Could you imagine laboring over a piece of copy the way old-timers like Howard Gossage did? And if you did, what would your current clients do to it after you sent a draft to them?
Thanks to these internet tubes, people everywhere are writing, all the time. Or at least, they’re typing. Has all this collective writing ability lowered the grammatical and stylistic standards of the ad industry?
That’s the conundrum for our industry: the quicker and sloppier society gets with language, the more precise we have to be. We know more precisely than ever that the right words impact sales. If you’re writing for e-commerce, mobile, SEO, or if you’re working on some utility-focused website or app, you’ve seen that even mundane phrases like “click here” get tested and altered to achieve the best results.
As a writer, it’s my obligation to mind the words I write for my clients. But I also have to be aware of the overall effect a piece of communication has. Our audience can respond to any aspect of what we do, or none at all.
It’s the subject of my new column on Talent Zoo.