The King and His Private Secretary (The synergy of great copy and great graphics)

As a copywriter, I believe, as many of us writers believe: “Copy is King!” No matter how great your lists or offers, without great copy, you don’t have a winning promotion.

But the truth is, we copywriters usually need great graphic design to make our copy come to life—so it can produce massive sales and profits.

What’s the secret of merging great copy and great graphic design?

To get the answer, I decided to interview one of the top graphic designers in our business, Rob Davis. Rob and I have collaborated on some highly successful promotions, so I know first hand, “Rob gets it!”

Here are a few of his thoughts.

He writes, “If Copy is King, then graphics would be the King’s private secretary. Whoever that guy is who makes sure that whenever the King goes out in public, he’s suitably dressed for the occasion. That his manner and voice are at all times optimally regal and appropriate. If a King were to appear to address his royal subjects in a tattered, wine-stained shirt and spoke in a high, squeaky voice, no matter how great his words were, his message would be lost on those how might otherwise been keen to follow him.”

Geez…I’m a copywriter and I couldn’t have said it better myself. Great insights, Rob!

Rob is right. Great graphics brings great copy alive.

How does Rob go about creating great graphics.

One secret of his—now are you following closely?—is Rob reads the copy. Yep, he actually sits down in a comfortable chair with a pen and bright yellow highlighter and a cup of tea and reads the copy.

He says he’s looking for the story behind the product—whether it be how it’s made or some unique personality behind it. Rob looks for the USP (he defines this a Unique Selling Points) that makes this product different than any other. He says that tapping into the USP graphically is essential to designing a great package. (No wonder this guy’s great—he’s a graphic designer that thinks like a copywriter!)

Rob literally scours every paragraph and identifies as many USPs as possible. Once he’s done reading, ideally, he has a graphic theme and a manuscript of scribbled notes and yellow ink highlighting the things he wants to emphasize.

He believes if you pay attention to the story behind the product and know your target audience, the unique graphic theme tends to emerge.

For instance, here’s Rob thinking behind a promo he designed for direct mail package I wrote for a krill oil product.

Rob says, “The product had a very unique selling point in that it came from krill harvested in the deep, pure waters of Antarctica.

“Of course, I’m going to pick up on the whole Antarctic theme and show lots of deep blue oceans and generally keep my color palette pretty cool, with occasional sprays of beautiful pinky orange color of the krill.

“To choose a lot of those colors, I actually sampled portions of images of blue oceans and krill in Photoshop and brought those color percentages directly into my document color palette.”

The result? Rob designed a package for me that’s been very successful!

Here are some sample pages from the promotion.

Front cover

Opening spread

Key closing section

One thing’s for sure: If you merge great copy and great graphics, you dramatically increase your chances of hitting a home run.

Prospects will read the copy because of a compelling story…promise of benefit…or solving of a problem AND they’ll keep reading because of graphics that draw them in and keep them reading.
More to come on this subject.