Bill Gates Stole My Job

James Joyce while writing his great novel Ulysses came down to dinner one evening and when asked how he was getting on, answered,"I've finished."

"What the book" his friend replied.

"No the sentence I started yesterday," Joyce responded adding,"What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence."

If I had known this when I first started working in an agency as a copywriter I might have understood what my first two days were all about. The first brief I was given was for a bird charity. They needed an ad to persuade people to send for a free wall chart identifying garden birds and with it details of membership. All within 60 words in a single column just three centimetres long. Simple for a chap like me who had already been knocking out four page letters for insurance companies as a freelancer.

60 Words of Ping Pong

I delivered the copy to the owner of the agency half an hour after getting the brief. He called me into his office where we discussed the ad and he told me to go away and rewrite it. I did and after another half an hour I was sitting in front of him again being told I needed to rewrite it once more. Like a game of table tennis, we batted the copy back and forth across his desk for the next day and a half until he was happy that every single one of those 60 words was going to tear at the heart-strings of little old ladies, was persuasive and would get the response the charity needed to pay for their tiny ad.

It was a great lesson and taught me two things. Firstly, the importance of finding the right words and secondly the importance of polishing until the text is perfect.

In those days I left "final" copy in my desk drawer overnight, because on the following morning I would see great errors and imperfections invisible the night before that I would then correct. Today, copy sits on my laptop overnight and only after rereading and revising does it get presented to the client. Everyone should do this.

But how many people have time for this today? Not many, judging by the state of my mail and my inbox. The trouble is that a huge chunk of business owners, salesmen and third-rate marketing managers with a computer think they can write copy and the dumber they are, the more prone they are to do so.

These idiots don't even know how to use the spell and grammar check tools that are part of their system and as for using the dictionary and thesaurus to make sure they are choosing the right words, one might as well whistle in the wind.

Air Guitar of Copy

Bill Gates has enabled anyone who can't chew gum and fart at the same time to believe they can write copy. Like air guitarists they are pretenders with no skills and they bring our industry into disrepute. They think they are being clever and saving money but all they do is add to the growing criticism of junk mail. However, people rarely complain about well targeted, well written communications. They don't even think of them as direct mail and are seen as personal communications in the same way as a letter from a good friend.

But each sloppy item of direct mail that lands on your doormat drives a nail in the coffin of the industry. In a totalitarian society there would be an easy fix with every copywriter licensed and every letter approved by the Department of Direct Mail, but I don't think this is the answer, as I haven't seen direct mail from North Korea win an award.

Perhaps this is the solution,

Dear Bill Gates,

I'm praying that in the next version of Microsoft Word you will provide an authoritarian proof reader that will stop any dodgy copy being copied, printed or emailed. When found, it would issue a curt reprimand followed by a screen directing the user to the nearest direct marketing agency before wiping clean the idiots hard drive and shutting their computer down. Actually, this last bit should be fairly easy for you as it already happens with monotonous regularity.

Can you do this for me? You have made my job easier with all your tools, but you are making it more difficult for me to make a living by providing the same equipment to fools.

Yours in anticipation,

Ian Dewar

This month I promised the editor a longer article, but he gave me too much time! It was Pascal who ended a letter he had written with the often-quoted phrase, "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." Even though he was a philosopher he understood that in haste we write long and that with time we can write more succinctly and to the point.

So if you want a convincing sales letter, email or webpage, make sure it is written by a specialist and give them enough time to write and review it before it has to be delivered. Your investment will be rewarded and it's quite likely that in ten years time you'll still be allowed to do direct marketing rather than being banned by the government, or finding the mailboxes of your prospects sealed against you.