In a nutshell:
G Copywriting is the opposite of writing a novel. It’s about
concision, not expansion.
G Be as charming as possible in print.
G Don’t dismiss digital – it’s still maturing and represents an
amazing opportunity.
G Writing is your trade, so learn to just get on with it.
G ‘If they could inspire the French Revolution with just three
words, we should be able to sell a soap power with less than
ten.’
G It’s a good thing if the client doesn’t know what they want.
That’s what we’re here for.
G Copy other writers’ imagination, but never their words.
Interviews 147
Is there anything specific you do to keep fresh?
You can learn all kinds of things from all kinds of places. There was a
piece in The Economist – one of our clients – just recently about Barbie’s
50th anniversary. Apparently the guy who designed Barbie was a cold war
missile designer, which, as the article pointed out, probably explains her
breasts. That’s not the kind of thing you expect to get from The Economist,
but there it was. So just be open.
And finally, any advice for younger writers?
One of the most useful people I’ve ever worked with was John Hegarty,
now Sir John. He’s not even a writer. But perhaps because he’s so good at
expressing himself visually, he was very good at getting you to write as
concisely as possible. He used to say something like, ‘If they could inspire
the French Revolution with just three words, we should be able to sell a
soap power with less than ten.’ It’s an exaggeration but it makes a good
point.
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148 brilliant copywriting
brilliant
questions and answers
Chas Bayfield
‘Brilliant copywriting is about what’s not said, rather than what is said. It’s
sweet, it’s slick, it makes you happy reading it. It’s not stylised advertising
copy that reads like it came from an awards annual 20 years ago. Basically
it doesn’t sound like copywriting.’
I’ve done all these interviews face to face because that helps the chemistry.
But in Chas’s case that would have proved rather inconvenient as he’s
currently ‘pottering around’ in Tasmania. As well as being the ace
copywriter behind the multi award-winning Tango blackcurrant ads and the
deliberately cringe-making ‘I fancy your mum’ campaign for Birdseye Ready
Meals, Chas is also the frontman for dirty gospel rocksters The International
Christian Playboys, he write songs with Justin ‘Hot Leg’ Hawkins and he’s a
founder of Christians in Media.
Who are you and what are you?
I’m a freelance creative – that’s what I call myself. The creative side
isn’t just about copywriting, it’s about having ideas. It’s about finding the
best way to sell a product, and copywriting might be a part of that. It’s
about using whatever’s most effective, and often that involve words on a
page, unless I’m doing something purely visual or purely ambient.
Let’s talk for a moment about that relationship between the visual
and the verbal in advertising . . .
The idea that they’re in competition is very old school. The days when
the copywriter used to craft his words, then slip them under the office door
of the art director who was sitting there playing a grand piano, are over. I
see it as two people trying to crack the same nut. Ninety per cent of the job
is having a great idea; the other 10 per cent is just making sure it happens.
So is that traditional relationship on the wane?
I think the pairing thing is a good idea, it gives you solidarity, it’s
someone you can be really honest with. I don’t think that’s going to go
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Interviews 149
away; what I think will go away is the very traditional roles of the writer
doing the words and the art director doing the visuals. There’s so much
more that a team can do these days.
How did you get started in advertising?
I was a bit rootless, living in Hamburg and making my living as an
English teacher. I taught some account directors in an advertising agency
and I got smitten by the environment. I came back to the UK and
happened to see a Janet Street-Porter programme called the Rough Guide
to Careers about life in an advertising agency. Just thought, ‘That’s me.’ So
I ended up at Watford College and eventually got taken on at HCL in May
1993.
What sort of character type makes a good copywriter?
The people I respect the most don’t seem to have their heads stuck in
advertising. They read books, watch TV and live in the real world.
Advertising can be a blokey clan where you have to like football, drink beer
and wear the right kind of trainers. I don’t mean to sound snobbish, but
there’s a very specific type of person who gets taken on. The people I look
up to live in their own crazy world and have a life.
I was going to ask you about your top tips, so ‘get a life’ is clearly
one of them. Anything else?
Go where the people are, eat in McDonald’s, read trashy magazines, sit
in Starbucks a lot, watch the world, travel on buses, go by coach, not first
class, and just realise that the people you need to talk to live in the real
world themselves and not in some little media bubble. I can’t stand it when
people get their ideas from YouTube or style mags or movies. Don’t do that
– get your inspiration from some weird German novel published 100 years
ago, read caravanning magazines or listen to the bizarre things people say
on buses.
Any particularly big influences on your thinking or work?
I had a teacher called Roger Pelham when I was 12 or 13 who got me
really excited about the English language and what it could do. I remember
having to précis 100 words down to 30 words and it was brilliant, like a
L
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150 brilliant copywriting
logic puzzle, and weirdly that’s very much what I do now – saying a lot in a
few words.
Are you still a big reader?
I am. At the moment I’m reading a Czech author who’s from the same
town my grandparents are from – he’s the most famous person it’s ever
produced. The stuff that really inspires me is beautifully written, particularly
Shakespeare and the Bible. The power of Old Testament prophets is
awesome – the amount of Tango scripts I wrote based on Haggai and
Isaiah ‘smiting with their righteous right hand’. No one knew where that
came from.
They probably thought it was Pulp Fiction, which is your point about
ideas being appropriated. Anyway, how do you then focus your thinking
down to a concise idea?
I’ve got this thing I call the Magical Ideas Book which I’m constantly
topping up with weird stuff I’ve seen or overheard. It’s literally everything
I’ve ever found interesting. The first rule for any copywriter is, what’s
interesting? If it’s interesting people will remember it. Then you need to
make sure it’s relevant to the brief and ask whether it makes the product
the hero. If it does, then it deserves a double tick. So at some point in
thinking about the brief what I do is open up the book – which is actually
a computer file these days – and think, ‘Right, I’m doing something for
online bingo, what have I got that’s relevant?’ And I can pretty much
guarantee that I’ll get say five ideas that are right on the money. So that’s
my start.
Do you enjoy writing?
I absolutely love it. It’s when I’m happiest. I love getting the sentences
to balance, which is why I love the Bible and Shakespeare. And Moby-Dick,
which I think is an amazingly powerful piece of writing. The Guinness surfer
ad – which I thought was one of the best-written ads I’d ever heard – got
it’s dialogue from Moby-Dick, so no wonder I liked it, although I secretly
wished that they were brilliant at writing instead of being brilliant at
borrowing.
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And finally, any advice for fledgling writers on how to get their
career moving?
Don’t obsess about what everyone else is doing. Don’t look at what
wins awards. Look to life and trust your instincts – try to encapsulate that
in all your work. Basically, live among the people you’re talking to. And
don’t get sucked into the blokey, boorish crowd of ad creatives. Just be
yourself. Too much advertising is smug without any reason to be. It needs a
massive kick up the backside.
In a nutshell:
G In the end, it’s all about ideas.
G Use whatever approach will sell the product. Sometimes
that involves words on a page, sometimes it doesn’t.
G Go where the real people are, do what they do, and look
beyond the media bubble for your inspiration.
G Learn from the Bible, Shakespeare and great classic
literature – it’s the best writing there is.
G Collect all your crazy ideas for use on some future project.
G Believe you’re good at what you do.
G Just be yourself and don’t obsess about what everyone else
is doing.
brilliant
questions and answers
Robin Wight
‘The way to get me to read 5000 words of copy is to have a headline all about
Robin Wight. The more you can make an ad personally relevant to its reader, the
more chance you have of getting through. That, for me, is brilliant copywriting.’
Robin Wight – President of The Engine Group and the ‘W’ in ad agency
WCRS – is one of those advertising characters you couldn’t make up,
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