Page 151 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

69 TAILOR THE MESSAGE
TO THE AUDIENCE

This might sound obvious. You’d hardly use the same copy to sell
to 20-year-olds as you would to 60-somethings would you? Would
you? I bet you’ve seen examples where exactly that has happened.
Or you find one piece of copy being used for a white paper, a policy
report, and an ad campaign. Or the same language being used to
appeal to customers, prospects, and staff.

It might work. It’s just unlikely to. One of the first things we do as
copywriters is try to understand who we’re writing to. Grannies?
Or kids? Business managers or nurses? Each group will have its
own defining characteristics and we should be aware of those when
we write.

The idea

From The Times Literary Supplement, a newspaper
Some years back, I was writing a lot of copy for the TLS: new
subscriber acquisition mailings, renewal letters, house ads. And
each time we had a very narrow target market. We characterized
them, not unkindly, as 60-year-old Hampstead intellectuals. You
know, blue stockings. Inkhorns.

Then, one day, we had a radically different audience in mind.
Students studying English literature. You could, I suppose, think
of them as intellectuals. But fairly green ones. It’s a challenge
getting retired people with lots of time on their hands to subscribe
to a weekly newspaper full of densely written, erudite book reviews.
But students? Come on! What could we do to break through the

142 • 100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS