Copywriting: why we need our rough edges and human frailties 

CDs and vinyl.  Ebooks and physical books. AI copywriting and human copywriting. 

Funny how the arrival of the new affects the old. No doubt AI has given copywriting (among many other things) a swift kick up the bracket. And it’s only just getting started. 

But here’s a thought – will AI copywriting actually heighten the value of ‘human’ copywriting? 

Finding the value in the human

“Is that a real snake?” 

“Of course not. You think I could afford a real snake?”

That’s from Blade Runner. A dystopian fantasy where replicants ran rampant and being human (or reptilian) was seen as something special. Something to pursue with passion. Murderous passion in the case of Roy Batty. 

The point of that snake-centred inquiry was that ‘real’ things were expensive in Blade Runner’s dark world. Because fake things, like replicants, were so abundant that everyone chose the fake over the real. This throws up an interesting idea.

That something created by humans, not by machines, could be worth more. Why could that be? Is there something inherently different in something created by humans? 

Composer and pianist Olafur Arnalds says that “art is me expressing something to you. An algorithm can compose a melody, but if it’s not expressing anything, can that be called art?” 

I know that calling copywriting capital A Art is a bit of a stretch. But if the definition of art is “something creative that someone has taken time and effort to produce and  that moves you” then we might need to get comfortable with the idea that copywriting can at least aspire to art.

And if our definition of art is that some human idea must be transmitted, can true art ever be replaced by something that’s not human?  

Embrace the unexpected 

Over recent years we’ve fallen in love with the handcrafted, the artisanally produced. Mass-produced stuff has never quite managed to put the craft stuff out of business. It just seems to just raise the value of the more authentic work. Why?

In Aldous Huxley’s peerless Brave New World, the savage laments that science has removed struggle, outlawed suffering, deprogrammed disappointment. He rages that he wants realism, danger, poetry, death. But all those things have been airbrushed out of existence. All the rough edges gone from life in that clean, hermetically sealed world of order. 

But it’s those rough edges we hanker after. Like the savage, we want danger, unpredictability, chance.

There’s a reason we love handcrafted furniture, clothing and screen prints. Because somehow, somewhere we can ‘feel’ the love, effort and commitment that’s gone into it. Somehow that enriches our enjoyment of it. I once saw designer and master of film credit sequences (check out his iconic work for Seven) Kyle Cooper talk and he talked about this idea of ‘leaving your hand in’ when you create a piece of work. That idea that those human touches, those often unplanned imperfections are what gives a piece of work its soul. 

In Wolf of Wall Street, Matthew McCounaghey’s celebrated humming was a happy accident. It was something he did between takes to focus. Apparently DiCaprio was taken by it and said “hey, you should do that in the scene.” Boom. 

The humans strike back

Could the same appreciation be applied to human-crafted copywriting? 

I have no idea. But I will tell you that we’re already seeing clients coming to us, telling us that they specifically don’t want AI-generated copywriting. 

True, they might be responding to bad-quality AI copywriting. Or at least badly edited AI copywriting. 

But they might also be valuing the human in the machine. Understanding that there’s an irreplaceable wonder in our human copywriting, parlaying the crazy unpredictability, random mish-mashing of our life’s experiences, hopes, dreams and fears into a headline for an ad about washing machines. Hey, it happens. 

Or it might just be that as the new comes in, the old regains a little of its lost lustre. 

Look at the examples I opened this piece with. 

Vinyl is still cherished. Not just by the luddites, but by stereophiles who swear blind that it just sounds better. 

The irreplaceable feel of a physical book means they’re in no danger of disappearing and are even surging. (The beautiful Minalima editions of classic stories are a perfect example.) 

Going back even further, the advent of photography didn’t spell the death of art. But it did ignite a vibrant exploration of different types of art. Things that photography just couldn’t do. 

So there’s hope for humans yet. We just need to embrace our unpredictability, our rough edges.