????很難確切地說，我最早是在什么時候開始認(rèn)定，每位商界人士都應(yīng)該學(xué)一學(xué)寫作之道，但很可能是因為我又一次看到已經(jīng)修改到第四稿、卻依然毫無說服力的PowerPoint文件，一稿一稿地改只是出于流程的需要。這些文件如此空洞無力，以至于我都開始懷疑，是不是有人密謀把微軟（Microsoft）Office兜售給百年新聞老店道瓊斯（Dow Jones）。

????翻閱《文案之書：全球頂尖廣告文案的寫作之道》（The Copy Book: How Some of the Best Advertising Writers in the World Write Their Advertising），我深以為然。由藝術(shù)書籍出版商Taschen于去年年底出版的這本書隨性地介紹了商業(yè)溝通的實戰(zhàn)指南。第一條經(jīng)驗就是：簡短。

????但如果你初初翻看書中所舉的廣告案例，可能會感覺“推崇簡潔”有些言不由衷。很多案例都讓人想起長文案時期，一整頁雜志廣告可能長達(dá)400字，或者差不多是一般專欄版文章長度的一半。換言之，它可比Tweet長多了。但400字并不是隨意拼湊而成，整個文案撰稿流程非常嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)，可以說那是個更尊重讀者時間的年代（時至今日，可能一個人一天就能發(fā)18條微博，哦，對了，微博確實簡短。）

????全球一些頂尖廣告文案在書中現(xiàn)身說法，強(qiáng)調(diào)文案撰稿流程的出現(xiàn)是因為當(dāng)年他們總是時刻擔(dān)心失去讀者。蘋果公司（Apple）著名的“1984”廣告的創(chuàng)意人史蒂夫?海頓稱，他剛剛?cè)胄校捅还噍斄艘环N觀點(diǎn)，即受眾的注意力很容易轉(zhuǎn)移、立場曖昧且心懷敵意：“不管文案多么拙劣，4%的讀者還是會瀏覽70%的正文。你的工作就是要提升這一比例。”

????他們反復(fù)斟酌用詞，想象中的讀者更多是吹毛求疵，而非心懷崇敬。Collett Dickenson Pearce廣告公司前文案主管托尼?布林戈爾稱，如果對自己手頭的文案沒底，他就會自問：“如果去參加酒會，我會不會主動走到一個陌生人跟前，和她說這些話？如果她饒有興趣、莞爾一笑或聽得津津有味，我就會接著寫。如果她的視線開始越過我的肩頭，或者伸手去拿花生，我就得推倒重來。”史蒂夫?哈里森在書中表示，直郵背景令他深知從第一個詞就吸引眼球的重要性：“我們開始寫標(biāo)題，希望能產(chǎn)生這樣的效果‘老天，很有意思，請接著說。’”（第二條經(jīng)驗：有趣。）???

??? 令人意外的是書中提到的很多優(yōu)秀文案并不看重精致華麗的語言。“在某種意義上，我對字詞不感興趣，”戴維?艾伯特稱。“我認(rèn)為字詞服務(wù)于觀點(diǎn)，總體上我喜歡平實、簡單和通俗的語言。”阿爾弗雷德?馬肯托尼奧更是簡要地闡明了他對華麗辭藻的不信任感：“小心形容詞，”他警告說。“他們并不總能起到預(yù)想的效果。”

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????It's hard to say exactly when I first decided that everyone in business should study the art of copywriting, but it was probably upon being presented with yet another PowerPoint deck four times as long as it needed to be and wholly unpersuasive. The rhetorical power of these documents are typically so underwhelming that I began to wonder if anyone had plotted sales of Microsoft Office against the Dow Jones.

????Browsing through The Copy Book: How Some of the Best Advertising Writers in the World Write Their Advertising convinced me. Released by art book publisher Taschen late last year, The Copy Book is an inadvertent how-to for crafting business communications. Lesson one: Keep it short.

????This premium placed on brevity seems hypocritical when you first glance at the ads reproduced in the book. Many hark back to the age of long copy, when a full-page magazine ad might run to 400 words, or just over half the length of an average op-ed column. A great deal longer than a Tweet, in other words. But the copywriters' process for arriving at 400 words was so rigorous that one could argue it represented a higher valuation of the reader's time. (And by the time someone has Tweeted 18 times a day, well, there goes concision.)

????To a person, the copywriters quoted in the book stress that the process emerged because they lived in perpetual fear of losing their reader. Steve Hayden, creator of Apple's (AAPL) "1984" ad, remarked that the truth of an easily distracted, borderline hostile audience was drilled into him from his earliest days in the business: "Four percent of the readership will slog through 70% of body copy no matter how bad it is. Your job is to beat those odds."

????They subjected the words to intense scrutiny and imagined an audience predisposed more toward contempt than admiration. Tony Brignull, former head of copywriting at Collett Dickenson Pearce, claims that if he had doubts about copy he was working on, he'd ask himself "would I walk up to a stranger at a drinks party and say these words to her? If she's interested, amused, engaged, I write on. If she starts looking over my shoulder or reaching for the peanuts I start again." Steve Harrison remarks in the book that a background in direct mail helped him understand the importance of hooking people from word one: "We set out to write headlines that elicited the response 'bloody hell, that's interesting, tell me more.'" (Lesson two: Be interesting.)

??? Surprisingly, many of these copywriters are remarkably unsentimental about language. "In a sense I am not interested in words," comments David Abbott. "Words, for me, are the servants of the argument and on the whole I like them to be plain, simple and familiar." Alfredo Marcantonio put his distrust of flourishes more succinctly: "Beware of adjectives," he warns. "They don't always do what you think."???

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