Rhyme of the Ancient Copywriter.

Not too long ago, I wrote, sold and produced a passel of commercials for a large tech brand. Large, of course, is relative. They're not Google, Apple, Microsoft or even IBM. I think they're about the 2400th most-valuable company in the world. As a one-man agency, I'd like a dozen clients that size.

Like most companies, from the dry cleaner down the street, to some couture place over on Madison Avenue, to a high-end restaurant, to a major ad agency or tech company, people started those businesses to do what they love. Making ads for themselves is not usually top-of-mind. That's why so many clients tell agencies they're too expensive. 

The value of advertising is seldom revealed to them. Therefore, they regard advertising as a cost, not a value.

The commercials I'm writing about had that sort of genesis. The tech guys who ran the company knew their product was onto something they believed would be big. But, they were having a bear of a time trying to say what their product did.

That's the part of writing commercials that a lot of people don't see. The part that defines and differentiates. That tells viewers what you make in a way that makes it lust-after-able.

In fact, for this client, while I was on the phone with the product people I said to them, "What will it say on your landing page when people get there?" 

No one seemed to be able to answer. So, again, while on the phone I wrote something, something that started with the word "Introducing." And was followed by the name of the product. That was followed by words like "the most...ever assembled." After all, as my friend Rob Schwartz has said so often, what's the point of introducing something if it's not the 

first at something, the
only at something, or the
best at something.

I set the line in big bright type--I used their color and font--in In Design. I'm hardly an In Design master, but I got my point across. The 27 engineers on our zoom breathed easier once they had what I called their "summary thought." 

I sent it over to them, and I waited. I assumed they'd spend a week watering what I wrote down. But magically, they left it alone. (It had given them something to shoot for.)

Now that I had the job, I thought about something another friend, Dave Dye often asks. "Why does no one do jingles anymore?"

I didn't exactly write a jingle for a client--it's hard to take a million dollar product seriously if it's introduced with JUNE MOON SWOON bushwa, but each spot, there were five :30s and a :60 in all had a rhyming epigram. These were about the versifying equivalent of a slogan by Muhammad Ali. Gerald Manley Hopkins has nothing to worry about.

Poetic acumen notwithstanding, I figured the people watching commercials like these aren't taking notes. Just as you want to leave a Broadway show humming a tune, a dopey rhyme might work to give viewers something to remember at the end of 30 seconds. Like the prize inside the old Crackerjack box.

So, I wrote little epigrams for each spot like "no more Frankensteining. No more whining."

Again, I waited a week for the "you can't say thats." But they never came. Last night the client sent me a screenshot of the social they did around the TV campaign. Each one prominently featured one of my little ditties. 

That made me feel pretty good.

And proved the rule of thumb, 

that sometimes doing something dumb 

winds up being a lot of fun.