Its best for copywriters to not right copy at all – in fact they should avoid it at all costs.

As a matter of fact how can you even write copy for someone else when you don’t really know them? How do you know what drives them?

You don’t – so what’s the solution?

That you find someone who can write good copy for you.

You find that by looking around the world and being with the people actually buying the thing you are writing for.

Great copywriters don’t ever have to write a single line of copy throughout their entire advertising career – the people they are writing for do it for them.

Marketing doesn’t lay in creative or even in the medium.

The proper way to first think of marketing is to start with the behavior change you want to make in the audience.

That requires to get clear about the decisions your customers have to make and the decisions you have to make.

The problem with social media is that everyone thinks they are a professional marketer on there when in fact they make all the common mistakes marketers make: 

The confuse creativity with style.

They confuse vanity metrics for results.

They are egocentric and not customer focused.

They interrupt people vs connecting with them.

They don’t think about who its for and what change they are trying to make.

In fact the only thing they do right is being consistent.

Social media should be the shadow of what you do – not all that you do. People make the means the end and think that having more followers is the goal.

The real goal should be too make real impact in the world with a brand that serves customers. Something that people want to follow not end up following.

However, that requires thinking and all people want is formulas.

The customer is the media.

TV, social media, VR, video games, print and other forms of media are not media – they are different delivery systems for the customer.

Thinking them as a separate thing causes marketers to obsess and think about tactics that are completely useless.

They end up forgetting about the most important component to marketing and business – the customer.

If we have any chance of performing effectively in marketing – we have to start with clarity.

Clarity comes from understanding what marketing is for.

Marketing exists to solve business problems. Specifically the business problem of creating customers.

Creation only happens if something has changed – if nothing has changed – no customer has been created.

Marketing thoughtfully – through empathy – gets really clear about the change and the business problem.

If this isn’t clear or in your marketing plan – you are not marketing.

No, you are in the category of people who think they are.

Some professions require specialization – a complete and absolute immersion in a field. It focuses on the management of principles rather than the innovation of them.

Some new fields today have never been seen before they require a set of new rules and new ways to think about the world.

Marketing and advertising on the other hand requires a child like curiosity of life.

It requires knowing a lot about everything – and that only happens by being curious and imaginative.

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Most people in marketing or advertising don’t even know the difference and a lot of times just use them interchangeably.

But there are two different things that require to different types of thinking.

Marketing is the thinking – its the big idea – it’s the change and impact that the business seeks to solve for.

Advertising is the voice. It allows you to get heard over everyone else.

People think they can do both – you can’t. Not at the same time anyways…

Marketing is over complicated. Today, focuses much to much on the form of marketing rather then the function.

You will hear the latest buzz words: 

Going Viral

Storytelling

Starting with Why or Purpose Brands

And now: Servant Brands

They all fail at a fundamental level because they don’t ever ask what the function of marketing is.

The point is to create a customer.

Here is the difference between a big idea and a small idea in marketing and advertising:

A big idea is equal to about 1000 small ideas.

In the customers mind the big idea takes up 50% – the other 50% of the mind is the other identical ideas.

This is how big ideas work in the human mind. Big ideas are in a category of their own, while small ideas are just apart of the noise.

Leave small ideas for the amateurs. Advertising and marketing has always been about big ideas and always will be – because it’s the basis for how humans make decisions.

There is a difference between creating an emotional reaction and creating a change.

One is temporary, while the other fundamental changes someone. It changes how they see the world, what their expectations are and causes them thus to take different actions in the real world.

There is a lot of debate of what a successful campaign is.

A successful marketing campaign creates change – not an emotional reaction.

And change involves action not reaction.