Group buying ads and the re-birth of copywriting
In this guest post, Peter Rush explains why writing ads for group buying sites is like a biker performing an extreme ramp jump.
Last week, in a job interview at a Pyrmont agency, I was asked to write a block of copy for one of those daily-deal group buying websites that are popping up everywhere. I’m told – but don’t believe – there are now 800 of these sights in Australia competing with the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial for our impulse purchases. You Google it, I’m busy. A civilian glancing at the sites sees bargains: “A Bali holiday, my fiancée’s name on a grain of rice and a colonic flush for just how much?!” But to a copywriter these sites offer a thrilling new subgenre.
I’m talking about that compelling paragraph of copy they all lead with. Open with a metaphor, get them smiling, then nodding, then clicking. To write this stuff takes a real fast, clever arse, thought-to-be-extinct copywriter. A surprising number of agency copywriters can’t actually write engaging, well-crafted copy. They’re ideas people who write the words at the bottom just to get the clever visual at the top through. And that’s fine if someone else in the agency can tidy the words up. But suddenly a new genre has hit town requiring a whole new breed – or the old breed – of copywriter. And it’s no territory for the delicate petals among us.
While I was anxiously searching for my opening metaphor, listening to the Red Bull motorbike aerialists making a racket over on Cockatoo island, it occurred to me that writing this genre is like pulling off an extreme ramp jump.
Speed is essential, (most exponents write 8 offers a day), as you hurtle towards the deadline with a list of facts, no real brief. Before you hit the ramp you grab the readers attention with a quick metaphor – or better still find an insight into how the product is bought or used (takes account service a week). You hit the ramp and with a perfectly timed offer you’re in the air.
A clever turn of phrase and you’re upside down. A well placed adverb, some superb adjectival alliteration, an incomplete sentence – anything to keep the audience engaged. All the while you’re feeding through the details like two-stroke through the carbie. Which resort? How many nights? Long-grain rice or short? Warm or cold flush? Remembering you’ve still got to get this thing back upright and land it, and with your hands in the air!
Which brings us to the landing sentence. A smile inducing reference to the opening metaphor and the final soft bump of the compulsory ending pun…and we’re down, hopefully with a click.
Here are some of the more interesting takeoff sentences I saw this week on LivingSocial other group buy sites.
Harbour cruise: In olde England, nicking a loaf of bread would have ended in a Sydney Harbour cruise. You can still get one for just a little dough today, with our special deal of just…
Quit smoking: You’ve chewed enough nicotine gum to cover the entire surface area of the undersides of a bus seat….
Café: Friendship isn’t really a big thing: it’s made up of a million little things. For just $19 make it a million and one with…
Pest Control: While you’re living in ignorant bliss thinking your cockroaches have died off, the truth of the matter is they’ve been at speech class, learning phrases like “we’re b-a-c-k!”, “Resistance is futile” and “You gonna eat that?”
And the landing for that last one….
Then you can safely come back to the cockroaches with a movie quote of your own, “Hasta la vista baby!”
Just when I thought advertising had been reduced to the visual pun, happy days are here again! With a little more love, and creativity, I’m predicting the group-buying opening paragraph will have it’s own category in the major award shows.
Did I beat the competition? I’m guessing my run-up was a little too much of a stretch, which cost me speed and therefore height. I would have nailed it on the second run but this wasn’t some major stunt-jumping event. You got one go with one paragraph. Or more likely they just took a look at my aging 80’s Honda 250 and didn’t want me stinkin’ up the place if I did land the gig.
Peter Rush is a freelance copywriter
“there are now 800 of these sights in Australia ”
Uh, I think he means ‘sites’.
He’s a copywriter, not a proofreader. 🙂
Group buying copy is where I get my daily ‘LOLz’
Get back to work anon
that’s right anon@11.29. If he were a proofreader he would have written ‘smile-inducing’.
question though: does the copy ad much to the appeal of the offer?
5 nights on Dunk Island for $999 says it all, doesn’t it?
add
I read a great profile in Vanity Fair about the founder of Groupon, Andrew Mason, who came up with the idea of those absurdist product descriptions as a way to distinguish them from the staid old concept of coupons (which is all that they are, really).
Sort of made me sad to think that not only has the whole group buying thing been copied ad nauseum around the world, but that one of it’s defining creative features had been mercilessly copied as well.
The questions is, how much more does a well worded line sell deals?…
I mean nobody can resist the lure of $1 coffee, not the mention how fast it spreads through twitter and facebook.
On the other hand, if you’re flogging a cactus as a christmas tree for $20 with the world’s greatest copy, how many will you sell?
There does exist a sweet spot where beautifully crafted copy meets an amazing deal… that’s when you can smell the hot cakes cooking.
Just as an end note: Getting your email subject line down to a crystal clear click through magnet is key.
I nominate Peter Rush for best long copy blog in the Media and Marketing category. Peter deserves recognition for his ability to write coherent smile-inducing copy that can justify more space than the back of a coupon, or a Groupon post.
(deep voice) I heartily agree with that knowledgeable Mr Mabbott as per the above comment.
A cactus as a Christmas tree? Soooooo doing that this year! (sounds way better than those wierd upside-down Christmas trees John Lewis in the UK were peddling a few years back).
Good to see there are others out there that enjoy writing a bit of Daily Deal copy. Almost every deal I write I get to have a bit of a laugh with!
Maybe there should be a monthly vote on the best opening paragraph from a deal site? There would be some crackers I’m sure.
Those ‘product descriptions’ you talk about are the biggest waste of time on group buying sites. No one actually has time to read all that nonsense (especially when you receive 10 daily deal emails like me)
I’m a copy editor for LivingSocial here in Australia and I couldn’t agree more. My team of copy writers do a bloody good job and work their arses off! They are talented, fast and extremely hard-working and always make me chuckle when I go over their stuff. We also do Copy of the Week for the most interesting and smile-inducing copy and I personally would love to see some kind of monthly contest for best opener or kicker!
It is true to say though – how much does it help sell the deal? Who knows? All I can say is two weeks ago we sold a whale watching deal in Perth with some rather good copy, if I don’t say so myself. We sell these quite often and usually get about 300 – 400 buyers. This time we maxed out at 1500. Interesting to say the least…
Thank you Peter Rush – you have brought smiles to all the faces on this Editorial team. Especially after quoting some of their own personal work… Next time, have a look at the Perth or Adelaide deals – capiche? 😉
@ Anon (12:19am) – You learning to use a keyboard was the biggest waste of time. If you don’t have anything other than negativity to bring to the table, please don’t expect to partake in the eating of the delicious casserole we have provided.
I for one applaud Mr Rush for pointing out the amount of skill it takes to write these pieces of copy. It’s a great article and it’s about time someone said it!!
Jack Smith – copy makes all the difference, if I were to write about my recent Whale Watching trip in WA it would read something like: Bored? Get on board for a whale of a time, you’ll be all at sea as we go searching for Mobby, dick-all chance of seeing anything more than a tail as you wave goodbye to your money, no refunds.
The Owl is right, it’s about time somebody highlighted the quality of the copy on these sites.
However I have to wonder if that is just because, as Anon suggests, everyone is too focussed on the % discounts to notice the writing.
Behold the masters:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05.....gewanted=1
Does this stuff sell? A good question I almost don’t want to know the answer to. I do know that at Why Pay Full Price they’ve been experimenting with same offer – different copy, and they’re convinced that humour makes a significant difference. But the thing is, the way these offers are laid out the busily-miserable don’t have to read the copy. Still, for those people I can see this copy being like the old Mintie wrapper. Ok you’re after the Mintie – got it, Yum! But while it’s extracting your fillings, you read the joke. Connoisseurs of this genre should Google up the writing guide for Groupon in the US. You can just feel in your Thesaurus bone that this absurdist style will spread beyond Group Buying sytes.
Does this stuff sell? A good question I almost don’t want to know the answer to. I do know that at Why Pay Full Price they’ve been experimenting with same offer – different copy, and they’re convinced that humour makes a significant difference.
But the thing is, the way these offers are laid out the busily-miserable don’t have to read the copy. Still, for those people I can see this copy being like the old Mintie wrapper. Ok you’re after the Mintie – got it, Yum! But while it’s extracting your fillings, you read the joke.
Connoisseurs of this genre should Google up the writing guide for Groupon in the US. You can just feel in your Thesaurus bone that this absurdist style will spread beyond Group Buying sytes.
.
Thank you Peter for bringing this to light. As a copywriter for a group buying site with an agency background I must say I’ve never written so much on a daily basis in my life. But what I love about it, is as a writer, I actually get to write, craft and play with words not just come up with a headline.
It’s a hell of a challenge trying to come up with interesting ways to write for different experiences every day, sometimes it works others not. What I don’t do however is clichés, puns, bad humour or like I have seen on other sites take four paragraphs to get to the point.
What I try to do is get you in with a lead-in opening, tell you the offer, what’s great about it and get off before I’ve bored you with too much fluff. It works for us although it’s not that way for everyone, and each company has their own way of doing what works for them.
In a survey in the US – as a surprise to me, I think it was around 70% of people who buy from group sites read most or all of the copy. This is because they want to know what they’re getting and what the deal includes before parting with their hard-earned. So my response is; the % off gets you interested, the copy if well-written and interesting, sells it.
Finally long copy once again has a place in society.
My only concern in the future though is that agencies and recruitment agents will look at your CV, see you have written for group buying sites, not understand the difficulties or writing skill required for that role and instantly dismiss you because you have no big name brands and budgets to your credit, which means that agencies will really miss out on some very talented people because of pretention and pigeonholing.
I love those blurbs. Very fun – they’re the reason I don’t delete those emails out of hand (yes I know, I could unsubscribe, but they’re playing my greed muscle).
Hey D. I seriously hadn’t detected, until writing this article, that there’s a stigma attached to writing group buying copy. What you should realise is that you are all skilling yourselves up with an incredibly potent mix: humour and online advertising. Funny is money. If it was me, I’d employ someone who can write funny over experience anytime. Just take this time to get as brilliant at it as you can. There’ll be new genres coming along after group buying that you’ll be skilled up for Including branded content stuff that’s gonna need comedy writers. It’s just gonna take one group buying writer (grouby?) to make the big time and the recruiters will all be looking for it on your CV.
Robin. Bravo!
As publisher/owner of one of the infamous 800, I know first hand how hard writing copy can be. Our niche is business products. Snoring! In fact, Mumbrella was kind enough to smack us around the head for this promo in our first month:
https://mumbrella.com.au/anthill-launches-group-buying-site-for-smes-40375
So, where does a publisher go to find this new breed?
Tips anyone?
James – why don’t you hire Peter? I highly recommend it!
Good article, and I love writing long copy, especially if I’m granted enough leeway to try and make the reader smile.
But if we’re talking about writing copy that makes people click, try getting people to pay you to write tweets — THAT is tough. Tweets are to group-buying what radio was to print. Damn hard, but satisfying when you find a way to make it work, even if it’s just once in a while.
Well said Peter!
I think writing group buying copy requires all the elements that you’ve articulated here – it certainly is a difficult job to manage all of the (frequently conflicting) components of writing a deal.
For example:
– Copywriters need to write incredibly quickly, but with unerring accuracy to the sensitivities and details of the deal – when not even the third party vendors are aware / forthcoming with all of these details in their own deals!
– Copywriters also need to be able to meticulously refine the deal titles, eliminating and agonising over individual word choices. At the same time, they need to appreciate the structure and flow of their longer form copy.
– Thirdly, as you’ve mentioned, copywriters have to write every feature in a witty and appealing manner, and then go and do it time and time (and time) and time again.
– Lastly, they have to make sure that not only is every piece creatively sound, but also need to analyse the core marketing strategy they’ve chosen for any given feature and whether or not they are selling the offer in the strongest possible way.
It really is a pretty demanding gig which requires a honed skill set!
(By the way, I work for Ouffer.com…and we’re always on the lookout for more talented freelance writers, so if you enjoyed Peter’s article and this discussion hasn’t scared you away, feel free to say hello at david.fay@ouffer.com!