They know no English

Was having lunch with a friend the other day. He works for a great advertising mind these days… Canas jury and all that. Was telling me how took apart a rookie copywriter for daring to presnet an English idea for a bank targeting second tier towns.

Now, I don’t know what you mean by ‘second tier towns’ in a world where most parts of most big cities don’t qualify for human habitation.

But if that means India outside Bombay, our genius is dead wrong. We talk English, we walk English as much as the big city guys do. There are fewer English types in any small city, but that’s because there are fewer people in any small city.

Mr Genius comes from a somewhat poor family in a small town, but is that any reason to assume that all small town folks are ill-off.

We small town guys are all sorts. I thought that was obvious. But then I’m a small guy.

Killed by clutter?

Try writing more than a dozen words in an ad and you have colleagues and clients descending on you with this platitudes and protest. "So much copy will make the ad so cluttered that people won't even look at it." "Why have art directors then, just print the leaflet?" and "Why do we need to say all this in this very ad."

Non-award-winning copywriters have buried by this deluge for far too long. Maybe it's time we make a point or two. 

First, what is the evidence that clutter is unattractive? Clutter is unattractive to us inside mainline ad agencies, but not to all humanity. For many, the overkill is what works. Walk into any middle-class drawing room and take a good look at the show-piece shelf. Look at calender art or idols. Personally, I find clutter disgusting, but I cannot make, less dictate, my audience's taste; they can, and perhaps should, decide my professional taste. 

(Let me take a step off the road. Americans routinely find Lata Mangeshkar shrill. To almost all Indians, she is the sweetest sound on earth. An American record company which wants to sell to us better not argue with our musical tastes.) 

In fact, in direct mail, clutter is considered good. Apparently, we humans instinctively arrange things in our head. When we see a cluttered layout, we try to arrange its elements in our head, that is, we get 'involved', and once involved, we start reading the benefits. 

I suspect this is hokum, but it seems to work for that industry pretty well. And it's too big to argue that it caters to a tribe that does not see mainline ads. 

In fact, they don't even seem to find this 'rule' (Clutter works better [than neatness].) worth testing. In a dozen years of reading about direct mail, I have come across only one test involving layouts, though scores involving headlines and copy. (It was for a British bed company. They had three ads in magazine. Two were uncluttered and modern, one was classic direct response. I wonder which one pulled more, and why.)

Anyway, my point is that there are plenty who practise and advocate clutter, and they may have a point. These things can probably cannot be tested, yet, like hypothesis in physics or chemistry can be. Nonetheless, unless you have conclusive proof, it is profitable not to believe in something just because others like you are doing it. 

(Many middle-class Hindus believe Muslims are terrorists; there must be some reason for their belief; moreover, I am a middle-class Hindu; hence, I too believe Muslims are terrorists. Well, Muslims may well be terrorists, but my logic is all wrong, because not all beliefs need be based on fact.)  

Second, let's look at the 'purpose of art' question. Why have art directors when anything goes? Actually, the block-headed copywriter never said, "Anything goes." He said, "For this ad to go anywhere, it needs to say more. And for it to still be attractive, please lay it out."

Two words need thought here: 'art' and 'attractive'. They are related. Art here is not 'high art'. It can be. It need not. Sometimes, it should not.

What's my point? Advertising art has as much to do with the art in gallerias as advertising writing has to do with the writing in novels, even pot boilers. Aesthetics is a tool for us, not an end. We'd write an ugly line if that makes advertising sense: You think we think those horrible bullet points are great literature! 

The same should go for an ugly layout. Avoid it if you can; do it if you must. And don't feel ashamed about it, because you're not an artist, but a salesman with colours and lines. 

The question, therefore, is not if the reader (viewer) will find a layout (a film) pretty; it is, will he find it interesting? Will he think it worthwhile to read (see) it, in the hope that he may materially benefit? For instance, to return to the beginning, can a cluttered layout signal that a brand has much to say in its favour?

Finally, must we say everything in that ad?

Well, when are we going to notice that our clients and we are the only people who live in our brand's world? Others have other things to worry about, their own lives, for example. If we get an opportunity, if we get a prospect's attention, let's make the most of it. Let's put forth as much as we can, and leave it to the prospect to decide where he wants to get off. 

The moment the reader reads the headline (paid attention to my commercial) I can reasonably assume that he is asking me, "What's in this for me?" I better give him a full answer. 

By which I don't mean hitting him with an encyclopaedia, but I do mean telling enough to let him decide (if I'm doing a Reason Why ad: If not, none of this applies). So, let us not palpitate about frying his poor brains with an 'information overload'. 

Yet, one question remains: If it's logical to say more, why aren't more ads saying more? There can be several explanations. 

First, numbers needn't mean much. It's logical not to smoke, yet millions do. It's logical to exercise, millions don't. 

Second, not saying much also sends a signal: "These people bought so much newsprint, then said so little. They used it, instead, to provide us 'visual relief'. They must be rolling with money. That is only possible if lots of people are buying from them. That's only possible if they're good." (Sethji is not selling water to pilgrims, he's giving it free. He must me rich, ergo, he must be good. When I get back, my business goes to sethji.) 

Third, and this is the most probable one in my book, there are not enough exceptions to prove (meaning tests) the existent rule that 'less is more' because we believe the rule is self-evident truth. Truth it may be; self-evident it isn't.

To sum up, I must say something so basic that my only excuse for saying it is that I'm faced with obsession: Ask what we need to say before debating how we're going to say it. If we answer the first wrongly, common-sense dictates that it won't matter much how we decide the second. For communication is the art of making words count, not the science of counting words. 

Simple

Throughout my copywriting career, my account servicing people’s constant favourite word has been ‘simple’. Make it simple. Better still, ‘Keep it simple, stupid.’

I wonder if any one of them have every stopped to think what ‘simple’ means.

Take walking. To you and me, it’s very simple. But to a physiotherapist, it’s probably a fairly complex process. 1 + 1 = 2 if simple for us; hardly so for the philosopher. So simplicity, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder.  

Or take a briefcase book, the type one picks up before a flight, at the airport bookshop. Typically, it’d quote two score research studies. ‘Research shows this and researchers say that’. Nine times out of ten, the data is meaningless. You can twist it and quote it at a cocktail party, but if you try to take a decision based on it, you’re inviting woe. The barebones is useless - worse, counterproductive - without the flesh and blood. But the worthless ‘basics’ may sound simple. 

Or do they think simplicity lies in boiling down the world into rules? Keep to the left. Sell dear, buy cheap. Honesty is the best policy. The boss, and the customer, is always right. 

Even a baby knows that if he tries to live by the rules, he’d be dead. A world without ifs and buts will collapse under its inherent contradictions before it can begin. Then why bother with such simplification, that the mind will reject alertly if not intuitively? 

Rather strangely, this drive for simple runs parallel to the rise of the visual, with pictures of ever-increasing complexity (that is, loaded with culture-specific clues) being used in all sorts of communication. 

One reason for this shift is that we do diagrams because we can. Click on a few dingbats, and you have a diagram. Never mind that the diagram is completely unnecessary, takes up far too much space, and illustrates something you’ve already written. It’s supposed to make the whole thing friendly. 

Friendly for whom? Someone who has neither time to read or think but has the time to act or buy? 

Another reason may be the hope that since computer drawings are such fun to make, they’re fun to see too. And whatever is fun, is good. 

Anyway, let’s come back to simplicity. My firm belief is that ‘simple’ actually means ‘different’. And ‘different’ means ‘what I think’. Long before a client starts a job, he makes up his mind about what he wants. The copywriter, because he starts with another point of view, or with none at all, arrives elsewhere. That may not necessarily be a bad place, but it’s not where the client wanted to go. For him there is only one road and one Rome. Anything else is complicated. 

So guess, guess and guess again.

And if you somehow guess right, if it fits, you’ll be crowned with Simple.

How different? Why different?

Do mainline advertising and direct response advertisement have far more in common than we care to admit? Do see this entry: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd3bjnd7_8hgcjcjrn. And this one too: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd3bjnd7_10d92nt4xj