R.N. Johnson Creative Marketing

Here’s a debate: long copy vs short. Which pulls better? Direct marketers have maintained for many years the efficacy of long copy: “The more you tell the more you sell.” But this advice doesn’t sit well with image conscious branding and awareness marketers: “Please keep it short,” they’ll say.

You might ask, which pulls better? But there may never be a definitive answer that will please everyone. It’s very contextual. I have seen clients go crazy at the idea of too much “verbiage” (the very use of the word giving you a clue to their feelings). Others cannot refrain from adding more to each paragraph until a fortress of compounding words has emerged. In both cases we must work to open them up. The right solution is likely to be a bit different than what the client may be thinking.

So, here’s the long and short of it: always use the right words and the right length. No more, or less.

The right words must express themselves completely, in the right way. If it’s a one step selling process (classic direct mail), you need the reader to make a decision. Every bit of language must act to overcome any resistance the reader may have, and the offer must be so appealing that the prospect wants to act (once convinced of the value and suitability of the provider). This kind of direct marketing takes some very good copy and copy length to achieve results.

Then you have the marketer who seeks to build impressions and brand preference over time. Awareness advertising does not seek (in the same way at least) an immediate sale. The famous appeal by Nike for example, “Just Do It,” is all the copy that fits. The right words are very short indeed.

What’s right for your campaign, message or direct response effort? What will reflect the quintessential uniqueness of your brand? Are you intending to launch an email marketing campaign, with a commitment to regular publishing and website integration? Or, are you planning a more traditional use of advertising in order to build awareness, visibility and brand equity?

All of the above goals are quite legitimate and worthy. It is important not to confuse methods and goals. Keep it straight. Know what you want and how you are going to achieve what you are setting out to do. Understand your customer and the context in which they will encounter your message. If you do these things you won’t have to worry so much about long copy or short copy.

The right copy will emerge in these conditions, if you let the right people and the right thinking prevail.

I have heard this one before. It is a comment reflecting the importance and personal pride of many sales professionals. Yet, I am left with a question. Is it really true?

They’re the one’s creating the opportunities and closing the sale through superior techniques, training, personal selling skills, etc. Of course, there is more than a little truth to this. Much of what we associate with corporate value, the company’s intrinsic worth, can be boiled down to a magic number called sales. And many companies are completely lost without a dedicated staff of sales representatives.

Yet it leaves me wanting for more, as it does many others who concern themselves with marketing. Harvard’s Ted Levine puts the counterpoint in succinct terms: “The goal of marketing is to make sales obsolete.” Which sounds a little harsh (even to me). Must these two points of view exist in such stark polarity? Sales! Marketing! Sales! Marketing! Each proponent quietly suggesting the other needn’t make so much of itself. In many companies the two disciplines fight it out during every budgeting cycle.

My own take on it is to say that we all exist on a vast ocean of economic activity which contains many fish. Lots of species and organisms thriving or not depending on the conditions of the hour. One such company depends on vigorous sales activity to generate its bottom line; another seeks it through effective marketing with far less attention paid to having a sales staff to differentiate itself. There are many combinations in the vast expanse of companies, selling B2B or B2C, through intermediaries and channel partners, with high tech goods and services which require personal presentations to products sold direct. Way too many fish to categorize so easily.

Yet sales can overemphasize their point that nothing happens until a sale is made. Because it is the outcome everyone wants, it may become the fixed center in how the thinking is done.

I have also come to appreciate Ted Levine’s famous line, i.e. marketing if done effectively will sell the product so well you won’t need a sales force. The product sells itself.