Long copy isn't back | Hacker News Reader

Long copy isn't back

creativereview.co.uk

65 pointschestnut-tree39 comments

When I saw the ad on TV, I thought it was egregiously self-congratulatory. It should have never escaped the WWDC. It's something to show in-house to rally the troops. Out in the world, it's just self-flattery and has a smug tone.

I don't know if this applies or is true: but I once heard that soft (non-informative) car ads are run not to advertise their product, but to make people to recently bought or own that brand feel good about their decision.

Considering how many people own an Apple product, it's possible that the ads are just to make those people feel more loyal to the brand.

>I once heard that soft (non-informative) car ads are run not to advertise their product, but to make people to recently bought or own that brand feel good about their decision

Interesting concept, but couldn't you make ads that do both? I feel like the "Think small" ad [1] must have worked both for people who were looking to purchase a car at the time and those who'd already bought a Volkswagen.

[1] http://www.creativereview.co.uk/images/uploads/2013/07/think...

It did, it's one of the most successful ads in existence. The trick is that the headline and picture grabbed your attention, and then they sold nothing but facts about the product.

Ads for computers are often "soft" though, by nature of the fact that many of the buyers won't use hard facts to inform their decision as much as style, buzzwords, and brand imagery. These ads are building Apple's brand imagery which is that of the sort of brand who makes products for the cultivated sort who like high quality things with which they'll do "great things."

I think this is very much true considering Samsung's most (?) successful campaign lately has been focusing on the exact opposite message (Apple fanboys not knowing what's happening outside their world)

How was that campaign successful? It didn't move Apple a dent from the high end market.

But it sold lots of Samsung phones.

True. Always thought it was Apple that was targeted, but it was mostly a node to the Apple-haters crowd.

Non-informative ads are mainly used to create irrational desire. Enforcing brand loyalty is a side effect - less commonly the main goal - that comes easily, as the human mind loves being right and will actively look for evidence to support that view (seeking praise for products that it has bought).

I'll play devil's advocate and ask: how is this different from the celebrated "Here's to the crazy ones" ads? Granted, these ads are more bland and forgettable, but that's a difference of degree, not kind.

Compare:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgtLSHhTPg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=170fh2mvog0

Both are content-free, vague, feel good ads. I feel like all the criticism in the article would also apply to "Here's to the crazy ones", perhaps even more so - at least the new ads actually outline Apple's design philosophy, while the older ad really has nothing to do with... well, anything.

So I'll grant that the execution in the new ad falls somewhat short, but does that simply mean the ads don't go far enough with vacuous feel-good stuff?

To me the major difference is that the 'crazy ones' commercial makes you feel inspired whether or not you like Apple at all. It gives a sense of, maybe these people feel the way I do and I want to be a part of that group.

The new ads, to me, come across as pretentious. My GF and I watched the new ad recently when it was on TV and when it was done she just said "I don't get it", with no prompting from me.

The new ad just reeks of 'look how cool we are, you arent this cool'

Because the Crazy Ones was a salute to those people. This new ad sounds like Apple saluting itself.

I think the primary effective target for these ads is Apple employees. The message is Apple's self-identify, what they perceive as their purpose of existence, how they approach developing stuff, why they don't try to be everything to everybody.

Customers getting the message is "just" collateral damage.

This is great. Step back from the Apple-specific nature of it and just read it as a "how-to" guide for writing content. Look at that Tesco ad! Really! I'm serious! I really mean it! The worst!

I hadn't paid any attention to the words in those Apple ads, and now I know why.

I actually felt the tesco ad was marginally better than the apple ad. It's still very vague but at least attempts to convince the reader they are doing something about the horse meat scandal, albeit, not particularly convincingly.

So, i've read the term long copy about 5 times now, and still have no damn clue what the hell it is. Is it too much to ask for someone to have some awareness of whether a domain-specific term they're using might be entirely unknown to the average public and spend at least one sentence explaining it? (Or, you know, this being the internet with hypertext and all that jazz invented in the 90s, link to an explanation they deem correct.)

long copy ad = ad that has a significant amount of text (i.e. where you actually need to stop and read at the text, vs. ads that only have 5 words that your brain parses with the rest of the ad)

Oh, so long copy = tl;dr?

I know marketing types will agonize over each line like poets imagining dramatic public approval, but most people will only see the words "Made by Apple in California", which brings about a "well, duh" moment, at least to me.

No long copy is the wall of text in a magazine ad. The exact opposite of tl;dr. It was more prevalent in the past, and you don't see it any more.

You still see it everywhere in advertising, think of informercials for example, or high quality ads in magazines.

Cheers for explaining. :)

Perhaps a unused term nowadays, but definitely with some (long) history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_(written)

I wasn't looking for a wikipedia link, i'm quite capable in finding those myself. ;)

This was more of a meta-mini-rant about how we have these tools available to efficiently communicate meta-information along without main message, but especially news media outright refuses to make use of it.

This is not trying to pass meta-information, but to sell to a prospect. The last thing you want them to do is go to another site rather than clicking on your call-to-action.

In context (an article in a design/advertising magazine) I think it would just be taken as a common term the audience would be assumed to know. Same way that a magazine aimed at programmers wouldn't typically define "functional programming" or "garbage collector".

Long copy essentially equates to "The more facts you tell, the more you sell." It's been tested extensively, more than a hundred years, in all kinds of advertising campaigns, from direct-mail to television (see an informercial and hear their super long copy). Direct response advertising shows in A/B tests that long copy always sells more than short copy.

Effectively, this is because an advertisement's chance for success increases as the number of pertinent merchandise facts included in the advertisement increases. You reel them in with the headline and the picture, and then the body copy sells the product. Long copy assumes that you've got a half-sold prospect, with little to no time however, so you pack in your promise in there.

The caveat is that if you want your long copy to be read, you must write it well. You won't hold many readers with those mushy statements of the obvious and vague promises. (This is it...You step back and think...) The worst sin here is that the copy has no contrast, no one wants to read white text on a light background. It's just tiring on the eyes.

It's not that long copy isn't back (it always has and always will be), but that Apple really executed this terribly.

Long Copy ads were especially successful in the days of print magazines and mail order.

Here are classic examples: http://robertrosenthal.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c511c53ef0120...

http://www.perrymarshall.com/images/micro_tv_breakthrough.jp...

http://copyquickstart.com/call/sugarman/homework/home_comput...

Sorry that the last one has just one of two-paged spread. All I got via Google.

EDIT to add: Oh, look at this, from the JS of JS&A fame:

http://succeedinyourpajamas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/J...

I don’t think long copy is due for a return. The reason it’s dead has less to do with fashion and more with practical reasons. Today it’s really easy to search out all the information you want to. It’s not necessary to pack all that stuff into an ad.

(Another possible reason might be widespread testing of ads based on very simple metrics. I would imagine that less complex ads that have more space to show something other than just indistinct text might score better when it comes to recall and people linking the ad to the correct brand. Also, that wall of text might be a great benefit to the few people who are already really excited about the advertised company or product, but the rest – and what might be an overwhelming majority – will probably just ignore it. And so it gets real hard to see any impact – even though the impact might very well be there for those few who really engage with the copy. Or not. You would have to test that.)

Why would you want to lose your reader's attention by sending them to another page? That kills how much you sell with that ad. The prospect may choose to learn more about your ad, but you don't want to lose their attention like that.

Getting a half-sold prospect out of your page is just losing a customer.

Just look at an informercial for example, the copy can easily take over an hour of narration.

Also, widespread testing of ads has been done for a very long time, it's not like research in marketing has never been done before. Long-copy always sells more than short copy. The trick is to write long copy well, which is not something that everyone can do.

If you are going to write long-copy, first make sure it's readable. This low-contrast stuff is just never going to work.

The part the author picked out as vacuous was, to me, a main substantive theme of the piece:

If you are busy making everything, How can you perfect anything?

We don't believe in coincidence.  Or dumb luck. There are a thousand "no's" For every "yes."

That's an explanation for why Apple's product range is so small, and their product releases so comparatively infrequent. That philosophy is what other tech companies with their plethora of confusing, often poorly conceived products lack.

If this is an Ad, what exactly is Apple trying to sell me?

I don't have a background in marketing, but I'm not sure how this is an effective ad? I feel like todays consumers have short attention spans, care about results over process, have an entire interent to get "facts" about products, and primarily value videos/photos/audio over over text.

It seems to me, if they're saying anything, it's this:

> We have put the trademarked phrase "Designed by Apple in California" on our actual products. We work hard on them, we pick everything that goes into them and arrange it very precisely, and then we put our marque on it to let you know that this thing, this combination of parts, is something we approve of.

> There are a lot of products coming out of China and elsewhere that seem, on first glance, very similar to our stuff. But on closer inspection, they use inferior parts, they don't arrange them the same way, and of course, they don't use our software--you can only get that from us. Still, you might get confused, especially on the things that don't even have an Apple logo on them, like our tiny iPhone AC/USB adapters and so forth.

> Just look for "Designed by Apple in California." Like "Rolex" or any of those other high-value brands, we can sue anyone who puts that phrase on a product that isn't ours--so inevitably, it either won't be there on these weak parody-products, or it'll be an odd faux-image: something like "Designed by Appl in Cauliflower." † If you see that, put the product back on the shelf: the Apple brand got the recognition it has because of our commitment to perfection, and these products won't give you any of that.

...or, rather, that's what they would probably say, if their PR-brand didn't have a distinct flavor that precludes saying things like that. Instead, they have to just remind people that their brand exists, and hope the subtext gets through, brand-marque recognition goes up, and counterfeit purchases go down.

† I actually have a third-party 35W iPhone AC charger that says just this. It works okay with my old 4th-gen iPod Nano; but somehow puts my iPhone 4 into a mode where it thinks it's already charged (not the same as the "not charging" mode when I plug it into an unpowered USB port on a hub, by the way.)

That's been the case since forever. This is not an example of out-dated advertising, but bad advertising.

It's not meant to sell you a product, it's an attempt to position and differentiate the Apple brand (the fact that they feel this is necessary is pretty interesting).

Think of it this way. How is Apple different from IBM PCs | generic MP3 players | Android phones | Samsung? Well, Apple only releases a few versions of a given product at a time, they obsess over details, leave out any non-essential features in favor of simplicity/elegance, etc. etc. Compared to the confusion in more generic markets, you always know what you get when you buy an Apple product. Also, California, USA, innovation, rah rah rah.

Disclaimer: my "background in marketing" is one marketing course I'm taking right now, so I'm clearly extremely qualified to comment on the topic.

It's a fair cop.

Someone was definitely watching too much Mad Men.

yet another example of Apple abusing short "sentences" and an overuse of arbitrary periods?

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