I’ve written a lot about the loss of long copy ads – and how the industry has mixed up people’s reluctance to read words that don’t interest them with volume of words.
Long copy ads are fast becoming part of a by-gone era, but I recently came across an ad that just might change all that …
[See it clearer, here – but please read it]
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Have you checked it out?
Have you?
Honestly, you have to see it before you read any further.
All done?
OK, so let’s continue.
Seriously, how amazing is that.
I absolutely and utterly love it.
I adore the pace … the eloquent phrasing … the way it constantly tries to coax a reaction by gently probing, tempting, flattering, challenging and misdirecting your trains of thought … the requirement to stay completely focused … the need to read between the lines … the incredibly slow reveal and – at the very end – the slight touch of menace they’ve intertwined with an air of concern as they warn you, in the most gentlemanly way possible, to keep this all strictly confidential.
This is copywriting at its best.
Storytelling at its most supreme.
And best of all, you are the star.
Of course given it’s an ad to attract potential ‘spies’ means it was always going to be interesting and intriguing, but that’s why the writing is so wonderful, because they’ve resisted the urge to scream it out from the rooftops, and instead, chosen to let the ad speak in a way that I imagine a real British spy would act and sound:
Calm. Eloquent. Controlled. Educated. Informed. Intelligent. Ambiguous … and ever-so-slightly intimidating.
I also love how the ad has been made to look.
No logo. No headline. Just – on first glance – an innocuous page, standing slightly behind all the other pages screaming for your attention.
It blends itself in the background, wanting you to come to it, not the other way around.
Treating the reader with the intelligence they can work it out.
Filtering out candidates by every line that they read.
Based on the ‘rules’ that much of today’s advertising seems to adhere to, this is almost the perfect anti-ad … and yet it’s one of the best ads I’ve seen in a long time.
I don’t mean best long-copy ads, I mean ads full-stop.
Apart from it being by M&C Saatchi London, I don’t know who specifically wrote this ad for the British Government … I don’t know if we’re ever going to be allowed to know who specifically wrote this ad for the British Government … but I want them to know it’s an exercise in communication magnificence and it restores my faith in what this industry can achieve when it wants to, and when a client allows it to.