In Victor Schwab’s essential book about copywriting called “How To Write A Good Advertisement”, there is a list of 100 good headlines along with comments about why they were effective. You may have seen this list in other forms (“100 Greatest Headlines” etc) as, like many things, the original material has been recycled many times. […]
“Scientific Advertising In The 21st Century” – Part 19 “Letter Writing”
In Chapter 19 of the copywriting classic “Scientific Advertising”, Claude Hopkins turns his attention to the subject of “Letter Writing”. By “Letter Writing”, Hopkins of course means classic direct mail. Here are his initial comments…
Copywriting Notes – Makepeace And Bencivenga Part 3
OK, here’s part 3 of the fascinating interview between modern day copy writing superstars Clayton Makepeace and Gary Bencivenga. Watch out for the comments about the copywriting process Gary followed when working with Dan Rosenthal as well as some great insights into connecting with your audience (plus a classic letter to add to your swipe […]
Copywriting Diagnostics…
…or “Help! The copy isn’t performing! What do I do now?” Got an email from Michel Fortin (well, his autoresponder, really!) yesterday about a post on his blog titled… “Are Bottlenecks Clogging Your Sales?” I was a little surprised because…
How The Once Mighty Are Fallen…
Received a solicitation from Amex yesterday for a Gold Card. Now, in my humble opinion, the classic “Quite frankly” Amex letter is one of the all time great pieces of direct response copywriting. Lost count of how many times I’ve written it out longhand. So it was with a great sense of disappointment…