I recently got together with some Twitter buddies for a good, old-fashioned tweetup in Melbourne. I was very enthusiastic because this tweetup also involved one of my favourite things…. Beer. [I know. I know. You’re surprised that I’m not a dry martini kind of detective] A group of us decided to brew some beer and tweet about it over two hours. We created #MelbBrewDay and we hope to make it a regular event!
But over the course of the afternoon, I learned that brewing beer can actually improve my copywriting and I thought I would share my beery-wisdom.
Brewing good beer needs good quality ingredients.
Writing good copy needs good quality research.
Like many things, you can only work with what you have and if you don’t take the time to dig for the gold, your copywriting will never really shine.
The Lesson: Put in the hard yards to lay a good foundation. For your copywriting, that’s research.
There is a process for making good beer and you do well to follow it.
There is a series of steps that you should follow when writing copy.
Now I’ve brewed my own beer for many years and I’m pretty familiar with the steps involved but on this particular day, I fiddled with the process. I was tweeting and taking pictures and I put my yeast on early thinking it wouldn’t really matter. But my yeast rose too quickly and ended up slowly exploding into brown sludge.
When I start a copywriting project, I have a system that I know will lead me to a good result. It starts with a detailed creative brief and moves me right through to the final draft. Every now and then I skip steps. I might take shortcuts to speed things up and almost every time I do it, I regret it.
The Lesson: If you have a system that works, follow it.
The brewing process suffers fluctuations and sometimes, exceptional beer is the result.
Copywriting is a creative activity. A regimented approach isn’t always right.
This might seem to be in direct contradiction to the point above but the fact is that a creative endeavour is just that, creative and sometimes a strict system can stifle the wonderful things that result.
Lesson: Be disciplined but have a sense of when you need to stick to your process and when you need to run with your instincts.
So at the end of the beer brewing session, I watched our beer head into the fermenting room for several weeks. My crappy yeast mixture shouldn’t affect the end result by too much (hopefully) but if it does I hope I’ve created something tasty in its place!
So tell me about your systems. Do you have any in place and would you forsake them?
Belinda (AKA The Copy Detective)
PS Thanks to @CarlaDelVecchio, @johnfrankiej, @mikerussell_ and @businessloom for coming along to #MelbBrewDay and @samenshaw from BarleyCorn Brewers.
5 Responses
LOL – What a very timely post. As I write this answer, I am sitting with a brewing tub (ginger beer) on my stationery cabinet.
All I can say, is I hope my writing isn’t as appalling as previous brewing attempts, which have all fallen horribly flat. I blame the room temperature – too cold – and just like good copy, there needs to be warmth and nurturing for best results.Perhaps the change of location to my toasty warm office will make all the difference 🙂
I love it Anna! Thanks for commenting with such a wonderful analogy.
I love the analogy, and I adamantly agree that there’s always fluctuations in how copy should be approached. It’s about appealing to human emotions after all… wildly unpredictable human emotions!
Wonderful analogy! I don’t have any hard-and-fast systems, but as a writer (and, I suppose, as a human being), I’ve always searched for the “reason why,” keeping the end result in mind, believing that knowing the rules enables one to achieve a better end result by creatively breaking them at times. I don’t brew beer, but I’ve found this to be valuable in cooking and baking, (which are similar pursuits, I suspect).
Thanks Carolyne. You are so right about being able to deviate once you have know the rules although I have identified some core steps in my process that I can’t skip. I guess those steps are like the ingredients you just can’t leave out!