Advertising has its place. But not all ideas and messages can be crunched to a single short sentence or 30 second TVC. Long copy suits complexity – as long as it’s succinct-long and not lazy-long!
If you’ve ever spent time marketing something other than a juice, dress or chocolate bar, something more akin to a finance product, utility or building material, you’ll probably have had the need for explanatory – and often technical – long copy. You’ll undoubtedly have faced numerous challenges meeting that need:
- How to render technical jargon intelligible, interesting, (and comprehensibly intact when it returns from the legal department).
- How to distill the ideas of a complex subject, and bring them to life for lay readers.
- How to find a way to weave a company and brand storyline into a far bigger picture so that the soft-sell is not self-serving.
For example when building materials company James Hardie wanted to share its sustainablity credentials, one of the platforms we created was the Smarter Green Book.
Sustainability can be addressed in a multitude of ways. However we chose to speak to the heart of people’s concerns as they relate to the built form.
- What’s the impact on the environment in manufacturing these materials? we asked and then answered.
- What’s the impact on the physical environment by the way you construct with these materials?
- What’s the impact on the environment over the life of these materials?
- What’s the impact on people’s health living and working in buildings that are built from these materials?
Of course the answers couldn’t just be restricted to James Hardie® materials – the story is bigger than that and big brands shouldn’t be afraid to own the telling of them. In creating a short book – about 20,000 words and 56 pages – James Hardie took a leading educator position and at the same time got their specific product messages across.
This of course is just one example. Having spent over a decade in the building industry I’ve devised communication strategies and written about everything from bricks to fibre cement, from R-Values to construction methods. I’ve also marketed technical industrial and wet weather fabrics, art house films and boutique pyjamas – just to add the fluff! There is no subject too technical that it can’t – and shouldn’t – be reduced to simple communication.
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