ON CRAPPY COPYWRITING

You don't have to be a good writer to write ads. But that doesn't mean any old anybody should be doing it.

Becoming a good ad copywriter is really not hard. It’s much easier than becoming a good actual real writer.

So what does it take to be a good copywriter? 1—you have to have a good ear. 2—forget grammar (mostly), write informally, like how we talk to each other. 3—a lot of common sense. That’s it.

Badly written ads are confounding to me. I understand that, during the “creative process,” clients often decide that they are better copywriters than the trained, successful copywriters they are paying and proceed to “tweak” headlines and copy with the result often being head-desk idiocy. But sometimes, it’s not just the client’s fault.

To the not-good. 11 ads.

Cadillac

image via reddit.

Here the writer, instead of ruminating for another hour or two and coming up with a good product hero headline, decides to “turn a phrase”, stupidly. Why turn corners? Because I’ll quite soon wreck or fucking kill somebody. How bout that, Cadillac? Morons.

Coopers Beer

Why? (deep breath for ALL-CAPS run-on rant):

OH, I DON'T KNOW—TO LEARN ABOUT HISTORY? UNLESS, COOPERS, YOUR SPARKLING ALE IS INFUSED WITH HISTORY LESSONS? IS IT? WHAT'S THE SECOND AD: WHY HAVE SEX WHEN YOU CAN DRINK IT? ALSO, IT'S IRONIC, ISN'T IT, THAT DRINKING YOUR SPARKLING ALE WILL ACTUALLY MAKE ME FORGET SOME OF THE HISTORY I'VE LEARNED? FUCK YOU.

Ad agency: KWP!, Australia. Back to your regularly-scheduled article.

Nortel

Photo by my Wife.

The line is vague and lame on its own. But when you consider the placement of the ad—JFK Airport, five years after 9/11—well, you’ve written something very, very BAD.

McDonald’s

Brands (and agencies) love to make up ad-words. They are almost always horrible. The “Uncola” was a good one, maybe the last good one. DRINKCESSORIZE. Words escape me.

AXE

BATHSCULINITY. Go ahead, say it out loud. Not only does it sound stupid, it’s fucking hard to say.

Corona

IT’S A WIN-WIN! What two things do I win, Corona? A lime? A beer? A trip to “my beach”? This is seriously one of the dumbest, laziest headlines in advertising history. I should have included in my July article: ON LAZY COPYWRITING. Ad agency: Cramer-Krasselt, Chicago.

Bud Light

Bud Light’s tagline from a few years ago. CLIENT: We want to say it’s the beer for everybody doing anything. CW: I got ya.

• Friend just got eaten by a bear? PERFECT.

• Sharted? PERFECT.

• Domestic Violence? PERFECT.

• Aliens just destroyed Earth, zero beer left on the planet? PERFECT.

Dodge Challenger

Bottom portion of a 2010 ad scanned from ESPN magazine. Hard-to-read copy:

“This is the car you buy because you can't buy a bald eagle."

Or, you could dress up as Revolutionary War reenactors (with real guns) and steal a Challenger? Or, you could try to catch a bald eagle? But you can’t drive or even ride (maybe a small child could try) a bald eagle? End of analysis.

DROID

Go ahead, try to make sense of this fucking headline. A bucket of female deer? Buckets don’t have knuckles of any kind. WHY A FUCKING BUCKET? How is a phone a bucket? Billboard on the Major Deegan Expressway, 2009.

DEATH=DEACTIVATING LIFE. To 2007, scanned from a magazine, I forget which one. Equinox, at least here in NYC, is an overpriced chain of gyms. So overpriced that some writer wrote that bombastic headline to try to justify ripping you off. Well, they couldn’t just say LIFE=FITNESS. ACTIVATING DESTINY! Shee-it. Give me some of that, whatever the fuck it is.

image via reddit

Tragic Wordplay. Yes it is still too soon since 9/11, headline writer. Is ELEVATE YOUR AUTUMN too much of a lesser line? It isn’t, in this case. Or, WRITE SOMETHING ELSE, for Christ’s sake. Shun Ad Puns & Wordplays!