Page 105 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

46 “I JUST NEED TO MAKE
ONE MORE CHANGE”

The desire to write the perfect sentence was so strong that Marcel
Proust used, reputedly, to take a year to write one. (OK, I made that
up. It may have been more like an hour.) For many novelists that’s a
luxury they don’t feel they can afford or need. For copywriters, too,
it’s a source of conflict.

On the one hand you want to turn in a flawless piece of copy
(we’ll assume for a moment such a thing exists); on the other, you
have a commercial imperative to get the thing out there into the
marketplace and see if it works.

The idea

From a corporate brochure I wrote for a large international
company
It was 11.30 a.m. in London, 6.30 a.m. in New York and 8.30 p.m. in
Tokyo. In each of those three cities sat a participant on a conference
call to discuss the corporate brochure I was writing. I drew the long
straw; I was in London sipping a mid-morning coffee. The draft in
front of us was number 11. I’d like to think that this was not because
of any fault in the writing (well, I would say that, wouldn’t I?), and
more to do with the conflicting desires of the two regional barons
on the call with me.

My role in the call was ostensibly to take notes; it was rather more
about conflict resolution. Long stretches passed where I listened as
Tom and Nick (not their real names) tore into each other’s concept
of what the brochure was for and what it should sound like. Down

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