7:6 Manifesto - Leathertex
- Rahima
- Dec 11, 2019
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 12, 2019
Our final session of the copywriting elective was on manifesto's and tone of voice.
A manifesto is essentially, a brand's personality and values summed up. Manifesto's dictates what a brand said and does.
Paul Burke showed us 'Everbody's Free to Wear Sunscreen' by Baz Luhrmann as an example of what pacing is like in audio:
In this example, he keeps his pace the same throughout and puts emphasis on specific words - it doesn't sound scripted.
When recording something, you need to cast a voice. He said a good tip was to imagine
voices as you write, picture who can bring your words to life. Male-centred topics obviously work well with male voices and vice versa for women. Sometimes you can use a balance of both such as male for the majority and ending with female or the other way round. For location specific ads, it's good to use local accents, while national ads work better with a standard english voice. Speech is music, words have rhythm.
We looked at the manifesto for M&S:
It's a message to their staff to give them more power. It's based in truth.
Paul said to avoid using the word mission and have no wasted words, only relevant information. Manifesto's should sound effortless.
A manifesto usually has short sentences, M&S one is a bit too long.
You can also write manifesto's for yourself, an example Brian gave was that at a museum exhibition you see an art piece and a description of the artist which is their manifesto.
It's something that will help you to talk about yourself clearly and quickly.
We looked at more manifesto examples:
Manifestos are for internal and external audiences;
internal - employees/families/same club, external - people on the outside looking in
The diesel manifesto uses emphasis on 'be stupid'. The apple one is shorter and to the point. The Nike one is short and clever but untrue.
We also looked at Adidas' video manifesto:
Their manifesto is fast paced, it uses different languages - it's inclusive. If you want these boots = if you wanna be on our side, prove yourself. It's challenging the consumer. It's confident, perhaps overly confident. Intense, demanding, bold, has an alpha male feel to it. Self assured and relevant to it's audience. It does go on for a bit long though.
We then looked at the manifesto for Avis car rentals:
They use relatable language, it's self deprecating. They're the nice guys.
Our final task is to create a manifesto for a small brand that doesn't already have one.
Something that speaks "this is why we're different"
Or a manifesto for yourself.
And a voiceover for the manifesto, that isn't recorded with your own voice.
Paul reminded us of a quote "Sorry this letter is so long, I didn't have time to write a short one" to remind us that it's harder to write small, so start big and cut down. And to read aloud our writing to see if it works. We need to select a tone of voice and know where to place emphasis. He also gave us the example sentence "I didn't kill your wife" which has a different meaning depending on which word you stress.
We looked at the manifesto for a food place named Simply Blues:
We listened to it without the audio and Brian gave us the task of highlighting where on what lines we'd put emphasis (in purple). He then told us about sentences having a front weight and end weight, where the sound goes higher and lower in a sentence - the rhythm. We annotated the manifesto with where the rhythm of your voice, the wave goes up, down or stays neutral. This helps because if we ever write copy for audio, annotating it like this for your client and talking them through it will give them a better understanding and sells your ad more clearer.
A tip from Brian was that if music doesn't fulfil 60% of the outcome, then it's unneeded. Music can help hide imperfections though and fill in awkward spaces.
I chose my dad's leather business, Leathertex to write a manifesto for. The company sells real leather from cow, sheep etc. and repurposes it into leather products. They're based in Europe and manufactured in Pakistan. My dad really wants to emphasise on the quality of the leather and how they're not fake. "Real leather for real people" - my dad, 2019. Emphasising that leather lasts for life, confident and comforting tone of voice. They don't want to rip people off so they charge affordable prices.
Paul suggested I just use the quality of the leather as my theme for the manifesto.
I did some research on leather and it's history to see if there was anything I could use.
"Leather is one of man's earliest and most useful discoveries. Our ancestors used leather to protect themselves from the elements. Primitive man hunted wild animals for food, then made clothing,"
The smell of real leather is apparently something that can't be mimicked because it's animal skin smell. Different leathers have different feel.
I started with a blank page and just wrote what I could, even if it was shit, for the brand:
I then arranged them into some sentences to see what worked. And then again:
And then again and again and again
To sum up all these notes; I kept changing it to really just be about quality. I wanted to sell an experience as opposed to a service/product as I felt it was the best way to connect to my target audience. I began by talking about the quality of different products and what they can do for you "warm jacket on cold winter night" and how we value customers over their money. But the flow was just off so I purely focused on the quality and how it makes the wearer feel. I still mentioned the products but rather than saying what they can do for you, it's about how they make you feel.
This was my final manifesto:
I was happy with the final copy, as was Paul, so next was to record it. I needed a strong male voice for the audio, so I pulled a sudden audition on every boy I saw at uni even if I didn't know them and finally found someone good enough to convey the feeling I wanted. I wanted a male voice as I felt leather has connotations of being strong, reliable and durable and I wanted the voice to also be strong, confident but also welcoming as opposed to aggressive and patronising. I wrote out my copy on paper and annotated it with Brian's tips for highlighting and using arrows for where the wave of voice goes up and down. I went through it a few times with my voice actor and we made some rearrangements to where I'd put emphasis (blue) which is why my notes look so messy:
The following is the audio without music:
The following is with music/sound effects:
I used Jazz music as the background because the voice actor's tone sounds quite comforting and warm which is the same feeling I get listening to Jazz. Jazz is also quite vintage as is leather.
The one with music worked better because without it, it just sounded too serious and boring.
What I've learnt from this task was that you have to make use of every word, a sentence like 'the very mention of his name', the word very adds no meaning but adds emphasis. It's about finding balance. You'll know it's ready when you don't feel like you can add anymore. Or if you add a word it but take it out again. If a line doesn't work, then the line before it is the problem. Make your reader feel smart, never patronise them. Also, it's so important to know your product and know exactly who they're audience is and how you want to make them feel. Just writing cliches won't work, it needs to be unique to the brand. I also enjoyed learning about copy in audio and using pacing and emphasis. I didn't realise how different your message comes across based on the way you annotate your script. But I really enjoyed doing this task.
Overall, I feel this elective was so worth it. I'm proud of myself for attending each one, almost all on time and I honestly looked forward to every session and now I'm sad it's over. But I learnt so much and discovered so much about my skills and what I'm good at that I can bring forward with me. I'm very thankful to Brian Sheppard, Paul Burke and Jon Ryder for helping me and always giving me worthwhile feedback.
Good stuff.
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