Red Flag Fridays: The Four Horsemen of the Copycalypse

"And lo, the copywriter looked upon the land and beheld the Four Horsemen of the Copycalypse. They rode forth on ghosted threads and vague feedback, bringing chaos to every inbox, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth."

If you've written long enough, you've met one of them in the flesh. Maybe all four. Maybe even in the same project. They are:

"We'll know it when we see it."

This is the prophecy of endless rewrites. They can't clearly describe what they want, so they vaguely describe what they don't want after you've already written it.

"Can you make it sound more punchy?"

Define punchy? Nine times out of ten "punchy" means "We don't actually have a brand voice, so umm, please invent one while staying on-brand, k thanks."

The Ghost Between Revisions

They vanish for two weeks then suddenly reappear with "Hey, can we get the final version by the end of the day? There's zero acknowledgement, zero feedback, just a quiet test of your boundaries (and your blood pressure).

The Six-Person CC Chain

Every marketer, their intern and their second cousin weighs in with "just a small tweak"and before you know it, your clean, conversion-ready copy has been workshopped into oatmeal.

None of this happens with the right structure in place. Many times, it's up to you to deliver it, so here's how you do it.

Define Everything Before the First Document is Ever Created

Spell out exactly what you're doing and why. "Three landing pages with hero, features and pricing, written to drive conversions for X offer." Include:

1. How many concepts or revisions they get

2. What's included in your research (interviews, competitor audits, and so on)

3. What the process looks like, step-by-step

If it's not written down, it might as well not exist.

Lay Out the Deliverables

List out every single thing you're responsible for delivering, from file types to drafts and even word count if you have to. You can include something like "Final deliverables include a Google Doc of approved copy, ready for handoff to design."

Be specific about what you'll hand off and what you won't. If design, uploading, or testing isn't part of your work, say so.

Be Clear About What's Not Included

This is the delightful moment where scope creep dies a glorious death. List the things that clients often assume come with the project, but don't -- like:

• No unlimited revisions

• No "quick little extras"

• No design edits, SEO audits or additional ad variations unless you explicitly quote for them.

This list isn't meant to paint you like the villain. It's meant to lay it all out so that you can enforce boundaries if you need to.

In the end, the Four Horsemen only ride where boundaries blur and briefs vanish. Ghosts can't haunt a process that's airtight. The CC chain collapses when there's a single decision-maker. Punchy means something when there's a tone guide giving it substance, and the best part of all, "We'll know it when we see it" turns into "Looks great, send the invoice."

And that, my friends, is how you survive the Copycalypse.