Keep a cut file

Every project has one. A line in the deck that comes out in round two for being too niche, or too blunt, or too much about one thing. It goes, the copy gets a little broader, everyone agrees the new version is safer. They’re usually right that it’s safer.

It’s also usually where the brand was.

Why the specific line goes first

Broadening is the easiest move available in a review. Nobody has ever been told off for making a claim less exposed. A sentence that commits to something has an edge on it, somebody in the room will catch on that edge, and out it comes. Do that four rounds running and you have copy nobody objects to and nobody finishes.

The instinct behind it isn’t stupid. It’s the same caution that keeps a company out of trouble everywhere else. It’s just being pointed at the one piece of work whose job is to be different from the others.

The file

Ours is one document per project, and anything cut for being too specific goes into it. Not everything cut. Plenty of copy comes out because it’s bad, and that stays out. Only the lines that came out for being too much.

By the end of a project that file is short and it usually has the good stuff in it, for a fairly boring reason: the only lines that make a review nervous are the ones that commit to something.

Nobody has ever been told off for making a claim less exposed. That’s the whole problem.

Putting one back

You don’t put it back as written. It came out for a reason, and often the reason was that it hadn’t been earned yet, a claim with nothing behind it. So you go and find the proof, work out what the line commits you to, and check whether the company is happy being the version of itself that sentence describes.

Sometimes it isn’t, and the line stays cut. More often it is, and the thing that felt exposed in a review turns out to be the only part anyone repeats back to you afterwards. The broad version was safe in the room and invisible outside it.