The best place to find insight is far away from the specific niche you’re studying. Curious creatives don’t get their biggest insights from an art course or a writing seminar… they find inspiration in seemingly unrelated subject, leveraging those insights to make their creations more dynamic.
Since starting my freelance copywriting journey, I’ve been needing to relearn this. Often, great ad writers learn their biggest lessons from something totally unrelated to ads or even marketing! And the best marketers learn quickly how to broaden their horizons and find copywriting lessons anywhere.
Recently, my top copywriting lessons have come from sitcoms. The more I dive into a TV writer’s process, the more “gold nuggets” I find to apply to my copy flow.
Marta Kauffman, one of the main writers of the hit show F.R.I.E.N.D.S, has been my source of insight in the past few months. (Yes, I’ve watched all 10 seasons of the show since November of 2020 as I try to dig into the “behind the scenes” of such a timeless show.)
Learn from the best, right? The fact that teens still wear shirts with the F.R.I.E.N.D.S logo even though the show ended in 2004 is proof enough that there are hidden writing insights to be learned from the show.
Here are the top lessons I’ve learned about writing from Marta Kauffman (and from the show).
Understand your audience.
Marta says the main goal of the show was to capture the post-college time in life “when your friends are your family”. To do this, she and her co-writer David Crane thought back to their 20s, sourced insight from other 20-somethings around them, and put themselves in 20-year-old shoes as much as possible.
That’s the mindset it takes to build relatable ads as well. Creating a customer avatar, building a foundational outline, and writing emotion-packed copy all require you as a writer to dig deep into the emotions of your target audience and find what’s most valuable to them.
The best writing captures more than one emotion.
So many scenes in F.R.I.E.N.D.S make you want to laugh and cry at the same time (or within seconds of each other.) Some scenes hit on comedy and insecurity; others mix a sad moment with a joke.
Take, for instance, Ross and Rachel’s “we were on a break” saga. While we all laugh at the stubbornness with which they cling to their differing opinions, we also identify quickly with the emotion involved in the situation. (Looking on, it seems like a minor issue. But living it out makes it a whole different story.)
Great writing (and by extension great ad writing) hinges on more than one emotion. It mixes comedy with hard-hitting subjects. It take a light moment and finds something deep about it. It tugs at the reader’s heartstrings while simultaneously making them smile.
Rewriting is the most important key to great writing.
F.R.I.E.N.D.S was a multi-camera show filmed live in front of an audience. Often, the writers had to adjust the story on the fly when the audience didn’t respond as intended, or if a particularly popular moment made itself clear.
Marta Kauffman openly shares the writing schedule from the show, and it’s intense. The team would go through 4-5 rewrites in a single week before the final take of an episode would be filmed at the end of each week.
The same thing goes for great ad writing. Get feedback. Let your writing rest and take another stab at it. Be zealous about cutting the fluff and filler words.
If TV writers can create successful 20 minute scripts with diligent editing processes, you can make a successful ad using the same strategies.
It’s better to have a great storyline than to be clever.
Funny lines are no good if they don’t have a strong framework. The problem with most beginner copywriters is they try to be clever (yeah, I’m talking about myself here) before they nail the fundamentals of the ad they’re writing.
F.R.I.E.N.D.S has many funny lines, but the reason people come back to the show is that each episode sticks to a foundational storyline. And the entire show follows a broader plot of friendship and growth that everyone can relate to on some level!
Be funny. It’s a good skill to have. But don’t even try to think about being clever until you’ve been clear.
Solve a problem for your audience. That’s all.
The timing of F.R.I.E.N.D.S was one of the reasons it rose to the #1 sitcom in America. When the American world turned upside down after 9/11, the show brought comfort to a hurting country.
While many shows are rightly created to make you feel uncomfortable (before resolving the issue), F.R.I.E.N.D.S was intentionally created to symbolize comfort. It perfectly solved the pain the American people faced during trying months of turmoil.
Ironically, that’s the whole point of a great ad! In the end, all your ad needs to do is solve a problem for someone. End of story.
Strong characters breathe life into your words.
Marta talks about the development of the characters- many of the scenes the writers had scripted out couldn’t come to life until the actors filled their roles. (Joey wasn’t “slow” in the writers’ original portrayal of him. But Matt LeBlanc turned him into the lovable, heartfelt character we all know.)
“Know your avatar” everyone says, but many ad writers don’t take into consideration just how important a well-developed customer avatar is!
A business’ avatar is exactly like the protagonist in a great TV show- the more developed the personality, likes, dislikes, thoughts, and feelings of your avatar are, the better you’ll be able to write a relatable ad for your customers.
SHOW, don’t tell.
F.R.I.E.N.D.S is noteworthy because of all the visual aids in the story. The coffee house, the time they switched apartments, and “ugly naked guy” are all examples of superb visual cues. Another example is the prom episode when Rachel takes a whole 15(?) seconds of valuable TV time to walk the w-h-o-l-e way across the room to kiss Ross.
Viewers understand something by those visual moments that can’t be described by any words in the script. It has to be SHOWN.
Creating word pictures and leveraging visual aids is one of the most sophisticated levels of great writing – when you know how to allow your reader to see the vision you’re portraying in an ad, you’ll get farther by a few descriptive words than you could if you’d write a million words to describe your product.
You can’t take the “you” out of your writing.
Marta and her cowriter David Crane readily admit that each character in the show involve pieces of them.
I thought this insight was interesting. The truth is, no matter how hard you try to separate yourself from your writing, your voice and personality will always bleed through.
You can allow this to be a crutch for you as a copywriter, or you can leverage it. Many great copywriters have been known for buying the product they’re selling and immersing themselves into the market for months before writing the final direct response piece.
You can’t take yourself out of what you’re writing. Leverage that!
You’re stronger when you work with others.
A common concept in TV writing is the “writers’ room” where all the writers get together to pitch ideas, edit scripts, and work together on other aspects of the writing process.
I’m not saying freelance copywriters need to have a partner. I AM saying your writing will exponentially grow if you surround yourself with other great writers. (At Copy Chief, where I’m a Community Leader, our motto is “nobody writes alone” – and for good reason.)
Feedback. Mentorship. Critiques. All of these are essential to taking your writing to the next level!
The best writing takes the obvious and turns it into something new.
I love that F.R.I.E.N.D.S takes the simplest moments and finds something amusing. Take, for instance, this scene where Rachel gets her first paycheck:
We all know how this feels. We all cringe when we see how much actually goes out in taxes. But when Rachel says, “This is… so NOT worth it!” that simple line makes the whole scene so much more funny and relatable.
I’ve learned so much just from listening to Marta talk about her writing. Who knew a sitcom would give me so much writing juice?
My resources for this post:
- 10 seasons of F.R.I.E.N.D.S (duh)
- I’ll Be There For You: A Conversation on Friends(hips) with Marta Kauffman (Austin Film Festival)
- Marta Kauffman, Writing the Great American Sitcom (Wesleyan University)