When your business or job involves meeting the needs of others, at some point you will find yourself disagreeing with a client. Copywriting is no different.
Caution – creatives at work!
Sometimes, probably inevitably, there is going to be a slight gap between our work and what the client thought they would receive. I have friends who work in all areas that fall under the creative industries banner and they all encounter this issue. Most of us though are not so arrogantly smug that we cannot stand being questioned. Nor are we delicate little flowers that are mortally wounded by criticism. Trying to tell you to trust us without coming across as either of those two things though is where it all gets difficult.
Here are 5 reasons to trust your copywriter (or any good creative) when they produce something you didn’t expect.
- They followed the brief
- When there is a disparity between what is produced and a client’s expectations, one thing is for certain, the writer will have tried to provide the right content based on the brief. It’s rare to find a copywriter who wanders off trail with their work. The brief is their guide and 99.9% of the time they will follow it. The best thing to do in this situation is to go right back to the start. Does the brief explain what was needed properly or did the writer actually misinterpret it?
- They tried to do what was right for you
- We are working for you, not for ourselves. The main reason we are not upset by feedback is that we thrive on it. If it is constructive, critical feedback is a real help because it allows us to produce better copy. We are trying to do what is right for you, not us.
- We are not as ‘arty’ as you think
- There is an old saying that ‘good writing is re-writing’. That is what we do. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that we are magicians or have some sort of permanently open channel to divine inspiration. By the time you see you copy it will have been researched, edited, re-drafted and refined.
- Creativity is about control
- For most copywriters (and designers, photographers, website creators, videographers and so on) ‘creativity’ is actually the result of a process. Creativity isn’t born from wild bursts of inspiration. Mostly it comes from hard work. We have a process, we follow it, and out pops the right result. When it’s your living standing around waiting around for inspiration is a really bad idea. Can you imagine if your doctor, electrician, or solicitor had to wait for inspiration to strike before they did anything? Sitting in the dark with your electrician waiting for them be enthused with new ideas enough to go and fit your fuse box isn’t a great business model. One of the reasons I don’t like the term ‘Creatives’ is that for far too many people it suggests the opposite of how we work. The work you receive isn’t thrown together at the whim of a celestial muse. It is conceived and created via a controlled process, by a professional, using proven techniques.
- We know what we are doing
- We’ve done this before. We know what works. We have your best interests at heart. Could you imagine going to either of the three professionals in the point above and then doubting their skills, training, and experience? You probably wouldn’t. If you genuinely feel your copywriter doesn’t know what they are doing, then change writers. If not, then support them to understand what you wanted so they can bring all that knowledge, all those skills, and their extensive experience, to bear on your brief.
There is a wonderful story about Pablo Picasso being approached by someone in a restaurant who asked him to produce something. They promised to pay whatever he felt was appropriate. He obliged with a sketch of goat on a napkin and asked for $10,000. When they objected that it only took him 30 seconds, he replied:
‘No, it took me 40 years’
The story is probably apocryphal but the point is valid. We recently tried to quantify experience in monetary value. To do it we took an experienced writer as a base, estimated the amount they would have written over 10 years to the lowest reasonable number, and averaged it using the cost of writing a blog article at the bottom end of the average charges. At turned out that every word they wrote for you would be carrying around £200 worth of experience. We may not be Picasso, but… well, you get the idea.
Don’t always trust a copywriter though…
As promised in the title, here is a reason not to trust us unquestioningly. Despite what you have heard about writers, we are actually human beings. Please read what we send you carefully and feedback if it is needed. Like any human being, doing any job, we make mistakes now and again, there is probably one in this blog somewhere. The occasional typo and similar mistakes are the copywriter’s equivalent of your waiter putting your food down in front of the wrong person or your mechanic ordering the wrong part for your car. It happens, tell us and we will fix it.
When it comes to the five things on this list, can I suggest you trust us? Build a good relationship and ask about what we did, and why we did it. Afford us the same trust you would give to any other experienced professional you consulted. We are on your side. Working with us and trusting us, will use our skills to their best effect.
(This article was originally published in The Business Bulletin)
