presents

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
FOR COPYWRITERS
HOW TO WRITE HEADLINES
AND WHY YOUR CAREER DEPENDS ON IT

By Suzanne Pope
 Suzanne Pope is a group creative director at john st. in Toronto.
She has written copy for TAXI and Ogilvy & Mather, and has taught
ABOUT
copywriting courses at Humber College in Toronto. Suzanne’s work
SUZANNE POPE
has appeared in Communication Arts and Archive, and she is the
winner of One Show Silver Pencil.
 AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
FOR COPYWRITERS
HOW TO WRITE HEADLINES
AND WHY YOUR CAREER DEPENDS ON IT

Hello, young copywriter. I am here today to tell you that you are a member of
an endangered species. I’m very sorry, but it’s true. If this website had a bigger
budget, I would rent Al Gore’s cherry picker, and I would use it to show you how
far off the chart our troubles are becoming. As things stand, though, I’m just
going to have to paint you a word picture. This word picture is no thumbnail,
so before asking you to commit your time, I’m going to be completely upfront
about what’s in store.

The article is divided into two parts. Part One is devoted to yet another lecture
about how copywriters need to actually write rather than limiting themselves to
visual thinking. You may find this presentation less tedious than usual because I
will provide more detail than one typically sees in support of the argument. Also,
I will present my case in the terms most relevant to you right now – that is, from
the perspective of launching your career.

But if seeing this dead horse get flogged once again is more than you can bear,
I invite you to scroll down immediately to Part Two. There, you’ll find practical
tools and techniques that will take you from wishing you could write headlines to
actually doing it.

3
 PART ONE

For years now, copywriters of a certain age have been predicting the nothing but an existing pack shot and a headline. That means your idea
demise of the completely visual idea. “It’s a fashion,” we’ve been saying, will have to be expressed in words.
pausing to blow on our Ovaltine. “At some point, the pendulum will
swing back, and a new golden age of copywriting will be upon us.” Another reason for all-type ads is the media buy. If you’re doing a
banner ad in print or online or on a TV news channel, you probably won’t
But clearly, we have been wrong. Most of the industry’s biggest awards have the space to communicate your message visually. You will need to
are still going to headline-free ads. And most advertising blogs are use words, and, ideally, no more than eight of them.
dominated by purely visual concepts. Indeed, when I tried recently to
convince my copywriting students of the relevance of headlines, I had to A third reason for headline-driven ads stems from the requirements of
dust off 15-year-old annuals to prove my point. the brief. Let’s take cars, for example. Some brilliant car ads have been
done without actually showing the car, but they are in the minority. And
So, from all this, copywriting students have drawn the reasonable if the main selling message is, “What a gorgeous car,” the gorgeous car
inference that it’s better to think in pictures than in words. Ads with copy will almost certainly be your main visual. So, if your ad is to have any idea
are merely quaint ornaments designed to lend a soupçon of variety to at all, again, it will have to be found in the headline.
your book. They serve only as a nod to your ability to write a headline in
the unlikely event that something so retro should ever be required. Sometimes briefs demand headline-driven ideas because of the
complexity of the message. We all know that briefs are supposed to be
But it’s a mistake to get career advice from annuals. Annuals may simple, but sometimes they are not. In retail advertising, for example,
showcase the planet’s best advertising, but they represent only the your brief might be, “Buy our printer and get a $50 rebate plus two free
thinnest sliver of what creative people actually do day in and day out. ink cartridges.” No amount of complaining will change that brief. And,
For a more realistic picture of a copywriter’s life, you’re better off looking no, you are not allowed to bury the offer in your body copy. It may be
at billboards and newspapers and online ads. There, you’ll see plenty of possible to communicate the message visually, but the odds of a good
headlines. Most of them are pretty bad, but their badness represents a ad are much better for writers who embrace the challenge of a headline
huge opportunity for writers who aren’t afraid to write. right from the start.

Here is the reality: Even at the finest, most award-winning agencies, And there’s yet another reason for headline-driven ads: the demands of
ads are typically driven more by copy than by visuals. This happens for brand character or a pre-existing campaign. Canadian readers will be
several reasons. Let’s go through them now. familiar with TAXI’s long-running campaign for Telus Mobility. This hugely
successful wireless brand was built on imagery of a natural world that is
The main reason for headline-dominant ads is a shortage of time and/ gentle and non-threatening. Every ad for Telus features plants, flowers
or money. If your client can’t afford photography or illustration or system or animals, always close-cropped on a white background. These visuals
work, or if final art is due tomorrow, you may be forced to work with certainly support whatever point is being made in the headline, but the

4
 PART ONE

main message of the ad is almost always expressed in words. And so, practising and not focusing. If we let that trend continue, we may one
if you have a visual idea for Telus that is outside this natural world, or if day find that we’re indispensable only when there’s a catalogue to be
your idea does not clearly communicate the offer, you will have more written.
work ahead of you, no matter how smart or clever your idea is.
But you’re not a wannabe art director. You’re a copywriter. That’s what
Add up the realities of our business and you’ll see that we need to you want to be. And if you really want to be a copywriter, you will be
develop and maintain our copywriting chops, despite what the show one. But that means learning to love words even more than you resist
annuals say. If you don’t demonstrate quickly that you’re comfortable them. It means getting over your fear of the blank page. It means
writing headlines, you’ll probably never get a shot at doing wordless developing the confidence that you can write five decent headlines ten
ads. minutes before they’re due.

But still there’s resistance. Last year, a handful of my copywriting How, you ask? By realizing that there are tools to help you. And by
students asked me why we were bothering to practise headline writing picking them up and practising with them. You need to make these tools
when all the great ideas these days are visual. I’m sure for every student your own. Yes, they’ve had lots of previous owners. But considering that
who asked, several more wondered quietly. I told them pretty much they’re over two thousand years old, the tools are still amazingly sharp.
everything I’ve written above, but I don’t know that I convinced them. So
I’ll try one more time, this time a little more bluntly.

If we as copywriters agree that words are now redundant, we ourselves

will soon be redundant. If a writer spends most of his day looking
over the art director’s shoulder while she works Photoshop, really, why
have a writer at all? Yes, the writer contributes ideas, but if they’re all
visual, wouldn’t the creative director build a more productive team by
just hiring two art directors? This idea would have been unthinkable
ten years ago. Today, it’s a definite option. Already, some very good
agencies have assembled junior teams by pairing up art students.
There’s no shortage of copywriters applying for the gigs; the problem
is that their headlines are no better than what the student art directors
have written. And so, on occasion, the role of copywriter has gone to
an art director. Think about what this means. Through sheer practice
and focus, copywriters should be able to write better headlines than
art directors ninety-five times out of a hundred. But many of us are not

5
 PART TWO

The only tools that can dig copywriters out of this mess are the tools of And so we see that all ads use rhetoric; the only question is how well
rhetoric. They go by other names as well, such as “figures of speech,” they use it. The ads that leave you breathless with their brilliance are
“literary devices” and so on. (A purist would tell you that the terms are using rhetoric so skillfully that you don’t even notice it’s there. That’s your
not necessarily interchangeable, but for the purposes of this article, they goal – to craft an idea so arresting, so transcendent, that no one stops to
are.) ponder how the damned thing got built. And in our business, rhetoric is
how things get built.
You already learned about many of these tools in high school English
– devices like metaphor and hyperbole. Many of the terms are Greek Many tools of rhetoric can be used visually, but some of them belong
because it was the ancient Greeks who first saw verbal persuasion as a exclusively to writers. Here in Part Two, I’m going to talk about the
subject worth analyzing. If you think the tools of rhetoric are passé, you tools that work best in advertising – and how they can work for you.
are mistaken. They are being used to full effect right now by the very The information will be useful if you do nothing more than read it. But
same art directors who are handing our asses to us. The only thing that’s it will work best for you if you practise writing headlines using each
changed is that art directors are now doing in pictures what we have device that’s described. Don’t worry about whether the headlines are
stopped doing in words. good enough for your book. That’s not the point. In due course, you
will end up with portfolio pieces, but for now, think of this in the way a
“Rhetoric” has a nasty connotation. A while ago on this website, a visitor professional musician thinks about practising scales: It’s never done with
dismissed an ad she didn’t like as mere “rhetoric.” I assume she was the intention of being performed, but it’s a big part of what makes a
defining rhetoric as a device that is dishonest or transparent or inept in good performance possible.
its expression. I guess if she had liked the ad, she would have praised it
for having avoided rhetoric. And she would have been wrong. Rhetoric As I mentioned, some of these devices can be used equally well in
is, as the Greek word suggests, all about oratory. It describes any verbal pictures and in words. We’ll look at those ones first.
technique used in the service of persuasion.

Aristotle said there are basically only three ways to bring someone
around to your way of thinking. You can do it by appealing to his logic.
You can do it by appealing to his emotions. Or, you can do it through
a presenter who is trustworthy, authoritative or charismatic. Three main
routes. That’s all. I can’t think of a single ad, good or bad, that has ever
found another path to reach its audience.

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 METAPHOR

Metaphor is the first love of English teachers, poets and advertising creatives, and it’s
used skillfully by pretty much anyone who enjoys talking. When people describe a bad
toupee as a rug, or when they call a troubled celebrity a train wreck, they are speaking in
metaphor. Equating your subject with something apparently unrelated helps guide your
audience to a deeper and more specific understanding of that subject. People will grasp
the wretchedness of a toupee much more quickly if you call it a rug than they will if you
just describe it as unattractive.

7
 Visual-driven ads have done very well with metaphor.
Here’s one lovely example, part of a campaign for Sony Noise Cancelling Headphones done by Bagby and Company, Chicago:

By directly equating a noisy child with a loudspeaker, the ad demonstrates Sony’s empathy with modern travelers, and thus
predisposes those travelers to trust Sony’s solution over the competition’s.
8
 But metaphor can just as easily live in words.
Here’s a great metaphorical headline, produced by Martin/Williams, Minneapolis for L.L. Bean’s dog beds:

9
Another example, from Carmichael Lynch, Minneapolis for Harley-Davidson:

10
 Crispin & Porter produced this wonderfully minimalist campaign for a homeless mission in Miami:

11
And the Martin Agency in Richmond used metaphor to celebrate John F. Kennedy’s role in putting the first man on the moon:

12
 Finally, consider this classic ad, done for Continental Bank by Fallon McElligott, Minneapolis:

This ad has the added power of a twist at the headline’s end. The structure of the headline leads us to expect that the floor
will be one more metaphor, but it ends up being used quite literally. There’s a different rhetorical term for this undercutting of
expectations (it’s called anesis), and we’ll get to it later.
13
 PERSONIFICATION

Personification is a kind of metaphor. But with personification, you’re no longer

comparing your subject with an inanimate object; instead, you’re describing it as you
would a human being. Personification allows you to present mere objects as being
capable of love, hate, fear, hope and every other emotion available to humans.

14
 Here’s a visually driven example, part of a great campaign done by Saatchi & Saatchi in New York for Ultra Tide:

Detergent ads have often presented stains as the enemy, but never so literally. Here, Ultra Tide is shown as a team of
overwhelming strength that leaves the opposing side, the ketchup stain, hopeless, despairing and doomed.

15
 These next ads also demonstrate personification, but I trust you will draw from them an additional message
concerning the dangers of purely visual thinking:

For the record, the Midas ad was done by me and Annie Lee at Ogilvy, several months before the Volkswagen version.
Which got into The One Show. Sigh.
16
 Identical ads aren’t necessarily the result of plagiarism. The fact is, visual mashups are
now so common, it’s inevitable that other people will arrive at the idea you thought was
yours alone. By contrast, people who write headlines stand a much better chance of
developing a tone of voice that belongs exclusively to their brand. The Economist and
Time are both news magazines, but an Economist headline would never make sense in
an ad for Time.

(By the way, if you’re interested in seeing more startling similarities in visual advertising,
you’ll want to visit coloribus.com, which was the source for these ads.)

17
 Let’s now take a look at how personification works when words play a larger role. This famous ad, from
Carmichael Lynch in Minneapolis, imbued bathroom fixtures with emotion in a way that felt radically new:

It’s true that the photograph of the shocked “face” is doing half the work of personification here.
But in this case, it took the headline to tell us just how intimately connected we are to our bathrooms.
18
 Personification can work even when your only visual is a pack shot. Have a look at these two billboards from
Lowe Roche in Toronto:

19
Personification is also at work in this ad for Gay Lea Spreadable Butter, done by john st. in Toronto:

No sane person would actually believe that margarine worries about its future. But by
treating this notion as if it were fact, the ad establishes Gay Lea’s superiority over margarine in a
way that’s funny and unexpected.
20
 HYPERBOLE

Hyperbole is the use of outrageous exaggeration to make your point. It is well used in
visual concepts, because it makes it possible to provoke shock or laughter without the
need for words. You’ve already seen instances of it here: Laundry stains are hardly a
life-and-death struggle, but Ultra Tide presents them as if they were. Similarly, no human
being could ever be as noisy as a loudspeaker, but it helps Sony’s Noise Cancelling
Headphones to depict that situation as reality.

21
One brand built entirely on hyperbole is Axe body spray for men. Here’s a very funny ambient piece that
Lowe in Brussels affixed to emergency exit signs:

22
 Though hyperbole is typically viewed these days as a visual device, it can also succeed wonderfully in
words alone. These two Altoids ads were produced by Leo Burnett in Chicago:

23
In this ad (from New York’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen), The Economist employs obvious exaggeration to
make a very believable point about its readers’ business expertise:

24
 And here, Karsh & Hagan Communications in Denver used hyperbole to arrive at a different way of
telling us this knife is sharp:

25
Finally, Chicago’s McConnaughy Stein Schmidt Brown sells us on the excellence of a steak house
using nothing more than over-the-top words of “proof”:

26
 IRONY

27
 Cicero defined irony as “saying one thing and meaning another.”
A great example of visual irony is found in these anti-gun posters from john st. in Toronto:

Here, ordinary citizens are presented as perfectly reasonable targets for shooting practice. The intended
message is, of course, completely the reverse.
28
 Because irony by definition involves two messages (the explicit message plus an implied one), it’s easier to
achieve when you have words to help. An award-winning example, done for the American Cancer Society
(by Cole Henderson Drake in Atlanta), showed a black-and-white photograph of a graveyard over the
headline, “Welcome to Marlboro Country.” Similarly, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America used dead
celebrities as an ironic punchline to a straight headline (Saatchi & Saatchi, New York):

29
 PARADOX

A paradox is a statement or situation that seems to be absurd or self-contradictory. The

power of paradox comes from the fact that the contradiction often turns out to contain
a thought-provoking grain of truth. The john st. anti-gun posters seen above provide
an excellent example of visual paradox. The viewer might say, “Wait a minute…children
aren’t used in target shooting” before realizing a second later that in some communities,
they might as well be.

30
 Creating paradox with your headline can result in work that has even more edge and power. Placed in a new
layout, this Luke Sullivan line would probably win awards all over again (ad from The Martin Agency, Richmond):

31
Paradox also lets you capitalize on deliciously sharp insights about your target (Fallon McElligott, agency):

32
 And if you’re fortunate enough to be writing about one of the world’s strongest brands, paradox allows you
to speak about truths that are beyond words (Carmichael Lynch, Minneapolis, agency):

33
While paradox helps you hit deep emotional places, it’s also versatile enough to add power to more
rational arguments (Scali, McCabe, Sloves, New York, agency):

34
 PUNS

35
Okay, this is a tricky one. Lots of people (including me) have told junior writers that they shouldn’t have puns in their books.
Which seems a little unfair, when you consider that most visual-driven ads are ultimately puns executed without words.
Here are two examples, great ads from Callegari Berville Grey in Paris and DDB in London, respectively:

36
 PUNS

A pun, strictly speaking, is nothing more than a word or phrase that I believe an advertising pun works best when both interpretations refer
carries a second meaning. Today, through the magic of Photoshop, that positively to what you’re selling. There is a chain of stores in Toronto
second meaning is being given to pictures instead of words. called The Running Room. Their tagline, “From Start to Finish,” says not
only that the store will prepare me for a race in literal terms, but also that
So maybe we should be showing a little more love to verbal puns. As they’re the only source I need for everything related to running.
George Felton points out in his excellent book, Advertising: Concept
and Copy, verbal puns are still finding their way into the award shows. One pun that didn’t hold together was found in a headline used by not
Perhaps, rather than avoiding puns altogether, we should just avoid the one, but two different brands of convertibles during the 1980s: “To air is
lame ones. human.” The line worked fine if one read it to mean, “To want the wind
in your hair is perfectly normal.” But if it were read as “To err is human,”
But how do you do that? One method was suggested to me by my it suddenly became a disconnect with the shot of people having fun in
first boss, the late Jerry Goodis, who had been the most famous and their car. Thus, the pun did not kick both ways, which would explain why
influential ad person in Canada during the 1960s and 70s. I had brought I saw these ads in magazines, but not in award shows.
Jerry a layout featuring a particularly egregious pun, and he handed it
back to me, saying, gently, “It has to kick both ways. If you’re going to
do a pun, it has to kick both ways.” What Jerry meant was that the pun
has to make sense no matter how you read it. A good example of a pun
that kicks both ways is the tagline for John Deere tractors: “Nothing
runs like a Deere.” Actually, there are two puns in that line (“runs” and
“Deere”), but all the possible interpretations coexist peaceably with the
brand.

37
 A more successful pun was produced by Rubin Postaer & Associates (Los Angeles) in this ad for the
Honda Accord:

It’s a lovely pun off “Send in the clowns,” because it delivers the message that only a fool would attempt to
copy this car.
38
 Even the venerable One Show is not above punning, as we see in this invitation by
Rice & Rice of Minneapolis:

39
Columbia Sportswear used both senses of the word “buy” to talk about its camouflage parka
(agency: Borders, Perrin & Norrander, Portland):

40
 And Ogilvy & Mather in Singapore used puns to promote Scrabble in a campaign that could have run forever:

Ensuring that your pun kicks both ways doesn’t guarantee that your headline will be a good one. The weird
thing about thinking up a pun is that it causes a rush of giddy glee that can lower our defenses against
corniness. So, if you can, put your headline away for a couple of days and work on something else. If you
41 still like it the next time you see it, it may be a keeper.
PARALLELISM

42
 Parallelism is the deliberate repetition of a particular word, phrasing or sentence structure for effect.
I would have described it as primarily a writers’ tool, but that was before I saw these wonderful visual ads
for Harvey Nichols by DDB, London:

43
44
 But in a writer’s hands, parallelism can have even more power. Consider this ad for fishing reels,
done by Core in St. Louis:

45
This next ad, for used Mercedes-Benz cars, uses parallelism to say something far more compelling than
“affordable” (The Martin Agency, Richmond):

46
 Parallelism is versatile enough to elevate the proposition for a humble food-storage container
(agency: Pagano Schenck & Kay, Boston):

47
And parallelism makes possible a slam dunk in an us-versus-them argument for a newspaper
(Cole & Weber, Portland, agency):

48
 Parallelism raises such strong expectations that if you fail to be parallel to the end, it will definitely be
noticed (agency: HSR Business to Business, Cincinnati):

49
Up to now, I’ve been telling you about rhetorical devices that are as available to visual
thinkers as they are to headline writers. But there are other tools that would be difficult,
if not impossible, to use visually. These tools are almost exclusively the property of the
writer. Not all of them will be your favourites, but I think you’ll agree that many of them
have provided the foundation for some brilliant writing.

50
 ANESIS

If you’re looking for edginess in your lines, anesis is a tool you’ll want to keep close at
hand. It comes from the Greek word for “loosening” or “relaxing.” It is the use of a
concluding sentence or phrase that undercuts or diminishes what was said previously.
Typically with anesis, one starts with a fairly lofty, dignified or respectful statement and
lets it all go downhill from there.

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This ad from Clarke Goward, Boston, is a good example:

52
 Borders, Perrin & Norrander used anesis to talk about a restaurant famous for its chops:

53
This ad for a ski resort starts with a friendly exhortation, but quickly takes a turn for the worse
(agency: Clarke Goward, Boston):

54
 In this ad for Moon Pies, Loeffler Ketchum Mountjoy of Charlotte, NC makes fun of the language of
nutritional claims:

55
And Cliff Freeman and Partners of New York took full advantage of a Hollywood media buy in this tri-vision
billboard for Sauza Conmemorativo Tequila:

56
 A strongly visual ad could use anesis, but it seems to me that it would still need words to deliver its
final twist (agency: Cliff Freeman and Partners):

57
 SIMILE

We’ve already seen how much metaphor gets used in visual advertising. When the
equation of a metaphor (“life is a poker game”) is altered by adding the word “like”
or “as” (“life is like a poker game”) the resulting comparison is known as a simile.

Simile gives you a subtler way to provoke mental images, a way that is not available
to strictly visual thinkers.

58
 Agencies: Fallon McElligott, Minneapolis and BVK/McDonald, Milwaukee, respectively.

59
 RHETORICAL
QUESTION

This is a question to which no answer is needed or expected. It is asked to bring your

listener or reader to your chosen conclusion. When you mention something ridiculous
and ask your friend, “How stupid is that?” you are asking a rhetorical question.

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 Rhetorical questions are powerful tools, tools that don’t exist in all-visual advertising. They can be used to
serve rational arguments, as we see in this classic ad from Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto:

61
They can also be used in an emotional appeal (Earle Palmer Brown, Bethesda, agency):

62
 Rhetorical questions are flexible enough to advance even a deliberately nonsensical argument
(TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, agency):

63
 MONOLOGUE,
DIALOGUE,
TESTIMONIAL

I have put these last tools together because they boil down to the same thing: human
beings talking. When people talk, they reveal a lot about themselves, whether they mean
to or not. The most brilliant visual ads in the world – and there have been a lot of them –
have never captured the nuances of human speech in the way that a headline-driven ad
can. This means that a huge opportunity for nailing emotions and insights has fallen by
the wayside.

You can mimic human speech patterns simply to give your headlines a more informal,
conversational feel. But you can go a step further by quoting real or invented words from
your customers.

64
 Testimonials are viewed as the oldest of old-school devices in advertising because they’ve so often been earnest and hokey.
But even in this age of ironic detachment, testimonials can be fresh and persuasive (agency: DM9 DDB, São Paulo):

65
 A FINAL WORD

There was a job listing that appeared on this site a while ago. The headline called for
A WRITER WHO WRITES. I have no idea who wrote the listing, but I felt keenly aware of
his exasperation. Here he was, having to specifically ask for a skill that could have been
taken for granted just ten years ago.

One of my students told me that he found headline writing to be a challenge because it

was such a departure from the visual thinking he’d been doing for so long. I know exactly
what he means. When our industry started gravitating towards visual ideas, many of us
found it scary. We had been trained to understand that every ad required a headline.
Now we were being asked to create ads that, ideally, would have no words at all. To do
this, we had to practise an entirely new way of thinking. But we did it. And you can, too.

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 And if you do, you will be amazed at the liberation. You will be able to infuse your ads with a sharp, dry
edge that would probably not exist in any visual alone (Fallon McElligott, agency):

67
You will be able to use the language of a shampoo bottle to sell daytime television
(TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, agency):

68
 You will be able to create thoughts so compelling that any kind of visual would actually be unwelcome
(Abbott Mead Vickers/BBDO, agency):

69
And, rather than always communicating in a single glance, you will have the power to delay the laugh till
the end, as in this ad for a student pub (agency: Allen & Gerritsen, Watertown, MA):

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 I’ve pasted some links below that will lead you to great sites with a lot more information
on rhetoric. If you decide to make a study of the subject, you’ll find that I’ve barely
scratched the surface of what’s available.

But whatever you decide, I hope you will decide to write. Because we as writers have a
problem. And for us, the only way out is the way through.

Links to sites about rhetoric:

The Forest of Rhetoric (http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm)

Rhetoric (http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/resource_rhet.html)

American Rhetoric (www.americanrhetoric.com)

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