Today, there is no need to speculate on the importance of advertising in business. Everyone knows that to become popular you need to advertise. In fact, we do it ourselves every day, advising a new restaurant to friends, complimenting an interesting book or a movie, speaking about our own virtues and talents at a job interview.
We do our best for the people to believe us and respond to our call for action, whatever it might be. But what happens if they actually follow your advice and then are extremely dissatisfied with the outcome? Do you answer for the results? Should you account for your promises? Or is it really a problem at all?
These questions get a special meaning with regard to the profession of a copywriter. As while you are unlikely to persuade your buddy to buy crap, if it is your job to compel, you sometimes need to compromise with your conscience. Even knowing that magic weight-loss pills are not that magic if not to say worse, you receive money for saying they are good, so what’s the difference? However, many copywriters refuse to perform the like assignments as they feel responsible for their words.
Let us take another simple example, namely, e-books. Hundreds and thousands are sold on the Internet covering every imaginable topic, and only a tiny proportion of them is really worth spending time and money on. But still it is the copywriter’s job to assure the target audience of product quality. If people are told “black is white” a lot of times in a row they soon start believing it. Amazingly, statistics shows that even if there is a return option, few take advantage of it, so bad stuff does sell when it has nice wrapping.
Look at the fast food stores: most of them provide products of medium to law quality, and every person can make sandwiches better than they make at MacDonald’s, still the business is extremely successful thanks to the highly professional and well-elaborated advertising campaigns. At the same time even products of exceptional quality can be getting dusty on store shelves without proper presentation.
So the answer to my initial question, whether cool copy can sell crappy stuff, is a definite “yes”. Thus, do not economize on copywriting services, this sort of investment can be repaid a hundredfold.