How to write a really good text

Sometimes it requires our copywriters to lock themselves away for two days to focus entirely on those (corporate) texts. With nothing else on their minds. Until they feel it’s an “award-winning” text. And by now we know from experience that when we ourselves stand behind it one hundred percent, the customer can only agree. Nothing better than that.

At WADM, our approach is infused with Whole Brain Thinking. We believe in – no, we are firmly convinced that when you write a text using the four thinking styles that this theory uses, you appeal to everyone with it. Both the actual left brain and the emotional right brain. Both the actual left hemisphere and the emotional right hemisphere. That last part is essential. And also immediately the challenge for our copywriters. For example, it’s important not to just tell functional product features or gore-dry factual information, even though in theory this may be exactly the information the target audience should know.

Just as important, a text should be easy to read and have a nice rhythm that doesn’t make you want to stop before the final point. The right hemisphere of the brain must always be involved. Not for nothing do we write texts that sometimes contain sentences of literally one word. Interspersed with longer sentences, it thus becomes, among other things, a playful text with stopping power.

Years ago, Professor Robert Gunning came up with the Gunning Fog Index: a formula that calculates how readable a text is by looking at, among other things, the length of sentences and the number of difficult words. He then demonstrates this with a score between 0 and 20. A famous quote from Gunning in 1964: “There are limits regarding long sentences and long words that the professional does not exceed. The writer’s limitations may be conscious or unconscious, but they are there. If not, he will not win an audience.”

“Not for nothing do we write texts that sometimes
contain sentences of literally one word.”

Well-known advertising phenomenon David Ogilvy also points out the importance of easy-to-read texts. People sometimes think that “fancy” words sound more interesting, but for readability and understanding of a text, the opposite is true. Communication is and always will be person to person. Or in other words, use “normal” colloquialisms, he preaches. Ogilvy reiterated, “Get on the bus. Go to Iowa. Stay on a farm for a week and talk to the farmer. Come back to New York by train and talk to your fellow passengers in the day car. If you still want to use the word, go ahead.”

Facts, form, fantasy, feelings. This is how we summarize it. The elements a good text should meet. What should the reader know? How do I pour that into a clear, lucid form? How do I turn it into a text that the reader wants to read, and how do I incorporate a good rhythm into it? Success guaranteed.