Direct Response Copywriting Swipe File

One late summer evening, two copywriters sat down at their keyboards to craft sales letters for almost identical products.

They were very much alike, these two copywriters.

Both had years of experience writing every type of ad and were dynamos at selling to their core markets.

Both writers were also dedicated students of direct response marketing and were up on the latest trends and techniques for making their clients (and themselves) ever larger profits.

But while one writer spent an entire week on writing and edits, his leisure-loving colleague cranked his final draft out within hours of sitting down that first evening.

And here’s the capper. [Read more…] about A Tale Of Two Copywriters

Warning: if you want the long answer to this, it’ll take about 20 minutes to read this behemoth of an ad from Victor Schwab. Also, unless you’re comfortable working with electron microscopes, printing this on an 8 1/2 x 11 will be a slog

(Just click on the ad image to download the almost one megabyte PDF file.)

There are so many timeless observations in this piece, that it’s hard to beleive it first appeared in print 55 years ago.

Much of this ad was repurposed into Victor Schwab’s classic, “How To Write a Good Advertisement.”

Here is one of my favorite sections called:”

“22 Ways to Hold Interest Longer” [Read more…] about How Long Should An Advertisement Be?

Why do some ads hit the white hot center of a market and become the control ads remembered years later, while others fall by the wayside?

This long running ad from the child psychology market sheds some light.

Here’s the powerful, yet economic headline that froze frustrated parents in their tracks for years:

Defiant Child?

“Mouthy, disrespectful or resistant to authority?”

As a father of three young kids, it’s something I experience daily. And, this ad nails that feeling in the copy.  [Read more…] about Ads That Command: Defiant Child?