At last, after a l-o-n-g  and tedious migration to a speedier server, I’m able to post new content again.

And this is one I’ve been itching to share.

26 years ago, the mega ad agency, J. Walter Thompson, ran this full page copy test in the New York Times, entitled, “Write If You Want Work.”

The candidates who took them up were given eight unusual writing assignments. Out of thousands who sent in their answers, ten people passed and joined JWT’s 85 member creative team.

Billy Bloom was one of them and he’s generously shared his winning answers to all of the questions.

What’s instructive about this copywriting assignment — really creative thinking assignment — is the concept of playing without a safety net. It conjures up images of an open tryout for an N.B.A. team. Here’s the court, bring your game…now show us what you’ve got.

And Billy definitely brought his game. Just sample his rendition of “Moldy Pizza Night” (Hit the PLAY button below!) sung to an  omnipresent 80’s melody. If this track didn’t get the ad execs’ attention, nothing would.

Here are all eight of Billy Bloom’s winning answers to the J.W.T. copy test. (1.9 megabyte PDF)

[mc id=”835″ type=”audio”]Untitled Media[/mc]

Hit play button for “Moldy Pizza Night.”

Here’s another zinger from Billy Bloom’s winning submission to the JWT copy test. Thousands answered this test, Billy was one of ten people that landed a position in the ad agency.

As a former New Yorker, I love this one.

For any New Yorker who’s ever said “#$@% it!” after waiting 20 minutes for the M-79 bus to take them crosstown, and walked through Central Park — especially after dark  — you’ll agree Billy’s “Central Park By Day…Central Park By Night” nails it.

Here’s question #4, I’ll be posting the other answers this week.

Question #4:

A delegation of Martian’s has just landed in Central Park. They do not understand any Earth languages — only very basic symbols. Prepare a short speech (comprised of pictures and symbols) to welcome them and to tell them just what kind of place Central Park is. (Please enclose a plain language version of the speech in an envelope, in case we are confused.)

Answer #4: (Here’s the 2-page answer to this question in PDF.)

Two down and eight to go.

Last spring I found the terrific J. Walter Thompson copy test which ran as a full-page ad 26 years ago in the New York Times.

Thousands of entries were sent in to the agency, only ten people grabbed spots.

Mystery writer, Chris Grabenstein was one of them and I interviewed him a few months back. But Chris never kept his answers to the test — though he did remember the answer to the sixth “entertaining and involving assignment.”

And last week, in steps Billy Bloom, one of the other 10 candidates who nailed the copy test and got a position at JWT.

Moreover, Billy kept his submission and he sent me the whole kit-and-kobodle over the weekend.

Initially, #6 was my favorite but after seeing some of Billy’s answers, I’ve switched my allegiance. I’ll be posting the other seven over the next week.

Question #6:

“You’ve heard the story about the man who made a fortune selling refrigerators to Eskimos. In not more than 100 words, how would you sell a telephone to a Trappist monk, who is observing the strict Rule of Silence? (But he can nod acceptance at the end.)”

Answer #6:

MONKS HAVE MOTHERS, TOO

You’re a Trappist Monk. You’ve chosen the lifestyle
that suits you best. For others, talk is cheap. But
not for you. Only through complete silence can you
come to appreciate the universe around you.

But just because you’re silent doesn’t mean you can’t
hear. On the contrary, you pride yourself on your
ability to listen. To the sounds of nature. To the
creaks in your house. To your mother.

Get the phone that allows you to listen, but not talk.
The only phone designed exclusively for the Trappist Monk.

NOSPEAK: The Phone Without A Mouthpiece.
(…from AT&T)

This has got more potential than anything I’ve seen in a while.

If you do any form of email marketing, this is something you’ll want to test asap because now you can embed YouTube videos that play directly in your customers’ Gmail Inboxes.

No need for your customers to click on an outbound link or take an intermediate step, they just click on the play button and your video plays immediately.

So, lets say you intend to send your customers to a long scroller of a sales letter.  You can now record a two-minute video with your webcam, upload the video to YouTube, then include the Youtube URL in your email broadcast.

The upshot is, you can give your customers a quick overview with a call to action at the end of the video before they click on the target link in your email message. This can make a world of difference when your customers arrive on your sales page.

And with Gmail possessing over 100 million users, plus being the fastest growing email service, this isn’t something to ignore.

You don’t need fancy production values or be a polished speaker to do this. If you screw up, as I did several times before recording this, you just do it over. Another benefit of embedding videos that play in your customers’ Inboxes is you establish you’re a real person. It’s hard to do enough of that.

No doubt, we’ll be seeing a lot of YouTube content sent directly into our email Inboxes in the near future. God help us when the spammers catch on!

At first, I thought my friend, Karl Blanks, got a degree in rocket science just so he could make room silencing jokes about it.

Now, after seeing an article in CNN Money entitled, “Google’s favored rocket scientist?,” it’s clear there’s evergreen PR value in his degree…besides the added rocket fuel he brings to the marketing table as a Cambridge trained rocket engineer.

But really, Karl’s success isn’t rocket science. (Last rocket science joke,  I promise.)

Last year, he related the story of being hired by large corporation to find out why people bought xyz widget.

So what did he do?

He went to a remote country fair — heck, it looked like the Scottish highlands —  and stood at a concession table for 6 hours asking prospects and customers a series of core question about the product: how they felt about it, what made them buy it over competing products, would they pay more for it, etc.

By the time he was done, he knew more about that widget than the widget manufacturer did and was able to get down to site optimization with as close to perfect information as any marketer can hope for.

He and his partner, Ben Jesson, just put together a report on “How we increased the conversion rate of Voices.com by over 400%.” In this fast reading report, they mention four things that gave them quick wins during their conversion rate overhaul.

Leo Dug Hard to Identify the Inherent Drama
in Everyday Things

(The following interview arrived in my inbox one Saturday morning, courtesy of one of the most formidable marketers in my rolodex. He made his bones and shuns the neon lights…for now. He clipped this article a long while ago and has no idea of the source. The underlinings are his.)

Leo Burnett was obsessed with finding visual triggers that could effectively circumvent consumers’ critical thought.

Through the Thought Force of Symbols, he said, “we absorb it through our pores, without knowing we do so”

Television, he asserted, “is the strongest drug we’ve ever had to dish out.”

He dug hard to identify the inherent drama that resided within a product through the conscious use of “earthy vernacular” imagery

Here are highlighted excerpts from an Interview with this legendary Ad Man from the Golden Age of Advertising.

Well, one of the things I wanted to ask you, Mr. Burnett – touching on what you’ve said – did you find writing ad copy more difficult than writing newspaper copy?

[Read more…] about Leo Burnett, a Little Giant from the Golden Age of Advertising

I know just enough about Richard Armstrong to be, well, scared.

He’s got a black sense of humor and the mafia heavies in his book are a little too vivid for my taste.

Speaking of his book, I just finished reading it.

“God Doesn’t Shoot Craps” is a fast reading, most interesting broth of a book Richard has seasoned with Joe Karbo, The Sopranos, Dante Aligieri and the film, Atlantic City.

Anyway, a friend of mine, (no really he’s just a friend) Dr. Jack Booman, sent me a link to download Richard’s amazing free sample book, My First 40 Years In Junk Mail. You’ll be hard pressed to find a more oustanding example of how to make your advertising itself valuable to your prospects.

Besides this, Ricard offers a boatload of free gifts to copywriters who purchase his book. Amazing stuff.

Richard’s material is so good, some rightly wonder if they should be sharing it with the rest of the world or just keep it under their hats. Some also wondered if Richard would be displeased if everyone on the Internet started posting links to his stuff.

After all, why gain all that copywriting knowledge only to wind up swimming with the fishes?

Well, Richard has put these questions to rest so you can learn a bunch of his tricks while sleeping easy at night.

Several folks have written to me to ask if it would be okay if they posted a link to on their blogs, Tweeted it, mentioned it on Facebook, Linked-in, told their friends and colleagues about it, etc. etc. After much careful consideration, here’s my answer…  Well, gee, let me think about that, hmmm, I guess, well, I don’t know, er, um, ah … YES, OF COURSE YOU CAN!!!  Obviously, I’d be delighted if you did something like that.  And you’d be my best friend forever.  Which, judging by how I treat most of my friends, means I’ll never call, I’ll forget your birthday each year, and I’ll be way too busy to come to your funeral.   But I’ll still appreciate it!

[mc id=”397″ type=”audio”]Bossy Telemarketer[/mc]

I’ve got nothing against telemarketers. Heck, many blue moons ago I was one myself…and a piss poor one at that. During my college days, I did a brief telemarketing gig for New York Life. I worked with leads of small businesses and pitched them on cheaper health insurance plans.

The lists I was given were 2-4 years old, so it wasn’t uncomon to be told that the person I was trying to reach was dead. Usually this was a relative of the deceased.

Talk about a downer.

After several weeks of this  sort of misery, I finally made my first sale and anxiously awaited my commission check. The only problem (speaking of piss) was my prospect tested off the chart for opiates. No policy underwritten. No commission.

So nowadays, I empathize with cold callers.  In fact, I sometimes enjoy engaging them and finding out what they’re made of.  But because the vast portion of my day is blocked out, the telemarketers have to “tell it to the chip.”

Recently, I bought something online called “Launch Tree.” More megabytes of crap on a hard drive already loaded with it. I’m still a sucker for such things and I wouldn’t have even recalled purchasing this but for the dozen or so messages from a hard-sell telemarketing team.

Big, bossy voices spouting lines like: “Lawrence, do this, now” and “Lawrence, you need to call my office today before 5:00 pm.”

Doesn’t bother me. I need all the merriment I can get since giving up drinking and the Lauch Tree has paid in spades.

Actually, the impetus for this post came after I dialed a freind of mine last week and he pegged me as a Launch Tree trimmer.  My friend used to make a very lucrative living as a royalty copywriter until making an even more lucrative one doing high level licensing deals.  So it was a kick to hear him recap his Lauch Tree interchange.

Launchtree: “Do you wanna keep playin’ around online…or are you ready to make some real money?”

Friend: “No, I’m just a tire kicker, thank you very much!”

(Silence.)

(The following hails from guest blogger, Byrne Hobart)

Leo Burnett was never one to shy away from the branding iron. Why spend millions hounding your prospects to convince them they needed corn flakes, when you could have Tony the Tiger do it for you? Tony works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and he doesn’t require health insurance.

But even though the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Jolly Green Giant don’t need to eat, you could starve to death trying to emulate them. Creating a character is expensive! You have to invent the character, of course, but a one-shot ad isn’t going to be enough: it takes a sustained campaign to lodge something like that in the public consciousness. It’s a big investment that only really makes sense on the national level.

But something has changed.

It’s possible to get the same kind of branding power that was previously only available to big-budget marketing brands. You can do it quickly, and more cheaply, through search engine optimization.

Think about the process in more depth. The consumer thinks: “I want some cereal. Which cereal do I like? I like Corn Flakes!”

Now, think about how they buy something that’s sold online: “I want blue plaid shorts. I’ll Google blue plaid shorts.” And what do they find? The first page is ranked #1 because of search engine optimization (and yes, full disclosure: I worked with them on that SEO campaign).

They could have spent far more money on branding their store and injecting themselves into the buyer’s thought process; they could have blanketed New York with flyers, radio ads, and direct mailings; but through SEO, they were able to make a small investment go a long way.

It’s the same trick the big, national brands pull off: slip into the consumer’s consciousness right as they’re getting ready to make the big purchase. But this time, it doesn’t require a massive budget. All it takes is a modest investment and a little patience.

Marketers are always finding ways to get closer to consumers at the Moment of Truth, when they make their purchasing decision. I’d like to suggest that search engine optimization is an essential part of the marketer’s toolkit. For more and more people, “reality” is defined as whatever ranks first on the first search they do—and for those of us who make a living getting things sold, let’s just say that’s GRRRRRREAT!

Byrne Hobart is a copywriter focused on SEO. He works for a web design firm in New York.

(The following is a 40+ year old article on one of the great women copywriters, Shirley Polykoff. She was #24 on Advertising Age’s top 100 of the 20th Century and also one of the highest paid ad writers of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Though she wrote (and sloganeered) for giant corporate clients, her style was direct response at heart.)

Advertising: A Blonde Who Has More Fun

She likes the right copy that sells for Clairol.

Last month, Rosser Reeves told the Advertising Writers Association of New York that it should give its awards for ads that sold the product and not for mere excellence in creativity.

The Ted Bates chairman, speaking at the association’s awards banquet, mentioned a number of campaigns that he believed should have been honored, but were not. On the top of his list was Shirley’s Polykoff campaign for Clairol – “Does she …or doesn’t she? Hair color so natural only her hair dresser knows for sure.” Mr. Reeves documented his argument by pointing out that the campaign was so successful in selling the product that today Clairol spends more on advertising then Bristol-Myers original paid for the whole Clairol Company, the Clairol advertising budget is $36 million. [Read more…] about Shirley Polykoff: Blonde Copywriters Have More Fun

Sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, may have died in 1848 but that doesn’t stop the man from tweeting.

In an elegant little PR stroke, the Massachusetts Historical Society has launched a Twitter account, JQAdams_MHS, and has officially started tweeting Adams’ personal diary entries, beginning with his trip to Russia on August 5, 1809 as U.S. Minister to Russia.

As the A.P.reported: “a high school student touring the sixth U.S. president’s archives recently noticed his bite-sized diary entries looked a lot like tweets.”

Many today connote direct response with enlargment pills, acai berries and colon cleansers.

Let them.

Here’s a yesteryear presentation by the Scottish high priest of direct response, David Ogilvy (heralded by trumpets).

Interestingly, the chasm between direct response and general advertising that Ogilvy mentions is just as wide as when he gave this presentation over thirty years ago. And were it not for the Internet clearly demonstrating the ineptitude and shortcomings of most Fortune 500 advertising, they’d still be in the dark.

The boldings are mine. I certainly echo the sentiment that, “Your timing is perfect. You’ve come in the direct response business at the right moment in history.” Though it would be insane for most to capitalize on this timing at an agency. Get in front of your computer and put on your thinking cap.

I wish I could be with you today, in the flesh as they say. Unfortunately, I’m in India. Ever been in India? It’s very hot. If you don’t mind, I’m going to take off my coat.

You know, in the advertising community today, there are two worlds — your world of direct response advertising, and that other world, the world of general advertising.

These two worlds are on a collision course. You direct response people know what kind of advertising works and what doesn’t work. You know it to a dollar. The general advertising people don’t know.

You know that too many commercials on television are more effective — more cost effective — than 10 second commercials or 30 second commercials. You know that fringe time on television sells more than prime time. In print advertising, you know that long copy sells more than short copy. You know, that headlines and copy about the product and its benefits sell more than cute headlines and poetic copy. You know it to a dollar.

The general advertisers and their agencies know almost nothing for sure because they cannot measure the results of their advertising. They worship at the alter of creativity, which really means originality, the most dangerous word in the lexicon of advertising. They opine that 30-second commercials are more cost effective than two-minute commercials. You know they’re wrong.  In print advertising, they opine that short commercials (whoever prepared the teleprompter presentation goofed, obviously he meant ads) sell more than long copy. You know they’re wrong. They indulge in entertainment. You know they’re wrong. You know to a dollar. They don’t.

Why don’t you tell them?

Why don’t you save them from their follies?

For two reasons:

First, because you are impressed by the fact they are so big and so well paid and so well publicized. You are even, perhaps, impressed by their reputation for creativity, whatever that may mean. Second, you never meet them. You inhabit a different world. The chasm between direct response advertising and general advertising is wide.

On your side of the chasm, I see knowledge and reality. On the other side of the chasm, I see ignorance. You are the professionals. This must not go on. I predict that the practitioners of general advertising are going to start learning from your experience. They’re going to start picking your brains. I see no reason why the direct response divisions of agencies should be separate from the main agencies. Some of you may remember when television agencies were kept separate. Wasn’t that idiotic? I expect to see the direct response people become an integral part of all agencies. You have more to teach them than they have to teach you. You have it in your power to rescue the advertising business from its manifold lunacies.

When I was 25, I took a correspondence course in direct mail. I bought it out my own pocket from the Dardanelle Corporation in Chicago. Direct response is my first love, and later it became my secret weapon. When I started a Ogilvy & Mather in New York, nobody had heard of us, but we were airborne within six months and grew at record speed. How did we achieve that? By using my secret weapon, direct mail.

Every four weeks, I sent personalized mailings to our new business prospects, and I was always amazed to discover how many of our clients had been attracted to Ogilvy & Mather by those mailings. That was how we grew.

Whenever I look at an advertisement in a magazine or newspaper, I can tell at a glance whether the writer has had any direct response experience. If he writes short copy or literary copy, it is obvious that he has never had the discipline to write direct response. If he has had that discipline, he wouldn’t make those mistakes. Nobody should be allowed to create general advertising until he has severed his apprenticeship in direct response. That experience will keep his feet on the ground for the rest of his life.

You know the trouble with many copywriters and general agencies is that they don’t really think in terms of selling. They’ve never written direct response, they’ve never tasted blood. Until recently, direct response was the “Cinderella” of the advertising world. Then came the computer and the credit card, and direct marketing exploded. You guys are coming into your own. Your opportunities are colossal. In the audience today, there are heads of some general agencies. I offer you this advice; insist that all your people, creative, media, account executives, that they’re all trained in your direct response division. If you don’t have such a division, make arrangements with a firm of directing marketing specialist to train your people. And make it a rule in your agency that no copy is ever presented to clients before it has been vetted by a direct response expert.

Ladies and gentlemen, I envy you. Your timing is perfect. You’ve come in the direct response business at the right moment in history. You’re on to a good thing.

For 40 years, I’ve been a voice crying in the wilderness, trying to get my fellow advertising practitioners to take direct response seriously. Today, my first love is coming into its own. You face a golden future.

Billy Mays passed away last week at the age of 50.

He got his start as an Atlantic City boardwalk barker and parlayed his face-to-face sales experience into the consummate infomercial production.

In this short interview, Billy Mays and his Pitchmen co-star, Anthony Sullivan, describe the necessary components of a blockbuster product.

Here they are:

• A product that has mass market appeal
• A product that solves a common problem
• A product that’s demonstrable (the demonstration in the video is wicked, isn’t it?)
• A product that’s new and unique
• A product that has a patent
• A product that adheres to the kiss principle (keep it simple stupid)

Also of note in the interview is something I’ve observed to be true of many super successful direct marketers and businesspeople. They’re willing to take massive risk and lay it all on the line for their passion and belief in their product.

I was in the dentist’s office a few weeks ago and was startled by a Newsweek cover story about Oprah Winfrey entitled: “Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures and You.”

When I flipped to the article, it was like being bombarded by a dozen magalog headlines at once.

“Live Your Best Life Ever! Wish Away Cancer! Get A Lunchtime Face-Lift! Eradicate Autism! Turn Back The Clock! Thin Your Thighs! Cure Menopause! Harness Positive Energy! Erase Wrinkles! Banish Obesity! Live Your Best Life Ever!”

I thought, “hey, did one of my copywriter friends help cook up this piece?”

As the article mentions, the real life Oprah is an unapproachable billionairess who flies on a private jet and hangs out with Hollywood film stars. She’s as opposite from her core viewer as possible.

But the TV Oprah is a down-to-earth everywoman — full of the same pedestrian shortcomings as the great, unwashed TV-land masses — and best exemplified by her life-long weight struggle.

Even Oprah’s tacit blessing of a product creates an avalanche of free trial offers for the latest berry or skin cream concoction, promoted via the now ubiquitous weight loss flog (fake blog) and loaded with as much manufactured proof as they can muster.

The article is fascinating reading for direct marketers because it really digs into the drivers for products and markets that seem to open up overnight after an airing on Oprah.

Yesterday, I sent an email broadcast to my Canadian customers and subscribers, wishing them a Happy Canada Day.

Took me 60 seconds to scribe two lines and send.

That simple email triggered a flood of replies, not simply out of bewilderment that an American remembered a Canadian holiday, but that I actually took the 60 seconds to send them a “personal” appearing message that was non-commercial in nature.

In fact, I’d say those 60 seconds were better invested than many messages consuming 30 minutes or more to create.

Moral: A.B.T. Always Be Testing.

And once again, Happy Canada Day, eh?