When copy loves itself too much

I’m not a narcissist, but sometimes my copy is.

One time, I nearly lost my mind while brainstorming copy for a holiday print ad. I was writing for Havenly, an interior design company, and we were advertising in a popular home decorating magazine. “Keep it simple,” I told myself, “this has been done hundreds of times before.”

An ad that took way too long to write because I was blinded by narcissistic writing. Creative Director & Designer: leigh buck, Copy: Jason Fox

Not only was a simple message about home decor likely to resonate with the audience, but it was also the holiday season. Here I was, with decorating for the holidays as my topic and the readers of HGTV Magazine as my audience. I knew it would take some time to get right, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to perform amazing feats of persuasion. I jumped into my writing process and was feeling good.

And then I got arrogant. Feeling so secure and self-assured about my copy options, I managed to convince myself that I was capable of writing the most amazing holiday decorating advertisement of all time.

I could already hear the praise. I was done for.

What might have been a quick and concise project turned into hours of trying to persuade my colleagues, torturing myself with ideation exercises, and ultimately degrading what could have been an enjoyable experience.

Pitfalls of selective perception

Intuitive and empathic writing is complex. And as writers, we spend a great deal of time thinking about how users might interpret our words. Context-appropriate approaches that are based on empirical testing are typically front and center in our processes.

But we’re writers. We’re creative by nature. So it’s often tempting (and sometimes rewarding) to listen to our gut and forget everything else. Because who knows, maybe this time we’ll buck the trend and pull off the impossible? It rarely works that way, though.

In the case of Havenly’s HGTV Magazine ad, I let a little bit of narcissism creep into my writing process, and it wrecked me.

Narcissistic Copy

Narcissism in writing, as I see it, is when preference is given to a strategy, technique, or style that aligns with personal preference rather than what actually works with a given audience.

This phenomenon might sound like the fringe problem of an over-worked or under-trained copywriter. But it’s actually quite prevalent and often flies below our radars.

Let’s take a look at a few examples of copy in love with itself:

The Confirmshamer

Leveraging guilt in place of empathy seems like the worst idea ever, but confirmshaming is everywhere. And it wouldn’t be such a prevalent dark pattern if not for the irreverent microcopy that accompanies these troublesome dialogues.

I love Gmail. I hate condescension.

I suspect that for every instance of confirmshaming, there’s a gloating copywriter.

Even InVision, a bastion of user-centric design, ships egocentric copy.

It almost feels like it should work. A perfectly-crafted line that cuts to the bone of our user’s soul. “No thanks, I don’t like being a good person!” That’ll show ’em, right?!