Websites are visual things – but they'd be nothing without their copy. From the strapline on your landing page to the articles powering your search engine optimisation, copywriting is crucial in convincing your customers to make the call or buy the product you want them to.
Too often, though, copywriting is an afterthought – left to the graphic designer, or knocked together by the person with the best spelling. But when it's done well it can turn a brand into a household name – and here's our ten favourite examples. Hopefully they'll inspire you.
- Think Small (Volkswagen)
A classic strapline. Two words that make the product's obvious weakness – in this case, not being a gas-guzzling muscle car in 1950s America – into its perceived strength. Within a decade the VW Beetle was the hippie car of choice and star of a series of Disney children's films.
- Probably the best lager in the world (Carlsberg)
When short of ideas, a bit of unashamed hyperbole never goes amiss. The "probably" at the start prevents jealous rivals calling in the lawyers and adds a touch of modesty to what is otherwise a simple, big, untrue – and effective – boast.
- Are you ashamed of your English? (unattributed)
Straplines like this started appearing in the 1920s and created a new concept in advertising: fear. Until then, people had only bought things they needed. Fear of social shame (making mistakes with their English, being unable to play piano or not wearing the right deodorant) convinced the world to buy things it never knew it needed, and the advertising industry never looked back.
- A diamond is forever (DeBeers)
How many other straplines have made their way into James Bond titles? A slogan that takes the legendarily hard properties of a diamond's carbon structure and turns it from science to romance.
- Labour isn't working (The Conservative Party)
Saatchi and Saatchi's slogan is so revered that it almost gets sole credit for the Conservatives' 1979 general election win. The three-word pun blamed the government alone for Britain's unemployment problems, made the Labour Party unelectable and kick-started a trend for negative campaigning that continues in politics to this day.
- Have a break – have a KitKat (Rowntrees)
Another punning slogan (KitKat's were generally broken to be eaten) and one that forged an inextricable link between tea-breaks and the biggest-selling chocolate bar to ever come out of York. The slogan simultaneously attributes restorative powers to what is, in effect, a cheap biscuit wafer covered in a thin layer of chocolate. Genius.
- The pause that refreshes (Coca-Cola)
Not as subtle as the KitKat slogan but interesting because of the way it developed through the years. Coca-Cola's first attempt to link itself with refreshment was the hardly inspirational 1904 slogan "Delicious and refreshing". Things didn't improve much with 1924's "Refresh Yourself". The more poetic "The pause that refreshes" came in 1929 before they tried to better it in 1939 with "Whoever you are, whatever you do, wherever you may be, when you think of refreshment, think of ice cold Coca-Cola". They proved that knowing when to stop is half the battle.
- Just do it (Nike)
Possibly the most famous copywriting slogan of the 1980s, "Just Do It" wooed the intense, inwardly focused alpha males of the business world and made them buy sportswear. The Nike brand went stratospheric, and the slogan entered the management lexicon as "JDI" – the ultimate in corporate rank-pulling.
- Vorsprung durch Technik (Audi)
Who says good copy has to be English? No-one understood the phrase, but its industrial German syllables suggested that Audis were a marvel of automotive engineering – and everyone believed it.
- Good to the last drop (Maxwell House)
Despite proclaiming nothing short of mediocrity (who buys "good" when you could have "great"?), the coffee company's copy worked because someone always had to ask what was wrong with the last drop. It entered popular consciousness and that was that.
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