Transcripts
1. Clare's New Intro Ep 1 (1): Hello and welcome to my first course on this
platform, Writing to a Brief. Before we get into
the intricacies of what we're going
to cover today, let me introduce myself. My name is Claire Red. I'm a senior copywriter
here in Perth, Western Australia and I have 14 years experience
in this industry. I've written and done
brand strategies for almost any industry
I can think of. Agriculture, mining,
fashion, food and beverage. I mean, even manufacturing, I feel like I've written for every industry under the sun. And because I love
to write so much, I took two years off to study at Stockholm University
doing a Masters of Transnational
Creative Writing. I've had a few of
my short stories published in
international journals. And I just absolutely adore being able to bring
all of that knowledge in characterization and world building into
brand copywriting. And the first part of all of
that is writing to a brief, and that's what we're
covering today in course one. So everything that
we're going to give you today is the foundational
knowledge you need for any single writing task or even any single creative task that you're going to embark on. We're going to cover
the deliverables, understanding exactly what you have to do and when it's due, plus the objectives,
what you're aiming to achieve and
what you're trying to get out of the project. And then we really hone in on your reader or in
brand language, more like your target audience. We start to understand
their demographics, but even more so
their psychographics. What motivates them?
What are their values? How do they see the world? And we take all of that and really start to
shape a personality, a tone, and a proposition
for your writing. It seems like a lot, but it is so doable. And actually you can
do it in two pages, which you'll get at the
end of this course. A brief writing template plus a copywriting
task to have a go at, and a little fun writing prompt just to get the juices flowing. So let's crack on.
2. Chapter 2 Writing to a brief: So let's kick things off with part one of the
content for today. Now, if you hear nothing else from our entire
time together, if you've procrastinated,
zoned out, walked off, whatever
you've done, all I want you to hear
is this one thing. Never write without a brief. This is going to be your Bible. This is the thing you follow as you write your piece of content. And it is going to be absolute
gold, not just for you, but for your client, for the brand that you're
working for, the agency. As much as we're here
in that capacity today, all coming together as writers. This actually extends across
all creative disciplines. And I know there
are a lot of you out there who aren't
just writers. Aj, I'm looking
directly at your way. She is one of these people who is probably a lot like you guys. You might be art directors, you might be graphic designers, or even just
creative conceptors. This brief is really
something that can ground and anchor the entire creative
team in one direction. So that when you
have the phrase, is it on brief or off brief, that actually starts
coming to life and meaning something for everyone
in the creative team. Having said that, if
you're a freelancer and you're going it alone with
just you and your client, or the agency and brand you're working with, That's
totally fine. This brief is going to
keep you connected to your project and connect
you to your reader, which is something
we're going to get to a little bit later. But that is kind of the essence
of why we write a brief. Now, you might
become some sort of copyrighting creative magician
later in your career. I don't know. Some
kind of dynamo. Or someone who,
what's with the face? Who what? No, you're to me, kidding me? Go on Youtube. He's amazing. But what's
another reference then? David. David Blaine. Okay. Okay. Yes. Let's go with
it. You could be a dynamo or a David
Blaine copywriter in the future and have
all of this in your head formulated before
you put pen to paper. But I tell you what, I haven't
reached that standard yet. I don't know any
creative that has. Having this brief
work done first will not only make your piece a lot better, but
I tell you what, it'll save you tons of rounds of amends with your client,
with the agency, because what you're doing is
all getting on the same page and ironing out any of
those inconsistencies. Really, early on, I
have found nothing better in my career than
always writing to a brief, also a template at the bottom. So download that now
and have it with you, either printed off or side
by side on the screen. Either way, you just want
to be able to follow along each section as
we speak about it. So let's just do a quick run through of each of the sections. So we've got the
deliverables, the objectives. Then we're going to go
into the target audience and their response and benefits. That's the bit where
we're going to spend the most time today
because that's about really understanding your reader and who
you're writing for. In the world of advertising
and brand copywriting, they're going to call that
your target audience. But basically it's just your reader who you're speaking to. Then we tie the brief together with a single
minded proposition. This is almost like
your thesis statement, The one line to have
with you at all times. And what you continuously anchor yourself to when you're
writing a piece of copy. And then we have a little
bit of admin at the end. You want to cover mandatories. These are the things
that your client or the agency just say
have to be included. Don't question it. They've
got to be in there. And to be honest, I used to fight against this
part of the brief, but it's really helpful to just show your client that you've
heard what they need. They feel safe because
it's on a piece of paper. It's like okay, they know
that they're going to include that particular
thing, whatever it is. And then we finish
off with a little bit more admin which is base copy. So anything that you've been given from the client
to be included, research, things like
that, as well as SEO. There are going to be
some pieces that you won't use it at
all, but if you do, if you're working
with an SEO agency or you're given key
phrases from your agency, just include them there
or even from the client. And for some of you out there, like those multidisciplinary and creatives we spoke
about earlier, I totally praise you guys. You may do the SEO
research yourself. And so this is the
place where you add primary key phrases,
secondary key phrases, long tail key phrases, and even just an overall
strategy or SEO search intent. There's a place for that
on the brief as well. While we're bookended
with admin on this brief, I'll get to why that's
really important. But the middle bit,
that really juicy bit of the brief that I so much, that's the bit that
is going to drive your copy and make
your copy engaging. And people warned to read it because there's actually this
quote by David Prestfield, which I say every time
that I run this course. And it's something to
really remember and humble us as creators and
advertising brand writers. And it is this, no one
wants to read your shop. And I say that with such love. But as consumers we know this. We receive 4000-10 thousand
brand messages a day. And so that doesn't include all the texts you're
getting, all the DMs, you're getting the
individualized content that you're consuming. This is brand messages
and that is a lot, our brains are not evolved
to take in all of that. The content that we
create is a single minded because if we're trying to tell them three different
things, forget it. They're already processing
10,000 other things. You want to tell them one thing and tell them that really well. And you also want to tap into your readers and what
they care about. So by doing this brief process and going through each
of those elements, we're going to make it
so that we have a chance that our readers are going
to care what we have to say. Engage with what we have to say. And ultimately do what
we want them to do, which is meeting
those objectives, those measurable
outcomes that of course, your client is going
to want to see. That's a lot, but we're going to go through it step
by step, so don't freak out. We're going to do one bit,
next bit, next bit, next bit. And by the end, brief writing is going to become
second nature to you. And you won't start
a big campaign or big piece of copy without it. I guarantee you write
into a brief. Let's go.
3. Chapter 3 Defining your purpose: The first thing we're
going to start with is deliverables and objectives. Now as much as this is kind of the admin
phase of the brief, I've rebranded it and decided to call it
Defining Your purpose. I mean, you can do
that in life as well. Great exercise for people to do. But I have a feeling
that if you're here and you're pursuing
your writing career, you've probably
found your purpose. So let's do it for this
project in particular. So here we've got deliverables. So what are you actually
delivering to the client? This is about defining
the parameters. So are you writing a
social media post, are you writing a blog? What's your word count? Everything you need to know what you're actually
writing to keep you within the frame of the deliverable is
super important one, this gets you on track with
your client and what they're actually expecting for you and what they're paying you for. Because I tell you what, as a freelancer that is
very important to define very clearly
and have them sign off what you're
actually delivering. I've also got a section
here called Backgrounder. Now this is really just a place to brain dump
everything, you know. It doesn't mean that it's going to end up in the final piece. This is literally
just the information you know about the client, what they do, what
industry they're part of, where they sit in the market, who their competitors are. Because a lot of the
times we have to wear different hats,
brand copywriters. You often end up being an
agricultural specialist one day and then you know how to mine for iron ore the next day. Then you know how the
fashion industry works. We're asked to, right?
Don't you think this? We're asked to be experts in so many different
fields and this is the background section where
you actually just write a bit of that out to show them that we understand their world. And then your brief starts to take a lot of
shape from there. So think of it as a funnel almost. So you start at the top. I was literally going to try and balance my to use two hands, but I feel like that's a hazard, not I'm going to do
it. Okay. Funnel. So starting at the top with the background
deliverables and we start to narrow the scope of the piece because
like we said before, we don't want to be
everything to everyone and be part of the noise of
those 10,000 messages. We want to be really defined. Now we want to define
the objectives. Now here you want a mix of measurable objectives and also things that
are immeasurable, like how people think and
feel about the brand. Certainly with
bigger budgets and in bigger agencies,
that is possible. There is a way to define brand sentiment
and brand equity. But if you're working within a smaller budget and
with smaller clients, especially as a freelancer, that's not always
going to be possible. So you want to mix like
number of clicks engagement, if you're working on socials, bounce rate, also SEO ranking, and the amount of quality score that you've increased
the site by, especially if you're working
over a longer term project, writing web copy, blog
articles, all of those things. Having that measurable section of your objectives is really important to show
the client that it worked or we didn't
quite meet them, and we need to edit
the copy a little bit. And then your immeasurable
objectives in most cases are those
things like sentiment. So we want to create
authority within our brand. We want to be leaders and experts having a voice in
this certain discussion, whether it's in their
industry or outside of it. We want to tap into an
entertainment aspect of our audience and engage
them in an entertaining way. We want to break
patterns of recognition. Have a real laundry list. Like I'm not opposed to having ten or so objectives and allowing your client
to cut from there. Like just put down what you think they will either
add to it or cut to it. And the more the better in a way because you can go back
to them and be like, these are the ones we met, these are the ones we
need to possibly consider other content for or shape the content that
we're already writing. So we're just going
to skip to the bottom because we're going
to stay in this left hemisphere of our brains and stay in the admin
phase of the brief. So skip all the way down
until you hit mandatories. Now this section, as
we said in the intro, is really just where you put anything that has
to be included, whether we like it or not, this is what the client is
saying, must be included. No exceptions, and a lot of the time it's really
obvious stuff like the website URL or the correct phone number
or the contact person. And sometimes it does have a little bit more of a
creative angle to it. But whatever it is just dot pointed out in the
mandatory section. And I urge you to discuss
with your client what these are and not have too many because you don't want to
restrict the brief too much. Keep it to the things
that are 100% necessary. Cannot live without
just have them in that section so that the
client feels at ease. They've been heard,
they've been listened to. They're not going to leave off that really important
blue boat that they love. Have you heard the
blue boat analogy? Oh, so it's like this thing we used to do at the agency, where you give, say, three creative pieces
and you always include a blue boat because the client will want
to change something. So they're like, oh, I love everything except the blue boat. And you're like,
ha, ha, I wanted to delete the blue boat anyway. So you add like a blue boat
and then they take it off. I don't know, did you
ever do that in Europe? Never done that. Never
done the blue boat? No. It's really quite manipulative. Think isn't that copy writing? Yeah. Oh, who don't
get introspective. Yeah. Don't even go there. We'll all start questioning our career choice before
the end of this. So at the bottom,
you've got base copy. Now what this is
is everything that is potentially
included in the piece. So not background where
you're going to kind of brain dump about the client and the brand and competitors
and everything, but actually the content that's included in what
they're writing about. If you're writing a
much longer piece, like a long form article
or even a white paper, this can exist off brief, like a bit of an appendix
because it can get really long. But it could be
old website copy. It could be capability
statements, old campaigns and brands. Anything that the client has that is relevant to the
piece that you're writing, pop it in the base copy. And then of course you've
got SEO which either you've done the SEO research
yourself, Breeze, well done. Or the client has given it to
you or you're working with a specialist SEO
agency or freelancer. This is the place where
you want to put that down. If you're writing a website, you're going to have different
key phrases per page. You also have different
URL structures and the site map is really going to guide your SEO deliverables. So this is a space to write any SEO content and
clients just love, love, love to see this. And if your piece
is not driven by an SEO strategy or outcome, and that is definitely
sometime the case, like not every piece of copy
has to be driven by SEO. Then just use this space to add a little bit of a caveat so that the client or the brand know exactly what you're delivering
and not delivering. So just add a line in there, not delivering on SEO strategy. And your objectives will
reflect that anyway, because there won't
be a measurable SEO objective in your brief. So you can kind of see
even in the admin part, our brief is starting to
bring the job together, and that's exactly what we want. That sums up the admin
part of the brief, and now I promise
you we're going to get super creative and get into the parts of the brief
that are really going to drive what you're writing
and who you're writing for.
4. Chapter 4 Writing for your reader v2: All right, here
we go. Now we are going to start talking
about your reader. So in the realm of advertising
and corporate copywriting, you're going to hear people call them the target audience. That is fine. That is the exact same thing as just
writing for your reader. So don't lose that
feeling of a reader because I think that really humanizes who
you're speaking to. The minute we get into the
realm of target audience, we start seeing them
as a commodity, as a consumer, as a purchaser. And we are so much more
complex than that. You know yourself,
you also consume content and think about the
content you like to read. It's about tapping into more
than just the demographics. But that's where we're
going to start because that is 100% what people expect. And I do feel like
it's shifting, but we don't want to go all
the way to the other side. So here is where
you want to list the standard things that you're probably taught in university, like socioeconomic
group, geography. Where they are, are they
urban, Are they rural? The male, female split
seems to come up a lot, although I feel like
it's dissolving. Thankfully, if that does need
a place in your brief then, you know, just add it in. Age seems to play a big
role in demographic. The thing I would challenge
you and the thing that I say to myself when
I'm writing briefs is, does a 20 year old and a 60 year old sometimes have
the same idea on a topic? Absolutely, right? Can you find a male and a female that agree on the
same world view? Of course, this
is the part where demographics can really
trip up creatives. If we get stuck within these binary ideas
of demographics, put it down if it needs
to be there, fair enough. But I would encourage you
to extend your thinking and spend more time in the
realm of psychographics. Here we want to explore
their world view. This is how your reader will think and feel
about the world. What values do they have? What fears are driving them? What motivates them to
act or to consume media? Or to choose the particular
entertainment platform that they prioritize. These are the bits
that will give us a much deeper understanding. So I would encourage you to definitely outlay their fears, their desires, their pain
points, and their values. These four sections
are really going to help you to understand
who you're writing to. Of course, someone
in their '60s could have the same fear as
someone in their '30s. Someone with kids could have the same desires as
someone without kids. So stay in the
realm of really who these people are
as human beings, not as their statistics, because everyone's different on paper than they
are in real life. And the same applies
to your reader. So you might be working
with an agency that has got so much data on the demographics of
their target audience, but you hopefully will have access to insights
that go beyond that. And if you don't, you're
going to have to draw them out of your client or
your agency yourself. And just asking those first few questions is really
going to help that. What are they feeling when
they engage with the brand? What part of them is
lit up or even dulled? And they're craving the light. Like what is it
about these people that you really want
to try to understand? And in that I tell you what, I can always see
myself because we are human beings and we're
more alike than we're not. And being able to
understand them on a realm that is also you
can help the piece can really transform it
into something that you first care about and your
readers will as well. 100% That is not to be naive
in saying we understand everyone's world view and everyone's experiences.
Absolutely not. There are going to
be times when you're going to have to research and really get into the minds and hearts of the people
that you're writing for. And a lot of the times it'll be experiences that you've
never had. And that's okay. Go and research. Go and read articles, they've
written themselves, social media that they follow, and really try to get into who they are and
what motivates them. I feel like I'm absolutely
repeating myself, but I just cannot emphasize
that point enough. If you're kind of
struggling to do this jump from demographic
to psychographic, I've got a little bit
of a hack for you. Think of your reader
as a single person, as one individual doing
a very human thing. And the thing that I like
to use is ordering a copy. Aj. Is holding up
her coffee order. I don't know what
that says about you, but no, we won't brand
drop. No, no, no. Double shot. Double
shot with L essence. That is the perfect example. Yes. Think of them. What would their
coffee order be? How would they walk
into the coffee shop? Or would they drive through? Would they order
it on their phone? Would they pay by their watch? Would they scourge in the bottom of their
bag for shrapnel? How do they move
through the world? And how do they even engage with the person taking
their coffee order? Or would they prefer not
to engage with anyone at all and they just want to
order it via their phone? Imagining them in this kind
of scenario can really start to paint a picture of who they are and how they
move through the world. Will, this stuff might not end up in your
brief, specifically, it acts as a really
good thought exercise to bridge you from
that demographic, faceless target
audience, consumer, into real human being who you can imagine yourself having
a conversation with. Because as writers
and creatives, that's pretty much
what we're doing. It might be on behalf of a brand or on behalf
of something, but we're in conversation
with someone, a real human being. You could also liken
this to online dating, like bear with me, okay? 'cause I know it might feel
like a bit of a stretch. But we look at all these
essentially demographics. We look at their age, their job, where they went to university, where they live, and then
you get to meeting them. Unless you share common values, unless you can really feel
the heart of someone and understand them and connect with them on a shared world view, it's very hard to build anything real with them,
build a connection. And that's exactly what we
want our writing to do. We want our writing to
build a connection. Think of it as that in
a little way as well. And I think it could
help you to understand the value in going deeper
than just what's on paper. Now that we've got the target
audience section written, go to the very next section of your brief,
which is response. Here is where you want to write everything that you want
your readers to think, feel, or do after
reading your piece. Sometimes I like to write
this as direct quotes. So think of your reader
telling their friend about something they've just read and actually write
it as a quote. Imagine yourself again in
their world and having your piece solve some of their pain points or meet them
at some of their desires, or connect with them on
what they're fearing and have those written out
as a quote, for example. You could write something like,
after reading this piece, I really felt motivated to pursue a career in photography. I'm thinking of like an
education brand, for example. Or now I feel like this
tourist destination is for me. If for example, your
objectives were to tap into a audience mindset for a destination that
was previously held only for adventure junkies. And now you're tapping into
an environmentalist audience. People who are nature
lovers and want to immerse themselves in
the natural environment. So whatever you
want them to think, feel, or do after reading
your piece, put it in here. It doesn't have to be in quotes. That's just something that I do when the brief calls for it. But if it works for you, then absolutely go for it. The next point is benefits. Now this is the
section of the brief where we link everything
that the audience think, and feel and value with
the desired response. What do we want them
to think, feel, or do with a brand benefit? So benefits is really
where it comes back to the services they provide or
the products that they have. So here you want
to link it back to the benefits of the brand relevant to the target audience. Now that is very, very key because you do not want to end up with a repeat
of your background Er. Now remember, background
Er is where we just dumped everything in
that the brand does, the company does, and we just made a bit of a laundry list. Fine, that's the
top of the funnel. Let me balance my, again, now we're getting
closer and closer to defining the scope and making
it relevant to your reader. So yes, those benefits
that you write at this bottom section of the brief would have probably been
mentioned in the background Er, but we want to make sure
that they're scync, that they're not everything. I mean, if you have even
one that would be ideal, but it's never happened
for me before, it's usually four or five. And they're the key benefits
of that particular brand or company that are relevant to this audience and how
they see the world. So if we go back to
the tourism example, the benefits there, you
wouldn't list skydiving, you wouldn't list all
the things that have previously kept the brand
tied to a specific audience. Because this brief is about tapping into
environmentalists. About tapping into people who want to immerse
themselves in nature. They want to go slow. They have a world
view in regards to sustainability and slowing
down and connecting. And we want to speak to them, so what are our benefits? You could talk about
really tangible things like the amount of
hectares of national park. And you could also talk about things that
are more conceptual. Like the ideas of
feeling outside of the urban life and slowing
down and connecting, really narrowing down
that funnel and just writing to the benefits that
are relevant for this brief. This reader is going
to make your piece so much more succinct and feeling like it's
written for them. Because that's another
thing that I'll say is that you want to read
something that mirrors you. Now, I talk a lot more about
this in my next course, which hyper focuses
on your reader. I know that it feels like we've
gone pretty deep here and certainly this is going to drive your writing like nothing else. But there's another
layer to this. I mean, I don't
know about you, but basically we're all a
bunch of narcissists. We just want to read
about ourselves. We do not want to read
about the brand and all their benefits and how many years they've
been in the industry. We want to read about our own human experiences and
feel connected to things. And people and even brands
can do this very well. So if you're interested
in going deeper and this is really speaking
to you as a writer, then absolutely go and
check out the next course. But don't leave yet because we're not done with
brief writing. And this is absolutely
the foundation of great creative copywriting. And that extends
brand copywriting as well as creative
writing in general. Like I have absolutely used this to structure and
formulate short stories. So let's keep going.
5. Chapter 5 Single minded proposition: Now we're up to my
favorite bit of the brief and probably
the hardest bit to nail, But I feel like what
it does is bring everything that you've
done into one line. Now people get caught up on this because they
think it's a tag line. Sometimes your proposition
does end up being a tag line. I've seen it happen again
and again and again. But there are also many occasions where
your proposition never sees the light of day. It is just to guide your
writing and your output. Now if you're a
copywriter who does a lot of short headline
copy or ad copy, then absolutely this proposition could launch into campaign copy. But not always, so
please don't get stuck. This is about just defining
the brief into one sentence. And I kind of call it my
post it worthy proposition. If I'm writing a bigger piece, or a campaign, or even
just a social media post, This is the line that I
put on a post it note and shove right next to my computer
or next to my keyboard. Something that I can constantly refer to to make sure
that I'm on track. You're not going to
read the whole brief every single time you write a sentence or segue into a
new thought or new paragraph. But certainly you can
glance at that one phrase, that will just
keep you on board. So here's how to write one. Now you've got the list of
benefits just above, right? You want to find the
one benefit that inspires your audience
to act, essentially. It's a combination of the
benefits and the response. So what's the key benefit? The one thing that
goes above all else. Now I'm not saying you can't write about the other benefits. I'm saying that your piece is wrapped up in this
one proposition. So the one benefit that
inspires the response. Now I used the word act, and you'll see it in your brief. Because a lot of the
times your client or the agency will want
the reader to act, to do something. To
purchase something. Again, we're in kind of this capitalist culture where we're wanting our
readers to be consumers. But that's not always the case
and it's changing so much. A lot of the time writers
are employed to just increase brand sentiment or develop connection
with your reader. So it's not always an action. It could be the one benefit that inspires your audience
to feel something. A lot of the times
a feeling response, being driven by emotion, is a lot stronger than being
driven by irrational need. So don't get caught
up on that word act. It could be feel. Now, this
proposition is absolute gold, and I would not discount the idea that it could take
you a while to get there. So think of it as
your leading thesis. If you've spent a lot
of time in academia, this could just be a
nice little safe space for you to think of it as that every time you write a new section and go
on to a new section, especially in a bigger piece, come back to your proposition. I know I just said that, but I feel like it's so
important because tangents can be pretty
evocative and addictive. Yes, you can feel like, oh, that's the new grade idea
and before you know it, your piece has gone
down a rabbit hole that actually wasn't intended. And that's where we used
the phrase off brief, and I'll say that a few
times when I'm editing, like the first half
is perfect and then you've gone off brief and
then you've come back. It's like, remember
your proposition. Remember your thesis
statement like bring it back in
my first agency, which is quite a big agency here in Perth with a
lot of big clients, I remember that the
strategy team would say a big fat no
and a big fat off. Wait, are we allowed to sweat? I don't know. We don't know. We can leave it
out if it's okay. Well we'll check the Ts and sees the season, then
we'll leave it out. Okay, But I tell you what, that word was used a lot and that was if you
came to them with a brief that had a
proposition with the word and it was
not acceptable. This benefit? And that benefit. No, no, no, no. Get out the creatives are going to
get completely stuck on it. And I also empathize
with the fact that we're kind of briefing
ourselves as creatives. And if you're in
a bigger agency, this whole process
could be done by a strategy team and you
will just get the brief. But that doesn't mean that
this content is irrelevant. This is also not just teaching
you how to write a brief, it's also teaching
you how to read one back to the point
about the proposition. Please avoid the word
and when it creeps in, or you might even try to hack your way around it with a
semicolon. I don't care. Any particular conjunction
that is being used in your proposition means that you have more than one benefit, Go back, try and
really hone it down. And I know I really do empathize
with how hard this is. You're going to
get better at this and you're going to get really close to identifying that
essence of your piece. So that when someone
is bombarded by 10,000 brand messages a day, they're going to
remember the one thing that you gave them and
how it made them feel. As an example, let's go
back to our tourism brief. We're trying to to tourism destination from where they're kind of been
stuck for a while. With the adrenaline audience, we're going to move them
into sustainable eco travel, which is absolutely a hot
market at the moment. Travel is opening up, people are moving
around the world again. But there's also an
extra bit of us within our world view of
some people that are hesitant to travel
because of the emissions, because of all the
knowledge we have about climate change and the
impact travel has on that. So what about if
your proposition was geared towards a net
zero travel destination? You could list all the
benefits in there, but that would dilute
your proposition outside of the one thing you want
them to feel and remember. So the proposition could
be crafted in this way, The net zero travel destination that makes you feel
good to explore. So you're getting the word
exploration out there, which is totally key
to this audience. And you would have no
doubt written that word when you were dissecting the
audience psychographics, they like to explore. So look back to all the work
you've done in this brief, because it will give you
your proposition, no doubt. And then we're using
the word good. It doesn't have to be too fancy. You don't have to find that really beautiful
adjective or verb. You can really just find the
word that people understand. If you feel good
about travel again because previously
you felt guilty about it or you felt
like you're contributing to the thing that you
purposefully advocate against, then the word good kind
of matches, right? So there you can see a
proposition that has started to bring the audience
together with their response, together with the
benefits of the brand, into a single
minded proposition, a net zero travel destination. That makes you feel
good to explore. Think about that
on a posted note when you're writing your piece. I mean, that would just guide
everything, wouldn't it? I think so. Yeah. I really
want to write that piece now. Doesn't it sound really good? Good, we're just picture. Yeah. Okay. But I think what it speaks to is the
idea that you don't have to negate any
of the benefits. It's not about like
cutting things out, it's actually about just
creating an umbrella. A statement that really houses all of the
benefits of the brand and keeps them sync into one single minded proposition,
one thesis statement. So yeah, spending time on writing that proposition
is super key.
6. Chapter 6 Finding your brand voice: Okay, the next chapter is
about tone of voice and I like to call this a personality
quiz for your brand. Now if the brand has gone
through a strategy process, you may have this
information already. And it's just a matter of
putting it into your brief. Having said that, it's
always kind of good to extend on it and find the
meaning for you as a writer. Because these words that we
often have in tone of voice, they can mean different
things to different people. So don't just skip over
this bit if you've already been given that
in a brand style guide. If you have, you're
probably in the minority, especially for
freelance writers. So for the majority of us will need to do
this process with our client and really uncover
how they speak as a brand. So rather than asking the client this directly and just
getting a list of what they deem their brand
persona is and having a list to infuse into your
brief under tone of voice. I've actually got a little bit of a different approach to it. So this is the one question you should ask your
client. Are you ready? This is going to just change your writing and
infuse a tone of voice into your piece that you wouldn't have otherwise
had access to. He goes, if your brand were
a person, who would they be? Now I know for a lot of left brain people this is
a really wild question. And you can kind
of see the matrix glitch a little when you
say this to some clients. But pushing them down
this line of thinking and really helping
them to uncover who their brand is as a
person will really help you to create a piece of writing that is reflective
of their brand. Because otherwise you're going to put your own voice in there. It is only natural
as a writer and as a creative to just
write as you speak. But you need to evoke the personality of
the brand to make your reader feel like they're engaging with that
particular organization. If your client is struggling
to answer that question, or if you're struggling to
answer it for yourself. Here's some other prompts
you could ask them. What movies have you watched lately? Books, have you read? It doesn't have to be
a real life person. Think in the world of character. Think in the world of celebrity. At the end of the
day, celebrities and their favorite characters are probably written
really, really well. And that's what we want
to try and emulate. So when they say a person, when they get to a
character, for example, my most recent client was a start up in a
construction industry. Never done any creative
work in their lives. Their joy in life was
carpentry and construction. And trying to get them to think in this way
was really hard. So we went down a bit of a rabbit hole about
the latest movies they've watched or
the iconic characters that they'd never left behind. And tried to help
them to think of their brand not themselves
but their brand. Which is also a nice hack to get soul traders outside of thinking of themselves
as a brand. So once we had a person, which the guy
actually landed on, Denzel Washington
in Man of Fire. So not Denzel Washington
that we see as a celebrity. Not in any other movie, but in that particular movie. And then I said, why? What made you think
of that? There are a lot of giggles in the room. People are like, oh, this
is weird, I don't know. But once we got there, he went down this
route of really explaining why he thought that was a good
match for his brand. Now the Denzil Washington
Manifier could be completely different
for him than it is for you, and
that doesn't matter. You're just really
trying to extract from them the personality types, the way they move
through the room and essentially get yourself a
very rich tone of voice. Because before this
question I tell you what, you'll hear a lot of
professional innovator, conversationalist, best friend, Like all these words that have just kind of lost
all meaning and they're not going to do
much for your creativity. So when you go down this
route with a client, you're really going to get some very interesting phrases that you can translate into
a brand tone of voice. For example, for him
it was that he was the guy you call on when ****
goes wrong. He was sturdy. He was stable. He wasn't
showy or affectionate. But his affection came through in the fact of
being a problem solver. Yeah. Straight to
the point getting down to business and
there's no fluff. And in that, I started to envision less
superfluous language, shorter sentence structures
using contractions to be really concise and
economical with language. And that's very
different than if he had have chosen an entirely
different character once I had gannedof the Great who was a mentor and who was soft and
gentle with their language. Who would kind of
guide you through these principles to really
get you there slowly? Denzel is straight to the point. If you don't get it go, we want to speak to you
and speak to you directly because there's urgency
now to the piece. They seem a little bit frivolous or flippant to ask
these questions, but I tell you what
they will infuse your writing with this really
beautiful creative energy. And what I often do is go and look at the thing
that they've told me. So I went and watched
some scenes of Denzel Washington in
manifire and I got it. That's how you see your brand. Now I need to emulate that
when I'm writing your website. The second part to
this is Google, the celebrity that
they've chosen alongside Meyer Briggs
personality types. Not all of them will have them, especially if you're staying
within your geography. If you've got a
particular celebrity that's really relevant
to where you live, but it's not a global celebrity. It can be a little
hard to get this data, but if you do, and more often than not, you will find it when
you get this result. It's quite common that the celebrity will come
with four letters. So it's like EN FJ IN FP. And what that actually is, is the four personality traits within the Meyers
Briggs psychology. So head onto their website, find the four letters
that they are, and they'll always
have a name as well. So you've got the protagonist, the campaigner, the logistician. And within that
is such rich data in regards to how these personality types move
through the world. They've got beautiful descriptors
about what their likes, their dislikes, what
careers they work in. And the synchronicity of this has blown my mind so many times. So when we did the
Denzil Washington one, he actually came up
as the logistician, which is also Hermine Granger. And it was amazing how much
it connected to his brand and what he does and probably how he saw himself
a little bit too. Just to reiterate the
one question when you're trying to understand
the brand voice that you're writing with is if your brand was a
person, who would they be? And now why, why would you be that you've
now got a position to write from that is 100% miles ahead of what you
had before that question.
Clare Reid, Senior Copywriter
