The impact of copywriting: How a tiger smells a rose

How to write a good copy and make it impactful? You can do it with a strong contrast, with touching details under the grandeur, and it is big but not empty. The author of this article shares his own experience and reviews excellent copywriting as a representative. Let's take a look.

When I was a kid, I saw an article in a magazine. I forgot what it was about, but the title left a deep impression on me:

Pour sea water into the cup.

At that time, our writing style was still like "Record an interesting thing", so you can imagine the impact this title had on me.

I was shocked again later when I read Professor Yu Guangzhong's translation of a poem by the British poet Siegriff Sassoon:

There is a tiger in my heart sniffing the rose.
In me the tiger sniffs the rose.

More well-known is "With a fierce tiger in your heart, you can smell the roses." The secret of this text technique can be explained in one sentence: extreme opposition . Chinese painting emphasizes "sparse enough to run horses, dense enough to be impenetrable." The Buddhist saying "one flower, one world; one leaf, one bodhi" also means this.

I really like Mr. Haizi’s poems, and I unexpectedly encountered this kind of opposing aesthetics in his poems.

bay

Blue palm

Full of shipwrecks and islands

——Haizi "Wedding at Sea"

On the backs of people

I saw the rising tide and the waves of the Yellow River.

——Haizi's "Dumb Back"

In just a few sentences, the macro and micro, the great and the small, the virtual and the real, the dynamic and the static, the hard and the soft... the beauty of opposition is written to the extreme. If the content has not only visual impact but also spiritual philosophy, it is a perfect sentence; if it is lucky enough to resonate with people, it is likely to become a popular phrase. I have a story, do you have wine? Ten miles of spring breeze is not as good as you. It is probably the same way. Why do such words and sentences give people a gentle blow? Because human nature is inherently contradictory and contradictory, but highly consistent.

Su Dongpo asked "When will the bright moon appear?" and also felt the "waning moon hanging on the sparse toon tree"; Liu Yong sang "The waning moon in the morning breeze on the willow bank" and also chanted "Qiantang has been prosperous since ancient times."

Human nature has more than one side. Even rabbits bite when they are angry, and the tenderness of a tough guy is the most deadly. You see someone who is very introverted, who can't make a fart even with thunder, but when he meets the right person, he can talk eloquently.

Everything related to creation can be used through the technique of "extreme opposition" to tear apart the contradictions of human nature and then stitch them together into an impactful work.

CCTV documentaries are masters in copywriting. For example, the title "A Bite of China" is a good example. The little tongue not only tastes the food on the tables of thousands of households, but also tastes the flavors of 9.6 million square kilometers of China, the vastly different food cultures from north to south, and the oriental life aesthetics scattered in the long river of time.

Its posters also well illustrate this opposing beauty. When a piece of pork belly is picked up with chopsticks, the texture on the meat is clearly the magnificent Chinese landscape; when a bamboo slip is opened, between the lines is the vast farmland in the south of the Yangtze River, with farmers working in the fields hidden in the text.

For example, "If National Treasures Could Talk":

Passing through the holes of the bone flute is the breath of humans nine thousand years ago.

From ceremonial jade to ornamental jade, we wear the beauty of the world on our bodies.

When our eyes meet these portraits, it is destined to be an encounter that belongs to the entire planet.

This set of copywriting for "National Treasure" is worthy of the title of National Treasure, and every sentence is an epic and noble expression.

In the advertising circle, real estate, automobiles, and luxury goods all like to write high-sounding copywriting. Many copywritings always give people a sense of emptiness, incomprehensible, and can be either there or not. Because there is no opposition. If there are majestic big words, there must be fine and detailed small words to make up for it. If there is a broad mind like a big river, there must be details of paddling in the water to prove its authenticity.

Now, let's assume that Chen Wuyong, a second-rate professional copywriter, is working on a brand called Niubi Beef Noodles. The client says that although it is just a bowl of noodles, it should make people feel that it is more than just a bowl of noodles. They don't understand the concept of opposing aesthetics. They just want to write impactful copywriting, no matter how shocking it is, because they think this noodle is really awesome. This is not a problem for a professional copywriter.

Just write a few sentences:

Writing surface:

The sandstorms from the Hexi Corridor and the soil and water from the south of the Yangtze River collide to create the chewy texture of this noodle.

Write soup:

Boil the surging Yellow River into a pot of gurgling pork bone noodle soup.

Writing history:

To know how long a noodle can be stretched, just look at the history of the nomadic peoples in the northwest.

High but with a bottom, big but not empty, the key is that macro things must have tiny details, presenting an extreme sensory contrast, with a certain impact, but also real and credible, so that people will not think you are bragging.

Author: Chen Wuyong

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