Though I never met him, David Ogilvy taught me more about advertising in general, and copywriting in particular, than anyone else. (Drayton Bird comes second, but only by a Rizla paper’s width.)
DO’s wisdom was, for the most part, timeless. He was immune to fads, preferring to concentrate on shifting merchandise. Here are five of his thoughts, and their relevance to web copywriting.
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself
Your website, and its copy, should make the product the star.
Which means that pointless flash intros (which we are advised to skip by the site designers – go figure) and dumb “content” optimised for search engines but not, apparently, for customers, are out.
Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals
Immortals do not mindlessly repeat keywords in the hopes of tricking Google into giving them an improved PageRank.
Nor do they recycle lame corporate brochure copy.
Or use empty adjectives like fantastic, exciting and unique.
If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative
I recently received a brief from a client for a website that very sensibly talked about driving visitors to get in touch and do business with them.
The designer had torn that up and instead said they would be creating a site that “oozed creativity”. Not sure where they imagined the client would be finding the money to pay for all this creativity.
The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising
Web pages have headlines. Sensible copywriters make sure they are given an <h1> tag.
Giving the reader a reason to read on is always a good idea online (as it is in print). That means talking about benefits.
And web page headlines do not have to be short. They need to be long enough to do the job – no longer.
What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form
Ah, content. DO didn’t mean content the way web types do – video, audio, animation, social media feeds plus copy of course. He meant that what you say is more important than how you say it.
So the next time you find yourself commissioned – or asked – to write some web copy, start from this idea: when they finish reading this copy, my visitor will…
Then write whatever you need to to achieve this goal. Forget about style, optimisation, Flash and everything else except getting your reader to take the desired action.
Simple and effective advice. Thanks for the reality check Andy. Life/copywriting really isn’t as complicated as we make it sometimes.
I always thought words and images should complement each other but years of trying to get designers to take copy seriously has made me cynical. You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve had the response ‘we don’t use copywriters’ when trying to sell myself to a design consultancy. Why not? ‘We let the client do the writing’. God help me.
Terrific post.
DO’s wisdom rings true after all these years because he understood people. Zingy headlines and technological bells and whistles don’t move people to action. Content that touches people’s core desires and pain points does.
I understand–even sympathize with–the esthetically-focused designer.
But the thing is, people don’t go to websites to see art or to be entertained.
They go to websites to get information and accomplish tasks. (Paraphrasing Ginny Redish, who wrote one the best books on web content writing, IMHO.)
Litmus test for content writing–online and off: Does it move readers to action? After reading your copy, do they do something? Like buy, click, sign up, call you, tell a friend.
Because if it doesn’t sell, who cares if it’s creative?
Great post, thanks. Ogilvy was a natural salesman and it shines through in his copy. He also credited consumers with intelligence, which I think is all too rare. “Ogilvy On Advertising” is a super book and I’d recommend it to anyone.
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great idea,thanks
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DO had many insights into advertising, but I treasure most his simple observation that the purpose of advertising is first and foremost to generate sales. He acknowledged that copy writing is a creative process — he was superb at it himself, but he quotes Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates agency with approval: “Now, what do you want out of me? Fine writing? Do you want masterpieces? Do you want glowing things that can be framed by copywriters? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?” The most inventive ad ever written is worthless to the client if it doesn’t move the needle. DO never wandered far from that principle.
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