I’m a copy/content writer working with one of Lagos’ top-tier digital marketing agencies, and for some time, my copy for clients kept getting shut down.

Not by the clients, but by my boss. 

My boss is as intelligent as they come. He has an astute mind for marketing, analytics and strategy. Sure, he can string together decent copy and do some decent editing as well. 

But he’s no writer! 

I mean, all it takes is a glance at one line, and I can tell if someone is a writer or not, no matter how seemingly good your copy may be. 

You see, I’ve always felt that writing, in its truest form, goes beyond what can be taught or studied. It may be learned, quite possibly, but for me, its true beauty finds its fullest expression in those who are born with it, steeped in it, in a connection so strong and intimate that each line blurs the divide between your reality and that of the writer’s. 

Each word pulls you into the depths of the writer’s thoughts, caressing your senses, and inviting you to abandon logic and reason for a rhyme expressed not in rhythm, but in the intercourse of mind, ink, words and paper. Gently nudging you to believe in a world where they all exist as one. 

Writing is art. For me, it always has been. 

So when my copy kept falling short of my boss’s expectations, of course I knew who was at fault. Obviously, it had to be him. True, my boss is as smart as they come, but he’s no writer. 

Surely, my job as a copywriter was to pile the client’s end product onto a flat surface and, with a mess of adjectives, verbs and adverbs, begin carving away the less beautiful pieces until what remained was ready for showtime. If that was indeed my job, why the hell did he keep shutting down my sales copy?

Many copywriters, especially those who are writers at heart, will recognise this struggle. You’ve written something beautiful, the sentences flow, the words feel right, and then someone who doesn’t share your flair for the pen, looks at the work and tells you it isn’t doing what it needs to. 

The simple, yet complex answer is this: copywriting is as much an art as it is a science. 

As a writer through and through, I would like to call it simply art. But in a world of information overload and cluttered marketing, I had to recognise that beautiful writing alone could not carry the assignment. 

The copywriter’s job is to engage the reader with words and move them towards a desired action. To make a purchase. Open an account. Sign up. Visit a website. Whatever the marketing objective may be, the words have a job to do. That takes intuition, creativity and a knack for understanding people. It requires the copywriter to step into the customer’s shoes, understand their needs and find the words that make the next step feel relevant, worthwhile and possible. 

This is where ‘The Art’ comes in: the instinct for wordplay, the feel for language, the ability to make someone see a little of themselves in what you’ve written. 

But understanding what works, identifying what makes customers tick and testing how changes in the content influence their response? That is where ‘The Science’ comes in. 

A marketing strategist looks at a copy as one piece of a campaign. It has to fit into the overarching strategy, speak to the intended audience and help achieve a defined objective. Historical data can offer clues about the writing style, tone and choice of words most likely to resonate. 

Testing can help reveal whether those choices actually work. Sometimes, that may mean the simplest line is the strongest one, and the line I wanted to embellish might already have said exactly what the customer needed to hear. This means that lines or phrases the copwriter might have been particularly proud of might have done more for their ego than the campaign. Because as a copywriter, once you’ve fallen in love with a sentence, being asked to remove it can feel like being told to chip the best part off your sculpture. 

Yet the copywriter has to work within the brief. There are word counts, style guides, brand voices and audiences with particular needs. A line can be beautifully written and still sound

nothing like the brand. A paragraph can hold someone’s attention and leave them unsure what to do next. Those things matter. 

So do search intent, buyer psychology and, where relevant, the keywords that help the right people find the content in the first place. 

The more I understood this, the more I understood what my boss was looking for. I was looking at the words I had written. He was looking at the work those words needed to do. 

I still believe writing is art. But I think the real art in copywriting lies in how well you can hide the science. 

In how naturally the customer’s need meets the brand’s promise. In how a carefully considered choice of words feels effortless to the person reading them. In how the next step makes sense without the reader having to work out why. 

Nobody wants to feel they’re being psyched into making a purchase, even when persuasion is part of the exchange. They want to feel understood, they want a reason to care, and they want to know what comes next. 

So if you’ve been having trouble getting your copy approved, take a step back, revisit the brief, familiarise yourself with the science, and then try again.