What is a Copywriter?
Outside the walls of advertising, I get strange looks and funny questions when I bring up what I do.
In the world of advertising, the Copywriter is a foundational role. Many of the names of agencies feature the name of a copywriter. The traditional core unit of creative advertising are made up of this basic partnership. A copywriter and an art director. One is in charge of the concepts and language, the other rules over the visuals. Of course these roles can blur, but on paper, that’s the basic unit of coming up with advertising ideas.
When people ask what I do who don’t have a background in advertising, I get a lot of furrowed brows. Even at a company I recently worked with, the title “copywriter” wasn’t understood. “So you are in charge of filing for copyrights with the patent office?” Not exactly good sir. I guess that would be called a “copyrighter”? Copywriting is a discipline centered around writing. The writing of copy. Copy are the words that you see all around you. They could be words on a billboard, words spoken by a celebrity in a commercial, words on a website or a tweet or an email. Copy is all around us. And someone needs to write it all. Enter copywriters.
OK, so copywriters write words for advertising. Yes, but then things start to get blurry, because it can expand quite a bit from here.
Below are is a non-exhaustive list of things a copywriter might be responsible for.
That Super Bowl ad you loved (and the ones you didn’t)
Every single commercial on TV, whether you loved it or not, was written by a copywriter. While commercials are fleeting interruptions of whatever you actually want to watch, the process of making a commercial is far from fleeting. I’ve worked on a 60-second commercial that took 12 months of work to realize the final result. Maybe you’ve heard of screenwriters? They are the people who write the scripts that get made into movies. Copywriters are the screenwriters of advertising. Every commercial starts as an idea, which is turned into a script, written by a copywriter. The script is filled with all the details. It sets up the world, the characters, includes the dialogue, the gags, all of it is written out in a script. The copywriter is the one who wrote that script.
That tweet from a brand that made you laugh
Copywriters are in charge of defining the voice of brands. That voice can extend anywhere the brand shows up. Sometimes that is incredibly short social media posts. A common assignment for a copywriter in a campaign is to write pages and pages of social copy for tweets, captions, text overlays, etc.
That tagline that brand has been using for years
Brand taglines look to distill the voice and attitude of a brand into as few words as possible. We all know what taglines look like. We don’t necessarily know where they come from, unless you are deep into the advertising world. “Just Do It” from Nike. “Think Different” from Apple. “Got Milk” for, well, milk. “A Diamond is Forever” for De Beers. All written by copywriters. Coming up with a decades long lasting tagline is one of the holy grails of copywriting. Most start off rushed out to hold a single campaign together, but through a combination of cultural forces and luck, some taglines truly are forever.
That billboard that made you go “huh, that’s clever”
As much as our lives have become chained to all things digital, there is still a simple joy in seeing the right combination of big words plastered on a billboard. While a basic advertising format, billboards, when given the right freedom, are a crown jewel level assignment for a copywriter. They’re the kind of thing that even your random uncle who drops by at Thanksgiving might appreciate and bring up on his own. A billboard is a good way to put a clever, true joke out there into the world and get a reaction. They’re like tweets before tweets were a thing. And they were all written by a copywriter.
Brand manifestos
Manifestos have been a central part of the advertising machine for decades. While they are mostly internal facing pieces of writing meant to express a campaign concept, sometimes these manifestos make it through and take on a life of their own. Like in the case of Apple’s “Think Different” campaign. They loved the manifesto so much that they got Richard Dreyfus to perform it over an emotional edit of the great iconoclast geniuses of the world.
A manifesto is an emotionally charged piece of writing that defines a specific point of view. The best are a combination of poetic language and logic that lead you to a conclusion that makes you feel something. They are inspirational and aspirational. And the very best can rise above advertising by speaking a human truth. The other thing about manifestos is that for as long as I’ve been in advertising, I’ve heard passionate clients cry “no more manifestos!” I don’t blame them. At worst, they can feel trite, pandering and formulaic. However, as long as I’ve been in advertising, I’ve heard most clients eventually ask “What’s the manifesto?” While conventional, they do help move the needle and sell the work through all the layers involved. And every now and then, you get life affirming work like above.
Celebrity social posts
Shhhhhh. This is a secret and might get me banned from the Order of Wordsmiths for Commerce and Profit, but when you see a celebrity or influencer posting about a product they endorse, there may be a copywriter behind the keyboard. A lot of times, copywriters end up writing some “example” posts of what the celebrities could post. A simple copy and paste later, and all the world sees is the celebrity being all witty and convincing you to buy that fragrance based on their childhood love of SpongeBob.
Web pages
On the rare occasion where you were so moved by a commercial that you actually click on the link, you will be taken to a webpage to buy a product or service. These web pages were written by a copywriter. At its basic level, the role of a copywriter is to convince or persuade you with the power of words into buying something. Most likely a product or service, but in aspirational advertising, they also get you to buy into an attitude or ideology. Just when they get you excited about how you can “Express Yourself” they’ll offer you some shoes that will let you do exactly that. All of that convincing, aspirational or serving the bottom line, is the job of a copywriter.
A romance novel about Kentucky Fried Chicken
More proof that a copywriter can write anything. Here the output was a 96-page, steamy novella about Colonel Sanders and fried chicken. Anywhere the brand goes, so goes the copywriter.
Really long pitch decks
The most time consuming part of the job as an advertising copywriter is writing decks. In order for a client to buy a campaign idea, they will need a deck that makes a convincing case for them to spend their marketing budget. These decks will combine strategy, creative concepts, how the campaign comes to life in video, digital and experience. Everything needs to be set up clearly, with each aspect finessed and explained. It’s the copywriter’s job to write and structure this document, along with coming up with the specific advertising ideas it contains. Once a campaign is sold, the decks don’t stop. There will need to be new decks to onboard vendors, reach out to celebrities, explain the idea to film directors and photographers. The core part of a copywriter’s day to day duties is writing and managing all of these decks.
Strategic documents
Some copywriters are called in earlier to the process by clients and asked to help define the strategy behind a campaign. Before sprinting off and coming up with TV spots and social media ideas, you have to know who you are speaking to and why. Copywriters can help define marketing personas and explain the goal of a campaign. Without this alignment, it’s hard to judge the work that comes later. Strategy is like a contract that everyone around the table agrees on. Sometimes copywriters are invited into this phase to clearly spell out what a campaign should achieve.
Product names
We have this great new product, but what do we call it? Enter the copywriter. They’ll rattle off a list of 50 possible product names for you to consider. If the product name is basic and functional, maybe they didn’t call in a copywriter and let a toilet paper engineer or umbrella marketing manager give it a name instead. But if there is a little something extra to the name that makes you smile or look twice, it was probably the work of a copywriter.
Blog posts
Yep. Combing the dark arts of persuasive writing and search engine optimization, a copywriter can craft long form written content that the algorithm will love. Using words to generate a never-ending stream of traffic right back to your brand’s website. They say long copy is dead, but the copywriter of blog posts disagrees. You can still write a ton of words, you just have to know where to put them.
Anything
Some copywriters are specialists. “I only write social media campaigns” or “I only write scripts for 10 million dollar commercials directed by David Fincher.” But most copywriters I know are also brilliant, curious generalists. They can find excitement in coming up with concepts or writing words that can go anywhere. So if you find yourself working with a copywriter, just talk to them. If you have something you need, go ahead and ask. Chances are, they’ll be up for the challenge.
As a footnote, some of our greatest writers and authors began as advertising copywriters. Writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Salman Rushdie and Joseph Heller all found words for brands before their own voices grew too big to ignore. Hollywood screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, the guy who ended up writing Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back, also started out as an advertising copywriter, before his buddy Steven Spielberg pulled him aside to write words that would go in Harrison Ford’s mouth.
On a personal note, I’ve worked on all the types of things mentioned above. So if you’re needing a little help with any of those tasks, feel free to drop me a line.
Andrew “Oyl” Miller is an advertising Creative Director and Copywriter. He spent 15 years working at Wieden+Kennedy on brands like Nike, PlayStation and IKEA. You can check out his work on his website.