Copywriting For Hard Copy

Hello, this is Craig again.

C4W has been working for a client on an unusual project recently. It falls somewhere between ghost writing (where you as the writer create a document for the client to publish under his/her name, and which reflects the ideas of the client) and translation from “foreign English” to standard English. All of this comes under the category of copywriting for hardcopy clients.

A little more information is required, without naming the client, so that you understand the circumstances a little better.

The client is a technical company, working in both engineering and hardware construction. The company is located in a non-English-speaking European country. Their personnel are predominantly from the home country and from other areas where English is not a native language. To make things easier to understand, lets just call the country “Nirvana.” The Nirvanians speak their own language, Nirvanan, and are not really familiar with English except as a second (or maybe third) language on a job site.

The Nirvanian client has produced a multipage English brochure to use in their marketing and public relations activities in Nirvana but more so for their activities in other, international, areas (the rest of Europe, for example). Their feeling is that English is probably the most widely used language in their marketing area and their technical area. Therefore, they want to have a presentable brochure that the majority of their potential customers can read and understand. That’s why they came to Copywriting for Websites.

Because of the “Websites” part of our name, they were a little hesitant to approach C4W, but our expertise in their technical area convinced them that we would be a good selection. Luckily, I (Craig) have had a little exposure to Nirvanan, and that made communications with them easier. We negotiated a deal, and C4W started working on the project.

Because they were in the middle of a marketing personnel change, the project was a little haphazard in terms of coordination, but we got the job done. Also, there were changes in some of their existing client areas (Northern Africa and the Middle East), and that meant we were aiming at a target that was sometimes moving politically as we wrote. But we did get the job done.

What was involved? Basically, C4W went through the existing brochure as a first draft, and cleaned up the English so that we had a firm basis for understanding the work. We also cleared up some inconsistencies and rectified some misstatements. Next, we discussed some modifications to the brochure that made it more of a selling device than a simple recital of their work experience, and agreed on some fundamental ideas. Then we adapted the existing text to the new ideas, fit things together with some new information, and dropped some policitally inappropriate text as well.

All that is left now is a final read over the finished product to make sure (we hope!) that we catch all the typos and logical mistakes and are consistent with numbers and names and formats before it goes to the printer. We also had to coordinate the text with the visual images they want to use in the brochure.

Think you could do that? Of course you can, otherwise you wouldn’t have read this far down the page! The catch is to have your own expertise niche, where you can provide a useful service, and then sell, based on your advantages.

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