Last week, during the fight against SOPA, I was listening to a radio show on CBC, hosted by Mike Finnerty.
He had two guests – Rob Beschizza, Managing Editor of BoingBoing, which went dark to protest SOPA, and Steve Tepp, Chief Intellectual Property Counsel of the Global Intellectual Property Center.
(Yes, this post is about copywriting. Keep reading…)
Finnerty reached them both by phone and gave them more or less equal time to present their points of view.
Both Beschizza and Tepp are smart guys, and both shared very different views on the value of SOPA. Beschizza said it was bad legislation that would result in a lot of unintended consequences for thousands of websites. Tepp said it was excellent legislation that would put a stop to piracy by “foreign criminals”.
Who won the debate?
Well, I think most people who listened to the program would say that Beschezza won it.
Not because he was smarter, or because his argument was necessarily better.
He won it because he was genuine. He spoke in everyday language. He spoke from personal experience, and from the heart – in the same way that you or I might.
By contrast, Tepp was undermined by too many years of media training. Everything that came out of his mouth sounded scripted. He chose his words and phrases carefully, making sure he used the sound-bite “foreign criminals” once every 45 seconds or so.
He also fell back on that over-used and intensely annoying tactic of failing to answer questions simply and directly. In common with his media-trained brethren, he skipped around the question and found a way to quickly get back to presenting his core message.
So here is what Tepp and thousands of other spokespeople and politicians don’t seem to understand.
We are not fooled by their slick tactics.
Twenty years ago we might have been. But the web, the very environment threatened by SOPA, has changed that. We have developed a taste for the sound of an authentic, human voice. On the blogs and sites we read, and in our interactions through social media, we have become used to and expect the genuine voice of a real person.
As a result, media-trained talking heads who say what they are paid to say, and who listen to advisors, speech writers and consultants, are now sounding more and more ridiculous to our ears.
I can see this picture in my mind… It’s a media planning session, coming to a close. Tepp is getting up to leave the room. Some hotshot media consultant shouts out, “Hey Steve, don’t forget to use the “foreign criminals” phrase. Our focus groups tell us it’s a winner for us!”
Give me a break. Maybe we could exile all these guys to an island somewhere, so the rest of us could get on with having normal, human conversations.
And yes, this post is about copywriting.
Copywriters can fall into the exact same traps. They can become over-trained in the same way. They can listen to too many focus groups. They can rely too much on “power words”, cunning tricks and closing strategies.
When that happens, you lose — for the same reasons described above.
Yes, know your craft. Yes, apply what you know. But ultimately, when you sit down to write, convey your message in genuine, human, everyday language.
About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…