To craft, or not to craft.

How important is craft in our industry? The question may seem blasphemous to quite a few purists out there, but do bear with a longish rant. Here goes 2 instances that I have faced during my rigours from the yesteryears.

Instance One.

Not very many years ago, I was briefed to write a script for a television spot; an everyday job for many copywriters like me. Yet, that day didn’t turn out to be one of those 'everydays'. As goes my routine, I reflected, procrastinated, pontificated and emailed 3 scripts to my then boss (who’s also one of the finest writers in our industry). In less time than it takes to cook Maggi, the reply popped in my inbox: “Doesn’t work. Write again.”

I had a few back-up scenarios ready and duly emailed another 2 scripts. The reply came again. Crisper but not much of a change in their meaning, “Not working.” Re-read the brief the zillionth time and went back to the prosaic Word doc.

Even more scripts followed and so did similar replies. Few hairs turned grey, the 7 PM shutting down went for a walk, half sleeves were imaginatively rolled up over the next hours. Ego and doggedness had taken over. 12 years in the industry and I couldn’t seemingly crack a pretty straightforward (bordering on the mundane) brief.

At 3:30 AM with a table fan whirring by my side, I called it quits. I had written some 17 scripts with 17 disapproval emails dotting my inbox. Next morning, emboldened by few hours of sleep and a confidence bordering on edginess, I decided to confront my boss (secretly wishing for him to come down his hallowed throne and try writing a few himself).

“Why aren’t any of those scripts working for you? Aren’t they on brief!”

“Some of them are perfectly on brief. But your punctuation is all over the place, my friend!”

I guess my WTF expression egged him to indulge me a bit more.

“The director will take this script to brief his actors. If your dialogues aren’t punctuated properly, how do you expect your cast to deliver the dialogues in the desired tone of voice?”

Instance Two.

This time the brief was to write some 50 odd contextual banner ads as a part of a high decibel programmatic push by an e-commerce client. Junior writers in my team could have done it (and in hindsight would have done a better job), yet I decided to give it a go. ?I hadn’t written headlines for the longest time and was itching to go back to the old school habit of writing ads.

After 3 hours I had wrapped them all up. Seemingly satisfied as puns, wit, word-play, click-baits, humour, intelligent innuendoes, craft adorned every piece. And then came a panic stricken call from my boss.

“Are you trying to write The Copy Book 2.0 in a performance campaign?!”

What followed was an intensive session until 2:30 AM in the night on how to write copy for banner ads (needless to mention I was 12 + 2 years experienced when this happened).

The copy had to be simple, straight-jacketed, speak what it was supposed to, sans any crafty indulgence, interpreted minus a ‘aha!’ in the brains, almost boring and matter of fact. No funny or punny quips ever. A complete left brained activity. Write just what the ad is meant to say. Full-stop.

What’s my unsolicited advice? It’s not about whether craft is important in our industry. It’s more important to know when and where to use craft.

#copywriting #digitaladvertising #UnsolicitedMondays #AdvertisingCraft