory tower, kind of looking out of the window and observing the crowds.

But John put it this way: you gotta be a “culture spy”.

That means you gotta get in there. You gotta get your hands dirty. You gotta gather information in the field. You gotta know what it’s like to be in their shoes, and you can’t learn that from OBSERVING them walk in their shoes. You gotta walk a mile in their shoes. Then you know what it’s like. And then you can talk to them.

And if you’re not willing to put these shoes on, then don’t put a copywriter’s hat on your head either.

And all of this doesn’t mean that you have to drown yourself in meaningless noise. Or abandon the stuff that really resonates deeply with you, where you find joy and beauty and truth and wisdom. It just means that you gotta understand and experience where your prospects are at. So you can talk to them in a way that strikes a chord. So you can enter the conversation that’s already going on in the prospects mind.

Anyway – I wanna come to an end here. This was a major lesson for me. I gotta get out of my own little world and go for a swim in the mainstream regularly.

(And somehow, there’s an inkling of an clue that there’s an underlying attitude and mindset that also needs adjustment if I really want to get good at this…)

(And don’t forget to check out John’s post, there’s an interesting discussion going on about this).

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