Category: Copywriting 101

“It’s [still] not creative unless it sells.”


I’ve always followed David Ogilvy’s dictum, which means I never show work around if I know was not successful in the marketplace. But what if the market was wrong? Or, to put it less arrogantly, what if the lists got messed up somehow and my mailer or email went to the wrong folks? Shouldn’t you be allowed a free pass once every few decades on work YOU really like and think is good?

I was going to present the piece shown here as an example. It’s always been one of my personal favorites, though I hadn’t looked at it in a number of years. The client and I were very surprised at the time that it was not a big winner. But when I pulled it out today, I could immediately see what was wrong.

The outer envelope (upper right in the photo) is what kills this package. We’re selling a book of relaxing natural cures to women and I wanted to use a lemon to illustrate how our mind has powers to help us. (Really concentrate, think about a lemon and its taste, and your mouth starts to pucker up.) But where’s the reader benefit in this? I was also betrayed by my choice of visuals from a great designer… this stop-motion bursting lemon image is frenetic when it should be calming, and the background should be green not purple for a restful, natural cure. And yep, that reversed out type is pretty hard to read.

Inside is lots of good stuff which the recipient of this package never got to see. There are two headlines I like: “Pamper Yourself Healthy” and “Natural Cures that Feel as Good as They Work”. Either one of these might have given me a fighting chance if I’d used it on the outer.

Once again the marketplace—and David Ogilvy—are right.

This ad stinks…and I can prove it!

A recent email from Doug Stine, a copywriting colleague in Albuquerque:

“My question is this: The time tested techniques of
direct mail copywriting seem so fraudulent to me, yet
“research” says that they work. What’s the scoop?

“I recently received a direct mail piece ostensibly
from Tommy Franks. The teaser on the 9×12 envelope
was “check enclosed.” I opened the envelope. It was
a check for $1 and a solicitation to send money to the
cause. I felt deceived.

“It was a four-page letter. I know that research
(although I can’t find any of this research) shows
that people respond more to longer copy. Yet the last
thing I wanted to read was a letter “from the desk of
Tommy Franks” which I KNEW was not written by Tommy
Franks but a copywriter.

“The result? I tossed it in the trash.

“So my big question is this: why are these crap
mailers considered time-tested techniques? Am I
really in that much of the minority that I see through
these gimmicks? Are there enough people that respond
to these frauds that make them financially worthwhile?

“Is there really anyone in the U.S. who would say. “Oh,
WOW, a letter from the desk of Tommy Franks. I think
I’ll read the entire letter and send $400 to the
cause.” Are people that stupid?”

MY RESPONSE:

“I’d love to confirm that the “time tested techniques” really are fraudulent… But I can’t. One of the things about direct mail copywriting that is both a curse and a blessing is its measurability.

“We don’t get to say something is brilliant just because we think, as writers, it’s creative when the client who pays for it has the numbers to prove nobody is moved to respond. And the flip side is that we can’t say something is crap from a response standpoint if the numbers prove it works. (Though we can certainly say it is crap from a perspective of personal taste. But direct mail is expensive, and nobody’s going to pay us for creating a creative masterpiece that won’t get response. At least they won’t pay us twice.)

“I haven’t seen the Tommy Franks piece you describe but the format suggests something that has a lot of money behind it, so if you’re seeing it that probably means it has gone through repeated testing and trial by fire. And I can tell you the “real check” is indeed a proven and effective device even though it may seem phony to you. The Pavlovian response is to start salivating at the prospeet of free money, followed by a flood of tears when you realize someone else needs the money much more. (Which reminds me of one of my favorite teasers, done by a writer at Russ Reid: “Christmas gift enclosed. But not for you.”)”

Comments? Tommy Frank, if you’re reading, what do YOU think?

Electronic Etiquette

A good friend and colleague died this past winter. I quickly learned about a tribute website, and posted a message which expressed my feelings in the passion of the moment. Having achieved some satisfactory personal closure I never got around to contacting his widow, who is also a good friend and colleague.

That faux pas clearly deserves a bitch-slap from Miss Manners and I needed to atone for it. Thus, when the widow wrote a broadcast email with the news that she was moving to a small town where she would be mainly taking care of her aging parents, I responded with some personal news about my family and expressed a wish to keep in touch. I never heard back.

Some possibilities are: a/the lady’s mad at me, as well she should be. But what if b/in her new life she rarely checks email; or, c/my message got caught in her spam filter. How can I know and what do I do about it, if anything? Such are the new challenges of communication in the electronic age, as we attempt to communicate through media that are still being defined.

In my copywriting classes, I always do an informal survey of email habits. Some findings:

1. Email has gotten much more formal over the past decade as it’s become a primary mode of correspondence. Misspellings, for example, are no longer OK. (Save them for IM.)

2. The majority of female senders say they start their message with a salutation (Dear so-and-so) even though it’s superfluous. Most male senders don’t use a salutation.

3. Most people “sign” their emails with their personal name, even though it’s unnecessary because you can be identified both by the “from” line and from the boilerplate signature if you use one. A best practice seems to be to sign off with your first name just above the standard signature, as a way to personalize the email.

4. There’s a trend toward composing email in HTML even though there’s no need for it because no graphics are involved. I like words to stand on their own, so this one really makes me grind my teeth.

How to write so people will read

An insurance company recently asked me to teach an in-house version of my copywriting course. The audience was mostly lawyers who write white papers on various legal topics. Since the scope was much broader than advertising, I retitled the course “how to make people read what you write”. I added two points which I think are worth repeating here:

1. Virtually everybody you are writing to has grown up with television, or at least movies, which means they have been trained to make mental edits when the communicator jumps from connection to another. What’s more, they EXPECT these jumps in the material they absorb and if you take pains to write with a smooth transition, they’ll just pass over the transitional paragraphs and move on to the next topic.

This means you need to write for scanning, not word-for-word reading. It also means you need to be aware of how the mind handles mental edits, and make transitions much as a film editor would. Cut from the big picture to a closeup, instead of showing two slightly different views of the same thing. When something is important, showcase it (=a closeup shot) and then establish context (=a person reacting).

I read a lot of “Magic Schoolbus” books with my 3 year old and I notice a wide range of skill levels in the cartoon factory workers who draw these. When the same character appears, in a similar context, on two facing pages, then Eli says “why are there two Carloses?” When the narrative talks about a giant squid that doesn’t show up in the picture, he says “where’s the giant squid?” He already has a well-formed system to tell him how stories should be told with words and visuals—and your older reader does too.

2. Dr. Johnson said that “knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.” White papers fall into the second category of knowledge, as do a marketer’s informational premiums. It isn’t necessary for the audience to read all the way through; the author has done his or her job if the reader glances at the first page, accepts that the paper is making an authoritative analysis of a topic, then files it for future reference.

On the other hand, you may fail even when communicating valuable information if the paper is poorly organized and hard to get at. This isn’t to say that presentation is more important than information. But if presentation falls short, the reader will never gain access to the information and the writer is judged a sorry failure.

The Robert Collier Letter Book

Early in my copywriting career, I stumbled across the Robert Collier Letter Book at the L.A. Central Library. Discovering it was out of print, I flirted with telling them I’d lost it… and soon wished I had, because the only copy was lost when the library burned down.

Now, the Robert Collier Letter Book is available once again via the web (use this Amazon link). It’s just as relevant and meaty as I remembered. Robert Collier was an early “Giant of the Mails” who shared his knowledge in 1937, but people are people and selling is selling so most of it still applies today. For example:

“All of us are consciously, or unconsciously, using ‘TESTED SELLING SENTENCES’ from morning, noon till night. Some of us use them to sell ideas, others service and others actual merchandise.

“Little Willy wants an extra slice of bread and jam; sister wants 15 cents for the movies; Dad is scheming how to get out of the house for lodge that night, and Mother is planning to have Dad sweep out the cellar–while around the corner the Preacher is planning a visit on the household to make it more church conscious and one and all, have their own pet ‘TESTED SELLING SENTENCES’ they plan to use on one another!”

If you work in marketing or selling, or even if you don’t, I say: get this book.

On persuasive writing.

Before my most recent copywriting class, a prospective student sent me this email:

“Can you please let me know how applicable the course content will be to writing technical press releases, magazine articles, editorials  and advertisements. I am an engineer who recently moved into product marketing and am interested in improving my writing skills, but I’m not going to be doing any direct marketing campaigns.”

My response:

“Fair question… One of the principles I teach is that persuasive writing applies to any situation because you always need to convince people to do something. In some cases that “something” is simply getting them to read what you’ve written… So you want to translate described features into why this is important, and write in a way that’s easy for people to follow. I’ve had a number of people who don’t actually work in marketing take the course and no complaints that the material wasn’t relevant enough to invest a day in it. Also, it may help you to know that since we’re in San Jose many of the attendees work in tech and want to discuss tech writing challenges and I myself have a lot of tech writing experience. (Though the ones I share in the course are tech direct marketing, not straight technical writing.)”

She did end up registering, and I followed up and asked this morning how she liked it. She said:

“Yes thanks I really enjoyed the day. There are techniques I will be able to apply to my press releases. Also, it reconfirmed some of my personal beliefs about writing styles and what works. It’s good to learn what are the proven methods to capture an audience.”

Why this is here.

This blog is about “copywriting that gets results”… the creation of email, direct mail, space ads etc that are measured not by awards won or clients placated, but by actual response in terms of URLs clicked, toll free calls made, coupons returned and so on. This is the kind of writing I do on a daily basis and it’s what I teach in the eponymous course at San Jose and other places.

We’ll use this space to share ideas and maybe some actual materials related to the courses that I teach. In addition, as the Cole Porter lyrics imply, we may take a few unexpected side trips. Welcome, and thanks for stopping in.