Late to the Party
Marketing needs both design and copy. But copy is more fundamental, because it’s about substance: what you want to say, as well as how you want to say it.
That doesn’t mean copy is ‘better than’ design. Just that it’s logical to think about it first. And that holds true no matter how much design comes to dominate the process – or the budget – later on.
Some clients fully appreciate the primacy of language, so they get the text sorted out before anything else. Copywriters love them. So do designers, because a ‘copy first’ project generally unfolds with preternatural ease, like a childhood dream of flight.
Sometimes Copy Arrives Late
Occasionally, copy shuffles awkwardly on stage at the end of Act IV, waiting for its prompt. By that point, the budget may already have been set as an unexpandable ‘fixed pie’, leaving the copywriter with a sliver rather than a wodge. More seriously for the client, many issues will have been resolved that would have really benefited from a writer’s input.
Why don’t clients get a writer in sooner? Maybe because they expect to do that job themselves (see below), at least initially. Or, if they’re less familiar with their target medium, it may be because design feels closer to the final product somehow, so they gravitate in that direction. If I want a house built, I might go straight to a builder, even though what I really need first is an architect.
Is Copy an Afterthought?
Does that make copy an ‘afterthought’? Well, in these Difficult Economic Times, we should probably be grateful clients are thinking about it at all. As marketers, it’s our job to fit in with the customer’s buying journey, not fight with it. We are where we are, and if we’re late to the party, all we can do is add value however we can – and suggest an earlier approach next time.
Everybody Writes
Unless they’re marketers themselves, few clients will spend much time thinking about graphic layout, user experience, or online functionality. Even fewer will use Github, Photoshop, or InDesign. So there’s a robust technical and vocational barrier to entry around design disciplines, preserving their separation and mystique. Practitioners can choose to cultivate that barrier or play it down, but it’s there.
In contrast, everybody writes, every day, using the same tools as Dave Trott or J.K. Rowling. And whoever writes, the output is a basic text document like any other. So the only thing upholding the copywriter’s specialness is the client’s perception of their art – which may be hazy, particularly early on.
Clients Trying Their Hand at Writing
As this story suggests, it’s often better if clients do give writing a go, because they are rarely 100% happy with what they produce, and often realize that they do need outside help. What’s more, their work can be a valuable starting point, whether instructive or cautionary. Contrast that with slapdash paintwork, which lacks all merit and hangs around for years, confronting you in mute reproach, until you move away.
Copy as a Fait Accompli
Not only are the tools of writing more universal, but the process they support can seem obscure and insubstantial too.
Working with a designer or developer can be a bit like watching Masterchef. There are so many milestones at which they can show what they’ve done so far: mood boards, wireframes, functional demos, colorways, logo options, brand books, sample pages. Each stage generates another meaty deliverable that beefs up the perception of value.
The copywriter, on the other hand, simply serves up the finished dish. As a writer, you’re usually aiming to hit the target first time. For sure, you expect feedback, and may have queries yourself, but essentially your text is good to go. You might do a sample of a larger project first, to confirm the style, but that’s more of a polished fragment than a half-formed pot.
Hidden Grunt of Writing
As a result, the grunt of writing is largely hidden. You take the brief, work your alchemy in seclusion, and reappear with the copy. All the experimentation, refinement, rejection, and selection happens in your head, or at your desk. And this disparity can make copywriting look somehow smaller and less substantial than design.
To combat this, consider adding some visual zing. For example, you can ask an art director to mock up your ad concept, or present your taglines in a colorful PDF or PowerPoint. The risk, of course, is that the visuals may distract from your copy or even take root as a viable design idea, enraging the actual designer on the job (which you would never want, of course).
Design/Copy Imbalance and Scheduling
The design/copy imbalance also has a knock-on effect on scheduling. While each design deliverable can occupy another stage on the project’s critical path, adding up to eons for the designers to do their thing, copywriting can end up as a single-stage task, scrunched into a ridiculous two-day window just before launch.
However, this also indicates the solution: break down the work into chunks and charge/schedule accordingly.
Briefing is a thing.
Research is a thing.
Interviewing is a thing.
Writing is a thing, as is rewriting.
Even thinking, to which we will now turn, can be a thing.
However, that isn’t always obvious from the way copywriters work, or talk about their work. All the client sees is the finished copy; the thought behind them stays backstage, only made explicit under challenge. Even the writer themselves may be only half-conscious of the full complexity of their work, since they create it intuitively and instinctively, as poets and songwriters do.
But I’m not complaining. It’s great to know that they appreciate how much of what I do isn’t copywriting at all. It’s copythinking.
