It happened again! Another client set up a kick-off meeting and said, “Hope you can attend. We need both creative and copy present.”
It’s so annoying!
Copy just isn’t considered creative anymore. These days it’s all about art. Think about it. You’ve just gone over the creative brief and the account manager asks the client if he has any questions for the team. Who does the client turn to for that spark of inspiration? I’ll give you one guess. It’s not the copywriter.
Or you’re in the final presentation. Everybody is wowed by your concept…but who gets all the praise? The art director of course.
Maybe art is the be all and end all in general advertising where getting a truly effective ad means going for a memorable visual effect. But in direct marketing, copy is still king.
How do I know? Well, you can start by taking what I call the Alphabet Test. Pick up any piece of direct mail and cover up all the type. Include everything – even logo type. Then look at what’s left and tell me you have enough information about the product to make a purchase.
I guess I wouldn’t mind hearing my art director partner constantly being referred to as “creative” if the big creative ideas always originated with the art.
But here – step by step – is what really happens to me between the creative brief and the concept presentation.
- The art director and I leave the meeting room and the art director says, “So, what are we going to do? Got any ideas?”
- I go to my office, review the brief and start noodling around some ideas.
- I get together with the art director to go over my rough concepts. I have an overall strategy for selling the product. I have formats. I have headlines and subheads for each piece in the kit. I have the opening paragraph of the letter and the intermediate headlines. I show how everything works together in my copywriter’s rough layout.
- The art director says. “Thanks!” Sometimes I get to see the cool photos he or she has found to use in the piece. Sometimes there’s a neat format to try.
- I take the format or photos back to my office and work them into the concept …or revise my idea to fit the format.
- I bring my pile of ideas back to the art director who makes it look pretty.
I know it sounds like I’m bashing the poor art director here. But I’m not. I enjoy being able to bring my ideas to someone who appreciates them and who works with me to make them better. I especially like it when the art director looks at what I’ve done and transforms it with a visual that takes my work to a place that surprises me.
It’s not the art director who’s at fault. It’s everyone who thinks that color and design are the truly creative elements of advertising. And it’s time that they realized that they are only half right.
Don’t know about the headline, in Direct Mail copy is right below the right list and above design in my book. Which of course makes it extremely “creative”
I disagree with the premise because I “grew up” at an agency where copy came before art, copy “went to art,” and the finished product was called “the creative.”
My agency experience was primarily where the concept came before any actual artwork happened – and the concept came from the writer, working with a creative director. The creative director approved copy to go to art, then the creative director approved the artwork, many times changing copy as the artwork was being tweaked. The art director might be the artist or designer working on the piece or overseeing the work of an artist or designer who reported to him or her.
To this day, I continue to work that way – with the creative concept coming from me the writer and then developed by a designer/art director. And we are both called “creative.”
Creative thinking happens in many ways – from the marketing strategy to the crafting of a catchy headline to the way a direct mail piece folds.
So it is not always the case where art is considered “the creative.” We can all be creative! Even the account service people who convince a client to go in a new direction or the production staff who may come up with a new format can contribute to the final “creative” product.
Of course copy is art–if its job is to support and explain the overall concept. It’s an art to sell something. To solve a problem. That is what advertising is. Solving a client’s problem. Sometimes it’s a creative approach which works best, sometimes not.
I often am impressed more with the copy than the art, especially when its in the form of a script. I remember a commercial where two elvis impersonators ran into each other on the street.
One said to the other, “…well, who do you think I think I am.” A brilliant exchange-and funny within the commercial’s context.
In the end, its a team effort between the Art Director and the Copywriter. Many times, as an Art Director, I come up with the headline and the writer hits upon a great visual idea.
Together its art.
Of course copy is creative and art is creative and together they make ‘THE CREATIVE.’ What I’m objecting to is the nasty habit people in account services, marketing and yes, even in copy and art departments of constantly talking about ‘copy and creative’ when they mean copy and design. This automatically denigrates the work and the ideas of the copywriter and lifts art up on a pedestal – even though often copy comes first.
Hi Marge. It’s a bit of a laugh isn’t it. Having started in general at NW Ayer, and evolving into direct marketing later in my career, I share your perspective on the uniquely different roles of art in general vs direct. And I just wanted to add one of my most recent experiences as further proof of the sheer ignorance of so many so called direct marketers as to what constitutes creative and how the process evolves. The last agency I worked for (which will namelessly remain unknown as TPG) employed 3 writers and 9 artists. A dead giveaway there. As one of the 3 writers, I can’t begin to tell you the frustration which accompanied the execution of every assignment. The other writers were concept-challenged and accepted their role as filling in the words to the formats and graphic schemes developed by the artists.
So in a sense, you can blame the writers for helping create and perpetuate this illusion. The truth may be that copy isn’t considered creative anymore because in most cases, it simply isn’t. One final anecdote that may shed further light on the plight of the truly talented writers was a conversation with the top writer at this particular agency. We were talking about copywriters in general, and she expressed the view that the worst ones she had run into in her career were those damn English Literature majors. Imagine someone approaching the execution of conceptualizing and writing original, imaginative, on-target copy. What a waste of time. The boss just wants you to rewrite that package from 2 years ago, and have the art department make it look different.
I got fired a few weeks after that illuminating discussion.
C’est la vie!
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