At several conferences that last few months and in several emails, there is one question that keeps popping up, what is the critical skill for marketers to have today.
Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist recently said that the “…sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians…The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it.” I agree with Mr. Varian completely. However, I’d like to add the other sexy job of the next decade, the copywriter. Being data centric and being able to use that data to communicate to your customers effectively and in a human way is what will differentiate companies in the decades to come.
It’s all about creating engaging and effective content. It doesn’t matter if it is words on a page, a script for a video, a status update or an ebook or whitepaper. The challenge will be how you communicate your message effectively in a world where our attention is constantly slammed, while continuously shrinking.
Copywriters in the 1960′s used to say that copy needed to be like a lady’s skirt: long enough to cover the essentials and short enough to be interesting. My brother Jeffrey Eisenberg recently observed, “The skirt just seems to be getting shorter and shorter.”
AdWords, Twitter (microblogging), social media, text messaging, Google’s seeming preference for pages 500 words or shorter and the continual assault of data on our senses is raising the bar. What do you think copywriters in the 2010′s will say copy is like?
What other skills do you think will be necessary in the decade to come?
P.S. Want to improve your copywriting skills? Be sure to subscribe to my friend Jeff Sexton’s blog.
Jeff is right, but that skirt should only get shorter if you have the legs to pull it off
Trying to run a marketing campaign without a copywriter has always struck me as ludicrous. Then again, I do have a vested interest…
.-= Andrew Nattan´s last blog ..Five Wildly Inaccurate Social Media Predictions for 2010 =-.
Bryan,
First, know that every contact I have will know of this post (already tweeted) – copywriting "sexy"?, yeah baby!
I think a common theme might be emerging in the comments, to which I would add: As channels continue to fragment, we will need to be faster at determining the best ones for our messages and better manage our time to control them.
With the proliferation of marketing channels and ways to reach customers, we need to know the target market and speak clearly to them. We could give this a sexy name like "market awareness guru" but to me, this is fundamental marketing and the more diverse the channels become, the more important it is to be very solid in the fundamentals. Without this, you can't decide how to use what channels and how to be the most effective.
Discernment is getting more and more critical and less and less available in the masses of marketing types.
Without it, salespeople waste their time and efforts and fluff.
Without it, copywriters waste their words on filling the page/ad.
Without it, advertisers spend $15 million on a Superbowl ad.
Without it, marketers try to sell everything to everyone.
.-= Mike´s last blog ..Your Customers Are Liars =-.
Hi Bryan,
I think that we will need more and more personal skills inside the organizations. Tools are abundant, no one has any doubts of the value of online, analysts/marketers are getting experienced on online marketing.
Now the issue is to convince the boss and get executive support for things like: using online to build offline campaigns and strategies, using online behavior to understand product weaknesses and strengths, using online to engage customers.
So my vote goes to: interpersonal organizational skills.
.-= Daniel waisberg´s last blog ..Google Search Suggestions Helps You Go Back =-.
All I can say is FINALLY. I can't tell you how many projects I've worked on where people were trying to boil the ocean. For all the verbosity, were clients served? Not really. Hopefully the trend will become not only succinct messaging, but a more humanized version. Jargon be banished!
.-= Deb Kolaras´s last blog ..Crash Courses Coming in Colorado =-.
How do you think copy writing will change in the shift from less broadcast media to more engaged media? The age-old "attention, interest, decision, action" model will never die, but do you think it will evolve to include relationship building text and exchanges?
.-= Brett Greene´s last blog ..Weekend at Lucy’s =-.
Copywriting is more important than ever as attention spans get shorter and shorter like the skirts. The companies that can translate their message to how their users consume it will be the ones to watch in 2010 and beyond
.-= Mical Johnson´s last blog ..Fortune 500 company or Online Scammer? =-.
Stephen – I agree. Speed of execution and corporate metabolism are critical for success as well.
Brett – We have moved from AIDA to AIDAS where the S stands for satisfaction.
The "S" add on is nice. After that there will probably be some sort of continuous feedback loop that leads to further communication and future purchases. I believe Zappos has a model like this.
.-= Brett Greene´s last blog ..The Benefits of Not Being the Smartest One in the Room =-.
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It's true, we really are living in an age of information overload. I watched a documentary that studied how quickly people scan information on the web. Gone are the days where university students sit and read through a book to find the information required, now with the vast amount of information online and tools such as Google book search this is no longer necessary. So I suppose we must consider this when writing content, keep the "skirt" as short as possible whilst still trying to provide as much useful info as possible.