Interview: John Simmons, The Writer
Having been head of copy at Interbrand for many years, John Simmons, now at The Writer, has extensive experience of brand communications and tone-of-voice management. As well as training copywriters in the rigors of creative writing, he consults some of the world’s largest corporations and a number of smaller outfits on how to utilize language to represent their organization clearly and build strong relationships with their audiences.
I work to a wide variety of briefs and still write a lot of copy myself. I think it’s important as a writer not to get carried away with your own ability to use words, and remember that sometimes no copy is better, as words could detract from an image.
When you are aware that someone speaking is choosing words very carefully you will listen more intently, but you will tend to cut off those people who don’t. I have recently been working on a brief for a series of 48-sheet billboard posters that convey the skill of the writer, and we don’t allow the copy on each poster to be more than six words. Hemingway is credited with writing the shortest story in the world, using only six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
I have a big problem with management writing, and also with brand strategists who are allowed to put words on paper. They are not writers and usually choose the wrong ones. Brand people have an urge to fill every space, and tend to take a scientific rather than a creative approach, preferring to replicate other big brands than create something new. It’s not so easy as that. The copy must define a brand in its essence.
It’s important to use that part of the brain that you use yourself, relating to your reader as a human to a human. I put notes in a notebook, the things I want to keep and go back to. I write the first draft by hand and then type it up, editing it as I do so. I read the copy out to the client. I do this when I’m proud of copy and it works. It goes back to childhood. We all like listening to a story, rather than a PowerPoint presentation.
It is also important to maintain a consistent story across all expressions of the brand, globally. Guinness is in 150 countries and had been putting out different brand messages in each one. We rationalized this around the theme that Guinness reflects your inner strength, showing how Guinness helps them in a situation.
A recent copywriting and tone-of-voice project has been the cosmetics range ILA. It features spas, products, and skincare with pure natural materials, which they describe as “beyond organic.” The client, Denise, is an ex-nurse. She developed products for a client of hers who was “allergic to water”; this became The Himalayan Goddess Company, which we rebranded as ILA. Pentagram, with John Rushworth as partner, created the identity. There was no grand model, it was simply based around “purity.”
They required pack copy for a new range of products. The range was hardcore, drawing on ideas of vibrational energy from Vedic scriptures and involving chanting of mantras when making products. I was slightly sceptical at first. I aimed to get across what we felt was good in the range and broaden the market.
I began by researching ILA’s story. As a writer you sense a company. It is vital to visit and get to know a business. How can you work if you’ve never met or spoken to its people? You’ll probably not be true to its absolute essence. The key with ILA was going to the Cotswolds to see where the products are made. Denise gave me a head massage and talked for three hours about her company and products. I just absorbed it all, the words and the atmosphere.
ILA is about essential oils, so their “essence” was even more vital than with other brands. I’m always sceptical about straplines, and instead I suggested we say “Purity, Energy, Balance.” This came from John’s original brand definition. ILA’s tone is different to commercial companies, but shouldn’t be too off-puttingly “spiritual.”
I found out where the products came from, and the beliefs behind them: a blend of Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian thinking. Three ingredients are used: pink Himalayan salt crystals, argan oil, from the seeds of a tree only found in the Atlas mountains in Morocco, and rose damascene from Rajasthan in India.
When it came to the booklet, I started with the stories of the three ingredients (and the barn where the company operates). I’d enjoyed listening to them, and thought, “well, if I like them others will too.” They worked well beside beautiful photographs of the ingredients being harvested and prepared at source. I was limited for space, and the designer wanted captions, but I said no as they wouldn’t have added anything. The introductory copy fires the imagination and the images, without any copy, let it go.
“Keep saying to yourself ‘there’s always another way to write this’.”
The ultimate role of the booklet is to sell, but we approach this in a subtle way, building brand values and letting customers discover benefits. The right tone of voice is about light touches. It’s more believable to say “known for centuries” instead of “will remove …”. ILA products are tested in high-tech laboratories but we don’t lead on this. We expect readers to take time to discover the qualities and benefits of the products because we know that the people we cater for will do this; the audience is women in their late 20s onward who shop in upmarket stores and on the internet. They are attracted first by the emotion, the sensuousness of the approach; rationality confirms what emotions have decided.
I remembered the John Donne poem “At the round earth’s imagined corners,” using this as inspiration. We made the booklet square, with four “pegs” to the corners, Rajasthan, Kashmir, Morocco, and the Cotswolds. The theme was the love and care that goes into the products, the sense of discovery that accompanies them, and Phil Sayer’s beautiful photographs.
You have to find out about a company to inform your brief. I’ve recently been developing tone-of-voice and internet copy for an accountancy firm that offers professional services to large businesses. Their brief to me is about defining their brand, and I was lucky enough to share the project with designer Angus Hyland of Pentagram.
When I met the senior client team they gave a PowerPoint presentation about how their brand was defined, but it was not to the essence, lacking clear vision. They said “our people are different, and are encouraged to speak out on issues affecting the professional and the business world in general.”
Previously the copy on their website was dry, drudgy, with long sentences, no personality, and a bureaucratic, formal feel, which they knew didn’t represent them. I took on the roles of writer and brand consultant, writing some copy with the right feel, then breaking it down to determine what the values were, and checking to see if the new tone-of-voice definitions reflected these values.
The three values were “bold, clear, and positive” and I developed a three-part narrative structure: always start with something bold, develop the message with something clear, and work toward a positive conclusion. The next stage was to evolve a distinctive feel to the copy to set them apart from their competitors.
I presented this to a committee. You have to have principles behind your writing, and before presenting draft copy to the client I showed the tone-of-voice definitions, using only a few pages. It’s important to get full agreement and consensus from the start, because it makes it hard for them to disagree among themselves later. There is a large element of politics in this process. It was approved, and we also used the tone-of-voice and style guide to train their own people how to write and talk publicly on behalf of the company.
I always try to help provide the client with the eye and the ear to appreciate the copy. I let them read it and read it to them as well. The ear is the most important thing for a writer – the reader is listening to the words in their head.
My advice is to continually return to the brief you’ve been given, or the one you’ve formed, and be as objective as possible. Go with your instinct, use this as your guide to creating a natural feel, and hone the copy. Keep saying to yourself “there’s always another way to write this” – it’s part of the editing process. I do lots of alternatives for myself, but I don’t show them all.