6 Ways to Liven Up Your Copy

Today I’m starting week four of my on-site copywriting gig. Despite being literally surrounded by designer handbags, jeans, dresses, and other goodies all day (not to mention coming up with clever ways to describe these products), so far I have not succumbed to the siren’s call of a sale. I haven’t picked up any of the merchandise (yet), but I’m definitely picking up some new ways to spin copy.

See, I’m used to writing short copy, but in magazine or blog land, short means 250 words. With marketing copy, it’s closer to 250 characters. Capturing a duvet set or a rug in that tiny amount of space forces a sort of linguistic agility. It’s like writing a modern day haiku. It can be a challenge to write something interesting in such a short amount of space, so here are a few of the strategies I’ve been using:

1. Parallelism. A popular rhetorical device that dates back to ancient China and Greece. Remember the old phrase, “Veni, vidi, vici”? Translation: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” More recently, JFK immortalized the phrase “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” I incorporated parallelism into a tagline for a postcard I wrote: “Good copy gets your point across… Great copy gets results.”

2. Juxtaposition. Try combining opposite elements. For instance, there’s a documentary about Walmart whose tagline is “the high cost of low price.” Schlotzky’s Deli has the tagline “Funny name. Serious sandwich.” Target’s slogan is along same lines: “Expect More. Pay Less.” When writing taglines, headlines, or body copy, you could juxtapose things that are light and dark, big and small, new and old, and so on.

3. Alliteration. This can get a little cutesy if overused, but I like a alliteration. A lot. Have you noticed? Gap, Inc. has a good, simple tagline it uses for recruiting materials: “fashion your future.” According to Gerber, “babies are our business.” Both are simple, but highly effective.

4. Old phrase, new way. Take an old cliché and turn it inside out or combine two phrases in an unexpected way. Take the word “break.” You could go on a “coffee break” or “break in a pair of shoes.” There’s also “back-breaking,” “record-breaking,” and “breaking news.” These ideas could be creatively merged together to make a clever little statement. My gym has a sign that says they offer “two ways to tighten your belt” (the secondary copy explains that they’re offering a discount on gym memberships). H & M had a window display that reads (and I’m paraphrasing here) “breathtaking fashions at prices that let you breath easier.” Love those!

5. Rhythmic variety. As one of my colleagues reminded me during an email exchange about newsletter subject lines, “you don’t have to write in complete sentences.” Short sentences can be effective. Like this. I’d forgotten how powerful it is when you really break up the rhythm of your writing! Try it sometime.

6. Sensory details. I spent much of my first week on the job writing product descriptions of watches and rugs. After about ten or so items, they all start to sound the same. But by going beyond the obvious (“this watch has a black dial” or “pink flowers adorn this rug”), you can incorporate other details that play on the senses. Perhaps that green lamp has the shiny finish and round shape of a freshly picked apple. Or the colors in those curtains are reminiscent of summer breezes on the Cape.

Tagline Guru has a list of famous taglines, which could offer a little inspiration (some of them are already mentioned in this post). Any strategies that I’ve missed? Let me know!