Dave Courvoisier's Blog

Oh, there's plenty of copy out there. 

Bad copy.  75-secs worth in a 60-sec spot.

Bad spelling, bad grammar, no grammar.

Stuff with lousy concepts, banal sentences…even worse: lots of numbers being repeated over and over.

We all want good stuff on our demo.

Just listen.  Yeah…listen.  It's out there. 

TV and radio.  Uh-huh there's actually some good stuff here 'n' there. Those ad agencies get paid millions by billion-dollar companies to come up with new stuff all the time. Pay attention to the spot-sets…not the programs. 

But the best stuff?  It's gonna come from you. It may take a while to develop this skill, so start now.  Read magazines, newspapers, fliers, direct-mailers, even the Reader's Digest.  If you don't find good copy, you'll find good IDEAS for copy.

Write it down, word process it to death.  Move the words around.  Cut 'n' paste.  Highlight.  Be colloquial…use vernacular…

Until your sense of it all finds maturity, just do this:

Listen to the best spot during Prime Time, and transcribe it…write it down, or type it into your laptop (use your TiVO, dummy!).

OK, now you've got the :30 or :60 in front of you.  You can't use this spot, 'cause somebody already HAS.

So change the product, but keep the sell.  Make it softer, harder, schmaltzier, funnier, or tongue-in-cheek just by adding a stutter or an ad-lib, or few extra words, or fewer words. 

Save the flavor, change the content.  There are a million ways to take the essence of good copy and make it slightly different enough to make it YOURS.

Do it today. 

CourVO