Page 119 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

53 WE’RE NOT SELLING TO
YOU

I was in a meeting with a client last week and the conversation turned
to their in-house copywriters. “The trouble our junior marketing
executives have,” said the marketing manager, “is that they find it
hard to understand what it’s like being one of our customers.” And
that nails one of the top challenges we all face: getting inside our
prospect’s or reader’s or customer’s head. Feeling life the way they
feel it. Sharing their problems.

But that’s what we get paid for: our ability to empathize with our
reader—then sell to them. So how frustrating to come up against a
manager (or, occasionally, a client) who tells us to change the copy
because, “I wouldn’t respond to that.”

The idea

From BBC Magazines
When we won a pitch to create a raft of marketing communications
for this well-known magazine publisher, there was much fist-
pumping and high-fiving at Sunfish Towers. (Oh, all right, we
said, “Well done, Sir,” and “Yes, I thought that went rather well.”)
Imagine it: a stable of titles, some of which I was already subscribing
to, covering subjects I love including cars, gardening, and cooking.

Now, for the car title, empathizing with the target subscriber was
easy. It was me. A 40-something bloke of reasonable means who
spends a good part of the time (when not scribbling away) filling his
dream garage with exactly the right selection of four-wheeled exotica.
But what about the cooking title? In a stroke of briefing genius, the

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