"I Just Need This Polished"

Why Rewriting an Ad Rarely Works

As a copywriter, I get requests to rewrite someone else’s work about once or twice a week. My next job is to find out what a client means by “rewrite”. It can mean “express these ideas in whatever format you can use to bring in customers.” It can mean “just reword a few parts and polish it.” It can even mean “I want this reworded to avoid plagiarism.”

Let’s go through these one by one.

Rewording an Ad From Scratch

This is usually the best approach to rewriting an ad. The only reason to keep the old one, is to show the writer what the sale or promotion is about. Five times out of ten, the writer will not only use a different approach, but even change the format. This isn’t always a reflection of a particular writer’s style…it’s a reflection of the copywriter’s understanding of the market.

Yesterday’s way of listing bullets won’t work today. Last month’s guarantee on high quality can’t compare to tomorrow’s guarantee on lowest price. The dynamics of a market shift constantly, and the copywriter’s job is to stay ahead of it. This means trashing the old work and finding a fresh approach

Polishing an Ad To Maximize Conversion Rates

When your copywriter provides an ad, it’s customary to go through a tweaking period. Changing the headline, the order of bulleted benefits, etc., are all parts of testing an ad’s effectiveness. But when you decide a single ad isn’t working, it’s time to replace it.

Polishing a DIY Ad or Another Writer’s Work

If you wrote the ad yourself and want it polished, you need a proofreader…not a copywriter. Copywriters start from the bottom up. They look at the market’s desire and decide how your product will fill it. Because this is a copywriter’s specialty, he / she will come up with an entirely different approach than those who own a business and are looking down at the market.

So as copywriters sit at the cutting board to decide what gets culled and what needs to be added, they usually end up with an entirely different ad…and the client who thought they had created an ‘almost perfect ad’ gets hit with a pride buster. The copywriters are scratching their heads because they weren’t looking at the creative composition as a personal achievement…they’re just trying to connect with the audience.

If you paid a writer to give you an ad and you’re not happy with it, then why try to use it at all. A copywriter should provide a 100% working ad…maybe with some room for tweaking as you test it. If the copywriter only provided a rough outline that needs to be polished, then why trust in his / her ability to perform all the pre-analysis that goes into the ad?

Avoiding Plagiarism

So you found someone else’s ad and you want it rewritten to reflect your own company…not a good idea for two reasons.

First of all, if it’s a good ad, the copywriter was answering a specific desire that existed in the market at the time they were writing. Those market conditions will never exist again, so the approach calls for a fresh idea.

Secondly, the wording is as much a part of the ad as the idea and focus for the concept. There’s a formula to it. Starting with the headline and jumping to each paragraph, it was all put together as a mathematic equation. Change any one of those numbers and you have an entirely different outcome. If you change wording, you should change the entire approach.

Always Start From Scratch

The internet brought some real changes into the direct response advertising world. It gave business owners the ability to test every aspect of an ad, and shifted the focus from creativity to results. So even if the creative aspects of an ad are great, if the results aren’t good, then it’s time for a new approach.

In short, if you give me something and ask for tweaking or rewriting, I'll probably hand you back an entirely different ad.  Don't be offended.  Just accept the fact that I really want the ad to succeed and put more money into your pocket.  After all, it's my job.