Fang Wenshan talked about how to write advertisements

Music has the power to touch the soul. Vincent Fang's lyrics can be read as a guide for advertising creation. This article describes the relevant content and I hope it will be helpful to you.

The songs I usually listen to are usually a bit old, which shows that I am also a bit old. Sometimes when I really don’t know what to listen to, I listen to Jay Chou. I subscribe to QQ Music just for Jay Chou. Although QQ Music doesn’t seem to fit my pseudo-literary temperament as well as NetEase Cloud Music, NetEase Cloud Music doesn’t have Jay Chou.

A few days ago, I was listening to Jay Chou and suddenly became interested in Fang Wenshan's ideas for writing lyrics. I found a book of his, "The Blue Sky Waiting for the Rain", in which he talked about his representative lyrics, the stories behind the creation, and the rhetorical techniques. What surprised me was that he also had a wealth of music theory knowledge. It seems that it is no accident that Fang Wenshan became a top lyricist. I have made up my mind several times to learn some music knowledge, but I still haven't learned to read music and can't even play "Jingle Bells".

The more I watched, the more I felt that what Fang Wenshan talked about could be read as a guide for advertising creation.

1. Fang Wenshan’s creative guideline can be summarized as “One Three Five”, namely one principle, three elements and five structures.

1. The principle is that lyrics should serve emotions

Lyric writing is different from poetry writing or serious literary creation. It must be popularized. Even if some details do not make sense from the perspective of historical facts, academics, or grammar, it does not matter. The most important thing is to resonate with people.

What about advertising? Advertising serves the brand, but it serves the brand through communication with people. First of all, it must be popular and understandable to everyone. Good writing skills alone will not be enough to write good advertising. Many outstanding advertising people are not majored in Chinese. Secondly, excellent brands bring people powerful functional value, and great brands usually bring people positive emotional guidance, give people upward strength in ordinary life, and defeat the dark things in human nature, such as Nike, KEEP, Coca-Cola, etc. It can also be said that the advertising voices of those great brands are all serving positive emotions.

Being an advertiser, like being a lyricist, can be a profession. It is a professional profession in the marketing industry. Professional means being a fucking professional. You have to hand in your work regardless of whether you have inspiration or not, instead of having to wait for inspiration to come before you can write like a poet.

2. Three elements are the basis of lyrics creation

The first of the three elements is the use of personal pronouns . I, you, we, you, the people who sing and listen to the song will be able to substitute for the role and enter the story more smoothly. In the advertisement, the first person seems real, and the second person brings people closer.

The second is to master the rhyme of lyrics. Rhyme gives words their own rhythm and movement, deepens the memory of words, and makes them more popular with music. Rhythm plays an important role in the high popularity of classical poetry. Modern poetry does not pay attention to rhythm, so it is difficult to become popular. There are two extremes in the advertising circle now. For example, the slogans written by Hua & Hua are almost all jingles, and many advertising companies deliberately avoid rhyme in order to pursue colloquial language, thinking that rhyme will be a sign of artificiality. I think there is no need to go to extremes, as long as the sentence is suitable.

The third is the greatest common divisor of emotions. That is, things that most people can relate to and identify with. Most pop music describes things related to emotions, such as love, family affection, etc.

Many classic advertisements also take the greatest common divisor of human emotions, such as Chivas' Father's Day advertisement, P&G's advertisement praising mothers, and De Beers tied to love.

3. The five structures are the grammatical structures of lyrics creation

The five structures of lyrics are images, attitudes, emotions, moods and story lines.

The picture refers to the nouns in the lyrics , such as street lights, cafes, campuses, etc., which give the lyrics a sense of picture and create a stage for the story. Sometimes the artist feels that the text given by the copywriter is too empty and cannot be executed, which means that the nouns are not used properly. A very important point of the copywriter is that the words are meaningful. Dong Yuhui's live broadcast copywriter is a model of meaningful words, with a strong sense of picture. He sold rice with "the white snow on Changbai Mountain" and "the breeze blowing through the fields in October". Look at the power of nouns.

Attitude refers to viewpoints and ideas . What you want or what you want to give up must be clear. Now, you can't remember the slogans of many brands, but their brand views or positions are very clear. For example, you can't remember the slogans of Shenzhou Special Car, Volvo, and 360, but they all chose the brand attitude of "safety". If you value safety, you will consider choosing them. In the future, the era of conquering the world by massively launching a sentence will no longer exist. Brand attitude is more important than slogans.

Emotion can be understood as the emotional category of a song . This song is sad or happy, depressed or excited, about a love triangle, a secret love, or reminiscing about a lost relationship. In advertising, it is the "tone" of the entire work, whether it is touching or humorous, plain or grand. Generally, the "tone" must be set before creation, and even corresponding references must be found to allow both parties and team members to reach a consensus and ensure that the deliverables meet expectations.

Emotions are different from feelings. Feelings are the general direction, while feelings are the small details. For example, "a faint smile at the corner of the mouth", "tears rolling in the eyes", etc. In the advertisements I have seen recently, there are almost no big ideas. They are all about small emotions. A flower blooms the daily life of a mother, and a cup of milk tea expresses the sorrow and joy of a worker. This may also be a trend in future advertisements. In an era of chaos and uncertainty, perhaps the only certain happiness and satisfaction is the ups and downs of small emotions that are readily available.

The storyline refers to the echo between the beginning and the end, the consistency of the emotions, and the consistency of the words used for the emotions. What I want to say here is that the storyline of lyrics is different from that of advertisements. The consistency is inevitable, and the lyrics are more simple and refined, and will not explain the complete story, which is why you will never get tired of listening to them.

From the screenwriter's perspective, Robert McKee said that stories are meaningful changes in life situations, but changes are not necessarily stories. For example, if it rains and the street outside the window is wet, this is not a story but weather; but if a person is soaked in the rain, it may be a story. In advertising, the changes in life situations around brand attitudes are brand stories. For example, a person is unhappy and his friend throws him a can of iced cola. He laughs like crazy after taking a sip. This is a story of sharing happiness.

Fang Wenshan has also written many advertising songs. In the early years, many musicians had advertising backgrounds, and many advertising people became music masters. In the end, all those who worked in advertising were "generalists."

Author: Chen Wuyong

Source: WeChat public account "Chen Wuyong (ID: wuyongzhiyong2022)"