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Copywriting Persuades People to Take Action in the Real World.
The action may be buying something, or contributing to a charity, or calling or writing their congressman, or going out to vote for somebody, or scheduling an appointment for cancer or diabetes screening, or reading to their kids. It is an advertisement of some sort that contains (usually at the end) a "call to action"; the most basic one being "Call Right Now!" followed by a phone number, or "Click Here!".
I have written advertisements for five companies I have been a partner in, and for my university.
"Copywriting" originated in 1911 in the newspaper business, when "copy" was slang for "text to be copied". For some reason this was limited to text in advertisements.
It is still only applied to advertisements, but these can be advertisements in newspapers, magazines, fliers, billboards, direct mail, press releases, and to some extent its principles are applied to radio and TV advertising, with a crossover into scriptwriting for voice/film actors.
It is not "puffery", it should not be lies, but it should be persuasive, and it has become its own art form, from first word to last. 99% of advertising is ignored, and there are principles (backed up by extensive science) in getting somebody's attention quickly, using the headline and opening lines, and sustaining that attention while they read. Sometimes these are counter-intuitive, and they can often result in writing you would not put in any fiction, but they do work.
I once rewrote a brochure for a company that I worked for, one they had been handing out at trade shows for four years, that got them very few call backs; they'd hand out 300 at a show, and get one or two calls. I did not lie once in that brochure, I did not mislead, I just focused on the principles of copywriting, explained twice as much about our product, focused on the customer, answered the questions I guessed they would ask, and in the first trade show where my new brochure was used we handed out 300, and got fifteen callbacks on it. Same performance in the next, and the next, and even though I don't work there anymore, they are using the same brochure eight years later.
Copywriting also has form restrictions; instead of a number of words you can write, you have a physical space you have to fill. It can be an oddly shaped space, these days, a curved space around a photograph or illustration, for example. You can sometimes adjust kerning (space between letters), font and fontsize, and word spacing. You can choose to box, star or color text for emphasis.
Although it is not always true, quite often the copywriter is also the ad designer, directing the production of the art, or choosing what should be illustrated. That was the case for me when I worked, I decided what to write about, and I consulted with contract graphic artists (and in one case with a professional photographer, in another case for radio with a contract musician) to produce the visuals around the text (or sound around the script).
Unlike Fiction, or most Non-Fiction (like biography, or textbooks, or history) the point of copywriting is to persuade somebody to do something, to sell them on an idea IRL.
Whether ads lie depends on the people producing them, and if they are willing to be dishonest to make money. I see a lot of ads that lie. I am not willing to be dishonest for money, and not one of the ads I wrote lied to customers. In my opinion, the job of the ad is to grab the interest of the small percentage of people that actually DO need or actually WOULD enjoy what I am selling, and not lose their interest, and tell them enough about it to persuade them to take the action of pursuing it. Without lying or disappointing them. A good ad connects a provider and consumer for a win-win transaction, with neither side regretting making that transaction.
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