The rise of the neo-writer: how copywriting is rewriting its future
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is. The fact is, people don’t read anymore.”
☝ Those words came from Steve Jobs, back in 2007. He was talking about the launch of the Amazon Kindle and how the idea of an e-reader was doomed to fail. “Forty percent of people in the US read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore,” he declared in the New York Times.
He was referring to paper mediums like books and newspapers, of course. And how people were spending less and less time with the printed word in a growing digital world. But behind his statement there was a deeper implication at play. Why weren’t people reading anymore? Because the internet had changed their lives forever. Choice was now infinite, attention spans were now tiny. The world had sped up to a phenomenal rate and pausing to read was something that could only slow it down.
Jobs was also speaking about the USA. And I should be clear from the start that everything I’m about to say comes from a UK perspective. But that comment from Jobs was heard globally and, I believe, had a big influence on this side of the pond. It helped to validate a generalised opinion about reading and writing that had already been forming in the early 2000s. It didn’t take long for this idea to become a general rule of thumb for anyone creating anything online in the 21st century.
I’ve been a copywriter for almost twenty years now. And for those two decades, I’ve been hearing variations on this rule of thumb from just about every employer I’ve ever worked with. “People won’t read this far”. “No one’s going to read this”. “Too Long Didn’t Read”. It’s become a narrative in its own right, an industry truth that’s so obvious you don’t even need to say it: people don’t want to read anymore, so stop making them read.
And TBF, from one point of view, it’s entirely true. Digital completely transformed mass communication. We live in the attention economy now and people certainly have less time and less headspace for reading. But from another point of view, you could argue this is entirely false. You could argue that digital didn’t stop people reading at all.
It simply changed the way they read.
Which means we changed the way we write.
Writing for the web 101
When it comes to writing for digital in English, every copywriter knows the golden rules. These aren’t even rules anymore. They’re established facts about writing online and no one gets very far without practising them…
- Use short words
- Use short sentences
- Use short paragraphs
- Break things up with subheaders
- Break them up more with bullets
In other words, less is more. Anglo Saxon words (shorter) are better than Latin words (longer). Showing is better than telling. “Short beats good” as Sue Factor, the first UX Writer at Google, once said. These principles are driven by the need to make writing simpler, quicker and more effective. They make reading more accessible and that, in turn, makes people more likely to read.
Because as most marketers know, writing in smaller modular doses is much more appealing for your audience. It’s more digestible. And more habit-forming. ‘Bite-size’ and ‘snackable’ content is precisely that: served in smaller portions, it encourages people to come back for more. It’s why you can see “22 min read” at the top of this Medium article, so you’ll know how big your bite will be before you’ve actually bitten. It’s why Instagram tells you “You’re all caught up” when you go past the posts you’ve already read. It stops you over-eating but encourages repeat visits, like Pac-Man gobbling up endless rows of tiny little pellets.
So less is definitely more. But when it comes to copy online, that doesn’t mean people are reading less. It feels like the opposite has become true: people now have more to read than ever before. The digital landscape is one big mix of reading for recreation and knowledge: news, sports, fashion, food, fiction, games, [insert your sector here]. But it’s also about reading that just helps you get stuff done: order a cab, book some tickets, go to checkout, split the bill, track your run, post your photo, [insert your service here].
Whether the reading is fun or functional, it’s all still reading. And just because it’s getting shorter it doesn’t mean it will always be that way.
In 2018, around the time Mark Zuckerberg was having his US Senate hearings, we had what’s known as a Techlash. A lot of people turned against tech platforms over fears for their privacy. And what marketers used to say was definitively out, all of a sudden came defiantly back in. There’s been a growing appetite for longer reads, for example. Along with qualified journalism and more analogue experiences. Paper books are booming, even more so during the current Covid-19 crisis. But this could be a whole other article in its own right 😊
So that idea that people don’t read anymore? It couldn’t be more misleading. Yes, life is different now: people read differently and for myriad different reasons. But they’re probably consuming more words, per day, than previous generations ever did. And all the while, more and more platforms come onto the market that rely on language and writing and carefully configured words to keep their audiences engaged.
In truth, there’s never been a more exciting time to be a writer. And specifically, a copywriter.
But here in the UK (and again, to restate, I’m only speaking from a career spent in the UK market) I don’t see enough copywriters making the most of it.
We, as copywriters, have a few problems we need to figure out. Some of them are coming from our industry. And some of them are coming from ourselves. We need to start solving them soon so we can push our discipline forwards and use our skills in more meaningful ways.
It’s time to diversify
Consider this for a moment. Since the world at large commercially accepted the internet, the discipline of design has been evolving and diversifying at a crazy rate. In 2020, when you need a designer for a specific task, you can ask your talent team to go look for a…
- Visual Designer
- UX Designer
- UI Designer
- Interaction Designer
- Product Designer
- Graphic Designer
- Web Designer
- Motion Designer
- Animation Designer
- Corporate Designer
But when a client or an agency needs someone to write the words that will integrate with this specific design skillset, they ask for “a copywriter”. It doesn’t matter what that person will be writing — branded content, video scripts, voice guidelines, product UI — the person required is simply classed as a copywriter. Flippantly, I imagine the conversation going something like this:
Talent: We’ve found your Interaction Designer!
Client: That’s great. We need a copywriter, too.
Talent: OK. What kind of copywriter?
Client: Well…you know…one that writes copy.
In the last 20 years, we as a community haven’t diversified in the same way the design community has. As digital capabilities and requirements have advanced, designers have branched out and specialised. But in that same timeframe your average copywriter has remained a jack-of-all-trades, more of a generalist than a specialist.
I rarely come across a designer who claims they can design absolutely anything for you, from print to UX to motion. But I do see an awful lot of copywriters who say they can write anything for anyone: as though sectors and mediums all come second to the power of good writing, which can be moulded to suit them all. You could say writers have gone wide but stayed on the surface, while designers have gone deep and dug into new niches.
Or you could just say I don’t know what I’m talking about.
But I don’t say these things glibly. Not too long ago I was Head of Copy at R/GA London, where I interviewed hundreds of copywriters for an ever-changing pipeline of projects. All in all I found that 90% of candidates were generalists, keen to turn their hands to just about anything. Only 10% or so could truly say they were specialists in a certain field — like UX writing or brand naming. And that 10% was always in high demand and rarely available when I needed them.
When I think about why copywriting hasn’t developed into more sub-disciplines, I see a few challenges at play: how people see us, how we see ourselves as writers — and a historical movement away from design thinking, instead of an instinctual movement towards it.
How people see us
The majority of people don’t know what copywriting is. If they do, their only cultural reference is probably Mad Men and a bygone era from 60 years ago.
It means that A) if the world at large hears you say “copywriting” and doesn’t assume you look after “copyrighting” in the legal department, then they’ll B) assume you work for an advertising agency, writing billboards and jingles for chocolate bars and chewing gum and will never consider that C) you could be the person who writes the words they see and touch every day on their phone, tablet and computer screens.
It’s not their fault. They have zero reason to think about any of this. But it doesn’t help that, whenever the outside world does come into contact with our industry, they find it’s still pushing a Mad Men narrative. We as copywriters, no matter what kind of copy we write, get lumped into this too. And if that’s the only way we’re being presented that’s the only way we can expect to be seen.
Let me give an example.
In 2018, D&AD updated their well-known copywriting anthology: The D&AD Copy Book. I’ve always been a fan of this big, chunky book, ever since I first opened it up as a junior copywriter back in 2001. If you haven’t read it before, it’s a collection of previous work and personal advice from some of advertising’s best-known copywriters. It’s full of inspiring tips on the writing process and insider views from adland.
But while that’s a big selling point, it’s also a big problem. The book’s completely focused on creative copywriting in ad agencies and, to my knowledge, no other publication brings so many copywriters together in one place. Which means it’s the only book in the public consciousness that puts copywriting in the spotlight. And because it’s all done through an agency lens, the public — including all the younger writers who want to break into the trade — associate copy with advertising and nothing else.
But there’s another problem, too. Apart from a small update to include a few more women and some writers who can talk about websites, the Copy Book is tremendously out of date. Almost all of the wisdom in it focuses on the holy trinity of a headline, some body copy and a CTA i.e. classic pre-digital copywriting for print.
While it’s always inspiring to hear from veteran writers and see their approach first-hand, some of the ads they’ve chosen to display are from the 1970s. And that’s a very different time and place, getting harder and harder to relate to with every passing day. The last time I read through the Copy Book, I also happened to read this opinion piece from Nick Law, the incoming VP at Apple. The two pictures they painted of agency life were in complete discord: D&AD were championing the writers of yesteryear, while Law was saying loud and clear that agencies must learn new capabilities, or else they’re f***ed.
What people can’t see
Where is the copywriting that happens outside of advertising? The product writing that delivers a service like Lyft, Deliveroo and even the BBC Weather? Where’s the microcopy that creates an experience like Headspace, Houseparty and Woebot? This kind of systematic writing is often kept in-house (check out the experts at Dropbox, Invision and Shopify). And it’s being slowly popularised in forums and blogs by a growing movement of neo-writers (more on these a little later). But where is the wider exposure for this more functional and user-centric kind of writing? How can we give it a higher profile on the public stage?
Daily life is driven by apps and platforms and the specialised writing they require. But it’s hard to find any official bodies dedicated to this writing. There are very few awards for traditional copywriting as it stands, let alone for non-traditional copy skills like these. And there’s virtually nowhere you can go to train for it. There are a handful of courses online, usually created outside the UK. But within the UK, the closest I can see is a classic advertising or marketing degree, which still tells students that copywriters must pair up with art directors if they hope to have a career in the future.
It all means a huge lack of exposure for what’s already a hugely varied pool of writing. And maybe that’s to be expected, as new sectors and disciplines come into shape and find their feet. But right now there’s a vacuum sitting in the middle of our profession that needs to be filled. And while we wait for that to happen, we still have an incumbent old-school narrative sitting there that the industry’s in no hurry to update.
We’re drifting away from design
Which brings me back to the “people don’t read” narrative. Because agencies have come to believe this over the last few decades, writers have slowly drifted out of the design process. We’ve reached a point where designers and writers regularly work to different project scopes, different budgets, different deadlines. They work on the same projects but the design usually comes first and the words join it later on — typically well into the Definition phase.
This is a dangerous way to work. There are ways to change it and I’ve written on this subject before. But fixing it means wholesale behavioural change. And when you’ve been moving in one operational direction for 20 years, with the constant pressures of sprints and deliverables and salaries to pay, it’s understandably hard to turn 180° and start doing everything differently.
Having said all this — words coming later, too late or even not at all has become a more visible problem these days. Writers have been complaining about it for years (mostly to each other) and thought leaders have been warning everyone for just as long that the best design follows a “content first” process. Without real copy and content in place, you don’t really know what you’re designing for. And for the folks running agencies, it seems like this is all just now starting to sink in.
But up until now, designers have carved out a clear place in the project process. While writers have just kind of accepted theirs. A writer’s position is very often one of catching-up: on the strategy sessions they’ve missed, on the Discovery phase and all the user research they’ve missed, on the creative territories explored and the design decisions made before they joined the team — not to mention the backlog of copy tasks that have steadily built up.
Your average writer will plunge straight into that, keen to get stuck in and do a good job, never really questioning the powers that be or the way things are. Because that’s the way they’ve always been and it’s better to have work to do and do it well, than ask your team to rethink their entire way of working halfway through a project.
It means, unfortunately, that businesses have developed a copywriter-shaped hole that neatly opens up at the same time and place in most given workflows. And we, the writers, have developed the ability to walk through the front door and slot snugly into it.
We’ve become the minority
Look a little deeper and there’s another reason why we tend to be brought in later than we’d like. It’s because there aren’t enough of us in the room. I can honestly say, hand on heart, that in every office and studio I’ve ever worked in, permanent or freelance, the copywriting team has always been outnumbered by the design team. Sometimes by the HR team, too. And sometimes by the cleaners.
I think this also stems from the “people don’t read” platitude. If you believe you need less copy, you’ll hire fewer writers. There’ll be less of them to go around, so you’ll add them to projects later. And maybe you’ll add them to two projects at once, working double-time at 50%, because they can bang out the work quicker than a designer or a developer can.
Not having enough writers at the table means, over time, writing itself has been out of sight and out of mind. And it has gradually devalued. I see this attitude coming from clients sometimes. But also from some of my own team members. It’s not always the case and it’s not always explicit. But when it’s there, it’s there. There could be a number of reasons for this:
- Everyone gets taught to write at school: how hard can it be to sit down and hammer out some words?
- The writer’s process is mostly interior: the research, the writing and the rewriting doesn’t appear on the finished page.
- You can write copy without specialist tools: no Photoshop, no InDesign, no Illustrator or Sketch required.
- Reading itself is devalued: because, as we know, people don’t read anymore.
- Good writing is invisible: when copy is written at its absolute best, you don’t even realise it’s there — all the hard work is hidden.
I’ve had clients hurry me up while presenting my writing, because they want to skip ahead to the design work. I’ve been the first person cut from projects, as soon as budget problems flare up — and the agencies I’ve worked for have rarely fought to keep me in the process.
I hear similar stories from other writers. Most of them joke about it, shrugging it off like it’s an occupational hazard, a universal Copywriter’s Curse that just comes with the territory. Inevitably though, I think it’s had a bearing on what we think about ourselves. And what we believe we’re here to do.
How we see ourselves
Moan, moan, moan. Copywriters have it bad, isn’t it terrible that the world doesn’t value good writing and the rules are always different for us? It’s easy to slip into that victimised mindset and I’m aware this article is in danger of playing its own tiny little violin 🎻
So let’s acknowledge there’s a flipside to just about everything and copywriters have to take a hard look at themselves, too. I’ve met many kinds of writer in the last 20 years and I’ve noticed some trends in our ranks that aren’t doing us any favours…
Firstly, lots of copywriters just want to write. They have a degree in English or Journalism, maybe an MA in Creative Writing. They’re bookish and words are their true passion and they want full responsibility for all of the writing — but not much else. The content strategy, the user research, the design system, the localisation, the development, the QA: these are all things they, as writers, don’t believe they should be touching. Because it stops them from getting on with what they enjoy the most: the writing. (Which is why you’ve hired them, after all.)
But the truth is simply this: it’s not just about the writing any more. To work at your best, you have to accept you’re part of a bigger machine now. More is expected from you, because there is so much more to be done. If you don’t integrate with every other discipline on your team, from data through to development, the problem of “writers as an afterthought” will continue. You’ll be writing from a bubble, floating up above your project. And you won’t get underneath its skin.
Secondly, lots of copywriters don’t want new tools. This is a biggie and I think it’s had a lot to do with our lack of diversification. I’m always surprised how many of my fellow writers want to work in MS Word. Sometimes, if I ask them to work in Google Docs, they’ll grudgingly admit they don’t really know how. And they don’t want to write directly into Google Sheets, because that’s not how writing gets done. And writing straight into something like Sketch or Figma? No way, those are specialist programs for designers. It will just be quicker and better in Word.
And the truth here is that it’s quicker and better in Word — only for you. Not for the designers or translators or coders who will work with your copy, line by line and word by word, to migrate your content into a final product. To move our discipline forwards, we have to stay in step with technology. The more you ignore it, the bigger the gap grows between your writing and your ability to collaborate. And the less value gets attached to what you do.
Thirdly, lots of copywriters want their inspiration. They want to work with big brands, in exciting sectors, on sexy products that make a visible impact. Deep down, we all want this. And I understand why it’s such a driving force behind the work we go after and the trophies we put in our portfolios. But too often it means you’ll miss out on great opportunities, because you decided upfront that the work wasn’t inspiring. I was talking once to a senior writer about a position I hoped to fill. The moment they found out it was UX copy for an insurance company, they backed out straight away because “that’s kind of boring, it’s not what I’m interested in”.
Senior writers shouldn’t be speaking this way, because it trickles down to the juniors who look up to them. There’s a quote that people attribute to Ogilvy:
“If you want to be interesting, be interested.”
This is one of the hardest skills for any writer to master. If you can step outside yourself and find a way to make the uninteresting become interesting — no matter how many hours of study and immersion that takes — your value becomes infinite and there’ll be nothing you can’t achieve as a professional writer.
So: to recap. The industry already has a set view of us. We’ve settled into a set view of ourselves. Where do we go from here? I think it all starts with getting back in touch with design.
Closing the gap
Copywriting has been drifting on a loose current for too long and if we don’t change course soon, it will drop away from the design process. If this happens, both writers and designers lose out. No one benefits from a diffusion of skillsets.
Consider, as a case study, the profession of Technical Writing. If you’re a technical writer, you’re the person providing direction, instruction or explanation. You’re explaining how to use a software program or how to assemble some furniture. Or maybe you’re explaining a government policy or writing the user manual for a car.
I myself used to write user manuals for video games at Sony PlayStation. I was part of their Creative Services department, because I was working with so many creative IPs. But in truth I was more of a technical writer because I spent most of my time explaining how things worked.
This kind of writing has essentially become divorced from the wider marketing world. Technical writing, report writing, the kind of copy that goes into help libraries and knowledge bases — the received opinion is that this kind of communication is as far away from “creative” as you can possibly get.
Which puts a terrible limit on what the term “creative” can really mean. This writing might not seem creative compared to something like a social media campaign. But: simplifying reams of complex information into logical steps that all readers can follow, within a strict word limit? That requires a serious level of creativity in its own right (albeit of a different breed).
Regardless, the end result is this: non-technical or “creative” copy is something you outsource to agencies, served as a bolt-on to the full design package. But the technical copy is the stuff you tend to keep in-house, or give to lone freelancers, because no one else wants to do it. It requires no real attention from design. There’s no strategic problem for an agency to crack. There’s no branding at play here. It’s purely information.
That’s how things were always arranged at PlayStation. The copy for all the software and hardware was written internally. Anything that leaned towards marketing — product campaigns, microsites — was farmed out to an advertising agency.
But there are some new writers on the block who see things differently. They’re trying to push technical writing (content and information) back towards design methodologies. They want to enhance user experience by asking better questions about language, listening to data and making iterative improvements. They’re actively trying to bring functional copy, at one end of the scale, closer to the creative copy at the other end — where it’s still (for the time being) attached to the design department.
And these two ends of the scale do urgently need to come closer together. Because what we have in the middle right now is that vacuum I mentioned earlier: a big gap between the technical and the creative. We need to build a bridge across that gap or it will just keep getting bigger.
Two ends of the scale
Nothing illustrates this gap more clearly than the difference between a creative copywriter and a UX writer. Here’s a quote from the very famous Dan Wieden in the D&AD Copy Book:
“If you can’t write something startling don’t write anything at all.”
Dan Wieden came up with Nike’s tagline Just Do It and he’s something of a god in the ad industry. His approach is all about personal inspiration, ideas that grab the reader and make a real psychological impact. Creative copy from this side of the fence has to cut through the noise and stop you in your tracks. Otherwise, what’s the point?
But as a piece of advice, this sits in stark contrast to the way a writer thinks about UX copy. Michael J Metts and Andy Welfle are two US copywriters who specialise in product design. Here’s something they have to say in their new 2020 book Writing is Designing:
“The goal is not to grab attention but to help your users accomplish their tasks…Stop writing clever copy. Start writing to design.”
The two philosophies presented here are completely at odds. One insists on form, the other insists on function. When two opposing angles like this are possible we can’t lump them both together under “copywriting” anymore. We need both kinds of writing to meet two different needs, that much is certain. But for a long time the world has only been aware of the traditional school of thought embodied by industry leaders like Wieden and D&AD.
We need to find some balance. And on the more technical side of the fence, the sands are finally starting to shift. There’s never really been a middle ground between instruction (the how) and branding (the why), no ethos or process that connects the two and weaves them more closely into design.
But a third species of writer is starting to emerge and fill that empty space. And by all accounts, it’s looking like a complicated birth.
In my head, I’m calling them neo-writers.
The neo-writers
After a long period of wandering, copywriting has found a new path and it’s already starting to branch out. It’s great to see this new wave of thinking, even if the lines are still being drawn around it. There’s no way to whitewash this: right now, the market is super confused by neo-writers and I see lots of job titles overlapping and even contradicting each other.
But that’s the nature of this new school of writing. It’s hybrid and multilayered. It taps into design thinking and recognises that copywriting is about more than the writing alone. It’s leading copy in new directions with an even blend of creativity and technicality, a merging of art and science.
Neo-writers tend to work in emerging industries and challenger platforms, like cloud computing or digital banks. They’re also helping older, bigger companies tap into that same challenger mindset.
Just as we now have neo-banks and neo-coins, we have neo-writers who create the copy that brings these innovations to life. Their roles aren’t standardised yet, even among themselves. And from what I can see, lots of employers don’t fully understand where they need them yet and why. But something’s happening and change is here. This movement is nascent and still finding its own identity.
Here are some of the hybrid neo-writers I think you’ll see more of as we push into the next decade…
Content Strategists
Yes, this role has been around for a while but writers are only just starting to wake up to it and integrate. Back in 2007, Rachel Lovinger described it as using “words and data to create unambiguous content that supports meaningful, interactive experiences.” In the same article, she used an analogy to show its relationship to copywriting: “content strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design.” There are more and more writers, now, fusing their work with the content strategy that so naturally feeds into it.
Content Designers
Clients are asking for more content designers, too. How distinct are they from content strategists and do teams truly grasp the difference? That question, I think, is still being answered. But Sarah Richards, who wrote the book on this after her seminal work for GOV.UK, offers up this definition: “Content Design means not limiting yourself to just words. Content on the web is often words, but not always. The point of content design is that you start with research to help you identify what your users actually need…then instead of saying How shall I write this? — you say — What content will best meet this need?”
UX Writers
Content design also overlaps with this emerging discipline. UX writing always starts with research, which informs the microcopy you find inside a digital product. We’re talking about the tooltips, the form titles and button labels that help you use an app or move through an experience. Kinneret Yifrah, seen as a leader in this field, uses this description to differentiate UX writing from content and copy: “[It is] the words or phrases in the user interface that are directly related to the actions a user takes. The motivation before the action. Instructions that accompany the action. The feedback after the user has taken the action.”
Conversation Designers
And here we see another blurred line. Conversation designers take the skill of UX writing and apply it to interfaces that mimic human conversation. When you type to a chatbot or speak to a voice assistant, the words coming back to you from the AI have been carefully constructed by writer-designers. Here’s how Google defines it: “The role of a conversation designer is like that of an architect, mapping out what users can do in a space…They curate the conversation, defining the flow and its underlying logic in a detailed design specification that represents the complete user experience.”
I prefer this simpler version from Robocopy: “The Conversation Designer has to understand both the human and the artificial brain, and has to use copywriting techniques to make sure both brains understand each other.”
For all the nuanced differences at play in this new set of specialisms, you’ll notice one clear thing in common: all of these writing niches have tied themselves more closely to design. Whether they’re designing information, content, interactions or conversations, design thinking has become their new and necessary north star.
They’ve come to the view that copy isn’t an accessory or an add-on in the design process anymore. This view, alone, will be hard enough to get teams and stakeholders on board with initially. But even more crucially, they’ve come to believe that copywriting is a design process in its own right. And that’s something that you, the writer, will need to convince yourself of too 😁
Because when you create, compose, craft, edit and polish a piece of writing — you are designing it. You’re not just designing it for your audience and your client’s KPIs. You’re designing it for the medium you’re working in and for the team you’re a working part of.
I want to come back to this idea of copy as design in a future post.
But for now, I’ll come back full circle to Steve Jobs, in 2007, airing his doubts on our human capacity to read. It’s not that the world got lazy and everyone slowly stopped reading. It’s that we helped to change the way reading itself works. For a long time, the onus has been on us to step up and help it work even better.
It feels like, with the growing success of neo-writing, we’re just now starting to make that happen.
