Great copy can engage, educate, persuade or inspire action. It gets the facts and the grammar right, but it also infuses the message with the brand’s personality.
A garden care brand was updating the packaging for one of its rose sprays. The product was not changing, and neither were the basic facts that needed to be communicated. But when we reviewed the proposed copy, we felt it had not quite captured the new brand tone of voice.
Here is the before and after.
ORIGINAL
PRODUCT NAME
Effective rose spray
Enjoy healthy roses
Physical control of aphid, whitefly, red spider mite and more
Works by physical mode of action
UPDATED COPY
PRODUCT NAME
Specialist rose spray
For lush, beautiful roses
Protects against aphid, whitefly, red spider mite and more
An invisible shield that deters pests
The two versions contain broadly the same information. But they do not create the same impression
Is your message letting you down?
Each line of the pack copy has a specific job to do. The improvement does not come from making the language more colourful for its own sake. It comes from understanding those jobs and choosing words that perform them more effectively.
The first line needs to identify the product and establish its relevance.
“Effective rose spray” became “Specialist rose spray”.
Effective is generic. Almost every product wants to claim that it works.
Specialist suggests expertise and tells us that the product has been developed with roses specifically in mind.
The next line needs to show the desired outcome. “Enjoy healthy roses” became “For lush, beautiful roses”.
Healthy is a perfectly valid benefit, but it is also a fairly clinical one. Gardeners do not merely want roses that are technically healthy. They want roses that look abundant and beautiful. The revised copy moves beyond the basic benefit and connects with the gardener’s aspiration.
The third line needs to align the product with the problem the customer is trying to solve. “Physical control of…” became “Protects against…”
The original sounds like technical or regulatory language. The revised version makes the relevance of the product more immediate by connecting it directly with the aphids, whitefly and other pests the customer wants to deal with.
Finally, the copy needs to give the customer an understandable reason to believe. “Works by physical mode of action” became “An invisible shield that deters pests”.
This is the biggest shift. A technical mechanism becomes an image that is easier to understand and remember. It gives the product character without making the language decorative or overcomplicated.
Of course, product claims still need to be truthful, technically accurate and approved. Good copywriting is not about inventing a more attractive story. It is about finding the most compelling truthful expression of the story you already have.
The same, but different
Most marketing copy seems fine until you see what the right words could have achieved.
The same principle applies whether you are writing five words for the front of a pack or five hundred for a product page. Short copy needs to earn attention quickly. Longer copy needs to keep earning it, deciding what the reader needs to know first, what deserves emphasis and how the facts should be organised into a persuasive case.
We saw this on a very different project for a global technology company. The brief was to create a library of short customer-success stories for use in presentations. The original writing was full of technical terminology, product features and familiar corporate language.
One story explained how fibre broadband could help close the digital divide. The original led with “light-speed connectivity”, “future-proof capacity” and an “end-to-end, one-stop-shop for network and BSS transformation”. All relevant information, but not necessarily the most compelling place to begin.
We reframed the story around the human difference the technology was making: giving rural communities better access to education, healthcare and economic opportunities. The technology and the company’s solution were still present, but they supported the story rather than dominating it.
Sometimes better copy is about finding a more imaginative phrase. At other times, it is about recognising what the story should have been about in the first place. Our brand story and messaging service helps to identify the strongest stories that will resonate.
What we say, and how we say it
Copy does two jobs at once.
It communicates the message, but the choice and arrangement of the words also influence how that message is perceived.
The facts or meaning come first. What does the audience genuinely need to understand? But on top of that, the copy carries personality and, where relevant, emotion.
As a marketing or brand manager, you should understand your brand well enough to have a sense of how it would behave in different situations. It should have a three-dimensional character.
That does not mean every piece of communication should sound identical. An advertising headline, a product description, an apology and a set of instructions have different jobs. The tone should be adjusted according to the circumstances, but it should still feel as though the same character is speaking.
When that character has not been clearly understood, whoever happens to be writing naturally defaults to their own voice.
I have seen marketing managers and marketing executives write for the same brand, each in their own perfectly competent style. The result is two different voices, neither of which sounds quite like you would expect the brand to speak.
This is understandable. Most of us have a default writing style, and it follows us from emails and reports into product descriptions, packaging and campaigns. Unless we make a conscious effort to step outside it, we use ourselves as the benchmark.
A useful tone-of-voice guide should help people make that step. It needs to do more than describe a brand as friendly, confident and inspiring. Almost every business would like to be those things.
It should explain the role the brand plays, what it believes, what kind of relationship it wants with its audience and where the boundaries lie. Expert, but not academic. Warm, but not gushy. Confident, but not boastful.
Most importantly, it should demonstrate the voice in real situations. It is much easier to understand how a brand should sound when you can see examples of a product description, campaign headline, customer email and response to a complaint.
A tone of voice is only useful if different people can use it and still create writing that feels like the same brand.
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The creative leap
Great copywriting is not only about finding better words for an obvious message. Sometimes it involves finding the thought that brings the whole story together.
We faced this challenge while working with LG Mobile during the early years of the smartphone.
At the time, mobile technology was advancing rapidly. New product ranges appeared every six months, bringing improvements in screen size, resolution, processing power, memory and a host of other specifications. Unlike today, when established product families tend to evolve from one generation to the next, each round of launches could introduce a substantially different line-up of handsets.
Our work was in trade marketing, helping LG’s product marketing team create a compelling story to sell the new handsets into mobile operators.
One particular range represented a significant step forward across the board. The difficulty was that there was no single breakthrough feature around which to create the sales story. The screens were better. The processors were faster. The memory had increased. But no single improvement could carry the whole presentation.
Listing every advancement would have been accurate, but it would also have created a fragmented and fairly predictable story.
The creative idea we developed was:
Demand More
It brought all the separate advances under one thought. More power. More memory. More screen. More from the technology in your hand.
The line did not replace the technical evidence. It gave the evidence structure and a reason to matter. It helped LG present the range as a meaningful advancement rather than a collection of updated specifications.
That is the creative leap. Not simply choosing a more interesting word, but finding the idea that makes all the other information fall into place.
The first ideas are often the most predictable. They describe the product, list the benefit or repeat the same claims used by everyone else in the category.
The leap comes when you find an unexpected but relevant connection. You join two apparently separate ideas, turn a familiar message around or look at the product from an angle competitors have missed.
Surprise alone is not the goal. An unexpected headline can still be irrelevant, confusing or self-indulgent. The creative idea must illuminate the message rather than distract from it.
Creativity without relevance becomes cleverness for its own sake. Relevance without creativity often produces the same bland copy as everyone else.
The skill lies in finding an idea that is surprising enough to earn attention, but relevant enough to make the message stronger.
Made to stick
Perhaps I am particularly sensitive to the rhythm of language because I spent several years working as a musician.
I hear phrasing and dynamics in written words. I notice where the stress falls, when a sentence gathers momentum and whether it lands where it should.
Not every piece of copy needs to be lyrical, but every piece of writing has rhythm, pace and emphasis, even when we only hear it inside our heads.
When my eldest son was little, he loved listening to The Wind in the Willows being read aloud. Some of the language and sentence structure would have been advanced for him, but he was completely captivated by it.
I cannot know exactly what he understood, but I suspect he responded to the music of the words as much as their literal meaning.
Kenneth Grahame describes Mole’s experience of the river as:
“this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh.”
You can hear and feel the river moving through the sentence. The words do not simply describe it; their sounds, rhythm and structure help create the experience.
Marketing copy rarely needs to be this lyrical. But readers still experience the sound and shape of the sentences we write. Some phrases move effortlessly. Others feel cumbersome. Some finish with force. Others peter out.
We experienced this while working on a campaign for Pyrex.
Our original headline expressed the superior nature of Pyrex glass without calling it out explicitly. It was:
There’s glass and there’s Pyrex.
The legal team wanted it changed to:
There’s glass and there’s Pyrex glass.
The addition appears minor. It may even seem more technically precise. But it changes the line completely.
“There’s glass” sits on one side. “There’s Pyrex” sits on the other. The word “and” acts almost like a pivot between them, and the brand name receives the final emphasis.
Adding another “glass” unbalances the line and places an unnecessary note after the sentence has already reached its natural resolution.
Most readers would never analyse the construction in that way. They would simply feel that one version was stronger than the other.
Readers may not consciously notice the rhythm of the words, but they will often feel when the rhythm is wrong.
I’ve got a feeling
I had always been interested in good copywriting, but a McDonald’s campaign created for the 2012 Olympics by the Leo Burnett agency made me fall in love with it.
The headlines included:
The nervy peeker: we all make the Games.
The flag-waving piggy-backer: we all make the Games.
The blubbering wreck: we all make the Games.
The writers had observed the small behaviours and emotional reactions that surround a major sporting event and found exactly the right words for them.
They did not need to explain the Olympics or tell us that sport is exciting. They captured moments that anyone who has been emotionally invested in a match or race could recognise.
It is similar to great observational comedy. The comedian notices something we have all seen or done, but perhaps never consciously considered. Once they put it into words, the audience immediately thinks: that is exactly what people are like.
Great copywriting can do the same.
It can articulate something the audience already feels, recognises or believes, but has never found the words to express.
The line “We all make the Games” gathers those individual observations into one inclusive idea. The spectators are not competing, but their nerves, rituals, tears and celebrations are all part of the event.
Human insight does not always need to be that profound. In the rose-spray example, the move from “healthy roses” to “lush, beautiful roses” simply recognised the result the gardener was really hoping to achieve.
Before deciding how to describe a product, we need to understand what the customer genuinely wants from it. What are they hoping to achieve, avoid or feel?
The strongest copy often begins there.
It’s not all flowery, touchy-feely stuff
At this point, a sceptical marketing manager might be thinking:
We’re selling compost, not writing Shakespeare.
Fair enough.
Good copywriting is not about making every sentence poetic, emotionally charged or clever. The words need to suit the task in hand.
Sometimes the task is to inspire or entertain. At other times, it is to explain a technical feature, reassure an uncertain buyer or make a practical benefit immediately clear.
Ronseal provides one of the best-known British examples:
Does exactly what it says on the tin.
It is plain, direct and rooted in a functional customer need. People tackling a DIY job want to know what the product does and whether they can trust it to work.
But the line is not bland. It has rhythm, personality and a dry confidence that feels entirely appropriate for the brand. Straight talking became distinctive.
Simple is not the same as effortless. The finished phrase feels obvious because it is so well judged. Many less effective lines could have been written around reliability, performance and ease of use.
The cleverness lies in finding the simple expression that captures the whole promise.
Copywriters can also fall into the opposite trap. I have done it myself. You become attached to a clever turn of phrase and lose sight of the overarching message.
A clever line earns its place only when it makes the message clearer, stronger or more memorable. Otherwise, the writing is serving the writer rather than the brand.
There is also a practical question of time and money.
Some words also carry more of the commercial burden than others.
David Ogilvy famously wrote:
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.”
He went on to compare writing the headline with spending 80 cents of every advertising dollar.
Ogilvy was writing about print advertising in a different media era, so I would not treat those figures as a universal measurement today. But the principle remains useful. A headline, front-of-pack message or opening line may determine whether anyone reads what follows. It deserves a proportionate amount of attention.
That does not mean every sentence needs the same level of investment. A marketing manager may understand why a campaign headline deserves careful thought, but be less convinced about investing in hundreds of long-form product descriptions.
That is reasonable. You do not need to lavish the same amount of time on every piece of copy.
Flagship products, launches and commercially important ranges may deserve more individual attention. Other products can follow a strong shared structure, supported by useful tone-of-voice guidance and well-written examples.
Good copy at scale does not come from labouring over every sentence. It comes from making the important decisions once, then giving people a reliable way to apply them.
A product description may also be reused on the brand website, retailer pages, catalogues, presentations and sales materials. Improving the core version once can be a more efficient use of budget than repeatedly producing adequate copy in a hurry.
There’s more to copy than commas
I have seen this happen many times.
Copy is sent to a marketing manager for review and comes back with a handful of changes to the punctuation, capitalisation or grammar, but no comment at all about the content, message or tone.
I do not think this is a conscious decision. They genuinely believe they are reviewing the copy, but somewhere along the way their mind slips into proofreading mode.
Grammar and punctuation are tangible. There are rules to apply and errors that can be corrected. It is much harder to step back and judge whether the message is strong enough, whether it sounds like the brand or whether it will make the audience care.
The grammatical changes may be perfectly valid, but they are not necessarily evidence that the copy itself has been properly assessed.
Correcting a comma cannot rescue a bland message.
When reviewing copy, start with the larger questions.
What is the central message? Is it clear and worth noticing? Does the copy communicate the brand’s perspective, or simply provide the required facts? Does it sound like the brand rather than the individual who wrote it? Is the tone appropriate for the audience and the situation? Does it engage, educate, persuade or inspire action as required?
Then check that nothing clever is getting in the way.
Only after that should the review become a detailed check of factual accuracy, grammar and punctuation.
All of those things matter. Brilliant thinking can be undermined by careless execution. But correctness is the minimum requirement, not the measure of success.
Before you approve the next piece of copy
The next time you write or review a piece of marketing copy, begin by asking what it needs to achieve.
What does the audience need to understand? How should the product or brand feel? Do you want to educate, reassure, persuade or inspire action?
Then step back and look at the message as a whole.
Does it carry the brand’s personality, or does it simply sound like the person who wrote it? Is it saying something worth noticing? Could a more imaginative angle make the idea clearer, more distinctive or easier to remember? When you read it aloud, does the rhythm help the important words land?
This does not mean agonising over every sentence or turning every product description into a major creative project. A clear understanding of the brand, useful tone-of-voice guidelines and a reliable structure for recurring copy can make good writing easier to produce consistently.
The important decisions are made upfront, rather than reinvented every time someone opens a blank document.
Most marketing copy seems fine until you see what the right words could have achieved.
The words are not the finishing touch.
They are where the message becomes clear, the brand’s character becomes audible and the creative idea begins to connect with people. They can turn a list of technical improvements into a coherent sales story, make a functional product more desirable or put language around something the audience already feels.
The facts still need to be right. So do the grammar and punctuation. But those are the foundations, not the finished work.
At WrightObara, we approach copywriting as part of a joined-up piece of marketing. We look at the product, audience, brand, context and commercial task before deciding what needs to be said. The value is not simply in polishing a sentence. It is in finding the stronger message, the more compelling angle and the words that allow the whole idea to do its job.
If your copy is accurate but does not quite do justice to the product or the brand, that is the kind of problem we help solve.
Because the right words do not simply describe the value. They help people see it.