Thinking of launching a marketing campaign using brochures? Aside from the design elements that you may want to put there, your copy would play a crucial role in the success of your strategy. When writing a copy, your utmost concern is what you should write about the commodity that you are promoting, whether it is a product or a service. While that is important, you should also consider what you shouldn’t write down.

Stealing someone’s words or works

There is a field in law that protects illegal use of people’s original creative outputs, ideas, inventions and others, and it is called Intellectual Property (IP).

If, for instance, you state in your copy a person’s famous phrase that is frequently quoted or tag lines of competitive brands, and you forget to mention or deliberately omit the source of these, you would violate the person or company’s IP rights.

It is seemingly harmless, especially if you are not aware of this law and if it is just a few words. But it does matter. “Ignorance of the law excuses no man*, even with ‘borrowing’ ideas or words from someone without properly acknowledging the source.

It is your responsibility to know such matters before engaging in copywriting and advertising.

Of copyrights and trademarks

If you fancy a picture from the internet or perhaps a line from a famous movie and asking for permission is not feasible, make sure that you give the owner or conceptualist the credit he/she deserves by citing his/her name and stating where you got it from.

You are probably familiar with the encircled ‘C’ and ‘TM’ symbols. They stand for copyright and trademark, respectively. Copyright is protection for works like songs, books, articles and inventions. Trademarks, on the other hand, are seals for brand names, words, phrases and slogans.

Steer clear from copying these without proper citation. But if the output that you want to copy is not protected by either one of these, still credit the owner. That does not make the act of ‘borrowing’ less illegal or damaging.

You wouldn’t want anyone getting credit or income from what you worked hard for, right? The same goes for everyone.

Get your copy right for your color brochure printing project.

*quoted from John Selden, Antiquarian and Jurist