Last time it happened, I was at a party.
‘What do you do?’ said a man. He was a whopping great bloke with a point to prove – his handshake was crushing.
‘I’m a copywriter,’ I said.
He asked which legal firm I worked for – he reckoned he might know them.
I shook my head. ‘No, like a writer. Copy means commercial writing. I don’t really know why. I write words for businesses.’
He looked a bit blank about that as well. ‘So you don’t put the curly-cuh next to companies’ products?’
I shook my head again. ‘Have you seen Mad Men?’ I asked.
‘A few episodes.’
‘OK, I’m like Peggy Olson.’
*
I don’t know many copywriters who haven’t had the same conversation. Why not simply say ‘I’m a writer’, you could ask. Well, it can make you sound like you’re trying to be some kind of Hemingway, which doesn’t often work. Plus you always get the impression you’re about to have someone pat your head and say ‘aww’ – or ask if you’re the next JK Rowling. Say ‘copywriter’, though, and it’s got a bit of gravitas. At least until you remember that most people don’t have a clue what it means.
Still. The curious will dig. And me, I’ll say, ‘I write scripts for the phone, copy for websites, for direct mailers – stuff like that. But mainly my company does on-hold marketing.’
‘Is that actually creative?’ someone else might ask. ‘Isn’t that just writing “thanks for holding” and all that?’
The implication being you don’t need real writers to write that sort of fluff. The common perception (and misconception) being that on-hold messages are all filler, meaningless platitudes or plain old disingenuous. Or all three.
‘No,’ I’ll say. ‘We’re actually doing all we can to change that idea. Because, in layman’s terms, my team writes targeted advertising not unlike the stuff you’d find on your local radio station, or even a voiceover script for a TV campaign.’ (Maybe I wouldn’t put it quite so eloquently.)
And I might go on. I might explain how we know the clichés, so we know how to avoid them. Or why these days, fewer and fewer of our productions actually feature the phrase ‘thank you for holding’ at all.
I’d say that we take plenty of time out to understand the brands and businesses we write for. And how, more often than not, our product tends to win over the sceptics.
Is there a formula to making more of the time a caller spends on hold? No. If there were a formula, there’d be little point in the creative side of it. But what I do know is this: we’re able to surprise listeners because we acknowledge their being on hold and neatly turn it on its head. If you can say ‘We know you’re hanging on and don’t want to keep you waiting. But while you’re here…’ you’re turning what’s sometimes seen as a negative experience into something more positive. Maybe an opportunity. If you replace ‘thank you for holding’ with something valuable, useful, entertaining, you’re going even further.
Ultimately, it comes from a way of thinking – not just writing. Our first thought isn’t ‘What do callers usually hear and expect to hear?’ but ‘What would I want to hear?’ And that, I suppose, is the difference between copying the pre-existing formula… and copywriting.
And who knows? One day we might just end up doing it for a company that puts the little © next to a product name. Copywriting about copyright. That guy at the party would explode.
