Why art directors don’t read copy and copywriters can’t stop writing.

As a young trainee copywriter, I was yet to come face to face with the harsh reality called an ‘art director’ or ‘artist’. Given to believe during my learning days that ‘a copywriter and an art director’ are in it together, that ‘no idea can be good enough without the equal contribution of both’ and such romantic mush, I was looking forward to some great chemistry with the artists on my team.

But as I would soon discover, the reality was earth-shattering like in most things. After fussing and fawning over myriad things like the thesaurus, origin of words, right usage and finally writing a copy that was ‘crisp’ yet ‘connected’ and ‘good’, I felt the art director could have at least read it (once!) But alas! No such luck. I was on the threshold of finding out his eternal love for the CTRL A, CTRL C and CTRL V keys (copy-paste for the uninitiated). The end result was that the dear man had put down everything I had written down, even the instructions like ‘highlight this’, ‘use the standard bullet points here’, ‘this is missing’ etc. to the last letter. Aaarghh! I pulled my hair for the nth time in a single year but the art man was as impassive as ever. He nodded his head when I pointed out, deleted the things I pointed out and went about his ‘designing’ business again. The next ad came out exactly like the first one, with all the instructions intact. That’s when the bitter truth hit me:

“Art guys don’t read copy”. But why???

Good question, no good answer.

And then another good question:

“Man, I mean woman, why do you write such long copy ya!!!! I mean who will read this, who has the time to read allllllll this!!”

“Can you cut this down to half? It’s such a huge mass”, beseeched the art man of me in a very silken voice that almost betrayed his frustration at long copy. And here I was convinced that not everyone can write GOOD LONG COPY. Sigh!

So I cut the copy NOT IN HALF of course, but a wee bit and got back to my business - of writing.

We must have repeated the above incident ‘n’ number of times in the decade and a half we have worked since. The art directors I worked with changed with the agencies, but their property of ‘copy paste’ seemed to b an integral part of their DNA. Surprisingly, when I met that old art man again he had the same to say for copywriters.

“You copywriters just can’t stop writing!!”

Although the art of advertising has undergone radical change since then, there’s one thing that has stuck - art guys who never read copy and copywriters who never stop writing long copy. The endless brawls between copy and art continue unabated. But we still work together; sometimes (these are rare cases) display great chemistry and many a times come up with a brilliant, award winning piece.

And yet, the eternal fight for space even in a double spread continues and so does the ego-tussle between art and copy. The boss throws his hands up in exasperation and throws a deadline at both. “Remember”, he bellows, “a good ad can have just one thing –a powerful visual or a powerful headline, never both”.

Win-win my foot!