COPY BOOK FOR THE NEW GENERATION
A book to launch a new generation of copywriter.
The secret to seductive copy will be revealed at the Copywriting In Action book launch on Friday, 20 March at Storey Hall, RMIT Melbourne.
Author Nicolas Di Tempora takes the reader on a journey to discover the process of creating a compelling piece of communication, from the development of a single-minded concept to the completion of the final draft.
From get go, the reader takes front seat in a master class taught with an energetic, challenging and stimulating dialogue between Teacher and Student. “I loved it.” Says Jane Caro, copywriter and panellist on the Gruen Transfer. “I used to think there were no really good textbooks about copywriting, but I’ve changed my mind.”
The act of copywriting for print, screen, radio and the web are demonstrated in five compelling, page-turning chapters, making this the bible for the new generation of students and practitioners of marketing, advertising, professional writing and graphic design.
“By the time you get to the end of this book, you will be equipped with all the skills, disciplines and knowledge that are necessary if you want to become a successful copywriter,” says creative legend Ron Mather.
World renowned copywriter John Bevins agrees: “If I’d had this book when I first started, and read it attentively, I could have discovered the Holy Grail in 15 minutes. It’s there in six words, but I’ll not give It away.”
Copywriter and teacher, Nicolas Di Tempora, has been working for 28 years as a copywriter and art director in the advertising business for agencies such as JWT International, Saatchi & Saatchi and DDB, collecting awards along the way.
Copies of Copywriting In Action will be available at the launch and from www.ditempora.com.au
Copywriting In Action book Launch
When: Friday, 20 March
Time: 6-9pm
Place: Storey Hall RMIT, 342 Swanston Street, Melbourne
Guest speakers from advertising, RMIT University and graduates of Copywriting in Action will inaugurate the book launch.
Email: info@ditempora.com.au
43 Comments
Good. There hasn’t been a decent book on copywriting since Crompton’s Craft of Copywriting, which I think is out of print now.
Hopefully it’ll be more useful for juniors than the D&AD Copy Book – which was chock full of ads so intimidatingly good, that when you read it as a noob, you really didn’t know where to start (good book though, but not all that instructive)
Six munce ago I couldent even spell copyriter, now I are one!
Shhh! Don’t tell anyone.
When will it be available for sale on the website?
I wrote a book called ‘Moob Juice’. And it sold millions.
Then i got arrested for fiddlin’ with myself on a train.
Moral of the story? Fuck knows. Just be careful that’s all.
It’s disturbing how many so-called writers in our industry can’t actually write at all.
Hopefully they can read.
Sounds like something I would have bought this instantly but the shop isn’t open on the site. So he’s wasted his press release because I’m buggered if I’ll remember it next week.
The shop opens on March 23. Patience has its rewards. Meanwhile, you can always buy the book at info@ditempora.com.au.
If Jane likes it, I like it.
Does this book include interview tips?
Hiring writers with design skills halves your costs and often the amount of time it takes to get shit done.
Ah, 7:10am, you’ve hit a very salient point about the writer/art director team structure.
Do you really need two people to crack an ad? I hold the unfashionable view that you don’t. So why pay two salaries when a talented writer with a good sense of art direction/design can deliver on his/her own?
Discuss.
I hate it when people end their posts with the word ‘discuss’.
It makes them sound like pompous wankers.
Discuss.
Discuss? – isn’t that where kiwi’s go duncing?
10:21
From my experience, the only eye a writer has, is the one they sit on.
That would be the one you talk out of, 12:14.
10:21
Is that a line of coke in the shape of a ‘C’….?
10.21
We’ll discuss.
Sure you could crack it by yourself, but does that mean it’d be as good as it could be?
…it takes more than one person to believe in an idea.
Why can’t writers skill up?
Or Art Directors learn decent copy and do without crap writers all together?
Most designers I know can write really fucking good copy.
Stick a good idea in there and they’re a great Art Director / Writer combo at half the price of a team.
The best in advertising can do both exceptionally well, on their own or in a team.
It is funny to hear people talking about copywriters who can design.
This why Australia lacks good craft.
People seem to believe that drawing some doodles at Award school qualifies you as an art director. that somehow knowing how to use photoshop is enough to be an deisgner.
Art college or design school is the minimum. And even then you probably still going be just mediocre.
You look at the CVs of best art directors in the best agencies in the world, they are all from the top design schools and have often spent time in a design studio before becoming art directors.
OK, John & Paul, I’ll take up your point which I’ll say at the outset is worthy of lengthy discussion.
At the outset, I’ll say that whatever tweaks and finessing an art director can bring to a writer’s idea – or for that matter whatever little additions, alterations or improvements a writer can make to an art director’s idea, the problem is that one partner – the person who had the idea -is carrying far more of the load than the other.
If one partner adds 5% to the other person’s idea, should they be be given 50% of the credit? And should they be paid as much as the person who generates the idea?
These are just two of the minor practical issues that arise.
Frankly, over the 30 years I was a copywriter, much of it as a highly acclaimed industry figure, I found sitting in a room with another person an annoying distraction from the task of getting into the Zone, and the fun of coming up with ideas. To me quiet concentration is better than endless interruption. But that’s just me. Of course different people work in different ways. Sometimes the other person will say or do something that triggers another thought in your head, and a fresh idea will result. My critics will of course say “Derrrr, that’s the crucial point, and the reason we work in pairs.”
Incidentally, I once heard the process described in the following terms: the two of you create a third person, and he’s the one who comes up with the ads. Not bad, eh? But I suspect that was devised by the partner who routinely only adds the aforementioned 5%. Perhaps to justify his or her existence – and salary? Yes, I’m very cynical, aren’t I?
I just think it’s an extravagant and expensive duplication of resources to have two people – assuming that they are each individually capable of generating very good commercial ideas – competing with each other.
Beside all that, I’m really not interested in tweaking other people’s ideas. I’d much rather come up with my own. And I find they’re usually pretty fully formed at birth.
I realise that my views – and the things I’ve said here are only the tip of the iceberg – probably put me in the minority, and are undoubtedly old-fashioned. Hey, at the end of the day, it’s only an opinion.
But it’s MINE.
Love, 10:21
“Most designers I know can write really fucking good copy”
Funniest thing ever written on this blog?
Most designers struggle to spell their own name.
Most designers use copy as a design element. Never read it, just fill in spaces with it.
True story. A guy doing AWARD said he wanted to be a writer because he couldn’t draw or do Photoshop. The tutor said ‘Well you can’t fucking write either so why don’t you be a suit instead?’
I think it’s about big beautiful ideas people. Even better if you can get someone like a junior I hired a while ago, who had a design background. He’s risen through the ranks pretty quickly and there’s no surprises there.
The comment about designers being illiterate should research what kind of a UAI / HSC mark you need to study. Last count it was over 98.7%.
It’s odd really.
I’ve seen endless books and articles about copywriting. But none of them, not one, has ever had the best and most basic piece of advice there is, which I received from a 60 year old writer the day I joined one of the country’s biggest agencies as a kid. (Sadly, that was over 30 years.)
All he said was, if you want to be a better writer, just read. And read. And read.
And he wasn’t talking about reading D&AD annuals.
He meant read the great novels. Read articles by great writers. And keep reading them. Because the simple fact is, no self help book will ever beat learning from the best.
The comments about designers are spot on.
Good writers want their copy to be read, so they want it to be readable. Designers, though, usually like to whack it at 8 point using their favourite san serif type.
Personally, I’m always happy to rewrite copy to help the designer or art director with line breaks and so on, but it’s always, always a battle to get a readable size and a readable type face.
I also agree with 11.37 about teams. The best team relationships I’ve been in were just short of the Bernie Taupin / Elton John ‘two rooms’ thing. We’d leave each other alone to think up our own ideas, then get together to work on them. Usually worked out fairly even over time.
When the blogger who wrote “Most designers I know can write really fucking good copy” he acknowledged that they still need someone to provide the idea for their “really fucking good copy”.
And who would be expected to provide that idea?
A writer, of course.
10:21 I think you summed up what I’d love to reduce to a few words.
“Ego and creativity come from two different parts of the soul.”
Everything else you said was gospel, sometimes it works in a team, sometimes it doesn’t. Best writer I know and the best in Australia used to fill out 30 boxes on a page with a little line in each. Got it down to 6 minutes per page in the hey-day.
March 16, 11.37
Yup – as you say, you can do it by yourself – and some people do work better that way. But even then you concede that when you have a partner – even if they’re not the originator – they still add, say 5% to the idea. That’s because they’ll have a different take on things than you. And that was our point.
There’s also the real world issue of time. As a team, you tend to crack (and execute) things a lot faster. You also get to see problems from two different points of view. It works for us.
One last thing. Who cares if your partner claims 50% of an idea (and do they?). They’re not stealing your soul. This is advertising. I could crap on with sporting analogies here but I don’t think it’s necessary – you get my drift.
x
As I suggested at the start of my earlier lengthy tome, the whole team/individual thing is a fertile area. Yet strangely it’s never been explored by CB. I suspect few people in the industry would be willing to nail their colours to the mast and identify themselves, especially if they eschew the conventional team structure.
Naturally there are shades of opinion on this vexed subject, but how refreshing that the discussion on this thread has been not only civil, even pleasant and reasonably erudite.
But I guess there’s time yet for a disgruntled art director or two to call me a nob, fossil, muppet etc etc and recommend that I return to my brochure, DL piece etc etc etc. It’s too late for that, my little choux pastries, I’m no longer working in the field.
Oh, one point I didn’t make earlier is that while I often reject input from art directors, I don’t mind input from directors at production stage, although you have to be vigilant to protect your idea from irrelevant and gratuitous techniques and other assorted distractions from the idea in the director’s attempt to make a name for themselves or put their stamp on the spot.
Regards, 10:21/11:37
If you were to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite everything said above into a clear, cohesive and constructive dialogue that literally demonstrates the collaborative act of producing a compelling piece of communication that inspires and intrigues to the very last word, you would have a book called COPYWRITING IN ACTION (long sentence done purposely).
10.49
Okay, okay. I’m sold.
Yeah 10:49, beautifully steered back on-brief. The same point was dawning on me at the precise moment I began to read your pithy observation.
I’m sure Nicolas Di Tempora would be proud of you.
Over and out from 10:21/11:37.
All “how to write copy” books are rubbish.
I agree fully with 7.24.
If you want to learn how to be a better writer, read. And read lots.
And also write lots.
Only by reading lots and practicing what you’ve learnt by writing lots will you ever be a half decent writer.
Oh, and one other thing. Don’t just write, but rewrite. You’re first attempt will never be your best attempt. There’s always a better way. Keep writing till you run out of time.
Good writing, like good art, is never really finished.
Copy book for the new generation.
Get a full bleed, desaturated photo. Stick a small logo in the corner.
10:36. You forgot to add: make it incomprehensible no matter how long you stare at it while saying “what the…?”
March 19 10:36 AM – YOU STOLE MY IDEA!!
FUCKER!
I’m gonna put it in Cannes before you do.
How quickly the above went off brief again! What is needed here is what every great copywriter and art director has – from Bill Bernbach to Jane Caro to John Bevins to Peter Carey to Ron Mather to Ted Horton – a harnessed imagination, a disciplined mind and a transformation of flatulent ego into fragrant eloquence. The key to it all, as John Bevins says, is in COPYWRITING IN ACTION. But you’ll have to read it to get it. And once you do, all of the above comments (except for 10:21/11:37) will seem like a playschool rumble.
Hey! I’ve just heard it through the grapevine by Marvin Gaye that The Shop will be opened today at 3:35 pm for purchasing COPYWRITING IN ACTION at http://www.ditempora.com.au
And by the way, there’s still time to get to the launch tonight at RMIT Storey Hall Melbourne from 6-9pm.
It sounds like your brief, 11.21, was to sell the bloody book. Got shares in it or something? Work for the publisher maybe?
Most of these self help books are all the same; they’re incredibly insular.
I keep coming across young writers, and when I ask them what they’ve read lately, the answer is usually some ad award annual or some ad self-help book. Not enough of them read books. Not enough of them go to plays. Not enough of them watch classic movies.
There are endless books out there that tell you how to write better ads, and most of them are okay and have some useful tips. (Mostly they cover the basics that every ad person used to know and every kid used to be taught when they started in an agency, but it seems the days of CDs actually training young writers are long gone.)
Advertising is about getting in touch with human beings, making a connection with people. You can learn that from life and from great literature. But you’ll never, ever get it out of a self help book.
11.21
What brief?
11.21
I’m afraid your post has un-sold me on the book. It read like a bad infomercial.
Perhaps you should read Copywriting In Action for some tips on how to better empathise with your audience.
And how was 10.21/11.37’s point (that he preferred to work alone) relevant?
Hi there, 10.21/11.37 here again.
3:28, 11:21 was referring to my comment at 12:11PM March 18, the one in which I applauded the discussion for getting back to the subject matter, which I likened to getting back on-brief.
But I noticed a nice little anomaly in 11:21’s post.
He/she named Bill Bernbach, Jane Caro, John Bevins, Peter Carey, Ron Mather and Ted Horton as copywriters.
However, strictly speaking, this is incorrect.
One of them, whilst unquestionable an acknowledged idea generator, is/was an art director.
OK trivia buffs, which one?
‘Discuss? – isn’t that where kiwi’s go duncing?’
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
I got my copy this week and I have to say, it’s even better than I expected.