Thanks for your comment - nice blog, by the way!

Thanks for the tips Bill. Time for me to exercise a bit more assertion, and also empathy with the infidels!

Most clients will, at that point, at least pause for thought.

One thing you do need to bear in mind is that although sometimes clients have little idea about copywriting, they *do* know their products, and (unless they’re brand new in business) they also know their customers. If an established client wants to do something a particular way you should dig around for the reasons why. There might be something important that you’ve missed.

If you’re new - or, as in your case, working in an organisation - I still think you need to do something similar. If you show that you’re committed to the job (i.e., not just making trouble for the fun of it) and explain why you think copy should be written differently, then you should be listened to.

If you aren’t listened to, you perhaps need to start thinking of changing job.

BTW - and I’m aware this is turning into a rant - copywriting for any large organisation can be a nightmare. Why? Stuff gets passed round committees. Everyone wants to have their say and justify their salary. AND everyone thinks copywriting is easy.

It’s less bad in the private sector, where fudging and delays result in lost profit, but public-sector and quasi-public-sector institutions (e.g., universities) can be awful to write for.

The worst thing you need to watch out for is if some no-nothing tinkers with your copy and you don’t spot it. If said no-nothing introduces spelling mistakes, poor punctuation, bad grammar and other solecisms YOU will get in all sorts of trouble as a result - because as far as everyone else is concerned IT’S STILL YOUR WORK.

(’Oooh, look at that Bill Hilton - when he wrote the splash page for the English Department he spelled Jane Austen “J-A-Y-N-E A-U-S-T-I-N” and called George Eliot “he”…and he calls himself a copywriter!’)

This, as you can probably tell, is a topic I can get quite wound up about.

How do you deal with folk that think a few floral words and a bit of self-indulgent horn blowing will do the trick? I’m just starting out in copywriting, working in-house at a UK university, and I’ve recently been giving the treatment to some fundraising materials. The raw stuff I’ve been given stinks worse than last Xmas’s turkey leftovers, but yet I’m the only one who seems to think so.

My copy portfolio is going to lose out if I don’t really take the stuff back to the bone though, and turn it into something decent.

Anyway, excuse the rant. The question is this: How do you deal with people who have no idea about what makes good copy? How do you get them on board, and not insult them by telling them their writing is god-awful?

Cheers Bill