For some years now, writer and art director have been considered as equal partners working closely together. Television may have encouraged this process but there are other good reasons for it. Both partners are in the ideas business, and if the ideas are good ones, it doesn't matter where they come from. Most frequently they come from day long dialogues between the two.
It doesn't even matter if the art director thinks of the headline and the writer contributes its visual expression. The important thing is being able to recognize a good idea. Once this is done the two can revert to their traditional roles, the writer supplying the copy and the art director suggesting how the visual can help it sell.
Selling is the operative word. The fact that you have edited the school magazine doesn't necessarily fit you to be an advertising writer, even though a feeling of familiarity with words is a good thing. Interest in selling is more important than fine writing. It is sometimes salutary to imagine yourself selling your clients product from door to door when clarity and persuasion would help you far more than oratory. Make no mistake about what I mean by selling: it doesn't matter if you are trying to get people to buy tins of beans, contribute money to starving millions, or vote for a certain politician; you are selling the product, social cause, or person.
The ability to write clearly and well is a tool of the trade and a very necessary one, but it is the idea which you have that will make your advertising stand out from the rest. How do you arrive at a good idea? If there was a clear cut answer, advertising would be a much easier business than it is. Talent for ideas is hard to define. Some people are never going to have it. The creative team, for example, who appealed for help for the starving Biafrans with the headline, 'Fresh food is flying to Biafra' with a visual showing a few live locusts knew what they were doing. It all looks so simple when you see the advertisement but could you have thought of it?
However, when confronted with a new product or a new problem, there are a number of things to be done which could help you find the right answer:
1. Study the research which has been undertaken. Make sure you know exactly the audience for your advertisement and, if possible, what they are looking for when they buy a product like that of your clients.
2. Study the competition, the commercials and the advertisements of other manufacturers who make the same thing.
3. Get to know all the facts. You may have to tour the client's factory and see how the product is made. Writers often strike gold this way.
A leading advertisement writer describes how she was going round a factory making china when she saw an employee taking plates from the production line, smashing them and throwing the pieces into a box. The writer asked what this was all about. She learnt that these plates did not come up to the manufacturer's high standards and would go back into the melting pot. Further questioning revealed that the standards of the manufacturer in question were demonstrably higher than those of his rivals. Also, that in spite of the immense price difference between various designs, the basic china was of exactly the same high standard. The first advertisement to appear told this story under the headline, 'Before you choose the pattern, and choose the china.'
4. Find out whether the product or service has any features its rivals haven't got.
In advertising parlance, this difference is termed a unique selling proposition. Its appeal depends on its nature. 'The jelly made with real fruit', would be an attractive proposition. The only toothpaste with XKL2, is less attractive because you'd have to read the copy to learn what the mystery ingredient, XKL2, did for you. However, there's no doubt that one puts the creative team in a stronger position than not having one, as long as he or she succeeds in selling it to the public. Of course, there are many occasions when the product is similar or identical with the competition. The task here is to make people feel that it is some way superior, 'Nothing works faster than Anadin', is probably one of the best examples.
Wherever you advertise, on television, radio and posters, or in the press and magazines you are competing desperately for people's attention. How you say something is as important as what you say about it. Take the case of the copywriter charged with advertising men's shirts with three different sleeve lengths. Instead of saying 'Shirts made in 3 different sleeve lengths' which might not have been noticed by readers, the advertisement carried the headline: 'Is your husband in another man's arms?' A proposition hard to ignore.
