What is Copywriting Really? Part 3: Common Sense and Rationality

Before I made copywriting mine, I referred to resources (books, blogs, podcasts, videos) provided by experts on the subject matter. Helpful as they were, I couldn’t help but notice that much of what I reviewed was based on common sense and rationality rather than years of experience and discovery. Most of the guidelines, methods, and tricks of the trade were fundamental observations reframed to fit the copywriting narrative.

If we were to treat a business as though it were a person, then copywriting would be building that person. Giving it a name, shaping its identity and voice; its thoughts, desires, beliefs, ambitions, fears, etc…. and the way it presents them. Aside from physical appearance, these are the elements that constitute a unique entity. No two people are built the same; each has a set of qualities that work best within their own structure. So, what they are and how to use them is people-centered and fluid.

On a fundamental level, copywriting requires you to highlight the business’s description, mission, vision, values, the problem or issue it addresses, target audience, unique value proposition… But what if we instead chose to highlight logos, pathos, ethos, inspiration, community, and incentive? It’s a bit broader, but they cover the same touchpoints under different labels. Because, the ultimate objective is to connect strangers together. And we already have an idea of how to do that from all the time we’ve spent interacting with people. This dissection and fragmentation of presenting ourselves through copywriting stems from the same blueprint.

So, of course you have to know the audience you address, and of course you lead with your best qualities. You don’t talk to your colleagues in the same way you would talk to your friends or a stranger; you change your language intuitively. You don’t set out to make connections with a sour disposition. And connecting with shared interests is common sense. All that’s left is deciding how, and that’s rationality.

Copywriting is versatile. It shapeshifts into whoever it works with to capture the most of their voice. As such, each copy uses different approaches and bends different rules. Things that shouldn’t work sometimes do, and vice versa, because it’s more nuanced than having a checklist of fundamentals. Most of the time, you have to get what you want by using what you already have and what you can acquire. But, even in an ideal case where you have all the resources you could possibly need, not everything in the copywriting “handbook” can apply or should be utilized. The decisions are then dependent on the case-by-case circumstances of the business.  

The copywriting framework is a good guideline when used light-handedly. If you strip it down to its fundamentals, you would be amazed by how much of it you already know, and by how easy it is to figure out most of what you don’t. These guidelines are derived from human relationships for the sake of forming and maintaining them. It brings like-minded and like-spirited people together under a common interest, so the copy must complement the strategy. And whether you do it by writing desires in the form of a mission on a website, or by announcing it in a song on Instagram, as long as the intention and meaning come across, what difference does it really make?