Can you make it pop more?
If you’ve ever said this about some creative work you’re seeing for the first time, you probably caused someone to reconsider her career choices and take up tequila-tasting instead. It wouldn’t be your fault, though. Websites, collateral, presentations get created all the time that DO need to pop more.
The best way to make it pop more is to write it better.
Creatives are often visual people. Here’s a little story that happens all the time.
The agency brainstorm.
A bunch of folks from an agency meet in a conference room. They have whiteboards. They have dry-erase markers and lattes. They have read the documentation from the brand research and discovery sessions. Printouts of everything about your current brand and marketing are all over the walls of the war room. War room. “The battle for the consumer mindshare is engaged!”
They are really good creatives, too. Since they are visual people, they start drawing on the whiteboards. They talk about UX. They talk about making sure the website captures the essence of your brand, and talk about how to engage the audience, incorporate social tools, make a better shopping cart experience, and so on. Like I said, they are really good. They do this all the time.
They are fired up, and they go back to their desks, and collaborate, and mock up, and consume so much caffeine that the coffeemaker in the kitchen has a meltdown. They keep creating.
Here’s what you may get from this.
Comps, filled with greeking, as it’s known in the biz. Lorem Ipsum. It’s what designers put in where the idea is supposed to go.
Maybe this is OK, but usually, it isn’t. The writing, the words, the language isn’t there. So what you have are a bunch of really good comps but you ask, “Can you make it pop more?”
The pop was in the words, which sometimes get relegated to what are called copywriters.
The writers are the people who think in words. They should have been in the process before the coffeemaker went down.
I’m not the only one who tells the Lorem Ipsum story. Content people tell it all the time. We’ve written websites in those circumstances bunches of times. Hell, I may be writing (or rewriting) one now. That’s OK.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. What if somebody thought about the words at the same time that design, UX, UI and everyone’s fave, SEO were all being thought about?
What will happen is you will have the opportunity to tell a story that is easier to read, inspires prospects, and pops more. The core of your brand, what you’re all about, and what it does for your customers will come through without them having to suss it out. You will also have that often elusive quality that sets you apart from your competitors: you will have personality.
