Copywriting is dead? Don’t tell the journalists | Media Network | The Guardian

I remember a joke. I was living in New York. It was the late 80s. Here it is: A cop pulls a woman over and walks up to the driver’s side of her vehicle. She rolls down the window and holds up her driver’s license. “What’s that”?” he says. “I need to see your real estate license.”

Copywriting is the new real estate. You can make money from home doing what you learned in third grade! Except for one small problem.

Digital apps have made copywriting accessible to many. They have also changed the nature of the audience. Copywriters and their clients are struggling. While they focus on grabbing prospects’ eyeballs prospects are drifting to substance. Even in the Amazon age, quality still wins over quantity. The paydirt of marketing is developing a relationship through personalized digital marketing. And that’s not something any third-grader knows.

Here’s a good piece about that change. (Hint: This only scratches the surface.)

Copywriting is dead? Don’t tell the journalists

Last week the Direct Marketing Association hosted a thought-provoking evening looking at the state of copywriting. They produced a film to go with it that compared two generations – those that thrived in the mad days of the 1980s, and those now ascending the greasy advertising pole.