In 2016, I was having lunch with European marketing magnate and world class value investor, Norman Rentrop.
Norman is remarkably down to earth, so you might not take him for a billionaire… UNTIL you spend a few hours with him, observe his insatiable curiosity about all things and take in his incisive insights about business and life that puts mere mortals like me to shame. [Read more…] about Copy Test: “Write If You Want Work” (UPDATE)
It doesn’t get much better than Ogilvy’s travel advertising from the 1960s through the 1980s.
And who better than the famous Scotsman to promote the British Tourist Authority?
How I wish I could go back in time and REPLY to receive one of these “great value” brochures.
Travel advertising is all about SELLING the DREAM. You want the reader to be able to taste the Bass Ale, smell the fish & chips and see the cottage in the Cotswolds. Indeed, that’s what makes Britain great!
[Read more…] about “525 Castles & Palaces $15” (“Ogilvy Orchestration” Travel Advertising)
This entry was originally published waaay back on July 27, 2011.
Thankfully, not all of the stuff I put out then was crap.
I’m republishing it on March 16, 2022.
What’s changed in the world of direct mail supplement selling since then? [Read more…] about Promise + Proof = Profits
There’s been a lot written on Bruce Barton, so I figured I’d add a small piece to the pile.
Bruce Barton packed a lot into one lifetime. He was…
* Chairman and co-founder of one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, BBD&O
* Publicist, magazine editor and fiction writer
* United States Congressman and a prominent rival of FDR and the New Deal. (FDR singled out Barton and two other Republican foes in the fantasy firm of “Martin, Barton & Fish.”)
* A source of countless cling-to-the-memory quotes and catchy phrases (like: “If advertising has flaws, so has marriage.”)
* And…one heck of a copywriter.
A donation letter he penned to 24 wealthy men in 1925, requesting $1,000, received a 100% response rate. [Read more…] about Bruce Barton: The Advertising Copywriter
Thomas Aquinas spelled out the Seven Deadly sins or vitia capitalia (capital sins) in the 13th Century.
Pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth. (I’ve only nailed down four of these within the last hour.)
800 years later, Max Sackheim is sitting in his office on 5th Avenue trying to come up with a great headline for a full page display ad for his ad agency.
What does he do? He smartly swipes Aquinas.
And thanks to Saint Thomas, Max not only gets the seed for a great headline but the whole structure of his ad. Click here for this behemoth of an ad.
A Google search of “seven deadly” mistakes reveals this is heavily swiped.
Here’s a few results I found based on this versatile headline.
This is a headline that’s always going to have juice because of the magic of the number seven and the proof mechanism built into the headline. See Max Sackheim’s earlier home run ad here.
With some stylistic updates, there’s hardly an advertiser today who couldn’t profit from a careful read of this ad.
Ask Yourself These Questions About Your Advertising
1. Does it give the reader a reason for NOT reading?
2. Are we using headlines that whisper sweet nothings?
3. Are we using pictures that do not talk?
4. Is our advertising cursed with cleverness?
5. Does our approach go around Robin Hood’s barn?
6. Do our advertisements leave ’em dangling?
7. Do our advertisements contain “Yackety-Yack” copy?Why should anyone read your advertising? Is it NEWS? Does it PROMISE anything of importance for the reader? Or is it just “another ad?”
Why should anyone believe your advertising? Are you really convincing – or just “talky?”
Why should anyone do anything about your advertising? Do you give them a chance – or do you leave them high and dry?
Can we get a hallelujah for Max?
Have you ever noticed an ad in a newspaper or magazine and thought to yourself: “Who’d be crazy enough to pay for such an insertion?”
Then you see the same ad again and raise your eyebrows.
By the tenth time you come across the ad, you may not only question your judgement but your sanity.
And so it is with Raja Fashions, whose ad has run in major metro newspapers on four continents for over ten years.
Raja Daswani, the founder of Raja Fashions, describes his operation as “Italian fabrics, German machines, English tailoring and Chinese labor.” Others have labeled it the “traveling circus of bespoke tailoring.” [Read more…] about Strange Ads That Sell
Just when you thought you’ve seen every Gene Schwartz print ad there is, another one creeps up from his seemingly endless oeuvre!
This one promotes the Marshall McLuhan Dew-Line Newsletter which looks like it had a modest run between 1968 and 1970.
Gene was probably a partner on this one and you’ll notice one of his easy to identify corporate name selections, Human Development Corporation, as well as the ubiquitous Schwartzian word, “instant,” in the copy: “INSTANT SEX.”
(Darn, I was too late to register the domain!) [Read more…] about Marshall McLuhan Says That TV Killed Bob Kennedy (Gene Schwartz Newsletter Ad)
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.
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
This ad with Malcolm Forbes was part of the series Ogilvy and Mather created for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
They’re flatly some of the best business development ads ever written and were responsible for changing the landscape of the island.
Here is the original space ad written by David Ogilvy himself.
I would’ve opted for Forbes to don his “after hours” motorcycle leather instead of the CEO look, so it’s good I wasn’t part of that creative decision.
Why Puerto Rico is unique as a place for manufacturers to make more profits
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?
Here is another ad in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Series — perhaps one of the most effective business development advertising campaigns ever devised.
Why Puerto Rico is the most profitable of Omark Industries’ 14 plant sites in 5 countries
Here are the reasons why this Oregon metals fabricator’s plant in Puerto Rico is their leading profit maker worldwide. Send in the coupon below to discover what these same reasons can mean to you and your company’s profits.
OMARK INDUSTRIES, a major manufacturer of cutting chain, hydraulic loaders and industrial fasteners, started in Puerto Rico in 1965 with a cutting-chain plant in Bayamon.
Last year, this single 45,000-sq.-ft. facility earned over half of the company’s total after-tax profits. Here are some of the reasons why.
100% tax exemption
Although Puerto Rico is an integral part of the U.S., there are no federal taxes. What’s more, Puerto Rico offers qualified manufacturers like Omark 100% exemption from all local taxes for up to 30 years. In Puerto Rico, the profit you make is the profit you keep. [Read more…] about Ogilvy Ad from Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Series
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?
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.
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.
