好的商务写作永不过时

    很难确切地说，我最早是在什么时候开始认定，每位商界人士都应该学一学写作之道，但很可能是因为我又一次看到已经修改到第四稿、却依然毫无说服力的PowerPoint文件，一稿一稿地改只是出于流程的需要。这些文件如此空洞无力，以至于我都开始怀疑，是不是有人密谋把微软（Microsoft）Office兜售给百年新闻老店道琼斯（Dow Jones）。

    翻阅《文案之书：全球顶尖广告文案的写作之道》（The Copy Book: How Some of the Best Advertising Writers in the World Write Their Advertising），我深以为然。由艺术书籍出版商Taschen于去年年底出版的这本书随性地介绍了商业沟通的实战指南。第一条经验就是：简短。

    但如果你初初翻看书中所举的广告案例，可能会感觉“推崇简洁”有些言不由衷。很多案例都让人想起长文案时期，一整页杂志广告可能长达400字，或者差不多是一般专栏版文章长度的一半。换言之，它可比Tweet长多了。但400字并不是随意拼凑而成，整个文案撰稿流程非常严谨，可以说那是个更尊重读者时间的年代（时至今日，可能一个人一天就能发18条微博，哦，对了，微博确实简短。）

    全球一些顶尖广告文案在书中现身说法，强调文案撰稿流程的出现是因为当年他们总是时刻担心失去读者。苹果公司（Apple）著名的“1984”广告的创意人史蒂夫•海顿称，他刚刚入行，就被灌输了一种观点，即受众的注意力很容易转移、立场暧昧且心怀敌意：“不管文案多么拙劣，4%的读者还是会浏览70%的正文。你的工作就是要提升这一比例。”

    他们反复斟酌用词，想象中的读者更多是吹毛求疵，而非心怀崇敬。Collett Dickenson Pearce广告公司前文案主管托尼•布林戈尔称，如果对自己手头的文案没底，他就会自问：“如果去参加酒会，我会不会主动走到一个陌生人跟前，和她说这些话？如果她饶有兴趣、莞尔一笑或听得津津有味，我就会接着写。如果她的视线开始越过我的肩头，或者伸手去拿花生，我就得推倒重来。”史蒂夫•哈里森在书中表示，直邮背景令他深知从第一个词就吸引眼球的重要性：“我们开始写标题，希望能产生这样的效果‘老天，很有意思，请接着说。’”（第二条经验：有趣。）   

    令人意外的是书中提到的很多优秀文案并不看重精致华丽的语言。“在某种意义上，我对字词不感兴趣，”戴维•艾伯特称。“我认为字词服务于观点，总体上我喜欢平实、简单和通俗的语言。”阿尔弗雷德•马肯托尼奥更是简要地阐明了他对华丽辞藻的不信任感：“小心形容词，”他警告说。“他们并不总能起到预想的效果。”

    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."