Copywriting Code Books: Don’t Get Lost In Translation

You know the problem.

You’ve written a great marketing piece, you’ve given it to someone on your team, and you’re waiting for his or her reaction.

After a few moments of reading your obviously brilliant work, your team member looks up at you and says, “It’s confusing. And on top of that the last line is kind of insulting to housewives.”

You sputter, “No, no, no! That’s not what I meant at all? If you read it again, you’ll see that…” and then you proceed to explain exactly how they missed the point of  your sales copy.

Only they didn’t miss the point.

You did.

And unless you fix this copy, you’re probably going to be disappointed in the results brought in by the ad in question.

You see, Constant Copywriter, the communication is the message received – not the message intended.

Each of us has our own “code book”: certain phrases and words mean certain things to us, and carry certain connotations. We have built up our individual “code book” over the course of our life.

The problem is, everyone has a different codebook.

And it gets worse: hardly anyone realizes we’re all using different codebooks!

So I might think the phrase “that really lights my fire” means “that creates enthusiasm in me for this project” – while you might think “that really lights my fire” means “that really makes me angry”. And your co-worker might think the same phrase means “that gets me romantically excited”.

By now you’re beginning to see how this mis-matching of “code books” leads to miscommunication in general, and puzzlingly ineffective sales copy in particular?

So how do we make certain our message doesn’t get lost in translation?

The most effective solution is simple: have a wide variety of people read your copy and give you feedback. But not just any feedback. You’re not looking for praise or literary criticism. You want to know some very specific things from your sampling of readers:

1.     Can you summarize the message of this ad in your own words? What does the ad want you to do?

2.     Is anything confusing?

3.     Is there anything you don’t understand?

4.     At any point did your “BS Alarm” go off (did anything seem like a lie or exaggeration)?

5.     Did you notice anything that was simply incorrect?

Choose your evaluation panel carefully – three to five people who are very different from one another would be best.

If all your panel members can summarize the ad and accurately identify the ad’s intent, and they don’t find anything confusing, offensive, unclear, unbelievable or just plain wrong… you’ve probably got copy that is easily decoded using the “common codebook” that most of us share.

Of course, now that you have an ad everyone can understand, it remains to be seen if the ad will convert.

But that’s another article.

– Ray