There’s a special kind of frustration reserved for people who have to read product descriptions for a living.

You know the ones: “Our innovative solution leverages synergistic capabilities to optimize your customer journey experience.”

Which is why talking to Dave Harland—the self-styled “Word Man” who runs Copy or Die—felt like finding actual food in a world of processed marketing gruel.

The anti-guru who does the work

Twenty years in the word business. Started in journalism, moved through in-house gigs, freelancing, and now runs an agency with the kind of name that makes HR departments a bit nervous.

Dave’s got that combination of technical chops earned in trenches and enough irreverence to call out an industry that’s forgotten how to talk like humans.

His superpower? “Being really good at finding the most appropriate words or putting letters in the right order.”

No mention of “ideation” or “narrative architecture” or any of the other linguistic gymnastics that passes for expertise these days.

The fundamental truth

Here’s the thing that’ll make every brand manager uncomfortable: people don’t care about your features. They care about one thing—what’s in it for them?

Dave breaks this down with precision. Features are what your thing does. Benefits are how it improves someone’s actual life. The distance between those two concepts is the difference between making money and shouting into the void.

Take his example of LED bike balls. (Yes, that’s a real product. Yes, it looks exactly like you think.)

The manufacturer’s copy? Technical specs about silicone housing and battery life. Dave’s version? “It takes balls to get on a bike at night, but these balls could actually save your life.”

One makes you think about lumens. The other makes you not want to become roadkill.

Most copy sounds like it was written by robots

Most brands just copy-paste manufacturer descriptions. It’s like serving microwave dinners at a restaurant and wondering why nobody comes back.

Dave’s seen this problem up close: “Retailers tend to take the manufacturers details… they’re just lots and lots of facts, lots of information.”

The result? Copy that reads like it was written by someone who’s never actually used the product, for people who don’t exist.

The fix isn’t complicated. Get your hands on the actual thing. Feel what it’s like. Understand who’s buying it and why. Then write like you’re explaining it to a friend.

The estate agent who cracked the code

Want to see distinctiveness in action? Dave told me about Leslie Hooks, an estate agent who writes Shakespeare puns about street names.

“Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou Romeo? It’ll be a tragedy if you miss out on this one.”

Cringey? Absolutely. Effective? Dave started checking Rightmove just to see what terrible pun they’d come up with next.

That’s the point. In a sea of “delighted to bring to market this period property,” they chose to be ridiculous. Most people hate it. But the ones who don’t? They become customers who actually enjoy the buying process instead of enduring it.

(And isn’t choosing your own weirdness better than being generically forgettable?)

The McDonald’s lesson

McDonald’s might be better at copy than your brand. They don’t get cute. They don’t overthink. Big Mac photo. “Mmm.” Done.

Meanwhile, KFC and Burger King are playing wordsmith, crafting clever campaigns that win awards and lose sales. McDonald’s plants seeds in your brain with ruthless simplicity and watches competitors disappear.

“Sometimes the best way to sell a horse is to say horse for sale,” Dave notes. When your product and benefit are clear, trying to be clever ruins everything.

The research gold mine

You want to know how customers really talk about your stuff? Stop asking them what they think in surveys. Read their actual words—reviews, social media, complaints they post when they think you’re not listening.

Dave found gold in customer interviews for handmade clocks: “These are the unguiltiest pleasure of my day.”

Not focus-grouped. Not workshopped. Real human language expressing genuine feeling.

That phrase became part of the product copy. Because sometimes the best marketing is just amplifying what people already say when they think no one’s listening.

Why your subject lines don’t work

“So many times I work with a brand and they go, ‘Oh, such and such writes the subject lines.’ I’m like, ‘That’s the most important bit.’”

Think about it. You craft the perfect email. Polish every paragraph. Agonize over the call-to-action. Then slap on a subject line that makes people’s delete finger twitch.

Eighty cents of your dollar, Ogilvy said. If the headline doesn’t work, nothing else matters. Yet brands treat subject lines like afterthoughts, written by whoever’s got five minutes.

The truth about emotion

Every marketer claims they’re “leading with emotion.” Then they write copy that isn’t very lively.

The reality is stark: if people don’t feel something after reading your first line, they won’t read your second. Not “something positive.” Just something. Curiosity. Amusement. Even mild irritation beats complete indifference.

Dave’s test is brutal in its simplicity: How will this solve my problems? What’s in it for me? So what? If your opening doesn’t answer at least two of those questions, you’ve already lost.

The Bramwell Brown transformation

Want to see benefits thinking in action? Dave worked with handmade clock maker Bramwell Brown, who’d been describing their products a more plainly: “Invest in the classic design. Our original and most popular clock.”

After getting his hands on the actual product (massive, beautifully crafted, worth every penny of £400+), Dave rewrote it: “Bring the wholesome feelings from childhood back into your life with this handmade work of art.”

Same clock. Different meaning. One talks about specifications. The other talks about nostalgia, family memories, and creating something worth passing down.

The industry that forgot how to talk

Twenty years of watching brands sanitize their personalities into beige nothingness, and Dave’s still fighting the good fight. Teaching companies that distinctiveness isn’t dangerous—it’s the only thing that matters when everyone sells the same stuff.

Most agencies will nod along to your brief, cash your check, and deliver copy that offends nobody and moves nobody. Dave’s built a business on the radical idea that making some people laugh is better than making everyone yawn.

In a world where “leveraging synergies to optimize engagement” passes for communication, maybe what we need is more people willing to write about unusual bike lights with a straight face.

Because at least then someone’s paying attention.

This article was written with the assistance of AI.