Zombie Boy at Beyond Madison Avenue has an interesting rant on the word “copywriter” and its decided lack of sex appeal.
Sadly, for the average person outside the ad industry, the job title “Copywriter”, brings to mind either some guy who sits at the end of a long production line of freshly published books with a black ink pad and a rubber stamp bearing one of those little encircled letter c ensignias or some sort of pathetically downtrodden Dickens character like Bob Cratchet hunched over in some extra tiny scribe’s cubicle, making sure that all the illegible 3 pt. disclaimer type is spelled correctly with the proper use of style guide grammar or something equally menial and tediously insignificant. Let’s face it, to the average person, “Copywriter” is just not the most glamorous sounding job title.
How hard would it be for the industry to replace the title of “copywriter” with something a little more interesting or important sounding?
In the interactive world, a copywriter can end up with a title like “content developer” but that still doesn’t make sense to anyone outside the industry.