8. Writing For Different Media

Unlike most other forms of copywriting, where the medium for your text is fixed (on screen for the web, printed paper for direct mail and so on), advertising covers a wide range of media, each requiring different styles and obeying different rules. Writing banner ads for internet sites, for example, is a very different matter from scripting TV commercials, although in both cases you still need to abide by the basic rules of good copywriting described in Chapter 8.

Going into detail about how to approach each type of medium is beyond the scope of this book. Scriptwriting, for example, is a major field in its own right. If you are going to be doing a lot of work in this area then I would suggest you buy a specialist book or take a course on the subject. However, here are some basic pointers to bear in mind regarding the main media used in advertising, to help you with any occasional briefs that might come your way.

The types of media below are listed in rough order of importance in terms of their share of the market. (July 2007 figures from the Advertising Association showed press ad spend accounted for 43.7 per cent of total UK advertising expenditure. Figures for other media were: TV, 24.1 per cent; direct mail, 12.2 per cent; internet, 10.6 per cent; outdoor, 5.7 per cent; radio, 2.8 per cent; and cinema, 1 per cent.)

Note I have left direct mail and promotional material out of this chapter as they are covered in more detail later in this book.

Print

This is by far the most frequently used medium, with formats ranging from small ads in the classified sections of newspapers to full-page display ads in glossy magazines.

Considerations for display ads are:

• Size and shape: will your ad work as well landscape as it does portrait?
• Colour or black and white: mainly a consideration for the art director or designer you are working with (if you are working in a team), but bear in mind that your copy may have to work harder if you are not able to use a very strong image.
• Tone and style of the publications: it goes without saying that your copy will have to fit with the kind of magazines or newspapers it is going into if it is to have the best impact with the publications’ target audiences.

Television

Writing for television is the ultimate goal of any serious advertising copywriter (and, indeed, many other writers, serious or otherwise). It also demands very special skills, since your script is not only a sales tool but also a creative guide to the director who will turn your words into images and sounds.

Some considerations are:

• Make sure your work is in a format that a director can work with easily. Scripts need to be set in a single column down the left-hand side of the page, with dialogue indented and each actor indicated clearly in capital letters centred over their lines. As a guide, take a look at some of the scripts on specialist websites such as Simply Scripts (www.simplyscripts.com). You may also want to buy script formatting software such as Scriptware (www.scriptware.com).
• An art director is almost indispensable as you will need to story-board your script prior to production.
• Use the action – rather than the actors – to tell your tale. (For more on this, the art of ‘exposition’, read Robert McKee’s book on cinema scriptwriting, Story.)

Radio

Radio is not an easy medium to write for, since your words cannot get help from visual props and you have very little time to develop an elaborate message.

Bear in mind the following:

• Timing is crucial. Try to pack as much impact and information as you can into each ad.
• It is also important that your messages are short and clear. Remember that your copy could be delivered in any number of ways and listened to in any number of environments.
• Think about using sound effects to bring the settings of your ads to life. If the commercial is supposed to be set in an office, for example, include office noise in the background.
• Jingles can be used to help deliver a consistent brand message over a number of ads or even campaigns. If your ad includes a jingle, make sure you practise it aloud to get it right – a copy line on paper will not always sound as good when it is spoken.

Outdoor

‘Outdoor’ basically means posters, which are broken down into size categories depending on how many sheets of paper make them up, from six sheets to 96 sheets covering 400 square feet (the 48-sheet billboard format, covering 200 square feet, is the one commonly seen on roadsides). Recent years have seen an explosion in formats, including giant posters (usually occupying special sites such as the sides of buildings) and those with Trivision (the format used by Pfizer Consumer Healthcare in the Sudafed ad example earlier on). A related type of medium is ‘ambient’, which refers to advertising in the environment (but not necessarily on posters) – for example, ads on the back of bus tickets. When approaching this kind of work, bear in mind:

• The size and location limitations of the medium you are considering, plus how it is likely to be seen by an audience. You can pack a lot of copy into a poster on a train platform, for example, because people are likely to be standing in front of it for some time. If you are writing copy for a roadside billboard, however, your message needs to stand out in the two or three seconds it may take a motorist to drive by.
• Whether you can use the context of the poster to drive home your message. An ad such as ‘You wait ages for an X and then three come along at once’ might be a bit hackneyed on the side of a bus but elsewhere you may be able to improve the effectiveness of your advertising by relating the message to its environment.
• Whether it is possible to use the medium itself to boost the effectiveness of your copy. I once worked on a campaign (with the PR agency Band & Brown Communications) where we built a client’s free-phone number in giant numerals on a hillside at the side of a motorway in the West Country, England; what made the campaign effective was not so much that it was seen by motorists but that it made the news, along with an explanation of the aims of the campaign.

Online

The classic format for online advertising is the banner ad, that ubiquitous commercial strip which has become a constant in most website designs. Nowadays there are many other formats including ‘towers’ (vertical banner ads), ‘buttons’ (square boxes) and ultra-annoying pop-ups, which leap onto your screen and slow your computer down whenever you try to access a new site.

Points to bear in mind when producing online ad copy include:

• Stick to really simple messages. Online ads are small and limitations on screen definition mean you have to use relatively large type (although some fonts, such as Verdana, have been specially designed to be legible on-screen even at tiny point sizes).
• Think in frames, but do not overdo it. Animated gifs, the standard used for most banner ads, allow you to build up a message in any number of frames. If you go overboard, however, you run the risk of losing or boring your audience before you get your message across, so stick to between around three and six frames per ad unless you need more for special animation effects.
• Beware of the size of the file you are creating. Most media owners restrict the file size of banner ads to 12 kilobytes; you can, however, get around this problem by using a Flash animation for your ad. If in doubt, talk to a graphic designer.
• Online media are designed to be interactive, so make sure your ads are, too. At the very least they should be designed to encourage the viewer to click on them, so they will be taken to the advertiser’s web site. For more on what other types of interactivity can be built into your ads, talk to a web design agency – you will probably be working with one on this kind of project anyway.

See Chapter 13 for more about writing online.