Recently I had the opportunity to judge an advertising awards show. In the past I’ve been asked to look primarily at videos and commercials, but this year I was asked to look at a lot of writing. And I usually try to avoid judging writing because life is short and I don’t want to spend what little time I have left reading bad work. If that makes me an elitist snob, I am absolutely okay with that.
But hey, it was a growth opportunity, right? So bring it on.
My criteria for the writing was the same as my criteria for any media I judge – indeed for any work I review at any time. It’s pretty simple. It’s this:
Do I care – This has nothing to do with the topic at hand. It’s not about whether I find dental insurance interesting or germ research fascinating or whatever. I’ve read copy on topics I’ve loved (and by people I’ve loved) that were interminable, and I’ve read work on subjects I had not the slightest interest in that I could not put down. It’s all about the writer’s talent. That’s why when I see something like a website for a medical process, my first response isn’t “just shoot me” but rather, “how are they going to make me care about this?” And believe it or not, I am eager for them to succeed.
And lest you think this is all about my prodigious elitist ego, let’s remind ourselves of one thing – no one reads. They’re too distracted by TikTok and YouTube and God knows what else. So if you can’t make someone who has signed up to read this stuff (in other words, me) care about it, why should I think you’d make someone who didn’t?
So make me care.
Is it keeping my interest – This may seem like a rehash of the first criteria, but it’s not. Look anyone can write an attention-grabbing headline, and maybe even a paragraph of copy that sings. But a thousand word blog? A two page press release? A five page micro-site? If you can hold my attention throughout, if you can keep me from scrolling to see how much more of this garbage there is, if I’m not thinking about all the other things I need to get done today while I’m reading your piece, if I don’t have to stop and go back when I suddenly realize I wasn’t paying attention to the past three pages I was looking at, well, then you have something.
Is it surprising me – Again, perhaps this sounds like just a different way of saying the first two criteria, but it’s not. To explain, a little story:
I remember looking at a writer’ portfolio once. She had been at an agency that was deep into one particular industry. As a result, all of her work was for different companies within that industry. So I was expecting a lot of sameness, because in many ways what those companies were selling was a commodity. But each project she showed me surprised me. Each felt unique, like she wasn’t working off of a template. The tones were different, the styles were different, the structures were different, the strategies were different. To such an extent that I was actually excited to see how long she could keep it up, to see how she made the next project surprising.
In advertising, it’s easy to fall into a habit, a trap, a template. We create so much and so quickly that despite our best intentions to create signals, we’re often just generating more noise. That’s why if I’m reading something and it does something I wasn’t expecting – but that totally makes sense within the work, and indeed, illuminates it all in a way I hadn’t considered – then I know I’m reading some real gold amidst all the other dross.
Like I said, this is fundamentally my criteria for all work (though, of course, here I’ve customized it to “writing”). But as I reviewed the work for this awards show, a fourth criteria occurred to me:
Was this written by AI?
There were several occasions when I read copy that really felt like it was generated artificially. It was basic, repetitive, it lacked depth and style, and I thought “Is this just mediocre copy,” (and yes, in any awards show there’s work that you look at and say “Really? Y’all thought this was the bomb?”) “or did they take a shortcut and just let ChatGPT handle it?”
And to be clear, I am, as I have written elsewhere (like here and here and here, for example) pro-AI. So my complaints about it in this instance are not a pro-forma disparagement of the technology. Quite the contrary. If mediocre agencies want to fill the websites, press-releases, print ads, social media and every other god-damned thing they produce with mediocre copy, I am certain their mediocre clients will love the cost savings. And no, I’m not kidding. And further, I believe that by doing these things they will make my work look that much better.
Or said another, slightly less self-involved way, if I can’t tell the difference between mediocre copy by a mediocre copywriter, and AI-generated copy generated by a bot, well then doesn’t that mean there’s an opportunity for good copy – generated by good copywriters - to stand above the mediocre and add value to the creative that AI-generated copy can’t?
What kind of value? The value of actually engaging the reader. Of creating an experience, a memory that lasts long after they’ve turned the page or closed the tab. You know, the stuff great advertising is supposed to do and that clients pay us for.
In other words, perhaps AI isn’t a threat to copywriters – perhaps it’s an opportunity for them to up their game. Not by doing more, faster, cheaper. But by doing it better. By writing work that makes people care. That holds their interest. That surprises them. That isn’t just filling out layouts or wireframes or posts. Let AI do that.
Do the thing AI can’t. Make me care.
Of course, it occurs to me that if copywriters do up their game, then all that better copy will wind up in the LLMs, driving AI to generate better work.
But that will just force us to up game even more.
Wouldn’t that be nice.