Author Description

IF YOU ARE NEVER AT A LOSS FOR words, consider a career as an advertising copywriter. Advertising copywriting involves all the elements of good writing, including clarity, flow, purpose, and direction. Great copywriters relentlessly go after their audience, tugging at their emotions, pulling at their purse strings. Advertising copywriters are telling a story. It has to be interesting, informative, draw the audience in, and lead to a satisfying conclusion. As the story is being told, copywriters play to their audience. Factors like age, gender, marital status, lifestyle, family life, profession, income, likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams, problems, and concerns, are all taken into consideration when targeting an audience and crafting copy. As the copywriter, you establish the mood, set the tone and create the atmosphere. Where do you want to take the audience? What do you want them to feel? Ad writers can make their copy funny, uplifting, inspirational, thought-provoking, poignant, urgent, chilling, shocking, heart-wrenching, informative, or use any of the other myriad appeals that will resonate with an audience. An advertising copywriter is limited by space and time constraints, so words have to be chosen precisely, to fit perfectly into a thirty- or sixty-second commercial, a few column inches in a print newspaper or magazine advertisement, or part of a computer screen in a web ad. Nothing can be left out, yet there is only room to include a little. It takes a true word magician to get so much into such a tight and unwavering format. Each word has to convey an array of ideas. The copy has to be pithy and to the point. You have just a few seconds to convince your audience to read on or listen further. It all has to be accomplished in a flash, before a person turns a magazine page, switches a television channel, or clicks the mouse to close the ad. The ad has to be hard-hitting right from the start and carry through to the end. There may be tantalizing artwork and dramat