Copywriting and the Portland Principle: Demystifying the Demystification of Hip Creative Marketing (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Norm)
By Eric S. Gregory
Ah, Portland, Oregon. Bluer than the Pacific Ocean—bluer even than the Democratic Party’s collective blood. Where success is measured by how well your comfort and success accord with doing the “right thing.” Where compassion and creativity share a bottom line and an extended vision. Where marketing that bottom line means you capitalize with words like “creative,” “authentic,” “unique,” “independent,” “progressive,” “experimental,” “original,” and so on ad naseum. Where ideas “inevitably overflow outside traditional worlds” [wk.com - Weiden & Kennedy]. Where the “magic” a company has to offer exceeds the product, extending into and is “deeply ingrained in giving back to the community” [www.hannaandersson.com - Hanna Andersson]. Where companies are “as responsible as we are profitable, and committed to doing good with the resources we have” [www.keenfootwear.com - Keen Footwear].
Now I’m not suggesting that these marketing templates and conceptual strategies are strictly located to and from Portland, Oregon. Turn on your on demand digital cable in high def and you’ll quickly recognize many of the same catchphrases, keywords, and “responsible” products calling your name. So is this turn towards a marketing voice rooted in “doing the right thing” (which naturally always includes making a profit) then more of a generalized transnational strategy? Of course it is. But I’d still argue that this trend grew, developed, and was perfected here in Portland, and that at the very least, it’s representative of the marketing moves popularized by the big name Portland success stories. People in Portland are typically very comfortable. The climate and pace of life are almost too moderate. We’re politically progressive (duh), we’re concerned with a balanced quality of life. But most of all, we think ahead. We can live for tomorrow because we’re situated quite well today. And the metropolitan area attracts a certain breed of American: typically young (under 40), college-educated, white—I realize I’m stating the obvious here—but perhaps above all else, Portland attracts “responsible creatives.” And responsible creative types are going to best know how to create, push, and market products to other responsible creative types. We Portland marketers want to sell our product, our brand name, our website, etc. to ourselves (or someone who looks and lives a lot like us).
Now this may not be news to those of us who map and make these strategies. Then again, perhaps it is. I’d suggest that the Portland Principle (a cool phrase invented by my business partner which suggested something, some kind of a general trend—and now here I am filling in that “je ne sais quoi” with a specific definition) has outlived its usefulness. This ultimate consumer—the Columbia Sportswear-clad chick who lives in the condo unit just below you—the one who drives a Subaru outback with the “Keep Portland Weird” and the “Re-Defeat Bush” bumper stickers, who jogs every other morning with Hugo, her Weimaraner, whom you never see on the weekends because she’s out hiking or kayaking or whatever godawful recreation this particular type regularly engages in, who religiously recycles (except for those occasional mornings when she’s way too hungover), who isn’t quite sure whether she’s going to vote for Hilary or Obama because they both seem kind of untrustworthy, but she certainly isn’t going to vote for a “crazy” like Kucinich—or maybe she will. She read something on Salon.com about how he’s attracting more and more deep-thinking twentysomethings and that must mean something, right? Must our copy always be scripted and delivered to the specific needs and impulses of this (completely fictional–and I might add, unimaginatively so) ultimate consumer? I don’t think so. I think people like her are tired—or at the very least—uninspired by copy that relentlessly retreads the same progressive ground over and over and over again (and if a cardboard character like this one is bored by such marketing copy, imagine the response of the woman who actually lives in the condo unit below yours).
I’m hereby throwing down the gauntlet to local and national copywriters and editors. When asked to script the “About” page for your employer or contractor, try not to write that such and such a firm “is an independent, creatively led fill in the blank that creates strong and provocative relationships between good companies and their consumers” [www.wk.com] (I’m picking on Wieden & Kennedy because they, perhaps more than any other Portland-located firm, represent the success of this so-called “Portland Principle,” and because they specialize in original and creative idea-making). I’m not suggesting I have any specific answers or even general directions to move towards aside from a move away from clichés about “caring relationships with communities and the natural world at large.” I’m suggesting that hip will always be shackled by its own localized and temporal attachments. I would like to see smart and successful copywriting move beyond hip. Language is arguably all we have to bend our cages. Let’s use what we’ve got. And let’s all breathe a little. It’s the right thing to do.
Technorati Tags: portland copywriting, seo copywriting, creative marketing, portland principle, seo copywriting portland, copywriting services portland, Optimal Copy, Eric Gregory
June 14th, 2008 at 9:58 am
When the conceit of Esquire’s limping hipness invades Modern Maturity and Family Circle, we know the rut is deep indeed. Progressives have fallen in up to their eyeballs - retread bore-and-snore language that stirs no one. The regurgitation of cardboard from inside the box will go on as long as we embrace being ill-educated, under-read, and fatefully incurious. Apathy in this country is an infectious brain disease and the only fire in our belly is from jalapeno burgers. Stupidity holds sway. What, in God’s brown earth, will it take?
June 14th, 2008 at 10:08 am
When the conceit of Esquire’s limping hipness invades Modern Maturity and Family Circle, we know the rut is deep indeed. Progressives have fallen in up to their eyeballs - retread bore-and-snore language that stirs no one. The regurgitation of cardboard from inside the box will go on as long as we embrace being ill-educated, under-read, and fatefully incurious. Apathy in this country is an infectious brain disease and the only fire in our belly is from jalapena burgers. Stupidity holds sway. What, in God’s brown earth, will it take?
October 9th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Copywriter on “speed” - what happens when emotions are not cooled a bit first.
This should read:
When the conceit of Esquire’s limping hipness invades Modern Maturity and Family Circle, we know the rut is deep indeed. Progressives have fallen in up to their eyeballs - retread bore-and-snore language that stirs no one. The regurgitation of cardboard from inside the box will go on as long as we embrace being ill-educated, under-read, and fatally incurious. Apathy in this country is an infectious brain disease and the only fire in our belly is from jalapeño burgers. Stupidity holds sway. What, in God’s brown earth, will it take?