Why Use Independent Copywriters?

4 Great Reasons...

Independent copywriters used to be a rare breed made up of ex-Creative Directors who had tired of Agency Land set and out on their own. These heavyweights are still the best out there. They will bring a wealth of craft and experience to any project, but they are no longer your only option. 

You can also hire the services of a middleweight who comes with a few years' experience and a lower cost. There are also plenty of lightweights offering smaller price tags and bags of enthusiasm.

But anybody can write, right? What’s special about a professional copywriter and why would use one? Here are four reasons to consider hiring a pro.

Time Constraints.

As a marketer or corporate communicator, you may not have studied writing at a tertiary level, and it may not be a secret passion. 

Even if you did, and it is, chances are the daily demands of your job mean you lack the time to come up with the perfect angle, leading to a killer concept, that you can then work through the mailer, leaflet, website update, social media post, video or poster you have to put out every day. 

Your Best Solutions?

A great copywriter can work with even the thinnest of briefs, take it off your hands, and quickly surprise you with a creatively elegant and effective piece of work.

If you just need to get a job off your desk quickly for minimal cost, then a medium or lightweight copywriter is your best bet. 

Brand Fatigue.

Few copywriters with creative flair, intellectual curiosity, multimedia experience, career success or ambition will leap at the chance to join an in-house corporate communications team. It’s just not a thing. 

Great creatives test themselves against the best in the industry and learn through exertion and experience across a range of brands, industries and sectors.  

Your in-house creative team might be outstanding at pumping out the volume, but it’s unlikely you will ever get a piece of work that measures up to the pulling power of a real pro.

When your communications sound the same, limp, lame, lacking attitude, style, creative angle, thematic integrity, or personality, look to an outsider to bring some original creative insights.

Your Solution?

Hire an experienced copywriter to take a fresh look at your brand positioning, campaign strategy, channels, media options etc. to give you a fresh angle on what has become too familiar to everyone on your team. 

You’ll pay a premium for all this heavyweight lifting upfront, but you can often negotiate a package deal on a high volume of work, or propose a retainer that could benefit both of you.

New Development.

Perhaps your company has come up with a new direction they need everyone to go in, a new marketing or sales strategy you need to be adopted, or some culture change you have to plant in the organisation. (This will be an enormous requirement after Covid-19.)

You need a cheat sheet for salespeople or frontline staff, some social media, a video to position the initiative, and perhaps a micro-comms campaign to get the idea out there to create excitement and engagement.

Your Solutions?

A heavyweight creative copywriter will bring a level of strategy that will help you unfold a universe of possibilities across a range of channels and audiences. 

A good middleweight copywriter could also give you some ideas for your short-term needs, but you might need to invest more time in the briefing and reviewing process.

New Broom.

Things change. People come and go. New situations emerge. The market shifts. Competitors come up with something brilliant or otherwise dangerous and you need to respond. (Again lookout for after Covid-19.)

Your existing corporate or brand communications culture can’t pivot fast enough. Legacy thinking is impeding creative progress and you need a fresh perspective to shake things up. Someone who can deliver a truckload of fresh perspective, style and content.

Your solution?

This is the role your best heavyweight copywriter was born for. There’s nothing they enjoy more than a genuine challenge. They will love the opportunity to get their teeth into something meaty and meaningful. 

Your investment will pay dividends in terms of the long tail content you will leverage. And again, most great creatives will adjust their ad hoc fee for a longer-term relationship.

Improved Results.

Maybe your communications are just not getting the results you need. The responses are not leading to sales, or your audience is not engaging with your content. 

This is the major downside of bland copywriting. Humdrum or soulless copy that is more informative than inspirational. Communications that tick the box rather than rock the world. 

We bombard people with corporate and commercial messages every day, night and over the weekend. If you are not communicating clearly and creatively you are just adding to the noise.

For example, I’m working with a client who needed to frame their Covid response and cut through the clutter of their ordinary internal communications. It’s not only crisis comms, because they know there will be an end in sight, and they are planning for it. They want their employees, managers, suppliers, business partners and clients ready, willing and able to reap the post-Covid rebound. For me, it’s a four-course French meal after a diet of salted celery sticks.

Your Solutions?

As a heavyweight, I love building creative clarity and confidence with this client, but heavy is not the only creative weight class that can help you in this case. 

A great middleweight could beef up your current comms and get you better results.

A great lightweight could blow the dust off some tactical comms you already have in play.

And Now?

Sometimes, just getting any weight of creative into your world can shake things up enough to jump-start your own creative engines. But if you’re serious about improving your output over the long-term, then it’s worth investing in a long-term relationship.

To find a great creative, ask colleagues for first-hand recommendations, or search for ‘copywriter’ on the internet, look through a site called SAFREA (The Southern African Freelancer’s Association), join them on Facebook under The Resource or go through a local placement agency like No Sweat. 

Great creatives are abundant by nature, if you bring one on board and treat them with respect, they will repay you with more than you expect.

Let me know how it goes.

In the meantime, stay safe from Covid-19, but also expose yourself to some dangerous creative input now and then.

Nick

P.S. I can recommend creative strategy rock star Terri Brown at The Logical Truth and copywriting guru, Tiffany Markman.

P.P.S. If you would like me to bring some Creative Clarity into your world, contact me on 082 887 1413, nick@creativeclarity.co.za or www.creativeclarity.co.za