The Three Kinds of Copywriting
Copywriting legend Eugene Schwartz, whose writing generated over $1 billion in sales, said that there are three types of copywriters. Here I’ll call them “copycats,” “formula copywriters,” and “creative copywriters.” If we draw a sports analogy, we can say these three categories are equivalent to amateurs, rookies, and veterans. Let’s look at what makes the difference between an amateur copywriter, a rookie, and a seasoned pro.
Copycat Copywriters
Copycats are copywriters who have all the creativity of a thesaurus. Their idea of copywriting is to copy successful headlines and ads from swipe files and reword them. This approach is to copywriting what article spinning is to article writing. This method is most frequently used by non-writers who do something else for a living and have to perform copywriting functions out of necessity, or by beginning copywriters who have just taken a crash course.
Schwartz said this was the most widespread and least effective form of copywriting, and it deserved the lowest pay. Why did he say that? Because the problem with copying successful ads is that the original success of those ads depended upon a specific relationship between a product or service and a market at a particular time. Consequently, the reworded headline is only going to be successful if the market conditions have remained substantially similar. But if the product or service has changed, if consumer demand has changed, if the competition has changed, or if any other major market variable has changed, whether or not the reworded ad will work is a shot in the dark.
To take an example, when the Flip Ultra hit the market in September 2007, it quickly captured 13 percent of the camcorder market. It achieved this by offering users simplicity, positioning itself as the camcorder equivalent of a point-and-shoot camera. This advertising angle worked great in 2007, but it no longer works because today smartphones offer consumers a photography solution that is just as simple and adds more features for the same value. Someone trying to sell a camcorder today using a modified headline from 2007 isn’t going to have much luck.
Formula Copywriters
So that’s the problem with the copycat approach to copywriting. The next step up is formula copywriting. Here instead of merely copying successful ads, the copywriter memorizes the rules that were used to create the original ads and applies them in order to generate new ads.
For instance, a formula copywriter’s arsenal might include a list of techniques and vocabulary to intensify an audience’s desire for a product’s benefits. To apply this to our Flip camera example, someone writing about the Flip camera’s simplicity might dramatize this benefit by telling a story to demonstrate how even someone with no photography experience can use it.
The problem with copywriting formulas like this is similar to the problem with copycat rewording. The formulas do work, but only sometimes, under the right circumstances. Other times, under other circumstances, you need a different formula. Returning again to our example, an ad demonstrating a Flip camera’s simplicity might be very persuasive to someone completely new to digital photography who has no awareness of other products; but the exact same ad could completely lose its appeal to the exact same consumer after they’ve finished looking at an aisle of smartphones that can do the same thing.
This underscores that the real trick to copywriting is not just knowing formulas, but knowing which formula to use under which circumstances. This brings us to our third type of copywriter.
Creative Copywriters
A creative copywriter knows how to use copywriting formulas to match products and services to market conditions. In addition to knowing copywriting, they understand marketing, and they take the time to do market research.
A creative copywriter takes the time to research the product or service they’re promoting. They learn its features and applications inside and out in order to understand what practical benefits it offers to consumers.
A creative copywriter also researches their client’s customers and competition. They investigate the current state of the market to learn what consumers want. They research who else is offering what the market wants. In this way they learn the information they need to know in order to make their client’s product or service stand out from the competition.
Unlike a static formula, a creative copywriting ad is dynamic, constructed to appeal to a living, breathing market at a specific stage of its development. It is not aimed blindly at a dead audience, but designed intelligently to support a growing business. It is this distinction which marks the difference between a cheap copycat or a formula cruncher and a master craftsman like Schwartz.
