On Writing Brand Manifestos

A manifesto is your brand's Magna Carta, Rosetta Stone, and Declaration of Independence all rolled into one; it's the halftime locker room speech given by the CEO; the words the founder heard on the mountaintop before bringing down the stone tablets. Reading a great brand manifesto should make you want to run out and try the product. You should feel the brand fire in your bones.

Typically, these screeds are written only for new business pitches or brand overhauls. They can also serve as true north on a brand's compass and be used for all kinds of creative decisions. Figure 5.3 is an example of a good brand manifesto; it was written for the winning Miller High Life pitch by Jeff Kling when he was at Wieden+Kennedy.

Read Jeff's manifesto and you'll see how it served well as a springboard for writing all those great High Life spots. I include here three of the scripts from that marvelous campaign.

1. (VIDEO OF A MAN LOOKING AT HIS NEIGHBOR'S SUV:) “Leather seats. Automatic transmission. Nowadays you'll hear people call this a “truck.” Well, a man knows a station wagon when he sees one. This car will see off-road action only if the driver backs over a flowerbed. If this vehicular masquerade represents the high life to which men are called…we should trade in our trousers for skirts right now.”
2. (VIDEO OF MAN SAWING WOOD IN BASEMENT SHOP:) “When you enjoy your work and you're suited to it, the hours just fly by. Before you know it, you're in danger of logging some unintentional overtime. That won't do. Fortunately, every High Life man comes with a built-in timer that automatically alerts him to the end of the workday. Thank you, five o'clock shadow. Feels like it's Miller Time.”
3. (VIDEO OF MAN'S HANDS PREPARING POTATO SALAD:) “It's hard to respect the French when you have to bail 'em out of two big ones in one century. But we have to hand it to 'em on mayonnaise. Nice job, Pierre.” whipple5highlife

For another example of writing that brings a brand roaring to life, I recommend the video for Johnnie Walker called “The Man Who Walked around the World.” It handily won the One Show's Best of Show award. Extraordinary.

Get Puns Out of Your System Right Away

Puns, in addition to being the lowest thing on the joke food chain, have no persuasive value. It's okay to think them. It's okay to write them down. Just make sure you put them where they belong. And don't forget to flush. whipple5Johnnie

Don't Just Start Writing Headlines Willy-Nilly. Break It Down: Do Willy First, Then Move on to Nilly

Okay, when it comes time to write, don't just start spitting out headlines. Instead, methodically explore different attributes and benefits of your product as you write.

Here's an example from my files. The project is a bourbon.

The client can afford only a small-space newspaper campaign and a billboard or two. The executives have said they want to see their bottle, so the finished ads will likely be just a bottle and a headline. After some discussion with the account folks about tone (“thoughtful, intellectual”), the art director and I consider several avenues for exploration.

The bourbon's age might be one way to go. Bourbon, by law, is aged a minimum of two years, often up to eight, sometimes longer. So we start there to see what happens. We put our feet up and immediately begin discussing the first Terminator movie. Sometime after lunch we take a crack at the “aging” thing.

If the Idea Needs a Headline, Write 100

Sorry, but there's no shortcut. Write 100 of them. And don't confuse this with Tom Monahan's exercise of 100-Mile-an-Hour Thinking.³ (That's a pretty good exercise, too, but better for the very beginning of the creative process. In that exercise, Tom advises creative people to turn on the fire hydrant for 20 minutes and catch every single first thought that comes out. Each idea goes on a separate Post-it Note, with absolutely no editing.) Nope, what we're talking about here is sitting down and slowly and methodically cranking out 100 workable lines—100 lines that range from decent, to hey not bad, to whoa that rocks. The key is they all have to be pretty good.

To prove this very point, Sally Hogshead bravely posted all of the BMW motorcycle headlines she came up with to get to her final five ads featured in the One Show and Communication Arts. Read the list and you'll see a copywriter really thinking it through, rattling different doorknobs up and down the conceptual hallways, sometimes writing about the union of rider and bike, sometimes about goose bumps. They're all pretty darn good. (She's good at other stuff, too—particularly career advice for creatives. Check out her book, Radical Careering.)

Even atheists kneel on a BMW. • Some burn candles when praying. Others, rubber. • There are basilicas, cathedrals, mosques. And then there's Route 66. • Buy one before the Church bans such marriages. • People take vows of chastity to feel this way. • More Westminster Abbey than Cal Tech. • Runners get a high from jogging around a track at 8 miles per hour. Pathetic. • This is exactly the sort of intimacy that would frighten Jesse Helms. • Fits like a glove. A metallic silver, fuel-injected, 150-horsepower glove. • You don't get off a BMW so much as take it off. • Relationships this intimate are illegal in some states. • Usually, this kind of connection requires surgery. • Didn't George Orwell predict man and machine would eventually become one? • The Church has yet to comment on such a marriage of man and machine. • Somebody call Ray Bradbury. We've combined man and machine. • Do you become more machine, or does it become more human? • And then there were two. • “Oh look, honey. What a sweet looking couple.” • If you ever connect like this with a person, marry them. • Fits tighter than OJ's glove. ∼SF • Why some men won't stop and ask directions. • “Darling, is that…a smudge of motor oil on your collar?” • The road is calling. Don't get its message by voice mail. • The feeling is more permanent than any tattoo. • “Yippee! I'm off to my root canal!” • Your inner child is fluent in German. • The last day of school, any day of the year. • Your heart races, your senses tingle. Then you turn it on. • There is no known antidote once it gets into your blood. • There are no words to describe it. Unless “Wooohoo!” counts. • No amusement park ride can give this feeling. • If he had a mood ring on, it'd be bright green. • Never has a raccoon baking in the sun smelled sweeter. • How “joie de vivre” translates into German. • Put as much distance as possible between you and the strip mall. • Off, off, off, off-road. • If it had a rearview mirror, you'd see your troubles in it. • There's something worth racing toward at the end of this road: another 25 miles. • The best psychotherapy doesn't happen lying on a couch. • A remote control is a more dangerous machine. • A carnivore in the food chain of bikes. • If you're trying to find yourself, you sure as hell won't find it on the sofa. • If you had eight hours, alone, no radio, imagine what you could think about. • Where is it written the love for your motorcycle must be platonic? • Seems preoccupied. Comes home later than usual. Always wanting to get out of the house. • You possess a motorcycle. You're possessed by a BMW. • Let's see. You're either riding it, or wishing you were riding it, or thinking about the last time you rode it. • Men who own a BMW have something else to think about every 22 seconds. • What you're seeing is his soul. His body's in a meeting in Cincinnati right now. • Merge with traffic. Not every other motorcycle owner. • Your estimated time of arrival just got moved up. • Where do you drive when you daydream? • What walking on air actually looks like. • The invitation said to bring your significant other. • Lust fueled by gasoline. • The bike, the girlfriend. Guess which model he'll trade in first. • She wonders why she sometimes feels like a third wheel. • Room for luggage. None for baggage.

The point here is both quantity and quality. You don't get to great until you do a whole bunch of good. It's part of the process.

Save the Operative Part of the Headline for the Very End

You know that single part of a headline where the concept comes to life? That key word or phrase where the idea is unveiled? Save that unveiling for the end of your headline.

Take, for example, this headline from the preceding list of airline ideas.

1. Almost every passenger arrives feeling human.
   1. (VISUAL: Dog getting out of airline pet carrier.)

The line could have been constructed other ways:

1. You'll feel human when you arrive, thanks to our new seats.
2. When the seats let you sleep, almost everybody feels human on arrival.

Some of the punch is missing, isn't it? It feels better when you save your wrap-up punch for the end of your sentence. It has more surprise and power.

Never Use Fake Names in a Headline
(Or Copy. Or Anywhere Else, for That Matter)

“Little Billy's friends at school call him different.” Lines like this drive me nuts.

“Little Billy will never know his real father.”

Hey, little Billy, c'mere. Go back and tell your copywriter a strange man in the park said to tell him he's a hack. Anybody reading this kind of crap knows these ad names are fake—and an irritating kind of fake at that, like those manufactured relatives they put inside of picture frames at stores.

Avoid fake people. Avoid fake names.

There are times, however, when using a person's name is the only way the concept will work. And in the hands of a seasoned team, as in the VitroRobertson ad for client Taylor guitars (Figure 5.4), it can be done beautifully. It comes down to style. To how gracefully and believably you pull it off.

One other note here. Avoid using product or model numbers in the headline. Product numbers such as “TX-17” may seem familiar to you and to the client. But you're used to it; you work on the account. In a headline, they serve only as a speed bump. They're not words, they're numerals, so they force readers to switch gears in their heads to 17, x45, 13z42 to get through your sentence.

Don't Let the Headline Flex Any Muscles When the Visual is Doing the Heavy Lifting

As it is in dancing, one should lead, one should follow. If your visual is a hardworking idea, let your headline quietly clean up the work left to it. And if the headline is brilliant, is well-crafted, and covers all the bases, the visual (if one exists at all) should be merely icing on the cake. Some teachers put it this way: If your headline is bent, have a straight visual; if your visual's bent, straight headline.

Similarly, never show what you're saying and never say what you're showing. Figure 5.5, an ad for Harley-Davidson motorcycles, is a perfect example. By itself, the visual is fairly tame. By itself, the headline is dull and almost meaningless. But together, they make one of the best ads I've ever seen.

When It's Just a Headline, It'd Better be a Pretty Good Headline

One of the best campaigns of all time (in this writer's opinion) is Abbott Mead Vickers's work for The Economist (Figure 5.6). This campaign was basically an outdoor campaign of brilliant headlines against a backdrop of the color red (lifted from the magazine's masthead). Several of the finished ads are pictured throughout this book, but the lines all by themselves are also great lessons in brilliant copywriting. I include my favorites here:

1. Think someone under the table.
2. Great minds like a think.
3. It's lonely at the top, but at least there's something to read.
4. “Can I phone an Economist reader, please, Chris?”
5. Don't be a vacancy on the board.
6. E = iq2
7. If they did brain transplants, would you be a donor or a recipient?
8. Don't make the same mistake once.
9. If someone gave you a penny for your thoughts, would they get change?
10. Trump Donald.
11. Does anyone ever ask you for your opinion? No, not you, the guy behind you.
12. Would you like to sit next to you at dinner?
13. Think outside the dodecahedron.
14. Ever go blank at the crucial…thingy?
15. Cures itchy scalps.
16. “Is it me, or is quantum physics easier these days?”

Certain Headlines Are Currently Checked Out. You May Use Them When They Are Returned

Lines such as “Contrary to popular belief…” or “Something is wrong when…” are pretty much used up. (Sorry, I used one or two of them myself.) They're gone now. Get over it. Time for something new.

Remember, anything you even think you've seen, forget about it. The stuff you've never seen? You'll know that when you see it, too. It raises the hair on the back of your neck.

Writing Well, Rule #1: Write Well

I don't think people read body copy. I think we've entered a frenzied era of coffee-guzzling, text-sending channel surfers who spell “are you” as “r u” and have the attention span of a flashbulb. If the first seven words of body copy aren't “OMG! It's beer and $$$$ for everybody!!” then word 8 isn't read. Just my opinion, mind you.

Raymond McKinney at the Martin Agency had it right when he wrote a line for those condensed-book study aids: “Cliff Notes. When you don't have time to see the movie.”

Yet when I write body copy, long or short, I work hard at making it as smart and persuasive and readable as I can. I suggest you do the same—because a few people are going to read it. And the ones who do, you want. They're interested. They're peering in your shop window. They are leaning in.

So as much as I hammer away on the importance of visual solutions, when you have to write, write smartly. Write with passion, intelligence, and honesty. And when you've said what you need to say, stop.

Write Like You'd Talk If You Were the Brand

As we discussed when we were talking about brand manifestos, every brand has a personality. You could describe Apple Computer's personality perhaps as “benevolent intelligence.” Read any piece of copy in any Apple ad—doesn't matter if it's an ancient ad for the Apple Lisa or one for the latest iPhone. No matter what Apple work you read or hear, you'll feel like you're listening to the same smart big brother, one who wants to sit in the chair with you in front of the keyboard and show you how simple, smart, and beautifully designed technology can be. Successful brands discover their own distinct voices and then stick with them year after year.

If you're inheriting an established voice, you can learn its cadences by reading their previous advertising. But if you have a new brand or you're creating a new voice for an old brand, consider yourself lucky. It's one of the most creative and rewarding things you can do in this business—discovering “who” a brand is and giving it shape and form and voice.

This isn't done to create stylish writing. What you're doing is creating a brand personality, which is a big deal in a marketplace where the physical differences between products are getting smaller and smaller.

Let's say, for example, you're working on a car account. Most of the time, it's likely you'll have to show the car. Your idea may feel half art-directed already, and in a sense it is. So if it comes down to showing just a headline and a picture of a car, your headline ought to have a voice no one else does.

Here are two car headlines:

1. If you run out of gas, it's easy to push.
2. We'll never make it big.

Here are two more:

1. A luxury sedan based on the belief that all of the rich are not idle.
2. The people with money are still spending it, but with infinitely more wisdom.

And two more:

1. Let's burn the maps. Let's get lost. Let's turn right when we should turn left. Let's read fewer car ads and more travel ads. Let's not be back in 10 minutes. Let's hold out until the next rest stop. Let's eat when hungry. Let's drink when thirsty. Let's break routines but not make a routine of it. Let's Motor.
2. Let's put away the middle finger. Let's lay off the horn. Let's volunteer jumper cables. Let's pay a stranger's toll. Let's be considerate of cyclists. Let's keep in mind automobiles were created to advance civilization. And for crying out loud, let's remember to turn off those blinkers. Let's Motor.

Can you tell which ones are from MINI? From VW? From BMW? It's pretty easy. Which is as it should be.

At the Same Time, Remember to Write Like You Talk

Now that you know you need to write like that particular brand, I also have to encourage you to write like people talk; in the copy you write for ads, in e-mails to clients, and letters to the editor, write like regular people talk. For some reason, when handed a pen and asked to write something that will be seen by others, 9 out of 10 people decide an authoritarian tone is somehow more persuasive than clear English.

There's a cost to this, which the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto made clear in their famous 95 Theses: “In just a few more years, the current homogenized ‘voice’ of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.…[C]ompanies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.”⁴

This horrible, boring voice is everywhere in this business. Consider this memo from my files, written by a man about whom, were you to meet him, you'd say: “Sharp guy, that Bob. I want him on my account.” Yet Bob wrote the following memo. (What he was trying to say was the program was killed because it was too costly.)

Effective late last week the Flavor-iffic project was shelved by the Flavor-Master Consumer Products Division Management. The reasoning had to do with funding generated covering cost of entry, not cost of entry as it would relate to test market in 2012, but as it would relate to expansion, if judged successful across major pieces of geography in 2013 and beyond. In sum, the way Flavor-Master new products division served up Flavor-iffic to Consumer Products Division Management was that if Flavor-Master were to relax financial parameters for Flavor-iffic in 2012, 2013, and 2014, in effect have Corporate fund the program, Consumer Products Division could recommend to Corporate to proceed with the program. The decision was made at the Consumer Products Division Management level that Corporate would most probably not accept that and the subject was taken no further.

Except for the name Flavor-iffic, I swear, every word of this memo is real.

The program was killed because it was too costly. That's nine words. Bob, in 143 words, was not only unable to get that nine-word message across, he effectively lobotomized his audience with a torrent of corporate nonsense that said nothing. It couldn't be decoded.

Bob proudly dictated this Rosetta stone, snapped his suspenders, and took the elevator down to the lobby, thinking he'd done his bit to turn the wheels of capitalism for the day. Yet when he got home, he probably didn't talk that way to his wife.

Honey, RE: supper. It has come to my attention, and the concurrent attention of the other family members (i.e., Janice, Bill, and Bob Jr.), that your gravy has inconsistencies of viscosity (popularly known as “lumps”), itself not a disturbing event were it not for the recent disappearance of the family dog.

Write like you talk.

Write with a smooth, easy rhythm that sounds natural. Obey the rules of grammar and go easy on the adjectives. Short sentences are best, especially online. One-word sentences? Fine. End with a preposition if you want to. And if it feels right, begin a sentence with “and.” Just be clear.

Through it all, remember, you are selling something. Easy to forget when you start slinging words.

Pretend You're Writing a Letter

Why write to the masses? It's one person reading the Web page you're working on, right? So write to one person.

Write a letter. It's a good voice to use when you're writing copy. It's intimate. It keeps you from lecturing. The best copy feels like a conversation, not a speech. One person talking to another. Not a corporate press release typed in the public relations department by some minion named “Higgs.”

Visualize this person you're writing the letter to. She's not a “female, 18 to 34, household income of blah-blah.” She's a woman named Jill who's been thinking about getting a newer, smaller car. She's in an airport, bored, trying to get a gummi bear out of her back tooth, and slowly paging backwards through Time magazine.

Don't Have a “Pre-Ramble”

The first paragraph of copy in many ads is usually a waste of the reader's time, a repetition of what's already been said in the headline. Get to the point. It's time for the details. Put your most interesting, surprising, or persuasive point in the first line if you can.

Five Rules for Effective Speechwriting from Winston Churchill

1. Begin strongly.
2. Have one theme.
3. Use simple language.
4. Leave a picture in the listener's mind.
5. End dramatically.

“It's Not Fair to Inflict Your Own Style on a Strategy”

This is from Ed McCabe, one of the great writers of the 1970s. Your job is to present the client's case as memorably as you can, not to come up with another great piece for your portfolio. You want to do both, but you aren't likely to do both if you're concentrating on style. Don't worry about style. It will be expressed no matter what you do. Style is part of the way your brain is wired. Just concentrate on solving the client's problem well. The rest will just happen.

Eschew Obfuscation

My point exactly. Those words say what I mean to say, but they aren't as clear as they could be. This doesn't mean your writing has to be flat-footed, just understandable.

E. B. White said, “Be obscure clearly.”

Once You Lay Your Sentences Down, Spackle between the Joints

Use transitions to flow seamlessly from one benefit to the next. Each sentence should come naturally out of the one that precedes it. To use Peter Barry's metaphor, an “invisible thread” should run through your entire argument, tying everything together. When you've done it well, you shouldn't be able to take out any sentence without disrupting the flow and structure of the entire piece. Novelist Wallace Stegner nailed it when he penned, “Hard writing makes for easy reading.” (This fragile coherence of beautiful writing is lost on many people and is the main reason copywriters are often seen mumbling to themselves at bus stops.)

Break Your Copy into as Many Short Paragraphs as You Can

Short paragraphs are less daunting. I've never read William Faulkner's classic Intruder in the Dust for this very reason. Those eight-page paragraphs look like work to me. Remember, nobody ever had to read People magazine with a bookmark. This isn't an argument for dumbing down your work. Be as smart as you can be. Just don't write paragraphs the size of shower curtains, okay?

When You're Done Writing the Copy, Read It Aloud

I discovered this one the hard way. I had to present some copy to a group of five clients and I read it to the group aloud. It was only during the act of reading it this way—out loud—that I discovered how wretched my copy was. Just hearing the words hanging out there in the air with their grade-school mistakes, seeing the flat reaction of the clients' faces, hearing my voice crack, feeling the flop sweat…it was awful.

When you're done writing, read it aloud. Not just your radio scripts, but copy for print, for online, for anything you want to make sure sounds like speech. Awkward constructions and wire-thin segues have a way of revealing themselves when read aloud.

When You're Done Writing Your Body Copy, Go Back and Cut It by a Third

Proofread Your Own Work

Don't depend on spell check. First of all, it won't notice mistakes like this in you're writing. Second, using spell check is just lazy. Seriously, if you have to use some stupid computer program on your writing, use Suck Check®, whenever that one comes out.

In particular, I draw your attention to the industry's most misused word: “mediums.” The plural for medium, the way we mean it in advertising, is media. The word mediums does in fact exist, but it's used in sentences to describe a roomful of fortune-telling crystal-ball gazers, or when referring to piles of a certain size of underwear.

If You Have to Have One, Make Your Tagline an Anthem

Try to write about something bigger than just your client's product. Own some high ground. In my opinion, the best ever written was for Nike: “Just Do It.” This exhortation is not about shoes. Nor is it about just sports. It's about life; it's about the competitive spirit; it's about kicking ass. And yet it sold a lot of shoes.

As you work, you might want to try getting to a cool tagline with both deductive and inductive reasoning. Working deductively means taking the work you've got up on the wall and boiling its essence into an evocative, provocative, or anthemic tagline. Working inductively, you take a line you like and see what executions you can pull out of it and put up on the wall.

Something has to Dominate the Ad

Whether it's a big headline, a large visual, or a single word floating in white space, somebody's got to be the boss.

It's easy to spot ads where the art director (or perhaps client) couldn't decide what was most important. The ads are usually in three big pieces. The visual takes up a third of the page. A headline takes up the next third. And a combination of body copy/logo/tagline brings up the rear. The whole thing has about as much cohesion as a cake left out in the rain.

An ad needs a boss. So does a home page, or any screen for that matter. There needs to be an overall visual hierarchy. The late Roy Grace, one of the famous art directors from Doyle Dane Bernbach, spoke on this issue:

There has to be a point on every page where the art director and the writer want you to start. Whether that is the center of the page, the top right-hand corner, or the left-hand corner, there has to be an understanding, an agreement, and a logical reason where you want people to look first.⁵

Avoid Trends in Execution

Don't take your cues from design trends you see in the awards books. (For one thing, if they're in the books, they're already two years old. The One Show book arrives, literally, on a slow boat from China, where it's printed.) But this is about more than being up-to-date. It's about concentrating on the soul of an ad instead of the width of its lapels. Do as you wish, but riding the wave of every passing fad will make your work look trendy and derivative.

Own Something Visual

You've got to find something your client can call his or her own: a shape, a color, a design—something that is unique.

Helmut Krone: “I was working on Avis and looking for a page style. That's very important to me, a page style. I think you should be able to tell who's running an ad at a distance of twenty feet.”⁶

What's interesting about Krone's statement is he's not talking about billboards but print ads. And if you look at his two most famous campaigns, they stand up to the test. You could identify his Volkswagen and Avis ads from across a street (Figure 5.7).

The longer I'm in this business, the more I'm convinced art direction is where the major battle for brand building happens. Once you establish a look, once you stake out a design territory, no one else can use it without looking like your brand. The Economist practically owns the color red. IBM continues to letterbox its television with those iconic blue bars. And Apple Computer's signature color of white in its stores and packaging fairly screams “Apple.”

Own something visual.

Be Objective

Once you've put some good ideas on paper and had time to polish them to your satisfaction, maybe it's time to cart them around the hallways a little bit, even before you take them to your creative director. You're not looking for consensus here, just a disaster check.

Doing so can give you a quick reality check, identify holes that need filling, and maybe point to some directions that deserve further exploration. Be objective. Listen to what people have to say about your work. If a couple of people have a problem with something, chances are it's real. Keep in mind when you're showing your work around the agency, you're showing it to people who want to like it, who want to see your idea live.

Kill Off the Weak Sister

If your campaign has even one slightly weaker piece in it, replace that piece with something that's as great as everything else. I have often talked myself into presenting campaigns that include weak sisters because time was running out. But readers don't care if most of your ideas are great. Out there in the world, they see your ideas one at a time, so they should all be great.

There's a saying the Japanese use regarding the strict quality control in their best companies: “How many times a year is it acceptable for the birthing nurse to drop a baby on its head?” Is even one time okay?

Always, Always Show Babies or Puppies

Oh, and another thing. Always—always—write every headline in the script of a child's handwriting. It's very cute, don't you think? And don't forget to have at least two of the letters be adorably backward. Backward $\exists$'s are best. Backward O's don't work. Here's a regular O and here's a backward O. See? Not as adorable as a backward $\exists$. (Just checking to see if you're awake.)