A colleague of mine recently shared this article by Adweek’s Mark Wnek, titled “Bad-Writing Syndrome Goes Viral.” It perfectly captures one of the dilemmas facing online presentation: timeliness vs. quality. As a writer, working for companies that preach to “just get the content up now, we’ll fix it later,” makes me cringe. As Wnek points out, that devaluing of the creative aspect of viral marketing is increasing, to the point where creativity is seen more as a necessary evil than as a vital part of the process:
“In the new-fangled new-media digital social-networking consumer-generated do-it-yourself universe that everyone seems so desperate to be seen to be espousing, great writing seems to be quite some way down the line of essentials … But in our business, the fundamentally gifted creators and judges, the people who simply know what is precisely terrific, seem to be out of style. Very much in style are ROI and proprietary tools and dashboards and black boxes and new media—none of which matter if the writing is garbage.”
Wnek uses the example of the “Fat Kids Are Harder To Kidnap” line to show that even the proliferation of trendy T-shirts results in only a couple of gems amidst a ton of charcoal.
So what’s the answer? If you’re a writer, you’re used to being underpaid and unheard anyway, so keep your head down, churn out that copy and ask no questions. If you’re a developer, try to remember that sometimes just a handful of finely place words can make more of an impact than even the zippiest of new Flash animations.
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