Direct Response Copywriting Swipe File

A client I hadn’t heard from in a while contacted me at the end of last year.

He had a print ad pulling a very respectable three times ad cost and wondered if he could get it even higher.

His objective went beyond merely trying to bump response since he was close to getting his product in a national retail chain, and he was looking for the tipping point to get there.

But as bright an aura as his ad seemed to have, it also cast a dark shadow.

The market clearly wanted the benefits his product offered. But for a large segment of them, it meant accepting a disadvantage they assumed went along with the benefits.

I’m an eternal optimist but when he told me his ad was doing 3-to-1, I didn’t hold out high hopes for significant improvement given his media costs. So it was a relief to spot some low hanging fruit when I finally got my hands on the ad.

It was time for the old…

“With-Without” Formula

As in, with all the benefits showered on you… but without any of the drawbacks.

In these cases, with the dark shadow of some assumed disadvantage looming in the background, there’s no time to mess around and address it in the fine print.

You’ve got to let the market know they get everything they want without the thing they clearly don’t want, and do so right away.

I made only two changes to the control ad.

[Read more…] about The “With-Without” Formula

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

Here’s a lead generation ad, or a want ad if you will, from Merrill Lynch during their halcyon days in the early 1970s.

Before the era of the vampire squids and the CEOs who detonated century old companies with toxic derivatives, Merrill was a genteel place to work and boasted Ogilvy & Mather as its ad agency.

Imagine the psychographics of the candidates a company could recruit in 2016 using print advertising with a detailed questionnaire like this one.

Could you make the grade at Merrill Lynch?

Through the lens of 2016, this ad’s copy might not be up to snuff.

But it wasn’t scintillating ad copy that kept Robert Allen’s ads and spots going strong for decades.

Allen had countless competitors in the “nothing down” real estate market — a market that’s making a minor comeback after years of hibernation.

Late night TV junkies during the 1980s are sure to recall one or more of these pitchmen:

* The avuncular Carlton Sheets with his trustworthy Midwestern accent. (Now retired.)

* The rags-to-riches Vietnamese immigrant, Tom Vu, usually surrounded by bikini clad women. (Now a poker player.)

* And the gritty salesman to the masses, Dave Del Dotto. (Now a winemaker.)

But of all the “nothing down” and real estate investment marketers, Robert Allen is one of the last standing after 35 years at it.

Why so?

Chalk it up to… [Read more…] about Ads That Command: The Outrageous Challenge

“Math Wizard Reveals Amazing Secrets Of Calculating Skills

Students  shed  calculators  and  pencils  with  Math  Magic.”

The “Math Magic” course was successful in print for many years and, like the “Total Transformation” campaign, is a great example of educational advertising using direct response.