Guest Article: Vikram Manghnani on lazy copywriters who fool nobody

Where is the copywriter? Brand X wants to do this promotion. A very important and crucial tool for marketing Brand X

Where is the copywriter? Brand X wants to do this promotion. A very important and crucial tool for marketing Brand X. And guess who is chosen to make this promotion a household anthem? The drained out, busy copywriter, who is already bent double under the weight of work. After numerous cups of coffee and lungs choked with cigarette smoke, he walks out to hand his line to his art partner.

“Khelega to jeetega!” Wow! Now that’s what you call a fabulous creative byproduct. After three days of intensive brainstorming, this is what is handed over to the client. Just in case you have failed to understand, may I point out some unique benefits of this line? The offer and action is upfront and, above all, it rhymes! Isn’t that wicked? It can’t get more orgasmic than this – for the agency, for the client and, of course, for the consumer.

While many think this to be a piece of lame copy, I take it as a classic example of how lazy copywriters are getting. In recent times, newspapers, leading publications and all kinds of advertising are oozing with pathetically written communication. Aren’t copywriters supposed to crack lines that make these mundane festival offers hit the consumer hard?

Nowadays, even those not connected with the so-called unconventional ad culture know that deadlines start yesterday and work flows like water out of a broken tap, but does that mean that we writers can throw our legs up on the table and vomit up such gross products?

Do the clients expect too much? My experience says no. How many clients stand up and say, “Can you please give me something original?” Very few – none in fact. Try this in an international boardroom and you will know what it means to face clients who expect some bloody good stuff.

Let me assure you that I m not mouthing off self-righteously. I am talking from personal experience. Life cannot get simpler than if you are a copywriter in India. Just give your clients something that rhymes well and is designed well and you are good. The question is whom are we trying to fool?

The situation is scary and soon going to get conveniently stagnant. Of course, there is always this doubt over whether we really need to spend so much time over a silly offer or one-liner that will vanish from our minds even before it is printed. But isn’t that a convenient cop-out? What we need are more people who will take up the challenge of making that inconsequential campaign so interesting that the client is tempted to splurge.

Whenever I go through the menu card at Mocha’s, I am amazed at the passion that the writer exhibits in the stirring copy that comes across as so effortless. Boy, he must be in love with coffee! That is work that I envy shamelessly. And I hold that menu card up as a prime example of how a simple tool can be transformed into a great advertising element with some uncomplicated, yet well chosen words.

Another stunner is Go Goa – just two words, but how hard they hit! Or, take the classic Diet Pepsi promotion poster, which said, “Diet Pepsi Promotion: Drink and Get Nothing in Return!” It just turned the most conventional seeming piece of communication into a humorous piece of wit that was read and absorbed well by its target segment.

Today’s copywriters are not as anonymous as they were when I got into advertising. And they are better exposed to the best of resources that were not available to an earlier generation, when, ironically, the ideas churned out were fresher, eccentric and obviously creative. Today’s writers literally have the best of everything – from stimulating ad fests to heaps of books and blogs that occupy everyone’s web space. It can get stressful, but then weren’t we passionate about writing copy? So why reserve our potential for briefs that are only for billboards and maha campaigns? Do we really need to wait for big budgeted campaigns to showcase our real talents? I certainly don’t think so.

It’s time copywriters woke up to the fact that being sluggish is not a great start to crafting lines that become classics that stand the test of time. More than your creative director going gung-ho or the client showering praise (both of which occur in closed rooms without any chance of promotion), one certainly goes back home saying, “That was some crack-o piece of shit I wrote today!”

So, go through that brief again, tickle your cerebral nerves a bit more. And see if you are proud of what you have put down. If not, ask yourself, “Where is the copywriter in me?” And I am sure you won’t mind doing the whole thing again. Just to do it better!

The writer is the founder of VMC Creatives, an agency dedicated to copywriting.