3. The headline made you wonder. “What’s it all about?” Maybe it offered you something brand – new, different, better, or something you’d never been able to get hands on before. That’s why we will see headline words such as “At last”, “Now”, “New”, “Announcing”, “Here’s”.
4. The headline gives you a promise of the good things to come. For example, it can be a soap, which is kinder to your skin or a cream, which makes you to get thinner and thinner. The copywriter probably has some very good and interesting things to say about the product.
Creating Interest
Sometimes people complain about ads and commercials that bore them stiff. They hate those ads. So the copywriters try to find ways to make people be interested in the product they are advertising. It’s one of the most difficult things for copywriters.
Stimulating Desire
A good piece of copy makes you want what it has to sell. This, as every good salesperson knows, is the heart of the selling proposition.
It is not enough to offer a furniture polish that will make tables glow more attractively; the ad must make the buyer see herself being complimented by her friends. It is not enough to save money or invest it wisely; ad must make the customer see themselves at the rail of cruise ship, reaping the benefits of such a saving or investment program.
Time after time, all through the history of advertising, the most successful ads as measured by their coupon returns have made the prospect see him.
What It Takes to Be a Copywriter
Writing successful advertising copy is a tough and demanding job. It takes knowledge of basic selling fundamentals; a polished writing talent; the opportunity to have learned and absorbed and benefited from the coaching of the best of the business; and it takes experience.
There are people around, including advertising people, who feel that writing successful advertising copy is not so very difficult. But studying the procedure of making ads we will understand that the copywriter picks up a pencil with the seriousness of taking a scalpel.
Writing a successful ad is much more difficult than removing an appendix; and it takes at least as much skills, knowledge, and experience. Fortunately, bungling the copywriting job won’t cost someone’s life – just a few thousand dollars in lost sales, somebody’s job or business.
Advertising Design, Art Director and Copywriter
Nothing happens with the piece of copy until someone breaths life into it. Nothing happens with the radio commercial until sound technicians and musicians and actors do their work. And the greatest piece of newspaper or magazine copy is lifeless until someone visualizes its appearance and arranges its parts in the most effective way possible.
That “someone” is called an art director.
The fact is that no two segments of an advertising agency have so much in common as art and copy – although this may come as news to some art directors and writers. The mode of expression is different (one use a typewriter, the other a drawing pencil), but the goal is identical. Both are in the business of getting a message across with a fresh approach.
Making Layout
When art director and copywriter are satisfied that they have a good visualization for their ad, the art director proceeds to make a layout. The layout is drawn to the actual dimensions of the finished ad.
Art directors recognize a number of different elements that may play a part in the making of a layout. They are:
· Headlines Picture caption
· Subhead Trademark
· Main illustration Slogan
· Subsidiary illustration Logotype or signature
· Body text White space
Of course, all these do not occur in every layout; but it is the art director’s job to arrange the elements so that the design of the ad is eye – catching and attractive.