A soul-searching question popped up on Reddit a few days ago:
“Would you write copy for a political cause you don’t believe in?”
To which I replied — I already have.
And I enjoyed it.
The story is that back in 2015, when the election was ramping up, I was hired to write some fundraising copy for an organization backing Bernie Sanders.
That went well, and so I got hired for a second job, writing fundraising copy for organization backing Trump.
And then Hillary.
And even Lyin’ Ted Cruz.
Altogether, I wrote about two dozen landing pages tying into current news, prophesying how the country is going to hell if the other guy gets elected, and soliciting donations.
Now, as you can imagine, I cannot align politically with both Bernie and Donnie, both Hillary and Ted.
In fact, I don’t really align with any of them.
And maybe that’s why it wasn’t any kind of issue for me to treat this as a simple sales copywriting job. After all, I often have to promote products that I’m not the target market for. It’s not hard to do, as long as you do a lot of research about the target market, and you figure out what moves them.
However, in the future, I would NOT write for the same political organizations that hired me back in 2015 and 2016. But that’s another topic for another time.
On the other hand, if I did get a direct call from Trump Tower — or from the deep woods of Vermont — offering me a retainer to write fundraising copy for the next election…
Well, I’d consider it.
Until that call comes, I’ll keep working on more traditional sales copy. Such as sales emails, promoting nutritional supplements and online health courses.
And if you want to read some of the lessons I’ve learned by working on such capitalist endeavors, you can find them in the following: