Direct Response Copywriting Swipe File

This infatuated advertiser credits David Ogilvy’s “Confessions of An Advertising Man” for the inspiration to create a headlineless ad…with the order coupon curiously stuck on the top.

Worth trying?

Doubt it.

Since this advertiser only ran it once, it’s safe to conclude that it’s not a money layout.

If anyone knows different, I’m all ears.

60 KB PDF “Coupon At The Top.”

In 1960, the Famous Writers School opened its doors and followed in the profitable footsteps of its business twin, the Famous Artists School.

In the year 2000, American Writers and Artists Institute or AWAI, first cast its wide net in the biz-op market. I remember my mailbox was pelted for several years with AWAI’s magalogs. One of its mainstay headlines was something like: “Last year I went through a bitter divorce. I needed time to laugh…time to cry…and time to make millions writing simple sales letters.”

I don’t remember seeing a biz-op offer in magalog form before them. They still seem to be going strong though I’ve wandered off their list.

So what did the Famous Writers School and AWAI both have in common?

They were following a well established business model in the writer’s market developed by the Newspaper Institute of America in 1926.

Pretty authoritative sounding name…isn’t it?

Actually, that seems to be one of the keys of making this type of business take off. It’s doubtful the numerous versions of the above ad would have run for 34 years had they been called Ajax Direct, Inc.

And since this is a mail order business, location is hardly important. Newspaper Institute of America was run out of an office at 1 Park Avenue in New York but they could have likely succeeded in the sunny yet rough and tumble stretch of Delray Beach, Florida that’s home to AWAI today.

Interestingly, AWAI has combined the best of the names of these three entities: Famous Artists School, Famous Writers School and Newspaper Institute of America.

The success of this little N.I.A. ad demonstrated the depth of this market for years to come.

“To People Who Want to Write But Can’t Get Started” is still a potent headline. It efficiently translates to a multitude of areas, like:”To People Who Want to Blog But Can’t Get Started.”

Here is the heart of the ad.

Newspaper Institute of America offers a free writing aptitude test. Its object is to discover new recruits for the army of men and women who add to their income by fiction and article writing. The writing aptitude test is a simple but expert analysis of your latent ability, your powers of observation, imagination, dramatic instinct, etc. All applicants do not pass this test. Those who do are qualified to take the famous NIA course based on the practical training given by big metropolitan dailies.

Like it’s predecessor, the Famous Artists School, it’s doubtful the N.I.A ever “rejected” a respondent to their ad. That qualifier, however, turned the ad into one of the best lead generation ads ever published.

“To People Who Want to Write But Can’t Get Started.”

I’m not a fan of “collecting” ads nor nostalgic in any way for advertising itself.

The ads I want in my swipe file are ones I can model to help my own ads pull better and enhance the revenue of my business.

Since I’ve invested hundreds of hours compiling the largest swipefile of actionable direct response print ads, I also tend to buy swipefiles as well.

Usually, these collections have a sprinkling of relevant ads today but mostly, they contain a lot of “filler ads” from the early 20th Century. While there are some good headlines to be found and a few timeless ads — especially those by Max Sackheim, Claude Hopkins, Bruce Barton and Frank Irving Fletcher — they’re not something you can easily model for your business. [Read more…] about FREE Advertising Swipe File (3,234 Ads)

Even the most irrational optimist can smell the fear in the air.

Turn on the news or read the papers and it’s unavoidable.

Despite the fact that many online businesses, large and small, are thriving, you don’t hear much about them because bad news seems to sell better.

As marketers, we can only go where the current takes us if we want to operate with greatest efficiency and that means ethically capitalizing on the omnipresent fear which stretches from the self-defense market all the way to high finance.

Here’s a 40 year old ad which uses the fear trigger to sell. I’m making a guess that it came out of copy legend, Dan Rosenthal’s agency because the publishing house was a stone’s throw away from his agency in New Rochelle, New York.

A Google search for a term like, “disaster preparation” is ripe with advertisers, so “dated “ads like these can come in very handy.

You can right click on the thumbnail and choose “Save Link/Target As” to download the 168 KB PDF.

The martial arts and self-defense sales letters on this page are some of the finest, contemporary examples of using the fear trigger to sell.

Two powerhouse direct marketers credit the same little known book by Frank Bettger for their success: Gary Bencivenga, the world’s greatest living copywriter and Marty Edelston, the founder of the $100 million per annum company, Boardroom.

After reading Victor Schwab’s spectacular (for the 1950’s) bullets, I’ve pulled “How I Raised Myself From Failure To Success Through Selling” for a needed refresher.

I am making a guess that Victor Schwab not only wrote the ad for the book but also the chapter titles. Schwab’s extensive track record at that time included the world class ad for “How To Win Friends And Influence People.” That was also the headline for the ad. One of the few instances in which the title of the book is so good, it’s impossible to come up with something better.

Bettger understood the power of great copy and smartly turned the chapter titling over to one of the world’s best ad writers rather than a book editor.

Keep in mind these bullets were written in 1950. It’d be another twenty years until the modern bullet was crafted by Ralph Ginzburg and Mel Martin.

• I was welcomed everywhere when I did this
• An idea that helped me get into the “major leagues”
• The biggest reason why salesman lose business
• A $250,000 sale in 15 minutes
• The most important word I have found in selling
• How I find hidden objection
• The secret of making appointments
• This interview taught me how to overcome my fear of approaching big men
• How I learned to outsmart secretaries and switchboard operators
• How to let the customer help you make the sale
• Seven rules I use in closing the sale

Here is Victor Schwab’s full page ad.

Here’s a text book lead generation ad for art lessons by mail.

The advertiser followed in the profitable footsteps of the Famous Artists School.

For complete details simply mail the special invitation certificate below and we will send you free, at once, the big helpful book “Art For Pleasure and Profit.”

Will you let us prove that you can learn to draw and paint — at your home in your spare time? We will send you by return mail the valuable FREE book, “Art for Pleasure and Profit” — and we will tell you how you can receive, free,
a beautiful folio of two Art Lessons from the world renowned Washington School of Art. This generous offer is made for one reason: to dramatize how quickly our training can get you started doing that professional drawings, paintings, even profitable advertising art in fashion illustration.

Study With Master Artists

You learn from lessons prepared by 11 master artists including
internationally famous professor, Otto Dix, the German expressionist
and Mario Cooper N.A, president of the American Water Color Society who
share with you the skills and know-how they use themselves.

2 Art Lessons FREE

Coming soon: Rare Thomas Hall diet sales letter…

Imagine a direct mail letter in the business opportunity area, so ingeniously crafted, it silences every conceivable objection before it’s raised — the same objections that plague lesser letters to this day.

Most mail recipients have never encountered anything quite like it.

From the envelope covered with Japanese characters and teaser copy, “Good News From A Far Country” to the brilliant opening paragraphs to the artful offer summary in the postscript, it’s a unique mailing.

The writer was a man named Thomas Hall and the letter is for 87 Japanese Money Making Plans You Can Use To Increase Your Income In America Today.

Direct marketing legend, Gary Halbert, credited Thomas Hall’s now impossible to find Direct Mail Guides with getting him started in mail order. He also praised this and several other of Thomas Hall’s letters which I was lucky enough to unearth in a 210 pound pile of direct mail. [Read more…] about Thomas Hall Direct Mail Letter: 87 Japanese Money-Making Plans

Several years ago, one of my European friends called me up while liquidating the contents of his storage space in L.A.

He asked me if I was interested in taking possession of his collection of space ads.

I said “sure” and he told me to expect it within a week.

But instead of the compact collection I was envisioning, four huge USPS Priority boxes arrived, packed with thousands of space ads. (I’ve probably “inherited” a dozen other collections since then.)

While many of the ads were interesting from a historic point of view, over 80% of the collection had little relevance to effective direct response advertising today. Count among them numerous ads for detergents and tooth paste.

I’ve since learned to become merciless at this pruning process with the end result that the remaining ads contain the kernel of an actionable idea (and at least one element of copy or marketing) any accomplished direct marketer can take and run with.

What’s in the new version?

Even though the “finish line” is close at hand, I’m pacing myself for Heartbreak Hill which includes a last pass over a mountain of space ads as well as magalogs and the numerous innards of direct mail pieces.

Here’s an example of the type of magalog in this collection with tens of millions of mailings. It was written by A-Lister, Arthur Johnson

To save this 11.2 megabyte PDF to your computer, Use either “Save Target As” in Internet Explorer or “Save Link As” in FireFox.

“I Haven’t Had A Glass Of Water In 20 Years”