- Want to win big clients and a bag of awards?
- Looking for practical tips on high impact copywriting?
- Keen to harness the power of ruthless editing?
Then meet award-winning freelance Copywriter and Creative Director Mike Reed.
Mike’s work has won the Design Grand Prix at the Roses, Gold and Silver at the Fresh Awards, an IVCA Gold, and an ISTD Premier Award. It’s also in the D&AD Annuals for 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2011.
He’s been a D&AD judge (Writing For Design) twice, in 2009 and 2011. Mike’s one of the original members of writers’ group 26, and a Fellow of the RSA. As you can imagine, we were delighted when he agreed to talk to us today.
But discovering what makes any top copywriter tick (and why) isn’t always easy. So we asked Mike the apparently simple question: What influences your copywriting – apart from other writers?
Take your influences from everywhere
“It’s so hard to pin these things down,” Mike says. He tells us: “If you’re a creative of any sort, your influences tend to come from all over: music, film, painting, poetry… I’m a very, very amateur photographer, and it has struck me that the process of cropping a picture has interesting parallels in editing copy”.
Crop out any redundant scene-setting
Mike continues: “It amazes me how much you can crop out of what at first seems a pretty well-composed and finished picture. You start to realise how much redundant scene-setting is there, how much is actually just background.”
The parallels with copywriting are clear, Mike explains: “Often it’s like that with sentences and paragraphs. At first glance, they seem okay, but if you take a moment to chop away, you find there’s a lot you can get rid of without affecting the substance at all.”
Mike says: “I suspect I realise this more with photography because it’s so new to me. I’ve certainly had non-writer clients and colleagues express surprise at just how many words don’t really need to be there. Someone I worked with recently said he wished he could talk as I wrote, because everything would take half as long.”
Leave some space for your reader
But it’s not just photographers who can teach copywriters a few lessons about framing and editing, Mike believes. He says: “It’s also something you read about from screenwriters. The temptation is to explain everything, to make sure the audience gets what’s going on. But people are actually very good at inferring an enormous amount of context and background on their own. Often, your well-intentioned explanations just get in the way.”
Use few words – but make every one count
Mike’s a big fan of this intelligent, pared back screenwriting style. But it’s not just about making things simple or “plain”. It’s about giving each word weight and purpose. As he says: “It probably also reflects my love of writers like Raymond Carver, Alan Garner and Michael Ondaatje, who use few words but make every one count”.
Thanks for reading.
To learn more about Mike Reed’s outstanding work, head over to Reed Words.
Missed our previous interviews with top copywriters? Then check out Drayton Bird, Steve Harrison, Lorraine Thompson and Richard Weston.
You can follow these links to explore D&AD, 26, and the RSA.
Fancy a spot of Christmas reading? Then take Mike’s advice and try some Raymond Carver, Alan Garner and Michael Ondaatje.
Thanks very much, Johnny. A lovely opportunity to mouth off.
And a great idea to link to those three magnificent authors. I discovered Carver when I picked up A New Path To The Waterfall while at University. I read the dedication: ‘Tess. Tess. Tess. Tess. Tess.’ and knew I had to buy the book. Making one word say everything: that’s going some.
Anything by Garner is worth reading. His recent novels for adults are just breathtaking: Strandloper and The Stone Book Quartet are dizzyingly beautiful and haunting books. And of course he’s written some of the best, strangest books for children ever.
Ondaatje wrote what I often quote as my favourite book: The Collected Works of Billy The Kid, an extraordinary interweaving of fiction, poetry and myth. It’s very short and very intense, like a sauce that’s been reduced to deliver a massive punch of complex flavour. And of course The English Patient is, to continue the metaphor, a feast of a book — of which the movie is only a lingering scent.