…and what to do about it if you’re a copywriter or a serious marketer.
Here’s an article from the great Drayton Bird that originally appeared over at Clayton Makepeace’s “The Total Package”.
Titled “What Some Famous Copywriters Taught Me”…
…with this subhead…
“Few copywriters study enough. And many who commission copy study even less. So the partially-sighted serve the blind. No wonder most copy isn’t very good.”
My observation over my own years in business is that few people in any line of endeavour study enough.
Anyway, here’s what Drayton has to say…
*****
I’ve always liked this old New York joke:
A man asks for directions. “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?”
“Study,” comes the reply.
I started studying how to write copy before I even got a job in advertising. I sat in Manchester Public Library and read everything I could find. I have never stopped. If others have done the job before you, start by studying and copying the best people you can find. It’s the only way to learn.
Most copywriters study little, if at all. They think the key is ingenuity and clever ideas. They put their faith in flair and luck. They “pick it up” as they go along. That is why most copy is so bad.
Their chances of success are not improved by those who employ them or commission copy, few of whom know much about the subject either.
Of all the kinds of copy, direct response is the hardest, yet few clients pay very well for it. To make big money you have to get a royalty deal, which is a rare and wonderful beast outside North America.
If you pay peanuts you get monkeys, so most copy is not very good. A shame, as it is perhaps the cheapest ingredient in success.
I have never specialised in any kind of copy: I take my money where I can get it. But the principles that apply to one kind of copy apply to all kinds of copy. What’s more, I have found they apply equally to all messages designed to get results – speeches, articles, presentations: you name it.
Here are some of the people I learned from. Maybe you will, too.
I suspect I learned most from John E. Powers – possibly the first really professional copywriter.
He talked about what a product does for the customer, rather than what it is. He popularised the free trial offer and the money back guarantee. To this day many do not realise the effectiveness of those three things.
In an interview he said, “The first thing … is to have the attention of the reader. That means to be interesting. The next thing is to stick to the truth, and that means rectifying whatever’s wrong in the merchant’s business. If the truth isn’t tellable, fix it so it is. That is about all there is to it.”
His two chief weapons were honesty and giving reasons for his claims rather than just plain boasting. He also said to his interviewer, who was from Printer’s Ink, the advertising trade paper, “Never read any of those advertising publications. They ain’t worth reading.”
That was in the 1890’s, so nothing much has changed.
To this day many people think unsubstantiated boasting works – look at most car advertising. It doesn’t. Not in real life. Not in copy. And if you don’t explain why you are so good, people tend to disbelieve you. Both these facts are unknown to many marketers, but my partners and I have had considerable success just by applying honesty.
And to this day people still imagine a bad product can be saved by advertising. It can’t; in fact good advertising kills bad products faster.
Claude Hopkins was perhaps the most able copywriter ever – so good that allegedly by 1917 his boss used to give him a blank cheque every year and let him set his own salary.
From his book Scientific Advertising (1923) I learned many things, but principally that copy is “just salesmanship”. Your copy should do what a good salesman would do.
A salesman gives every good reason for buying; a salesman forestalls objections; a salesman is not brief. Yet little copy does a complete selling job, and many still imagine brevity works best. It doesn’t. Time after time, for nearly fifty years, I have seen long copy beat short.
John Caples was the master of testing. I used to re-read his book Tested Advertising Methods regularly when I was young. I still turn to it. From it I learned many, many things – but especially that – as another good man, Richard V. Benson, put it, “There are only two rules in direct marketing. Rule 1: Test everything. Rule 2: Refer to rule 1.”
Two of my other teachers admired him. David Ogilvy, with whom I worked for some years, was one. He told me that he and Rosser Reeves agreed that they learned all they knew from Caples.
He also told me one night over dinner that the secret of success was charm – and that “the customer is not a moron: she is your wife”. So I try to avoid the usual crass, copywriter’s English and treat the reader like an intelligent person. It seems to work.
David was a great student. He encouraged me in my belief that study was the key.
His book, Confessions of an Advertising Man, had an enormous influence on me in my first big job as a creative director: I used to test things he mentioned, like the use of certain words which increase readership. Then when I wrote my own first business book, Commonsense Direct Marketing, I copied his idea of making it very personal. People are more interested in people than theory.
Reeves’ book Reality in Advertising sold the idea of the USP. I learned that you need to be able to offer something different and better to succeed. So I spend a lot of time looking for it. And I still find that giving a competitive argument usually increases response – yet few bother to do it.
Many years ago a friend asked me if I’d like to go and work for Reeves as a creative director; I wanted to stay in England for some personal reasons so I said “no”. I suspect I would have learned a lot, though.
Vic Schwab was partner in one of the first specialist direct response agencies, back in the ’30’s. He wrote a book called How to Write a Good Advertisement. I have had the same copy for 40 years. And I still refer to the list of 100 headlines in it when I’m stuck for idea.
There are many others I knew and am indebted to. Bill Jayme, Gene Schwartz, Joe Karbo, Monroe Kane, Murray Raphel, Denny Hatch, Joe Sugarman and Gary Halbert.
And I still study in the hope that one day I’ll really know what I’m doing.
*****
There are very few people in the field of direct response marketing and copywriting who have been active as long as Drayton Bird. As you might expect, he knows what works in direct response marketing…
…and what doesn’t.
Might be worth listening to what he has to say at…
www.DraytonBirdCommonsenseMarketing.com
…and he’s going to be speaking live here in Australia in March 2012.
Details at…