Right Communications

“Propose to any Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it.

If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.”

— Charles Babbage, 1852.

Much as I admire Babbage (the British mathematician, philosopher, inventor, and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of the programmable computer), I can’t say that his and my views of the British mind are quite in accord. But what do I know? In any event, it’s not the approach taken in most good marketing, which of course aims to stir enthusiasm for the view that a thing can be done.

Journalists are taught to write news stories in the form of an “inverted pyramid”—meaning you lead with the biggest, most important part and work your way down to the bits and bobs.

Good copywriters do the same thing.

That’s why much of copywriting consists of trying to think like a reader, asking yourself, “What should I write next so the reader will understand me and want to keep reading?” This, by the way, is back-breaking work (and not entirely conducive to good character).

The inverted pyramid sounds like a technique or trick. But it’s really just common sense. In live conversation, we get constant multidimensional feedback on whether we’re listening effectively, saying too much, drifting away from the interesting parts, answering questions, being funny (or not), getting understood, coming across as likable, and so forth.

In writing, we get none of this feedback, except in the often much-delayed, hard-to-measure sense that people buy—or don’t buy—the product we wrote about. The inverted pyramid, then, can serve as a guide-rail in a darkened room, helping us feel out what ought to be the next most interesting thing to say.

Adding to the difficulties, however, is the fact that the lead, the “biggest, most important part,” isn’t always a matter of disinterested common sense after all: Is your product, say, an exercise machine that develops whole-body fitness, is easy on the joints, and is being offered at a great price? Then you’ll be obliged, probably, to lead with “whole-body fitness” when writing for exercise buffs, “easy on the joints” for older people, and “great price” for budget-minded readers.

Yes. Well. The difference between art, I guess, and art for hire.

[Above: The Exploratorium posted these two pictures of the Mona Lisa to show that, when inverted, it's surprisingly hard to see how weird the one on the right is. Turn them over and see for yourself. Likewise, in marketing, we're often a bit topsy-turvy, and it can be hard to see how to proceed with an upright heart. It helps, as I have had the good fortune to do, to work mostly with upright clients, products, and services.]

When I was first starting out in business, in about 1978, and wished to be an ad man, I wrote and illustrated a portfolio of sample ads to show to prospective employers, along the lines recommended by David Ogilvy in his Confessions of an Advertising Man.

I showed this opus to Tom Rost, a senior vice president at Ogilvy & Mather headquarters in New York City, the ad agency where I most dearly wished to work. He read it, walked me down the hall to the human-resources office and said, “Let’s see if we can’t find this young man a job.” (I was actually young in those days.) Unfortunately the company launched a hiring freeze a week later, no job materialized, and before long I’d moved on to other, less elevated things.

Meanwhile, however, I happened to show the portfolio to my high-decibel sister-in-law Nancy in California. She shrieked, “This is great! It sounds exactly like advertisements!” And from that moment, I knew something was wrong.

In good writing, a series usually pools outward, meaning its elements are arranged so the sense or feeling of them progressively expands, like a movie camera pulling back to reveal the scene. This has the effect of “painting a picture” in a straightforward way that the mind’s eye can easily visualize:

YES: I enjoyed her golden hair, the dark and silent meadow, and the stars above.

NO: I enjoyed the stars above, her golden hair, and the dark and silent meadow.

Notice that the NO example above is hard to visualize, precisely because it’s jumbled.

When possible, it’s also nice to rework the individual elements so each one is just plain longer than the ones before it, which creates an additional, acoustic form of expansiveness:

YES: I enjoyed her golden hair, the dark of the meadow, and the glittering stars above.

Sometimes a series can go backward, contracting to a point, for dramatic or comical effect:

YES: She feared the raging storm around them, the dark shadows of the room, and his sinister smile.

In good product copywriting, a series usually scans downward across the product, again painting a picture:

YES: Features button-down collar, embroidered cuffs, and a neatly finished hem.

NO: Features embroidered cuffs, a neatly finished hem, and button-down collar.

Again, when the elements are out of order, as in the NO example above, the reader’s mind zigzags around, the picture is chaotic and sales decline.

As ever, God is in the details.