“I want you to meet someone,” said Bruce Gelb. 

He was speaking to a man in a suit.

In the 1960s, Gelb was the president of Clairol, the beauty products company. 

“Meet Phyllis Robinson,” he said. “She invented the ‘Me Generation!’”

Back then, Robinson was the Lead Copywriter at Doyle Dane Bernbach, the renowned ad agency.

Months earlier, she pitched Gelb on an idea, a marketing campaign she thought would increase sales of Clairol’s “Nice’n Easy” hair coloring by tapping into what she called the ‘Me Generation.’

“It had something to do with just connecting,” she later explained in an interview. “You know, people connecting with each other. I suppose they were getting the message: ‘Hey, somebody recognizes ME!’”

She called the campaign, “It lets me be me.”

It was a profound success.

The man in the suit shook Robinson’s hand.

“Pleasure to meet you, Phyllis,” he said. “Tell me, how did you think of the ‘Me Generation’ idea? How did you invent it?”

“I didn’t,” she smiled. “The ‘Me Generation’ was already there — and I just recognized it, and I pointed it out to Bruce, and I showed him the signs of it.”

And therein lies a crucial copywriting lesson that will save you untold time and grief:

Rather than CREATE a mood, good copy can instead REFLECT a mood. 

In other words, a copywriter shouldn’t always be expected to invent concepts that *manufacture* a feeling. Because it's not always necessary. 

Sometimes that feeling — that mood — is already there, all around, omnipotent and omnipresent. It's there but, at once, completely undefined — and therein lies the opportunity.

As a copywriter, you need not always create.

Sometimes it’s enough to just recognize a silent shift in your audience's worldview, and then put it into words we can all understand. 

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Enjoy!

Eddie Shleyner
VeryGoodCopy, founder

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