Writing Advice: Readers Are Real People (Get to Know Them Better)

Writing Advice: Readers Are Real People (Get to Know Them Better)

Writers of literary works say don’t go chasing an audience. Don’t picture the reader in your mind. Just focus on the story and serve the story. Basically, the exact opposite of how copywriters work.

The best copywriters are obsessed with reaching members of a pre-determined audience and moving them to act. For a copywriter, words on the page are not abstractions, they’re not hazy thoughts draped over a red velvet chair, words are the vehicle, the high-powered engine with the means to reach the desired audience and the agreed-upon end.

Not Always the Best Advice: Tell Your Story, Your Way

To highlight the “tell your story, your way” argument, I could pick out any one of a hundred pieces of writing advice. This is what screenwriter, John Milius says:

To write for someone else is the biggest mistake that any writer makes. You should be your biggest competitor, your biggest critic, your biggest fan, because you don’t know what anybody else thinks. How arrogant it is to assume that you know the market, that you know what’s popular today—only Steven Spielberg knows what’s popular today. Only Steven Spielberg will ever know what’s popular. So leave it to him. He’s the only one in the history of man who has ever figured that out.

When I consider his point of view—one shared by countless other writers—part of me nods my head in agreement. Another part of me wants to scream.

The biggest mistake a writer makes is leaving untold stories withering on the vine. The biggest mistake is not writing, not believing, not developing a routine, and not improving. Writing for other people is not a mistake at all. Writing for other people is also not the same thing as compromising your values or dumbing down your work. That sometimes happens, but it’s not a pre-ordained outcome.

A writer of literary works can care about the reader and maintain their integrity. The reader is not the enemy of your best work. In fact, just the opposite. It’s readers who spend time with your work and gain something from it. To me, it seems neglectful to not consider the reader.

Cozy Up and Open Up

John Milius also suggests that it’s best for a writer to be his or her own biggest fan. I disagree. Writing is lonely work as it is, and what helps is to hear directly from a reader who knows and supports you. A few kind words from this person can help spur you on, and help you to remember to believe in yourself and the work you’re doing.

Publishing is a business and a writer has to know something about it, how it works, and who is who. The lone writer in a room is where the manufacturing of books begins, but it doesn’t end there. Getting a book into a reader’s hands requires the help of several more people. Professional people who know how to help writers make better books.

If you write experimental fiction, then cozy up to the editors, agents, publishers, and readers in that world. By immersing in a community as a reader before you step up as a writer, you instinctively know what readers want, because it’s also what you want.

Writing is about artistic self-expression.

Writing is about connecting with readers.

Both of these things are true. What I don’t like about the lack of market awareness in literary writers is the solipsistic pose. For a story to work, it needs to reach a reader, and when it does the reader ought to be changed by it. Writing when there’s a reader on the other end is an alchemical exchange. That’s exciting to consider and to consider it fully, it means keeping readers in mind.

My Presentation to Advertising & PR Students at the University of Texas

My Presentation to Advertising & PR Students at the University of Texas

I was invited to speak to undergraduates at the Stan Richards School of Advertising & PR at the University of Texas. The invite came from the Association of National Advertisers in New York City.

The suggested topic for this guest lecture was “My Work as a Creative Director,” plus any tips I may have for graduating seniors seeking work in advertising, media, or marketing.

With the lecture hall as my stage, I brought a strong point of view forward and shared it with the students. One of the things I said is:

Ads Can Solve Powerful Problems

I wanted to leave the students with the idea that there are no limits on what can be achieved for a client, and that some client “at-bats” are more important than others.

During the Q+A following my slides, I was asked some great questions. One question that I thought was smart to ask, was:

What do you know now about working in the ad business that you wish you knew when you entered the business?

I said I wish I took seriously just how fragile one’s reputation inside the industry is, and that somehow we all must find a way to be nice, likable, and a pleasure to work with…without losing our standards or creative edge.

RFPs Are a Waste of Precious Time

There’s a wealth of highly specialized marketing talent available to brands today, but few brand managers know exactly where to look to find a good fit for their most pressing needs. 

Sure, the brand manager may read the trades — and maybe she has a robust network of peers to tap for recommendations — but that’s not the most reliable pathway to take when the business need is acute and the need for an answer is long past due.

Enter the request for proposal. RFPs are commonplace today, and they are often dismissed by savvy new-business professionals as a waste of human resources. If a client sends out 20 or more RFPs and then has a handful returned to sift through and assess, there will be more losers than winners. That’s just math.

Read the entire piece on Builtin.com.

For Better Results, Understand the Relationships Between Creativity, Productivity, and Accountability

People are being asked to do more with less. In the ad agency business, this has been going on since the first days of Digital Disruption. Today, with COVID-19 raging across the land and the globe, so-called “thought workers” who can work from home are doing so, but at what cost to themselves and the economy at large?

While it is true that some people excel in a home office and everyone saves on commute time, not all people, nor all teams are meant to work remotely.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development:

In the longer-term, productivity performance could improve to the extent that the crisis catalyses wider and smarter adoption of efficient telework practices, raising worker well-being and efficiency and lowering firms’ costs. This could speed up the transition into a “new normal”, which would have been more gradual in the absence of the crisis, given uncertainties and costs around the necessary organisational and management changes and other hurdles – cultural reluctance or legal constraints.

Emerging evidence provides support for this notion: 61.9% of hiring managers interviewed in a recent US poll stated their intention to rely more on remote work in the future. However, against these positive longer-term productivity effects stand potentially adverse effects arising from increased spatial distance among employees, e.g. impaired communication resulting in lower innovation or the fusing of work and personal, family and social life leading to hidden overtime.

“Hidden overtime” is a nice way of saying that with no division between work and home or work and play, We, the People are fast becoming automatons.

The process was well underway prior to the pandemic. Now, it’s worse and the impacts are rippling through our society. Overworked and underpaid productivity hounds burn out and lose their edge and effectiveness. When this happens, we all lose. Unhappy and unproductive workers are not exactly the best shoppers or most pleasant people. No sustainable work practices, no disposable income, no stoking of the economic engines.

The Eternal Question: Where Do the Best Ideas Come From?

Question: Where do great ideas come from?

Answer: Great ideas come from the minds, hearts, and souls of people who are experts at connecting disparate dots.

To do this deep work and connect disparate dots, people must have the room to relax, and the room to let their minds wander. Ergo, I want to present to you what I consider the ideal office space for a creative worker today:

No alt text provided for this image

Creative People Need Some Space to Think, Okay?

In a work environment where Slack, text, email, and project management software are always on and always dinging for attention RIGHT NOW, the team’s performance is bound to suffer.

Ad agencies can become pressure cookers where people have too many meetings and too many tasks on their plate. When this happens, people are not their best selves, which means their best ideas are not being sought, nor found.

People must be free to think, free to speak truth to power, free to go for long walks, and free to dream. When anyone or anything impinges on this creative freedom, trouble ensues.

Stress kills people and ideas. Ergo, the conditions that create stress must be managed successfully. You do this by becoming more accountable to yourself, to your team, and to your customers. When those are your north stars, you’re in alignment and when you’re in alignment you can do the “heavy lifting” required to achieve great things.

More Twitter Love from CA!

More Twitter Love from CA!

The person who runs the Communication Arts Twitter account likes the #AdLegends series on Adpulp.com. I am grateful.

CA is the creative industry’s standard-bearer, and each Tweet sent from @CommArts is seen by a segment of the magazine’s 81,300 followers.

To see previous Tweets that CA sent to promote my writing, visit this page on DavidBurn.com.

The Answer To the Brand Riddle Is Consistent Investment

Differentiate or die. That’s the mountain that all tech startups must climb. I wrote an article about it and BuiltIn.com was kind enough to publish it.

When the Product Does All the Talking, Where Does Brand Marketing Fit In?

Reaching the Builtin.com Audience

In the article, I discuss how the cultures of an agency that builds brands and tech startups are fundamentally on separate pages.

Going to market with a minimum viable product is common practice, but it’s not good for a new brand. From a brand impression perspective, anything you do that is underwhelming is a major ding to your image. Yes, iterating rapidly is required, but in brand communications, you do not “move fast and break stuff.” You make a map of the customer journey and meet your VIPs (a.k.a. customers) at every step along the purchase consideration path. 

My team moves faster than most. We are lean and we can do that. Even so, we follow a well-developed process that produces desired results, and it all takes time. And time requires trust, a financial investment, and a long-term vision.

Who has time for such things?

Companies that invest in ‘brand’ and truly care about the experiences they create for customers are the companies worth significantly more at the end of the day. This is why it’s worth it and why great brands make the time and invest the money to do it right. They’re playing the long game.

Between Tears

by David Burn

Between tears
Room for unbridled fears

A change of gears
Open ears

Seeing with mirrors
Doubt reappears

The unruly crowd leers
There are facetious cheers

A cascading veil of years
A quiver of spears

Between tears
News smears and confusion interferes

Alienation among peers
Rumors that no one and everyone hears

Still, we dream of deers
We reach frontiers

We are brazen cavaliers
We enter far out spheres

The rent is no longer in arrears
Time for starry premiers

More promises from pamphleteers
More conversions from profiteers

New bridges from engineers
Let’s head to the Berkshires

There will be souvenirs
There will be mutineers

Between tears
Love adheres

Best New Music of 2020

2020 has been a mess of a year on so many levels. For one, live music came to a total standstill. We are still standing still during this last week of the year.

Thankfully, when times get tough, artists get busy.

What did not stop this year is the writing and performing of music (in socially distanced studios). In fact, you could argue that 2020’s recorded music is truly outstanding by any measure. But why discuss such matters, when you can push play and listen?

The 21 songs in this playlist are standout tracks. Each track is also a signpost to the artist’s new album.

Laura Veirs, Jerry Joseph, Margo Price, Alicia Keys, Destroyer, Wolf Parade, Chuck Prophet, My Morning Jacket, and so many more musicians offered us songs of beauty and harmony in 2020—exactly what we need to shift from chaos to peace, and from collective despair to a new hopefulness.

Two Copywriters, One Shared Vision for Fostering Creative Excellence

Two Copywriters, One Shared Vision for Fostering Creative Excellence

I was honored when a colleague reached out to me recently and requested an interview to run on his company’s blog. Todd Anthony and I have been in the same social media orbit for years. Todd, who is executive creative director at Pinwheel Content in the Bay Area asked to meet on Zoom. He recorded our chat and then transcribed it, which gives the text a conversational tone that it would otherwise not possess. Here’s a small sample from our chat. Click over to Pinwheel Content for the full interview.

Todd: How would you describe copywriters as a group? What are the unique qualities about them?

David: Honestly, they’re all over the place. Writers are artists. Narrative artists. They can be difficult, strange, and un-business-like. They’re misfits, yes, but I think of all that as being a very good thing. If you can bring that to the suits and their corporations, who are stiff and boring and scared, you can make a difference for their customers…and that’s important.

If we have to be the court jester, well okay, there’s something to that, too. I remember many times going over to Coors and the clients were looking forward to it. They’d say, “Here come the creatives, they’re going to tell us stories and make us laugh for an hour.” That’s really valuable.

So we’re the court jesters of the advertising and marketing world. It’s because we’re the storytellers. We’re ready to walk into a room and captivate. And that’s not done with your notes and screens. That’s done with your personality and your intelligence.

Design Internship Featured in Franklin & Marshall College News

Design Internship Featured in Franklin & Marshall College News

I graduated with a B.A. in English from Franklin & Marshall College in 1987.

Yuhang Wang graduated from F&M in May with a B.A. in Art.

Last summer, Yuhang reached out to me via F&M’s True Blue Network, and asked if I could help her find a job or internship. She showed me her student work in theater set design, plus her fine art, and I knew right away that she’s an extraordinary talent.

I extended her a paid internship offer and it was one of the best decisions that I’ve made in years. She’s an outstanding intern and a wonderful person.

“You want to see the fine artist in a designer, just like you want to see the writer in a copywriter,” Burn said. “Thanks to what we’ve learned at F&M, we’re prepared to infuse the business world with art, writing, and meaning.”

One of the goals of the internship is to help Yuhang find and land a great job. Thanks to recent client wins at Bonehook, I am now hopeful that I can provide the job she wants, starting in January 2021.