Direct Response Copywriting Swipe File

Ah, retirement advertising.

Once upon a time it was so straightforward.

Just like that cherished phase of life, retirement, from the middle-French word retirer meaning to withdraw.

But hardly anyone seems to be withdrawing any longer and when they decide to, they’re doing it quite differently than their counterparts of even thirty years ago.

This is in no small part due to society today being quite different than it was then.

Life expectancies keep expanding.

The rate of technology changes continues at a head spinning pace.

And thanks to advances in medicine and health care, the elderly in First World countries are vital and engaged like never before.

What does this mean to advertisers?

Opportunity.

If you can identify and speak to the retirement segment in your market.

And it doesn’t matter whether you’re pitching an investment newsletter, cosmetics or business development for accountants.

Every market has its segment that’s responsive to the “R” word.

A respondent in her 20s may latch onto the biz-op like claim, “Retire This Year!… and Still Make More Money Than Most Doctors,” as easily as someone her mid-50s.

Another example.

Retirement is not the first word of ad copy that leaps to mind in the beauty and rejuvenation markets.

But if you’ve identified how to reach female executives in their 50s, they may well jump at the promise.

RETIRE BEAUTIFUL!

Two-word copy constructions like these are surprisingly often the miracle seeds for blockbuster ads… and businesses.

A few months ago, I had dinner with a brilliant, old-school, New York ad agency woman.

Her formula for doing this is simply putting together combinations of two buzz words that the public instantly recognizes.

Her best known success with this concept is Zone Pilates, which became a megahit infomercial. She’s got more projects in the pipeline.

Best of all, she keeps this small scale by concentrating on being an “idea woman,” creating a prototype, then licensing her baby out to a big manufacturer who’s happy to pay her royalties for as long as the product makes the cash register ring.

And speaking of cash registers, here’s some direct mail that’s creating a ka-ching! for one of my favorite mailers, Agora

There are few products that lend themselves to big promise quite as nice as the little penny stock.

“Secret $200 Retirement Blueprint! (15-page PDF, 8.4 megabytes)

What if you ad a simple blueprint for a wealthy, independent Retirement?

Just copy this simple “Secret $200 Retirement Blueprint…”

15 page DM letter (mailing March 2012) for Penny Stock Fortunes membership at $69 a year.

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Here’s an effective “ad within an advertorial.”

At first glance, this newspaper page appears to have an article, “Natural Golf earns coveted ‘Top 25 Golf School’ for 2002,” as well as an unambiguous
ad in reverse type, “FREE GOLF VIDEO.”

But the entire page is really a lead generation ad and the call to action is equally clear to the golf prospects this ad flags: call the toll-free phone number, also in unmissable reverse type, at the bottom of the page.

Yes, the top of the page disclaims “PAID ADVERTISEMENT,” but it’s the advertorial formatting that matters most and this complex ad was successful because it has the appearance of bearing news in addition to dangling an irresistible free offer.

Some of my favorite DR ads (don’t hound me that there’s no coupon here) are arcane, long copy book ads.

2,000 plus word ads like this, Frank Buchman’s story as told by Peter Howard, are fodder for plenty of contemporary topics such as the crisis in the European Union or the moral decay in… pick your country.

BRITAIN NEEDS AN IDEA

WHERE do we go from here? We have lost our way. We lack the power to lead or the grace to follow. We are anti-Communist or anti-American, anti-European or anti-Empire — but what are we for?

We need a goal, a theme of nationhood that the ordinary man can understand and love: something that will help us to play a part in human affairs worthy of our history and heritage, so that Britons once more will be ready to sacrifice their selfishness for their country, instead of sacrificing their country for their selfishness.

Men talk of the Commonwealth, the Common Market, Communism. We will face everything except the real cause of our malaise. It is a decline, in the character of our people. From top to bottom of our land we have accepted standards lower than those we know are right in our private, business and public affairs. Society leaders who accept perversion, divorce, agnosticism and indulgence as normal soon see a nation follow their example. Churchmen who call sin disease but fail to live an experience of Christ adequate to cure it, soon see worship become a form, not a force throughout the land.

We have spent so much time using our brains to prove to our conscience- that wrong is right, because it is convenient, that our sense of right and wrong is deadened.

Voting Conservative, Labour or Liberal will never cure this complaint. You cannot meet moral need with an economic remedy nor satisfy spiritual hunger with political deals. Until we tackle human nature thoroughly and drastically on a colossal scale, the British people will continue to feel emptiness, unrest and unhappiness in the midst of their affluent society.

The late Marquess of Salisbury, speaking in the House of Lords in 1936, gave the right diagnosis — and the right cure — of our current malaise. He said, “The cause of the world’s state is not economic: the cause is moral. It is there where the evil lies. If I may use a phrase which is common in a great movement which is taking place at this moment in this country and elsewhere, what you want are God-guided personalities, which make God-guided nationalities, to make a new world. All other ideas of economic adjustment are too small really to touch the centre of the evil.”

NATIONAL PURPOSE AND NATIONAL CHARACTER

People who hope to restore a national purpose without a change in men belong to the ranks of the idealists whose empty schemes have disillusioned millions. To expect a change in human nature may be an act of faith, but to expect a change in human society without it is an act of lunacy.

[Read more…] about Britain Needs An Idea (Book Advertising)

This is the follow-up ad in the series from the brilliant Chesapeake & Ohio campaign which changed the nature of cross-country transportation in the United States.

Why Should St. Louis Be a Stepchild?

Chicago has just won through service. It is being denied to St. Louis — on the Washington to Texas run. The same old excuses are being offered!

The campaign to get through sleeping car service for St. Louis has bogged down. The phantom “Chinese Wall” which divides this country—a wall that no traveler can cross without changing trains—has been cracked. But only at Chicago!

This breach at Chicago followed a series of Chesapeake & Ohio advertisements backed by, powerful support from the American press. The C & O pointed out, among other things, that a hog can cross the country without changing trains, but a citizen can’t.

On March 18, within a week from the time this last C & O advertisement appeared, the four biggest railroads running through Chicago finally promised through service. On March 31, the first through cars actually rolled into a Chicago station.

[Read more…] about Railroad Advertising: Why Should St. Louis Be a Stepchild?

Rarely dip my toe into the realm of political advertising but couldn’t resist this one.

Given Newt Gingrich’s long time talent for self-sabotage, it probably won’t be long before he vanishes from the public stage for a decade or so.

The ad in the thumbnail, Is Newt Gingrich Above the Law? is from a Mother Jones’ space ad that had a bunch of insertions in 1995 — plenty of copy in this one.

Another one which ran three years later isn’t textbook direct response but is a short, sweet and memorable print ad: Can’t This Guy Ever Keep His Word?

The Winstons aren’t trying to save the world. Just a little piece of it.

There are Apaches on the reservation in Clear Fork, Arizona, who can remember the last, hopeless Apache uprising in 1900. But for Della Alakay, a seven-year-old Apache, the enemy is not the U.S. Cavalry.

She and her people are fighting another kind of war. This time the enemies are poverty, disease and despair. And for the first time in generations, there’s a chance that the Apaches might win: thanks to the courageous efforts of her own people and other Americans like the Winstons.

Anne and Stan Winston and their two daughters live in a New York suburb 2,000 miles from the reservation. But it’s another world. The Winstons live in a big, old house and complain about a big, new mortgage. Their girls have a closetful of clothes and “nothing to wear.” They have bikes, skates, games, books, records and “nothing to do.”

Della and her seven brothers 
and sisters have none of these problems. Her father spends as much
time looking for
 work as he does 
working. Sanitary 
facilities are almost non-existent.
 Electricity has
 yet to reach them.
Water is hauled by hand. Even the barest necessities are hard to come by.

Through Save The Children Federation, the Winstons are helping Della. The cost is $15.00 a month. It’s not a lot of money, but certainly the Winstons could have thought of a lot of other things to do with it. Fortunately they thought of Della first.

[Read more…] about Fundraising Ad: Save the Children

What is an advertorial?

Straightforwardly, the word advertorial is the combination of the words advertisement plus editorial.

Here’s the skinny. People are used to reading editorials and often averse to reading ads, so if you format your ad to look like valuable editorial content, you’ve instantly gained credibility with your audience and will get a bump in readership.

20th Century advertising legend John Caples (and later his greatest disciple David Ogilvy) was the first to advocate and rigorously test the advertorial format.

One of his earliest split-run tests, in which one version of an ad was formatted as a traditional ad and the other as an advertorial resulted in the advertorial format getting 81% more orders. [Read more…] about What’s an Advertorial?

Makes me nostalgic for my years back in old New York.

These 10 Safety Rules for Halloween by Julia Waldbaum saw annual insertions and added an interesting advertorial style twist to the usual, “white bread” approach to supermarket advertising.

Happy Halloween…and Boo!

This ad is a time machine stretching back to 1966 and a reaction by David Brower of the Sierra Club to the intellects in Washington (on par with today’s incumbents) who proposed flooding vast portions of the Grand Canyon in the name of profits.

The creator of this ad, Howard Gossage, believed that advertising justified its existence only when used for social purposes.

The time line that appears in the center of the ad, combined with the sardonic punch of the headline, makes the point brilliantly.

This ad pulled 3,000 applications for club membership and stopped the hydroelectric project from happening in the Canyon.

(You can download the 138 kb PDF by clicking on the image.)

SHOULD WE ALSO FLOOD THE SISTINE CHAPEL SO TOURISTS CAN GET NEARER THE CEILING?

EARTH began four billion years ago and Man two million. The Age of Technology, on the other hand, is hardly a hundred years old, and on our time chart we have been generous to give it even the little line we have.

It seems to us hasty, therefore, during this blip of time, for Man to think of directing his fascinating new tools toward altering irrevocably the forces which made him. Nonetheless, in these few brief years among four billion, wilderness has all but disappeared. And now these:

1) There are proposals still before Congress to “improve” Grand Canyon. If they succeed, two damns could back up artificial lakes into 9 miles of canyon gorge. This would benefit tourists in power boats, it is argued, who would enjoy viewing the canyon wall more closely. (See headline.) Submerged underneath the tourists would be part of the most revealing single page of Earth’s history. The lakes would be as deep as 600 feet (deeper for example than all but a handful of New York buildings are high) but in a century, silting would have replaced the water with that much mud, wall to wall.

There is no part of the wild Colorado River, the Grand Canyon’s sculptor, that would not be maimed.

Tourist recreation, as a reason for the dams, is in fact an afterthought. The Bureau of Reclamation, which has backed them, calls the dams “cash registers.” It expects they’ll make money by sale of commercial power.

They will not provide anyone with water.

2) In Northern California, during only the last 115 years, nearly all the private virgin redwood forests have been cut down.

Where nature’s tallest living things have stood silently since the age of the dinosaurs, there is, incredibly, argument against a proposed park at Redwood Creek which would save a mere 2% of the virgin growth that was once there. For, having cut so much and taken the rest for granted, the lumber companies are eager to get on with business. They see little reason why they should not.

[Read more…] about Should We Also Flood the Sistine Chapel So Tourists Can Get Nearer The Ceiling?

How do you sell a high priced around-the-world adventure, including the North and South Poles, on a shoestring budget?

Simple.

Lead with a great idea, then persuade the world’s best mailing list expert and copy talent to jump on board.

This seven-page sales letter was mailed in 1968 on a budget of $5,000 to owners of yachts, Arabian horse breeders and owners of private two-engine airplanes. The price for this round the world voyage was $10,000 or $65,000 in 2013 dollars.

The promo was a smashing success and pulled in 72 respondents who ponied up $10k each.

Dick Benson was the “grumpy genius” behind the list selection and marketing and the late great Hank Burnett wrote the ad copy. [Read more…] about Selling High Ticket: The Admiral Byrd Society Sales Letter

The open letter approach in copywriting is hard to excel upon.

The key factor you’ve got going for you with an “open letter” is just that — it’s a letter first and foremost — not an ad.

As anyone who’s learned from the great advertising masters (Hopkins, Caples, Ogilvy) knows, editorial style layouts often get multiple times the readership that traditional advertising layouts do.

Open letters are the advertising parallel of op-ed (opinion editorial) pages. People read ’em.

So, when Saturday Review Editor, Norman Cousins, was ready to launch his new magazine, World Review, he relied on the venerable open letter. Of course, it helped having the name recognition Cousins enjoyed at the time of this insertion in March of 1972.

[Read more…] about The Open Letter In Copywriting

This ad comes from the December, 1980 Popular Mechanics issue and sold Joe Sugarman’s seminar retreat in the North Woods of Wisconsin.

Joes’s was the first high end seminar for direct response advertising and a finishing school for countless marketers, including: Richard Thalheimer of The Sharper Image, Drew Kaplan of Dak, Fred Simon of Omaha Steaks, Joe Karbo (The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches) and numerous others.

I was struck by this line:

“To be successful you must learn the rules, know them cold, and follow them. To be super successful, you must learn the rules, know them cold, and break them.”