Copywriting Then and Now Is Like Chalk and Cheese

by Donny in Comment — Updated Reading Time: 4 minutes

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Millions of advertising and marketing campaigns solely depend on copywriting. History clearly indicates the power of copywriting and its role in brand positioning. From stories to billboards, to print advertisements, to soap operas, to TV commercials, to web series, to social platforms, crafting a copy for various collaterals has come a long way. Copywriting is exploding in an unprecedented way leading to new metrics. Read this before you write another copy.

Gone are the days, where a bunch of creative and talented folks sat together and broke their heads to flex the muscles of their vocabulary and make their ideas more glamorous. Word gamblers saw huge success through their stylish and more sophisticated works in earlier days. Copywriting was considered an art then. As exponential masters of the language, copywriters had their power. Their works were more formal and got heads turning – ears flapping too.

This culture is slowly turning upside down. ,

Copywriters today are forced to go with the consumers. The scare to get denounced and to be tagged as an obsolete is eating many today. Don’t mistake this to copywriting apocalypse. Getting closer to digital excellence is a task that gets tricky many times. Today, there is a purpose to have a clear vision to tackle the trend and to achieve copywriting excellence. This calls for a refinement in strategies and mastering new skills that can boost your performance.

“The purpose of advertising is to sell. That is what the client is paying for and if that goal does not permeate every idea you get, every word you write, every picture you take, you are a phony and you ought to get out of the business.”
William Bill Bernbach.

Stop being creative at your risk

Creativity and spontaneity have taken a different approach in this digital age copywriting profession. With the arrival of the internet, social media and search engine optimization, there is more to copywriting than to merely being creative. The ways content are created and shared are different today. Traditional media forms have digital versions now. Media evolution is taking place all over the world. Brands need to hold this thought and act.

So, what are those powerful changes an online copywriter is expected to employ today to interweave with the innovations but still carry out the human touch?

First and foremost, copywriters need to understand that copywriting today demands a different set of skills in terms of creating, optimizing and delivering. You need to learn to deliver personalization today. With thousands of options set before them, customers look for that so called “personalized touch” to give a nod to your brand.

You can understand this better through the journey of a top beverage company in the World – Coca Cola

Coca-Cola Innovates New Spaces Quickly and Boldly

Coca-Cola, the most admired and the best-known brand has been making people associate with the brand generation to generation. The Company continues to make changes by evaluating its progress across the experiences that it has been creating, the process, technologies and above all with the people and data. Right from its launch in 1886 where it came up with a unique style of using Spencerian Script logo, the brand has been creating millions of moments through its marketing campaigns every year and every time it came up with a new promotion.

Whether it is for advertising or another form of marketing campaign, the company has never failed to connect with the audience. The brand has consistently moulded its copywriting strategies to accommodate various forms like prints, hoardings, radio ads, television commercial, blogs, newsletters, emails, white papers, e-books, podcasts, video productions, audio clips, webinars, Power Point presentations, social-media content, webpage content, mobile content and much more to come.

From “Delicious and Refreshing,” tagline of the 1890s to the revolutionary jingle of 1971 that read, “I would like to buy the world a Coke,” the company has stood unique in presenting itself to the public. Its advertising budget surpassed $100,000 back in the 1900s which became a big talk in the market. The company saw yet another ground-breaking response in 2015 when it tipped off the “Drinkable” ad campaign to launch Coke Zero. This campaign removed all barriers. It’s first ever 30-second holiday commercial on television back in 2016 for its, “Taste the Feeling,” campaign made the season special for all its evangelists.

It is a privilege when customers coin a new name to your brand. This happened with Coca-Cola. The name Coke was created by none other than Coca-Cola fans. Coke continues to teach every marketer even after these 130 years. The company is re-inventing big way by generating real-time content all 365 days. This helps in innovating new spaces and going in line with consumer’s taste.

“Taking into account shifting user trends and emerging technologies and tools at our fingertips, we’ve doubled down on visual storytelling—original video content, photo galleries, infographics and more—over the past two years. Now, roughly half of the dozen pieces of content we produce and publish each week include video, said Jay Moye, global editor-in-chief, Coca-Cola Journey.
From tagline to a billboard, Coca Cola has shown its excellence consistently sharpening its saw of copywriting.

Yes, with changing times, copywriting has undergone various changes. Today the focus is on the distribution of creativity, greater connectivity and consumer empowerment.

Re-work with some unconventional ideas

  • One of the vast and much-explored opportunities of digital copywriting today is to follow SEO.
  • So, provide the search engines with the clarity of what your content is all about.
  • Involve in market research
  • Infuse data and analytics
  • Inculcate the idea of using psychology
  • Be short and different but authoritative and relevant
  • Take advantage of Video technology
  • A third of World’s entire population is going to get hooked to social media by 2020. Understand how online information is shared via social platforms.
  • Understand the influencers

Future of Copywriting is Predictable

The race for an exciting copy will still continue. Today, you have a chance to prove your existence by being SEO and mobile friendly. Tomorrow, there can be another dominating method. Automated content development technologies and automated editors are in the race for future strategies. Such innovations can help in getting a raft of variables; permutations and combinations to one single idea which is slightly not possible with humans given the limitation of time for each project.

Future technological innovations can still have serious ramifications over copywriting. But, there cannot be any hindrance to creativity. With each innovation, copywriting can get stronger. Thinking can get bigger. Harness the innovations and confidently craft your ideas, carpentering words and phrases that suit to this era. Persuade the audience into taking a specific action. You can surely make empathic leaps. Let your creativity evoke emotions.

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