I had set out to write an intelligent column about the difference between writing copy and writing content, but now that I read it back, it all seems to have gone a bit wrong.
LinkedIn, that ugly, rubbish-strewn, inner-city shopping precinct where we all hang about these days, especially those of us who are ‘Consulting Creative Directors’, copywriters, content writers, art directors, designers and artworkers without gainful full-time employment, galloping desperately from one indifferent headhunter’s lazy signposting of an inappropriate ‘gig’ to another, alternately hooting at each other with derision and commiserating with each other about the ’decline of the advertising industry’, has rendered the task of defining the difference between the two roles of writing copy and writing content effectively redundant – and now my column is about to turn into a stream of ill-tempered invective, as it so often does. Eheu!
Those distinctions
I am indebted to Karli Saner, senior director enterprise brand and marketing at Mission Brands Consulting in Madison, Wisconsin for a deft and accurate (if not quite comprehensive) pair of definitions:
Copywriter: The wordsmith focused on persuasion and emotion. They craft taglines, ad campaigns, email copy, and website headlines to inspire action. Their goal? Conversion.
SEO Content Writer: The strategist focused on value and visibility. They create blogs, articles, and resource pages packed with keywords and insights to drive traffic. Their goal? Organic reach.
Karli helpfully gees on to say:
Here’s a cheat sheet:
Hire a copywriter if…
• You need compelling ads or brand messaging.
• Your focus is on immediate engagement or sales.
• You want content that sells.
Hire an SEO content writer if…
• You need traffic-driving, keyword-rich content.
• You’re building long-form resources or blog posts.
• Your focus is on rankings and organic growth.
I feel that Karli has accurately identified the differences here, but what she (understandably) swerves is the attendant rage and counter-productive infighting that these distinctions provoke.
To take just one example, copywriters are taught (if taught at all) to eschew repetition, to mine their ‘word-hoard’, to consult the thesaurus and to find fresh and dainty new ways to express the same concept. They are writing to retain the interest of a reader.
Content writers, on the other hand, are writing to ensure that their efforts achieve the highest conceivable ranking, to optimise the performance of their texts in attracting the attention of various algorithms. They are writing to gain the attention of a machine.
This is why copywriters may find it hard to write content and content writers may sometimes struggle with longer format copy.
But does it really matter?
When the basics of wordsmithery are increasingly handled so nimbly by the various AIs at a client’s disposal? Really? When the copy that isn’t generated by AIs is often produced by over-worked, graduate marketing assistants at client businesses? When copy is often generated in Google Docs or using Jira and a Kanban board where any contributor can suggest, or, indeed, implement amends in a spirit of ‘collaboration’?
I must say that my experience of working as a content designer in a major government department left me with a fresh perspective on the concept of the ‘auteur’.
It all boils down to that ancient canard; is advertising an art form?
Well, of course it isn’t.
Copywriters and art directors are as much artists as plasterers or plumbers. There may be aesthetic content in what we do but any aesthetic content is always – and I emphasise always – deployed in the service of late-stage, global capitalism. We are here to flog stuff to punters, and it is important to remember that. Our visuals may be exquisite and our words mellifluous, but they are there to serve the client in the selling of their products and services.
I am, of course, delighted to find creative people so passionate about their craft, it is to our credit that we believe so deeply in the importance of what we do – and to argue with each other at length on LinkedIn about defining aspects of that craft. But we are in danger of emulating the medieval religious thinkers who, as Erasmus reminds us, argue about how many angels may dance upon the head of a pin.
Does it really matter?
Well, it matters only in so far as it speaks to one of the most terrible aspects of the advertising industry’s creative process…
Snobbery
As someone educated at a minor public school and at Oxford University it is an issue I have often bumped up against, I am aware of my privilege and am at pains to be wary of any creeping sense of entitlement; not so the auteurs of the creative department.
In my career I have worked both ‘above’ and ‘below’ the line. (How meaningless those distinctions are nowadays!) I was astonished as a young man in the early 1980s at how the creative departments of traditional ATL agencies looked down on the efforts of those toiling to produce what used to be called Direct Response Advertising. BTL creatives were ‘coupon-mongers’ who produced STF, Shit That Folds. Well, thanks to the great democratising revolution that is digital engagement, we are all producing Direct Response Advertising now and being judged mercilessly on its effectiveness.
Is not the way in which ‘real copywriters’ look down on ‘content creators’ simply a recurrence of that ludicrous – and no doubt soon to be equally outmoded – snobbery?
There are two things that ring the most urgent of alarm bells for me when thinking about the magnificent industry that we are so privileged to work in (scribbling and doodling for a living!): SNOBBERY and NOSTALGIA.
Nostalgia
Even the most cursory glance at the pages of LinkedIn demonstrates clearly that as an industry we are in the iron grip of both.
There was no ‘Golden Age Of Advertising’. There were good adverts and bad adverts in exactly the same proportion as there are today. And, interestingly, some of the most vehement laments for said ‘Golden Age’ seem to come from writers and art directors in their 40s rather than ancient practitioners like your humble servant.
Yet for every BA or B&H ‘masterpiece’ there were a thousand OTP listing ads for Comet Warehouse, Freemans or AA Car Insurance – and in many cases the latter allowed the big agencies the luxury of creating the former.
Creative people in the advertising industry face multiple threats at present. Even Spoon Creative Ltd is, astonishingly, facing challenges to its cashflow this year.
We are competing with cleverer and cleverer technology, technology which is getting cheaper and easier for clients to use. The industry itself is struggling to deliver value in a post-retail world. Surely, we should be ‘manifesting’ our value to our clients at every opportunity rather than squabbling about some fashionable pecking order that will soon be as meaningless as the debate over coupon size and position?
For a clear demonstration of the fact that there has never been a Golden Age, that nostalgia and self-importance are meaningless – and that we are all essentially just clever salespeople, may I recommend a novel by that great copywriter, Dorothy L Sayers first published nearly a hundred years ago in 1933? It is called Murder Must Advertise and it is as fresh, wry and pertinent today as it was when George V was on the throne.
Don’t patronise those whose chosen path leads to a wilderness of Search Engine Optimisation; they are your comrades in the war to retain human agency in a post-Sorrel advertising world.
Don’t romanticise the past achievements of advertising creatives, they were hard-won and only shone against a background of workmanlike mundanity as dreary as the quotidian MPUs and social posts of the current era.
Meanwhile we should rise above the snobbery and the nostalgia and pay heed to those great, time-travelling prophets Bill & Ted. We should ‘Be excellent to each other’ and ‘party on dudes!’
Jonathan Spooner is consulting creative director at Spoon Creative
