Book Review: The Art of Writing Advertising
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The Art of Writing Advertising
Author: Denis Higgins
Paperback: 125 pages, $14.95
Published: 2003
In an attempt to capture the essence of a great copywriter, Denis Higgins heckles the hell out of the copywriters he interviews in The Art of Writing Advertising. The book compiles interviews with five of the greats in advertising writing: William Bernbach, George Gribbin, Rosser Reeves, David Ogilvy, and Leo Burnett.
Bernbach gives Higgins the most trouble in his attempts to uncover the secret recipe to create a legendary copywriter. He states,
I think I have said this before, and I’m going to repeat it to you now. One of the problems here is that we are looking for a formula. What makes a good writer? It’s a danger. It’s this attitude that makes for poor writers. It makes for people trying to be writers when they shouldn’t be writers.
Later in the interview, he laughs at Higgins and says,
I’m laughing because you are going back to habits again as if that were the answer. I have 100 people in copy around here and I doubt if any two have the same habits. And yet they’re tremendous.
The second interview is with Burnett. Higgins attempts to get a definitive answer from him, but Burnett is as vague as the question permits. He says to be a good copywriter you have to read everything and have a “flair for expression”.
Gribbin won’t answer the question directly, but he believes a good copywriter is somewhat of an outsider, who is a good writer first and a wise business man second,
I think you can make a good business man, which a copywriter needs to be, out of a writer, but I don’t think you can make a writer out of business man… Now as to qualities, I think that a writer is usually better if he hasn’t made a good ‘fit’ into living as a younger person.
So what do we know from Gribbin?
Well, we know a copywriter needs to be an empathetic individual, “I see an advantage in middle class upbringing over a rich one.” He needs to work closely with an art director to have a role in how the art plays out with the content. Gribbin believes that as a copywriter it is important to have an extensive knowledge of the product. He expands on this idea stating,
I think the writer should get to know a great deal about a product- not just the physical characteristics of the product he is advertising- but knowing the kind of people who are buying it, and what their motives are apt to be for buying it.
At the end of the interview he lists the qualities that contribute to the making of a good copywriter. They read broadly, live broadly, travel, are skeptical, and violate conventions. A copywriter should possess an education to, “teach a man to weigh thing by himself and for himself” not drench him in stuffiness, “a good writer can never be a snob; a snob sets himself apart from people, rather than being one of them.” Most importantly he states a writer should, “participate, participate, participate.”
Reeves believes copywriting, like Medicine or Law, is practiced, “to learn the copywriting business today you have to read advertising under a practicing advertising man.” Higgins attempts to determine if a copywriter is first a salesperson who learns to write or a writer who learns to sell. Reeves disregards the question stating, “You keep asking me silly questions…If he isn’t a salesman, he can’t write selling copy. If he isn’t a writer, he can’t be a salesman in print. Because it’s inherent in the phrase ‘advertising writing.’”
Ogilvy sums it up, “For 16 years I’ve been trying to find some common denominators which seem to apply to all good creative people. There aren’t any.”
Burnett has a folder for vernaculars he calls “corny language” and makes a habit of immersing himself in product knowledge before he writes copy. Ogilvy has a drawer and can’t write in his own office. Bernbach despises ground rules from the client; whereas, some writers want rules as guidelines. Like anything else, when we attempt to squeeze people into a little box, to define and attempt to reproduce a specific skill set in another person from a predetermined formula we crush creativity, which is the worst possible thing to do in advertising. Each and every copywriter is unique just as these five greats are inherently different. That is the lesson we get from this book, whether intended by Higgins or not. The message is timeless and should be revisited often.
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