Category: Copywriting

The play’s the thing: copywriting for the Everyman Theatre

During the course of a career, copywriters can be called on to write about all kinds of subjects. Throughout my mumble mumble years in the trade, I’ve covered video games, roof insulation, mobile phones, financial services, sportswear, residential developments, slate mining, the motor industry, pharmaceuticals, dentistry, pets, and more. Lots more.

With a couple of exceptions, I didn’t know much about those subjects before I began work on them, and I don’t necessarily know much about them now. But while I was engaged in writing about them, I took time to find out as much as was relevant to the task in hand, and turned that hastily accrued knowledge into copy that was right for its audience.

On one occasion, when writing a manual for a World War Two flight simulation game, I more or less had to learn how to fly a plane. It was a while ago, so please don’t ask me to shift one of EasyJet’s finest from Manchester to Alicante, but for the duration of that project, I started to feel that piloting a Spitfire wasn’t beyond my capabilities.

Clearly, the transition from self-confessed ignoramus to delusional expert is a copywriter’s occupational hazard.

However, not every project follows this trajectory. When genuine personal passions and professional duties collide – when the writer has already built up a significant breadth of knowledge on the subject – the result can be a special kind of job.

And so it was for me when the team at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre asked me to write the marketing copy for their 2018 repertory season. After all, the Everyman is a venue I’ve supported for over 20 years, and when it reopened after major reconstruction in 2014, I wrote about the role it has played in my life.  I regularly review its shows, and one of my sons is even immortalised within its architecture. And if that sounds unlikely, you can see him here: top row, third from left…

Everyman Theatre, Liverpool

I was therefore well placed to understand the importance of the season to the theatre, and I knew that the four disparate productions – Paint Your Wagon, A Clockwork Orange, Othello and The Big I Am – needed to feel like a coherent whole. The Everyman has created a stir recently with its decision to return to a repertory model, and with a single company of 14 actors performing all four shows, one aim is to encourage audiences to see the full set.

But 20-plus years of prior knowledge can only get you so far. In order to write about each production succinctly and yet enticingly, I needed to get a grip on what each one was about. The way to do that, of course, was to read the scripts. But a script is only the foundation of a show. It’s what the creative team does with it that really counts, so I also conducted lengthy interviews with the Everyman’s artistic director and associate director (Gemma Bodinetz and Nick Bagnall respectively) to get an idea of what they had in mind for each play.

With the research done, I wrote the required words: four pieces of writing of around 100 words each, all intended to be used in print brochures, online, and as cut-down text in a variety of contexts such as promotional emails.

You can read the finished pieces here: Paint Your Wagon, A Clockwork Orange, Othello, The Big I Am. (And before anyone gets in touch to tell me Othello is referred to as “she”… no, that’s not a typo.)

Paint Your Wagon, Everyman Theatre, LiverpoolA Clockwork Orange, Everyman Theatre, LiverpoolOthello, Everyman Theatre, LiverpoolThe Big I Am, Everyman Theatre, Liverpool

It doesn’t sound like much, does it? Four chunks of 100 words. But the reading, the talking, the thinking and discussing that went into this project – not to mention the years of theatre-going that preceded it – were all key to doing a good job. Effective writing demands a degree of background knowledge, and the only option for a copywriter is to either be an expert, or to become one. Fast.

As I write, the Everyman’s rep season is on sale, with shows running from March until July 2018. How effective my words have been on this occasion is for others to say, but for my part, I’m inordinately proud to have been involved in the venue’s rich theatrical story, and its continuing repertory tale.

And if you’re within reach of Liverpool and you fancy a treat, come and place your bum on one of its seats soon.

 

You can find my 2014 article about the Everyman here, and my 2016 piece about the theatre’s ex-artistic director, Alan Dossor, is here.

 

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Slaters gonna slate: scriptwriting for Llechwedd Slate Caverns

At the beginning of my freelance career I decided to call myself a “copywriter, content creator and creative thinker”. You need something to put on the business cards after all. It alliterates in satisfying fashion and its internal rhythms remind me of the clickety-clank of an old mechanical typewriter. Not that I can remember such things…

But does it really tell the whole story? Well, sort of… assuming you take the catch-all term “content” to mean every kind of writing that isn’t traditional advertising copy. Blogging, journalism, arts reviews… I do all these things and more. They all involve the creative use of language. In this buzz-wordy digital age, they’re all “content”.

And then there’s scriptwriting too. I’ve done my fair share of that.

Video scripts for Toyota, radio ads for MBNA, even short plays performed at theatres such as the Sheffield Crucible and Liverpool Everyman – from shameless sales pieces to serious art, I’ve scripted them all. But one of my most exciting script projects of recent times was completed just a few months ago, and the end product was finally launched at the end of March in the same week as my first freelance anniversary.

Llechwedd Slate Caverns is a historical visitor attraction sunk deep into the mountains below Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales. Since 1972, the caverns have been telling the story of the Welsh slate mining industry, welcoming visitors into the chilly voids 500 feet below ground and leading them through these spectacular man-made spaces.

The new deep mine tour at Llechwedd Slate Caverns scripted by Damon Fairclough.

In June 2015 I went along to the caverns to experience the tour for myself. I learnt that the old audio-visual technology – equipment which had done sterling service in aid of the Llechwedd story for a number of years – was going to be replaced by some far more up-to-date kit. And I was invited to develop a new script for the Llechwedd deep mine tour – a story that would bring the slate miners’ tales to life and help create an emotional bond between the present and the past.

Whether writing for TV, film, radio or stage – or slate mine – scriptwriting is often a matter of working as creatively as possible within parameters established by budget and technical capability. In this case, the project was being managed by Anthony Roberts of ZED Creative, who talked me through plans for high quality projections, animations, audio and augmented reality – all offering a world of possibilities – balanced by restrictions on where certain equipment could be placed, time limits and so on. The aim was to develop a visitor experience that would be both educational and seriously entertaining – something that would live long in each visitor’s memory while never skimping on the historical facts.

Once I knew how many caverns were involved and where certain activities had to be located, I could begin to add some storytelling flesh to the technical bones. My story would be set in 1856, seven years after slate was discovered at Llechwedd. After travelling down into the caverns via the steepest cable railway in Britain, visitors would follow the voices and images of a single slate mining family; by listening to these individual experiences and witnessing some vivid visual effects, I hoped that the Llechwedd story would come alive like no other tour of its kind.

I’m not going to give away any details about what we achieved, as like any decent drama, much of the pleasure lies in discovering the surprises for yourself. You can find Llechwedd Slate Caverns on a map here, and no doubt Google will be able to tell you the best route from your house. But rest assured, there are surprises. Quite a few of them in fact. There’s also a lot of cutting-edge equipment – and I don’t mean the blades they used to finish off the roof slates. Projection screens, iPads, explosions and smoke effects – they all play their part in telling the tale I wrote.

This fresh new deep mine tour opened to the public on March 23 this year, but like some kind of velvet-rope-dodging hanger-on, I was there the previous day for the VIP launch. There was still a little last minute nipping and tucking under way – as expected for such a technically complex underground installation – but I was shivering with pride as I emerged into the deep dark world of the first cavern and heard – and saw! – my miners come alive for the very first time.

And that’s the thing about scriptwriting. When I completed my part in this project, the script was just words on a screen. But in the subsequent months, those words were filtered through the creative minds of actors, video makers, animators, sound engineers and audio-visual experts, and only by experiencing the tour in those atmospheric underground tunnels can you actually understand what my carefully constructed words have now become.

So if any readers do make it to Llechwedd, I’d love to hear what you think. And you can speak freely, because like most copywriters, when it comes to taking criticism I have a thick skin.

I definitely hope you enjoy it. But I’m not afraid of being slated.

The new deep mine tour at Llechwedd Slate Caverns scripted by Damon Fairclough.

 

Images and videos by Anthony Roberts/ZED Creative.

 

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Human after all: how a copywriter’s dream came true

When I took the first steps on my freelance copywriting journey back in March (first steps as a freelancer that is; as an agency copywriter, I’d already circumnavigated the marketing globe) I had a few modest goals in mind.

Naturally, I wanted to do great work for wonderful clients, helping them achieve big things through the power of well-picked words. I also quite fancied seeing inside a bunch of agencies and businesses having previously been at the same desk for <mumble mumble> years. And, ultimately, I hoped to earn enough cash to ensure that beans-on-toast remained a snack rather than a staple, and to afford the odd bottle of very strong, eccentrically-hopped craft ale.

Modesty and/or shame forbid me from detailing the ways in which I may or may not have hit these targets, so instead, let me round off 2015 by talking about one project I would never have dared hope might come my way.

The Human approach

Sheffield’s Human Studio is one of the creative outfits I’ve followed from afar for years. Another would be the unfeasibly influential Designers Republic – the same studio where Human founder Nick Bax worked for 17 years. Another favourite of mine is Build, founded by Mike and Nicky Place after Mike left, erm, the Designers Republic. There’s a theme, certainly.

Human Studio badges

I say I’ve followed Human from afar, but in fact it has sometimes been from quite close. When I created a sci-fi backstory for the Sheffield electronic music label Central Processing Unit, it was Human who were creating the label’s super-minimal branding. I’d met Nick Bax too, once upon a lifetime ago, when I was creative writer at the games developer Psygnosis, and the Designers Republic were working with us on the game Wipeout.

But although we were known to each other, Nick Bax’s email in June this year still came as a surprise. He wanted to know if I was interested in working with Human on a project – an exhibition catalogue springing from their work with a gallery in Tokyo.

As an ad industry professional, I felt I should perhaps remain calm and measured in my response. As a hopeless fanboy, I felt I should perform the email equivalent of a high-five while simultaneously punching the air.

Guess which side of me won.

Sheffield to Tokyo

The job was briefed one memorable afternoon in July when I travelled to Human HQ in Sheffield’s Park Hill flats. (I could take this story down another diversion at this point, as those flats have exercised my thoughts on many occasions over the years, not least in this recent interview with the painter Mandy Payne.) Nick explained that they were planning to create a collection of 3D objects for the exhibition – sculptures I suppose – but that instead of transporting them to Tokyo by air or sea, the objects would be sent as digital files to be 3D printed at an event in the Calm & Punk gallery.

3D objects by Human Studio

So what was required for the introduction to the Human catalogue? Nick was pleasingly, yet also worryingly, vague. I inferred that he didn’t want a conventional studio biography or ‘explanation’ of what the work was about, and that was a good thing. On the other hand I felt the tantalising creative terror that comes when you know something is expected of you, but you’re not entirely sure that you’ll be able to work out what it is.

However, all the best projects begin that way, and my thoughts were duly set in motion.

I won’t detail the night sweats, mood swings and general creative thrashing around that accompanied my efforts to come up with an executable idea. Suffice to say, I delivered the goods on time and, six or so weeks later, I had colonised the first six pages of the exhibition catalogue, in English with side-by-side Japanese translation.

The storytelling urge

My piece was a short story about matter transference – or rather, about the way that the transfer of physical objects between Sheffield and Tokyo might evolve over the years. It took the form of three conversations: the first was concerned with events 40 years ago when a friend’s dad brought a calculator back from Japan; the second detailed Human’s use of 3D printing in the present day; the third speculated about where this technology may lead – in this fictional case, to the transference of humans at the press of a button.

Sheffield>>>Tokyo+<3 catalogue cover, Human Studio

The exhibition, called SHEFFIELD>>>TOKYO+<3, took place in October 2015: the files were delivered, the objects were printed, the gallery put them on display. The catalogue is slim and seductive; it is beautifully designed, of course, and adds context without over-explanation. If the objects and their mode of delivery raise questions, the catalogue doesn’t answer them; rather, it raises a few questions of its own.

For me, working with Human Studio and creating this piece remains one of 2015’s biggest thrills. Had I allowed myself to believe that work like this might come my way, it’s exactly the kind of job I’d have dreamt up. It’s my hope that this kind of storytelling – not a world away from the kind of work I was doing 20 years ago with Psygnosis – feeds back into every project I’m involved with, as even the most functional copy can come alive when you add a little storytelling magic.

As I said, that’s my hope. It’s for my clients to decide whether it’s what I achieve. But it’s what I’ll continue striving for as my professional odyssey continues in 2016, and my tentative freelance steps become giant creative strides.

Sheffield>>>Tokyo+<3 catalogue, Human Studio

 

You can read more of my words about Sheffield’s Designers Republic here.

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In the beginning was the… erm… something (fill this in later)

Everything has to start somewhere.

A football match starts with a whistle. The universe started with a bang. And this blog’s moment of genesis will occur when I finally click the button that says Publish.

For my first post, a little introduction: my name is Damon Fairclough and I live in Liverpool. I’m a freelance copywriter and content creator, not to mention feature writer, script writer, arts writer, music writer… shall we just say ‘writer’ and be done with it? I’ve been doing all these things for a long time except for the freelance bit, which I only started around six months ago. That’s why this website and blog are quite new. They still creak like virgin shoes; they still smell like fresh paint.

I already have lots of writing online, particularly on my own archive site, Noise Heat Power, and on the arts and culture webzine Northern Soul. However, this blog is a little different as it will focus on my role as a professional copywriter, producing words designed to sell sell sell – or at least to communicate a client’s message and motivate an audience into action. Maybe I’ll talk about current work or perhaps I’ll touch on stuff I’ve done in the past. In fact, both seem likely. And no doubt I’ll also go off at a tangent into areas that don’t seem directly related.

Don’t worry though. Whatever I write about will be related, because creative thinking doesn’t have boundaries. Or it shouldn’t do. All I’m saying is, when I start rattling on about techno and theatre and concrete, don’t stop me.

It all matters, you see.

It’s all words.

At which point, we’ve reached the end of the beginning. Finally, it’s time to get things underway.

*click*

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