Red ink is good for you!

How many times have you had your marketing copy ripped to shreds by a boss or colleague?  You get the paper back and it's covered in red ink, or you get the Word document back and every single sentence is redlined.  It doesn't even vaguely resemble what you started with.  This has happened to me countless times, thanks to a former boss's passion for getting every word just right exactly perfect.  It can be a humbling experience.

On the first round of changes, you suck it up and make the corrections.  But when your text has gone through three or four sets of revisions and they're still applying a liberal dose of red ink to your page each time, it's frustrating.  That's when you might think your boss is purposely trying to upset you, or that he or she doesn't trust your writing at all.  I mean, what difference does it make which of these words you use?  They mean the exact same thing!

Be grateful for those experiences.  Having someone review your text numerous times -- that's good stuff.

Closely scrutinizing marketing copy is something we often skip nowadays.  We're often making a frantic dash to the finish line to get a project done five minutes before it's due.  Or we don't want to bother a boss or colleague (who is equally busy as we are) to look over our writing and offer suggestions.  If the grammar and punctuation is correct, that's good enough for us.  Just get it done and move to the next project!  Who has time to think about every single word on the page, let alone get in a 15 minute debate about the nuances of a word?

But we should take that extra time, because something so subtle as a single word can be the difference between success and failure.

Here's an example.  Earlier this year, most Americans received a tax rebate that was meant to stimulate consumer spending.  But behavioral scientists adamantly believe it shouldn't have been called a "tax rebate" -- it should have been a "tax bonus" or something similar.  Here's a fascinating New York Times article that describes the huge difference in consumers' spending behavior, despite what seems like an insignificant difference in wording.  People who got a "rebate" spent less than half as much as those who got a "bonus"!

Especially with the Web and the immediacy of being able to distribute content, too many companies aren't thinking about their words carefully enough.  It only takes a few minutes for marketing copy to be posted on a website -- so we wait until the last minute, then send the text to the person responsible for posting it (or even worse, we post it ourselves if we have access...so not even one other person reads it before it goes up), and it's done.  Have you chosen the right words?  Who knows, because once it's posted and the project is off your plate, the small details in the text are almost always forgotten.

Entire buildings could be filled with books on how to write effective copy.  I have one sitting on my desk right now, "On the Art of Writing Copy" by Herschell Gordon Lewis.  But I admit I don't crack this book open often enough, especially if I'm in the middle of a project and trying to get text written quickly.

Do yourself a favor.  Next time, slow down.  Have someone else review what you've written and suggest changes.  Maybe even take it to a second person, or at least have the first person re-read it once you've made the initial changes.  It might take longer, but I bet the final product will be much better.