Generally speaking

I see plenty of copywriting mistakes every single day. Even some nights. I hear them when I’m listening. I taste them when I’m eating. And I smell them when I’m also eating. If I had to choose one mistake that’s rampant in the industry, it’s fairly simple. It’s the desire, no, the urge to be too specific. When you’re specific, you end up alienating the majority of people who simply cannot and will not relate to it.

How else to explain the beauty of a phrase like “Anytown, USA?” Begin chipping away at the genius and what do get? An ad that is only for people living on the west side of Wilmington, Delaware. Good, good for them. But very bad for the rest of us. We don’t go to Delaware. Yes, we realize, like most, that it was the first state to ratify the Constitution, but, to us, the word “ratify” is not one we use in our daily lives. Frankly, if I can be so frank, it sounds like something a rat does after its Bar Mitzvah, when surrounded by its adoring family to celebrate an important coming-of-age milestone. The pivotal scene within in a rodential bildungsroman. It says nothing or very little about what makes the beaches of Delaware on par with those of the much more famous Jersey Shore. And yes, we know about Joe Biden.

But that’s about it. Specificity confuses and annoys. Imagine I sit down for a steak dinner at a legendary Brooklyn steak house. The only thing I really want to know is the cut and the doneness of said beef. Anything else is superfluous and runs the risk of ruining the dining experience. I don’t want to know more. Not the farm, the farmers, or if the cow’s name was Bocephus, out of a bovine fondness for the music of Hank Williams, Jr. This just isn’t the sort of thing that helps the meal. It distracts, and it might just destroy it.

A great headline should comprise of three or four words and one of those should always be a word like “just” or “so” that seems to add nothing. But really, when I think deeply about it, the most egregious copywriting mistake is copywriting. Because it assumes the reader can read, which is a pretty big assumption that I’m rarely willing to make. Words don’t add much that a strong visual can’t take care of. The best way to ensure someone won’t read something is to give them something to read. Interestingly, they’ll read if there aren’t words, staring at the ad, examining it ever closer than they would’ve had it been mucked up with pesky little letters from the alphabet. 

This is the goal. To be as generic as you can, avoiding specificity all costs. That means singing animals, dancing animals, laughing animals. Animals who think they are men, who believe, despite everything they’re told, that they are in line for a cabinet position. And not one that makes sense like the secretary of agriculture either. We’re talking loftier jobs like national security advisor or secretary of state. 

These are ads with legs. Hairy, hoofed ones.