How to Ruin Good Copy

August 27, 2021      Roger Craver

We think and worry a lot about copy (here, here, here and here). And so does Tom Ahern,  Kathy Swayze, Jeff Brooks and many other proven fundraising copywriters.

Are we wasting our time?

Let me explain the reason behind this question.

A well-crafted piece of fundraising copy is far more than words on paper or digital bits and bytes. It’s a carefully thought through construction designed to inform and motivate the donor while reflecting the organization’s brand and testing or advancing the strategy behind the copy.

In short, it’s a piece of psychological chemistry –lots of different elements combined to produce a desired result. Perhaps the piece is designed to reflect the donor’s identity or psychological profile.  Or, perhaps, it includes some behavioral science applications.

Whatever the strategic goal of a particular piece,  a good copywriter will have included whatever elements are required to meet the strategic objective of the piece as briefed by the client or the consultant.

Of course,  the more we learn about elements like donor identity and psychological  personality types and craft the copy to include those elements along with effective story telling the better the piece will work.

BUT THEN… and far too frequently  all this careful thought and painstaking work falls apart.  Rather, I should say, it’s “torn apart.”  Wrecked and ruined by an inexperienced reviewer,  or ego-stuffed CEO or some self-absorbed review committee.

Every copywriter and strategist worth the title has heard the reasons for the desecration:

  • “It’s too long.”
  • “It doesn’t sound like me.”
  • “This doesn’t reflect our values.”
  • “I don’t like it.”
  • “It’s not on brand.”
  • The list goes on and on…and on.

Consequently, far too many organizations end up with a one-size-fits-all piece that fails to do the job intended.  And those who’ve wrecked the copy wonder why the organization’s  income isn’t growing.

We needn’t burn anyone at the stake, but we all sure as hell should be asking  some questions.  Like:

  • What qualifies someone to opine on copy? Their title?  Their expertise in grammar?  Their deep, sophisticated knowledge of their donors and prospects?  Their having been in ‘fundraising’ for 5, 10, 20 years?

Oh wait, maybe it’s the founder and she will tell us the copy doesn’t match the vision of the organization.    This critique would be reasonable and fair.  But that person is rarely the one doing the reviewing.

  • Is someone truly qualified reviewing the copy and the strategy/reasoning behind it? Or is the reviewer one of those inexperienced or untrained staffers who float in and out of organizations like oxygen. Over the years the copy review process seems to have gone from the top of the organization down to one of the siloes.

Perhaps it does make its way to the top. But that CEO or other non-marketing, non-founder, non-qualified, but very senior person is the wrong choice.

Unless those at the top truly know fundraising or marketing you’re better off avoiding them.  Does anyone think that the CEO of a Fortune 5000 (extra zero intentional) reads the copy of the Facebook ads for product X or widget Y or service Z?  Hell no.  It ain’t their job.  Opportunity cost alone dictates they put time elsewhere.

  • What, exactly, are the benefits of a copywriting review committees?  Most yield only personal opinions.  The worst kind are those whose members find any message that they themselves don’t like to be off-putting, even offensive.  This is often the case in organizations that deal with controversial issues.

 When did a piece of copy that doesn’t appeal to you rise to the level of offensive?  I’m not suggesting a pro-life group run pro-choice ads or vice versa.  I am pointing out that people are different and every organization has different people supporting it. There’s a real danger in ignoring differences.

Take for example, a group like the ACLU.  It has social justice supporters and also die-hard free speech civil libertarians.  If, for illustration purposes, that organization has a copywriting review committee made up of social justice proponents they may tank a message aimed at free speech donors because they have personal issues around defense of the First Amendment when invoked to defend the free speech rights of racists and other deplorable types.

The result, of course, is this group of reviewers has just deprived some of the organization’s best donors of important information and greater involvement because the group has personal issues.

  • Are you aware of the dangers of subjective personal opinion. Copywriting review by unskilled, uninformed reviewers who rely on their own personal opinion does greater damage than simply watering down copy.  For copywriters charged with communicating to different segments based on the identity of those donors a reviewer relying on subjective personal opinion prevents the organization from ever rising above the one-size-fits-all plateau.

No doubt there are many reasons why the copywriting and review process as practiced by many organizations is a disaster.  I suspect a major reason lies in the fact that too many organizations treat copy as just another commodity or task to be dealt with as quickly and easily as possible. ( “Just email it to me, we’re on a tight schedule.”)

The disaster is compounded by failure to think about the strategy underlying an appeal, acquisition, or call-to-action piece. In turn, this failure compounds into the failure to provide the copywriter a proper brief about key elements like donor identity or any other elements that will improve results. So when the copy arrives (as an email attachment) the reviewer really has no objective way to measure it.

The result?  All too often the reviewers don’t just poorly rewrite the work, they 86 it, preventing it from seeing the light of day–- all because the copy didn’t match the reviewer’s personal values.  Values which, by the way, rarely coincide with the organization’s values or brand. ( In the reviewers’ defense few are given any brand or values guidance on what the brand is/isn’t.  “Brand” work for most organizations is limited to a color palette and an approved font type.

Because the hard work of audience definition, donor identity, and strategic brand positioning has not been done or is studiously avoided, the copywriter and the copy is left with only personal values and opinions, not organizational values and strategy.

Almost always these personal values will be offended by anything that doesn’t match them, made worse by fear of anything that appears outside the norm – all of which results in one-size-fits nobody fundraising and lowest common denominator thinking.

Wise and successful fundraisers pay serious attention to the copywriting and copy reviewing process.

Roger

 

10 responses to “How to Ruin Good Copy”

  1. Laurie Siegel says:

    Spot on, Roger. Thank you.

  2. thanks Roger… that’s the world of so many wonderful fundraisers who don’t get empowered to do their jobs… hopefully more people will finally listen to this reason… it’s about time!

  3. Susan L. Sweitzer says:

    Time to share this with all the ‘reviewers’ in my life!

  4. Bob Hartsook says:

    Roger, you know this is not my area of expertise. I write this so that my colleagues who focus on large major gifts should only participate in this review to the extent it lends opportunity to identify donors who have the potential to move to a higher level. While Wounded Warriors a few years ago had those who questioned their work. I was not one of them. From my view their mission was to make American’s understand there is something like a “wounded warrior”. As a result of the incredible direct response efforts they created an awareness that has resulted in a plethora of Veterans, First Responders, and other organizations providing homes, devices, psychological care that might have been absent or at least smaller without Wounded Warrior becoming a part of our language in the country.

  5. Mark Rovner says:

    Word.

  6. What oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed!

  7. Steven Reed says:

    Roger, Great post that needs to be circulated annually in every fundraising organization. As an advertising & PR exec and then agency owner in a former life, I can assure you that exactly the same problem–with the same pathology–exists in the for-profit world. Substitute “consumer” for “donor” and you could publish this post in Ad Age.

  8. Cindy Courtier says:

    Had a client who would take copy home for his wife to read…

  9. Yes. I’ve worked within nonprofits and suffered the review process. The worst is when you get conflicting changes from two higher ups. Or find your story thread gutted.
    I’ve also seen many fundraisers set themselves up for interference by widely sharing their copy with people who just don’t need to be in the review loop. Unless a board member is the signer on the letter, why a board member would be in the loop at all is a question to me.
    And then. I’ve also worked with professional copywriters who, because they didn’t take the time to understand (or just can’t or won’t understand) the nuances of the issues the nonprofit they are working with, they end up writing copy that is misleading, insensitive, offensive to key constituents or filled with political landmines. So while donors are clearly the audience, copy affects the people nonprofits serve or their strategic partners and even other funders and donors. It’s one thing to dismiss critique around effective style (incomplete sentences, folksy language, underlining, short paragraphs, etc), and another to be blind to legitimate concerns that the organization or higher ups have that diminishes the people being served, that is filled with program inaccuracies, or reinforces white messiah-hood.