Why A Copywriter's Personality Is a Brand's Best Friend.

It's a strange thing about copywriting.

An ad is a creative act. It takes enormous creativity to generate a concept that not only answers the multiple brief points, but, at the same time, is so compelling that it kicks through the congestion of daily ad overdose.

And highly persuasive and charming copy is an expression of the writer's personality.

So why do so many clients happily eliminate all traces of a writer's personality from ad copy?

Think about the best writers working today in all mediums. Like Woody Allen - his personality infuses his work. His unique point-of-view is what informs his films and his hilarious New Yorker Magazine articles. When he wrote that "Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle," it was a line only Woody could have penned.

Quentin Tarantino. His personality is his writing. When he mentioned on a talk show that, “I was kind of excited about going to jail the first time and I learnt some great dialogue" you know his personality has crept down some unusual alleyways.

One of my favourite music bloggers is Bob Lefsetz. I read him because of the way his personalty filters the music biz (http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/). In his latest blog, he celebrates mistakes in recordings, calling them essential to making them unique and human. He sums up by saying, "Hell, look at Jennifer Grey, she had a nose job and it ruined her career."

Bob Levenson was one of my favourite copywriters from the golden era of advertising. His personality shone through every ad he penned, yet every ad was unique to each advertiser. When he wrote that, "There is indeed a twelve-year-old mentality in this country; every six-year-old has one" I want to have his personality bronzed.

Ever bought a second novel by a writer? Guess why.

For the longest time, people would come up to me and say, "Did you write the (fill in the blank) radio commercial on the air now?" To which I would say yes, and they would say, "I knew it!" I would smile, but secretly it would bother me. I wondered if everything I was writing was sounding too similar. Too familiar. But when I analyzed my work, it just wasn't so. The ads were completely varied - a monologue here, a dialogue there, a music-driven campaign for that client, a sound-effects based idea for this one, and so on. It wasn't uniformity people were reacting to, it was my point-of-view. It was a script that I had impressed my personalty against. And it was unique to me.

When a client looks at a script, and starts to cross out all the moments where a writer's personality shines through, it does both the ad and the writer such a disservice. The defining essence of great ad copy is found in the writer's personality. Her unique view of the world, her turns of phrase that have been distilled by her unique experiences in life. The words she chooses, the words she leaves out. It's all personality-based alchemy.

Clients, hear this: Don't be so cavalier with your red pencils. Yes, your ad should feel like your brand, but if you're lucky enough to have a gifted writer working on your business, don't bleach the writing. Before you stroke a line through a funny dialogue reaction, or cross out a surprising adverb, or insist on two beats instead of three, pause for a second. Are you making the ad better, or are you eliminating the very thing that makes it magical?

Your writer's personality is your brand's secret weapon.