Putting Big Ideas into Concise Copy

Break it Down to the Basics
Copywriters are often given the task of taking a grand idea and putting it into a clear, concise message.

This can be extremely difficult—especially if the whole picture can’t be wrapped up nicely in a few sentences. It’s up to the copywriter to flesh out the most important points and put them back together in a cohesive way.

An exercise in explanations

To get better at digesting big or complex ideas, distill them down into the benefits. Here’s an example. The product is a vegan leather handbag.

It has several core benefits that make it appealing to consumers:
  • No animals were harmed
  • It’s made with sustainable practices
  • It’s durable
  • It’s fashion-oriented

When you break something down into its benefits, it doesn’t matter what the product is—now, you have the things that make it special.

​You can talk about them specifically, instead of trying to explain the larger concept. For this example, you don’t need to explain what vegan leather is to sell the handbag—you just have to explain what makes it unique. 
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Good copywriters will learn to do this for anything they’re writing about. It’s the easiest way to put big ideas into quick, concise benefits.

Talking about the big benefits

We’ll teach you how to distill big ideas down into useable benefits, for more authoritative writing in our Copywriting 101 course.