"I have a dream" (See below)

Hidden Costs #3: Foregone returns

... because creative is bland, me-too (client allowed to dictate creative, work done by inhouse creatives, agency unable to sell the creative, etc.);

... because no offer/proposition included to stimulate response;

... because distribution inadequate;

... because channels not 'greased' with promotion/communication to alert their customer-facing staff;

... because there is no brand discipline so exposure of campaign does not increase the asset value of the brand.

COPY SCHOOL IS IN!

Speechifying, not.

Writing copy is not like writing a speech. Even though a speech is vocalised. The difference between speech-writing and copywriting is the level of intimacy which means talking in the ear of one person, not standing on a soapbox.

Speeches can be powerful, but they rely on the human dynamic of proximity to others while consuming the message to give them their strength.

For instance, here is one of the most powerful speeches in history: The Gettysburg Address by President Abraham Lincoln.
It self-consciously speechifies. Compare it to the words of Martin Luther king where he deaprts from the script and speaks directly to the people as if to a single person.

THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

MARTIN LUTHER KING March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom — August 28, 1963

I have a dream... that one day... this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream... that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream... that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.