Happy Holidays, Copywriters.
May your headlines be tight, your clients decisive, and your “quick tweaks” limited to under three rounds.
May your eggnog be strong, your
briefs be short, and your inbox mercifully quiet until January.
If nothing else, remember: Santa believes in you. He’s been
A/B testing messaging for centuries and still shows up every year.
Rest your brain. Sharpen your wit. We do this all again in
Q1.
Christmas! The holly-jolly season of joy, cheer, and slowly losing all grip on reality as retail jingles drill directly into your cortex. “Most Wonderful Time of the Year” plays on loop while you develop mall PTSD and wonder how wrapping paper suddenly costs more than rent.
Every commercial wants you to buy a luxury SUV with a bow on
it. A bow. Like someone woke up on Christmas morning and said, “Honey, I
thought socks, a book, and seasonal depression weren’t enough … so I bought you
a car we can’t afford.”
Also, the lights. The lights. I plug in one string
and my house blows a fuse like it’s trying to protect me from holiday optimism.
The neighbor’s display syncs to Trans-Siberian Orchestra and can be seen from
space; mine flickers like a sad interrogation lamp.
And the decorating pressure! If a single pine needle falls,
someone on Instagram will whisper, “Do they even love Christmas?” Yes, I love
Christmas … I’m just losing a silent war with Scotch tape and ribbon
that behaves like it has free will.
Meanwhile, Christmas cookies magically become currency. We
trade them like sugary NFTs of seasonal affection. Here is a tin of baked
love. Cherish it until New Year’s, when we transfer our emotional burdens to
gym memberships.
But ultimately, it’s magical, right? We sit by the glow of tree lights, sip cocoa, and ignore receipts like they can’t hurt us if we don’t look directly at them.
Merry Christmas.
May your gift receipts be long and your tree water not smell like swamp soup by December 26th.
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In my family, we celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah, which basically means December is a festive emotional obstacle course with twice the candles, twice the carbs, and enough decorative lighting to make the neighbors question whether we're trying to signal passing aircraft. It’s chaotic. It’s beautiful. It’s glitter, menorah wax, and cookie crumbs everywhere. And honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Holiday music.
Turn on the radio, walk into a store and you're
surrounded by seasonal tunes: Jingle Bells, Let It Snow, Sleigh
Ride, Feliz Navidad.
But nothing specifically for the marketing community that
has worked so hard to bring Jingling Hershey Kisses, Coca Cola swigging polar
bears, and prancing Budweiser Clydesdales to life to support holiday
consumerism.
Nothing until now.
Grab a mug of hot chocolate and sing along to: "White Christmas (A Copywriter's Carol)"
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Write Christmas (A Copywriter's Carol)
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Behind the music: The goal was to write and produce a
fun holiday song for marketing and advertising folks (focus on the writers) in
the style of the Christmas songs of the 1940s and 1950s. This song was written
by a human and produced with AI-assistance. The AI tools used were trained on
unlicensed/not copyrighted material. The artwork of the snowman working on the
laptop was generated 100% by AI.
Here’s the truth: perfection is smoke. You can’t catch it. You can’t keep it. It’s a mirage somebody’s trying to sell you so you’ll buy their book, or their course, or their cream that promises to make you ten years younger.
Life isn’t marble floors and designer lighting. Life is the chipped mug you drink from every morning because it just feels right in your hand. It’s the dent in your car door from the time you misjudged the mailbox. It’s the day you thought you couldn’t keep going ... and somehow did.
Things break. You break. And that’s not the end of the story. It’s the part that makes the story worth telling.
Take crayons. Snap one in half and it doesn’t lose its purpose. It still makes marks, maybe bigger, maybe bolder, maybe less predictable. The box might look neat and orderly, but it’s the busted crayon that sprawls across the page and leaves a trail you can’t ignore.
People are no different. Scars, mistakes, screw-ups ... those aren’t blemishes on your record, they’re the fingerprints of resilience. Proof you’ve been knocked down and chose to stand back up anyway.
Perfection doesn’t move anyone. It might earn polite applause, but it won’t change a single soul. What does? The jagged edges. The cracks where the light sneaks out. The willingness to keep stepping forward when everything in you says stay down.
That’s what people rally around. That’s what gives somebody else permission to try, to risk, to show up even when they’re terrified of falling flat on their face.
So stop waiting until you’ve got it all figured out. Stop rehearsing for a flawless performance that doesn’t exist. Put your messy, dented, glorious self out there and make a mark.
Because in the end, nobody remembers the perfect ones. They remember the ones who bled, stumbled, laughed in the wrong places, and kept going anyway.
That’s not failure. That’s life.
Most marketers are terrified of saying anything negative about what they sell. They think: “If I point out a flaw, people won’t buy.” ...
