📬TGC 04: How Half Magic writes spellbinding copy
+ the day I quit copywriting (spoiler: it's today)
🗓️This week in freelancing
I’m gonna be super real—I actually wrote this two weeks ago and scheduled it to go out today because I’M ON VACATION🏝️🧳⛱️🌞 Although, it’s not that kind of vacay, I’m just back home in the UK for a quick visit so it’s more like 🫖☔🥪
That means, there are no freelance updates this week..! Hopefully I’m prancing around London eating pastries and cheese while gleefully ignoring my clients (sorry lads)
TLDR: Drinking tea in Europe, brb.
🤿Copy Deep Dive: Half Magic
Okay. Nah.
I’m done.
I’m out.
Someone changed the beauty copy game completely.
Meet Half Magic.
Half Magic is the makeup dreamland concocted by Euphoria’s very own makeup artist, Donni Davy. I didn’t actually watch Euphoria but I remember everyone recreating looks on Instagram and they were all super colourful and shiny✨
✏️Half Magic’s pen
The cutest online features I’ve ever seen:
WHAT. THE. FROOP.
So this is an online feature, and we call it that because it’s a feature of a product that’s going on the web page. It’s made up of an eyebrow, a head copy, and a body copy. Not every online feature has an eyebrow, but they have head and body copy like 99% of the time.
The eyebrow: Plush glitter (the feature of this product they’re gonna talk about in the head and body copy)
The head copy: Came through drippin’
The body copy: that big paragraph below
Why it works:
It’s SO FREAKIN CREATIVE. This copy makes you see, feel, and LIVE the experience of Half Magic makeup.
“cocoons your lips”
“hyper-reflective medley”
I’ve literally never seen beauty copy done like this🙆♀️
I’ve never seen any copy done like this, tbh.
Before you get all, “What’s the big deal?” on me, let me just mention, I went through 7 different indie makeup brands with almost IDENTICAL copy before I found this one.
Here’s another one:
😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
DAILY DOSE OF DOPAMINE SPARKLE.
Both the little girl and the adult girl in me want that on the daily.
This is incredible copy.
If anyone knows the copywriters who worked on this, I NEED TO SPEAK TO THEM.
Why it works (some more):
I think there are three clear reasons why Half Magic’s copy is a winner:
It’s SO creative. There’s zero mention of cliches or overused adjectives. This makes it really fun to read and kinda makes me wanna buy all these products—and isn’t that the whole point of copywriting???? It really feels like they’ve put some effort into it.
The words are chosen so precisely to reflect the products and the brand, which means the whole tone of voice is so cohesive overall. If you made a blind test of three random beauty brands including Half Magic, I bet any money I could pick out which one was from Half Magic. STUNNING. Branding isn’t all about colors and logos and fonts.
Finally, it made me wanna step up my game. Thank GOD my books are full right now but clearly we cannot be getting cozy out here. If I’m reading copy that’s better than something I could write, that signals to me (in HUGE NEON WRITING with alarm bells and sirens blaring) that I’m not good enough yet. So we keep going and improving and stretching our skills🤷♀️
The Half Magic site is literally a joy to read and I think it’s such an incredible resource for anyone who’s trying to find their feet in the world of copywriting. If you weren’t sure what good copy looks like, well Half Magic = A*** okay?
*brb, studying the entire site*
Spend some time finding those adjectives and crafting descriptive phrases that really echo what the brand is all about.
📢It’s an experience, not a paragraph on a page.
🍪 Snackable Copy
(IYKYK: I found this a little late but being from Manchester and an avid KitKat chunky fan, this copy spoke to me quite deeply ngl)
That’s all folks!
If you enjoyed this week’s letter, you could:
Leave a comment to let me know what you liked (or didn’t love so much!)
Share any cool copy you’ve found in the wild
Send it to your copywriter / brand owner friend and spread the love!
Thanks for reading!
See you next weeeek,
Ella