Firstly, if you are not a Brit you might not know what I am referring to when I say 'chip'.
I am talking here about the deep fried thick rectangular potato kind of chip as opposed to a casino chip, a micro chip or an American Pringle kind of chip.
And when I say deep fried potato 'chip' I mean they are served hot and hopefully (in my case at least) with lashings of salt and malt vinegar and you get them from a chippy (British fish 'n' chip shop as opposed to a carpenter who makes things with bits of wood and leaves behind a pile of wood chips!).
They are not, I repeat NOT, American potato chips...THEY, in Brit parlance my friend are called crisps….C R I S P S!
So, now we have the name thing cleared up which is a copywriting conundrum in itself, let's talk about chips. Or what you might call French Fries. Well, sort of anyway.
In fact, more specifically let's talk about Mr Chips (no not the film character) but Mr Chips, the imaginatively named fish & chip shop I worked in when I was an aspiring kidult.
It's not a long story as I became intimately acquainted with the Spanish Archer after my first shift (i.e. I got the El bow...fired!) but I did earn ₤9 quid for my 12 hour long troubles.
My first task was to wait the tables in the little restaurant out back, it was also the location of my first failure of many for that day. My first customers were an elderly couple who only wanted a cup of tea. I think I went back to them about four to five times to clarify the order even though I had written it down...I was so flustered I did not want to get it wrong.
Fourteen minutes later I served my disastrous version of a nice cuppa Rosie (Rosie Lee = tea get it?)...too milky with tepid water and a few rogue tea leaves sadly floating atop.
Needless to say the owner quickly realised my limited potential in the food catering industry and put me out front where my next task was to simply wrap customers fish suppers in newspaper. That's all...I didn’t even have to waste any energy remembering orders.
But again disaster soon found me!
There was only one occasion during my whole stint that my carefully folded paper parcel managed to actually stay wrapped and the punter was able to leave the shop without leaving a trail of soggy chips behind him!
….and then came the night shift where, quite frankly things got even worse.
The drunk people fresh from the pub arrived!
Basically, I took the view that they would have their chips as I served them, not as they wanted. In hindsight a bad move.
My point with all this?
Well, do you ever find that sometimes you might not be delivering quite what your target audience actually wants with your copy?
Perhaps the terminology you are using does not resonate or is confusing (You say potato chip, I say crisp. You say French fry, I say are you kidding?).
Or maybe you are using colloquialisms or serving your customer something they don't want, didn’t ask for or don't even need?
Maybe you are not fully embracing the ‘C’ word in your copy...no not chips….but
C L A R I T Y.
You see, when we are writing copy we are sometimes so focused on what we want that we can forget all about the bigger picture.
It can be so easy for things to get lost in translation, to not be specific about what you are talking about, or more importantly WHO you are talking to.
And sometimes, just sometimes, regardless of your better judgement when writing copy for either a client or yourself, you have got to go with what works, not what youthink might work.
So my advice?
Along with the ‘C’ bit, don't be so clever that no one can understand what you are talking about (it's not the key to klever kopy), and don't for the love of all things sacred in the world, serve your customers with unwrapped chips and over milky tepid tea with added loose leaf debris!
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