When I was asked to write an article on “the evolution of copywriting,” my mind immediately started picturing a timeline of Ancient Greece:
- 200-196 B.C., Rome entered the Second Macedonian War
- 172 -168/167 B.C., Perseus of Macedon challenges Greek politics
While copywriting isn’t that old, it is older than you think. Copywriting and the first printed material (promoting the sale of a prayer book) came into the world around 1477 (not quite 200 B.C.) and during Babylonian times (not quite Ancient Greece).
The job of a copywriter
In the 1400s, ads were created on large posters made of paper with feather-dipped ink and fixed to walls and poles. Eventually, these posters evolved into smaller printed pamphlets and brochures, and that’s when printing began its new evolution. And once mass printing processes were perfected, around 1605, newspapers could be mass-produced and hawked on European street corners. When these larger design newspapers were printed, advertisements started to appear on an entire page, or several ads were spread throughout the pages.
The value of copywriting
Bouncing away from Greek chronology and the Oxford Gazette (the first-ever newspaper), I wonder about the evolution of one’s copywriting skills and how evolved it has become.
Here’s my thought: It hasn’t. Not really.
While the medium has advanced, the principle copywriters wrote under in the 1400s is still the same principle today. And that is, anticipated, personal and relevant messages always do better than spam.
Anticipated still matters. Personal still matters, and relevance still matters. Spam is still the opponent. What’s evolved is there’s more spam than ever before. (And I thought the world was busy in the 1990s. I had no idea. There were no smartphones then. I watch someone walking down the street today, and I know they are consuming 200 messages before the light even turns green.)
Copywriting today
Do you ever feel like we stole the skills from history and are just disguising them under new tech?
I sat down with our senior copywriter at Content Matterz and asked her a dozen questions. One of her answers elicited a true Aha! moment for me — the kind where the pointer on my right hand went up. I asked her what she thought was the most significant difference between copywriting today and when she started 10 years ago.
She responded: “The buyer is different.”
Simple, accurate, clear as crystal. The buyer is different.
To write excellent copy, you need to understand your audience to the letter so that you know how you can best serve them. Nothing else will do. It’s the same principle copywriters followed in the 15th century as they do today. You cannot write copy unless you know:
- Who you’re writing for (personal)
- How that person thinks (relevance)
- What that person needs (anticipation)
Bear with me for a moment while I pay homage to a few other rock-solid facets of copywriting that I feel are timeless:
- Impeccable storytelling
- Emotional persuasion
- Brevity
- Authenticity
- Audience-centric
But let’s circle back to the statement “the buyer is different.”
Buyers now have access to ALL THE INFORMATION. They perform independent research for customer reviews, ratings, and recommendations, making them more knowledgeable, tougher to reach, and less likely to spend time trolling options. They’ve changed the landscape, yes. But copywriting remains one of the best ways to promote a business’s services and products.
One last observation on the evolution of copywriting
While today’s copywriter has shifted from print to the internet, one thing is certain. Now, the copywriter has to do more than simply write copy. With e-commerce growing at a rate of at least 22% per year and content marketing a universal marketing tactic, a copywriter has to be proficient in SEO.
No pressure.
For expert and professional copywriting that truly makes a difference (and gets results and boosts your SEO), contact Content Matterz today!