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Six ways in which 'copywriting' differs from 'writing'.

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When people ask what I do for a living, I tend to get in a terrible flap. This is largely because I do a variety of things. I pen pieces about music, I blog about advertising and the creative industry (obviously), I present podcasts and radio programmes, and I work on advertising campaigns. Quite a mouthful, and on the occasions I've given the full answer, the questioner's eyes glaze over by the time I reach the full-stop. Nowadays, I tend opt for the simplified reply 'I'm a writer'.

However, when I'm working on the advertising and marketing stuff, I'm very much a COPYwriter and there is a marked difference. The things which distinguish 'writing' from 'copywriting' could fill a very large book, but as this is a webpage, why don't we just look at half a dozen?

A copywriter is always 'on'.

If one is writing a novel - or even a long article - there's usually some allowance for periods of consideration, re-consideration, adjustment and alteration. It isn't uncommon for an author to scrap huge swathes of a book if they consider the work to be below par. The copywriter doesn't have this luxury. To a tight deadline, he or she must deliver appropriate, accurate and compelling copy - on brief, first time, several times a day.

It's not just writing.

I suppose there may be a few copywriters living in glorious isolation, only troubled by beautifully precise briefs for award-winning headlines, straplines and body copy. But I don't know them. More usually, a copywriter is required to spread their skills across a plethora of tasks. From scribbled scamps and website usability tests, to client meetings and brand policing, to say the job is varied, is like saying outer space is quite big.

The battle of the brief.

With my bloggers' hat on, when I sat down to write this piece I had a blank slate. The length, style and subject was largely my own decision. But, when I'm writing copy, I'm tasked with addressing a brief which has not only passed through several hands, but can be inadequately short or ridiculously long. It may also be utterly unintelligible. Still, the copy must be written and it must satisfy the under-expressed desires of the brief's owners. Being an accomplished psychic helps enormously here.

No credit.

Over twenty years, I must have written millions of words of advertising copy. Some have vanished into the ether, others have appeared across the world. There is even a brand of catering bacon which bears the name I gave it. However, I cannot think of a single instance when my name has been credited. This is not a moan. I have never expected anything more - after all, the copy I write is intended to be the clients' voice, not mine. But it shows the only branch of writing which eliminates the author's name by default, is copywriting.

No representation.

Traditionally, advertising has been largely un-unionised. In other industries, it is quite typical for one of the large trade unions to approach employees with an offer of membership. In two decades, this has never happened to me. That said, designers and art directors have several, respected professional bodies available to them. Not so the copywriter. Of course, this is our own fault. In all these years, how did we fail to establish an International Association Of Professional Copywriters? Maybe we couldn't think of a clever enough moto. And don't imagine the National Union of Journalists welcomes copywriters, because it doesn't.

Interference.

I know novelists are prey to the vagaries of their editors. From time-to-time, that editor will demand the re-arrangement of chapters, plot adjustments and character amendments. But I'm sure they rarely re-write the entire book, without notification or consultation. And do so without so much as a nodding acquaintance with basic spelling and grammar. Sadly, as any copywriter will tell you, it's no surprise for a piece of copy to be replaced, at the last minute and following hours of careful work, with something the client's daughter wrote at school.

Copywriters are much better looking.

This is a scientific fact.
 

Magnus Shaw is a copywriter. And ...

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