If you want to see trends that even Faith Popcorn and John Naisbitt are too knee-deep in newspaper clippings and data scans to see themselves, turn to Dan Pink.
Dan's a friend of mine. Former White House speechwriter, but he has changed his politicking ways to literary ones. Wrote a powerful book called Free Agent Nation a few years ago.
Now he's come out with a new one, and there's a preview article in Wired Magazine that boggles the mind.
Because it's about the mind - the part that likes to be boggled. The right brain. Dan says, in so many words, that the world is falling more and more under the control of people who have mastered creative, contextual, conceptual thinking -- the province of the right brain.
This is very important for copywriters and copywriting because that's where we live - the good of us and the bad of us -- in creativity, context and concept.
Dan writes:
In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.
Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.
Yes, it looks like it's Our Turn. If you are One of Us... someone who lives in the span of mind between Imagination and Next Possible Reality.
I'm very excited by what Dan's writing and thinking. Why don't you take a look at the whole article?
David Garfinkel
And hey... if you haven't checked out the Breakthrough Copywriting Seminar yet... what are you waiting for???
David,
Fascinating article and fits in with the key theme of Stephen Pierce's big event in Detroit this past weekend (which I attended).
The key theme of the weekend (although a lot of people didn't seem to "get it") was creativity and innovation.
To get to the point, if you want your message to get across to people, you have to be aware of these trends that are going on and what's going on in the mind of your potential client.
If you want to write copy at the most effective level (and I certainly do!), in my opinion you will have to go beyond the old copywriting rules. Doing what everyone else is doing simply will not be good enough. That's why I'm going to the "Breakthrough Copywriting" event and I wouldn't miss this for anything!
Signing off from chilly Detroit!
Posted by: Kevin Francis | January 31, 2005 at 04:11 AM
Hi Kevin,
I really like what you're saying.
An interesting distinction:
Creativity _per se_ can be very dangerous in copywriting. Throwing a new idea against the wall to see if it will stick is a very expensive, and imprudent, way to test.
However, INNOVATION -- taking what works and coming up with an innovative twist -- is the stuff fortunes are made of.
We'll cover this in precise detail in Las Vegas, along with many other important rules of thumb. I'm glad you're looking foward to it; needless to say, so am I!
David
Posted by: David Garfinkel | January 31, 2005 at 10:14 AM