Whether it’s poetry or sales copy, you need to land with an immediate impact. No, not immediate. Instant. Where in a novel, a reader may give you a whole page to sufficiently hook them, and in a short story the reader might allow you at least a paragraph to breathe magic into words, readers of ad copy and poetry give you about three words.
Three. Friggin. Words.
In no time flat, you have to trigger the reader into some kind of reaction. Get them through to the end of the sentence. That’s your first goal.
All the advice you’ve heard about eliminating adverbs? Now is the time.
You will find a difference in the use of adjectives in poetry vs. ads though. In poetry, you want sensory images and specifics that come with detailed nouns. In ad copy, adjectives can be useful to trigger emotions. You want the reader to be able to picture the product in their hand and their life.
With that being said, some of the same rules apply. Alliteration. Cacophony. The old school literary devices that you “need to know“, all show up in poetry and ad copy.
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