Most good copywriters’, says William Maynard of the Bates agency, ’fall into two categories. Poets. And killers.
The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.
I asked an indifferent copywriter what books he had read about advertising. He told me that he had not read any; he preferred to rely on his own intuition. ‘Suppose,’ I asked, ’your gall-bladder has to be removed this evening. Will you choose a surgeon who has read some books on anatomy and knows where to find your gall-bladder, or a surgeon who relies on his intuition? Why should our clients be expected to bet millions of dollars on your intuition?
Given sufficient training, any intelligent person can learn to conduct surveys, but getting people to use the results requires salesmanship of a high order.
St Augustine had this to say about pressure: ‘To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place through all the world: war, siege, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures, and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendor. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure, but does not complain. For it is the friction which polishes him. It is pressure which refines and makes him noble.
Rosser Reeves: ‘Do you want fine writing? Do you want masterpieces? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve start moving up?
When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another, second person singular.
One day a man walked into a London agency and asked to see the boss. He had bought a country house and was about to open it as a hotel. Could the agency help him to get customers? He had $500 to spend. Not surprisingly, the head of the agency turned him over to the office boy, who happened to be the author of this book. I invested his money in penny postcards and mailed them to well-heeled people living in the neighborhood. Six weeks later the hotel opened to a full house. I had tasted blood.
Sales are a function of product-value and advertising. Promotions cannot produce more than a temporary kink in the sales curve.
All my experience says that for a great many products, long copy sells more than short.
If you choose to ignore these factors, good luck to you. A blind pig can sometimes find truffles, but it helps to know that they are found in oak forests.
Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you.
You don’t have to be Christian to behave like a gentleman!
Remember the French saying: ‘He who is absent is always wrong.
Long copy sells more than short copy, particularly when you are asking the reader to spend a lot of money.
Promise, large promise is the soul of an advertisement,’ said Samuel Johnson.
Almost any question can be answered, cheaply, quickly and finally, by a test campaign. And that’s the way to answer them – not by arguments around the table.
They are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post, for support rather than for illumination.
I was infinitely more useful to my clients when I wrote copy than when I was Chairman of the Board.
Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.
I like to succeed in public, but to fail in secret.