Direct Response Copywriting Swipe File

I haven’t run into a recent print ad sporting a “Who Else Wants?” headline in a long time. Maybe there’s a reason for that.

Online however, it seems like most offers for yesterday’s obsolete doohickey come today’s big launch, embrace this headline as their sole method of attack.

It’s origin supposedly comes from: “Who Else Wants a Screen Star Figure?” I haven’t been able to find the original ad.

The idea behind it is the power of social proof. Everyone else is doing it. Why not you?

Undoubtedly, it worked well in this 47 year old Wall Street Journal ad which had numerous insertions. This ad combined the social proof trigger with a laser honed, qualifying sub-head.

But now it’s time to put it to rest.

This headline is so overused that instead of grabbing attention, it repels it. By definition, if most marketing messages look the same, they cannot be effective.

The good news is even the Neanderthal marketers who mindlessly swipe each other don’t have to evolve to hike response. Not much anyway.

All they need are some new headline templates.

Let’s use Mel Martin’s brilliant and “unknown in 2007” approach.

With it, we can transform the Neanderthal version into a fresh and more powerful approach.

Neanderthal version:

Who else wants more website traffic?

New approach (based on Mel Martin):

For website owners who are almost (but not quite) satisfied with their traffic volume — and can’t figure out how to get more:

What I like about Mel Martin’s headline is it strikes a chord that almost everyone feels. Things are okay but whatever it is that can make them better is somehow eluding us.

I’m doing some split tests with Mel’s headlines right now and they are kicking tail.

Here’s a long copy ad from Gary Halbert’s most successful student, Ben Suarez, around 1977.

Sorry for the eye strain. This is the best I could come up with for a low resolution jpg file.

Little has changed with Suarez Corporation Industries’ copy approach in 30 years.

They’re a $100 million plus per year company through mastery of direct mail and their characteristic dense copy display ads.

They are Claude Hopkins, old school all the way.

“Fountain of Youth Discovered By Little Known Civilization 2300 Years Ago”

Here are two of the longest running space ads of the last fifty years.

Perhaps you’ve even seen some of the tiny (1/8 page) yet high converting ads featuring Norman Rockwell with the headline: “We’re Looking For People Who Like to Draw…Free Art Talent Test.”

I can’t say with metaphysical certainty that John Caples wrote these two mega successful lead generation ads but it would be a fair bet.

Here’s why.

The Famous Artists School was a client of BBDO in the 50’s and 60’s where John Caples was the franchise player. Caples was not only a copywriting legend but actively writing ads.

Caples was also part of the faculty of The Famous Writers School, a spin off of the tried and tested Famous Artists School.

No one tell me the idea for Agora’s “American Writers and Artists Institute” wasn’t swiped here.

Copy from…Announcing: Famous Writers School

“Advertising writing — You observe the results of years of experience and the expenditure of billions of dollars in planning and writing advertising campaigns for some of America’s largest corporations. Every copy style and all major advertising mediums are covered: newspapers, magazine, radio, television, direct mail, mail order. You acquire an understanding of how an agency functions as well as how it solves the problems which face its advertising clients.”

Send for Famous Writers Talent Test

“To help find people with an aptitude for witting that is worth developing, the twelve famous writers have created a revealing test to show you whether you should think seriously about professional training. If you do have this aptitude we will tell you so. If you don’t, we will frankly tell you that, too. After your test has been graded without charge by a professional writer on our staff, it will be returned to you.”

Famous Artists School Ad

Famous Writers School Ad

Robert Ringer is not a “touchy-feely” kind of guy. You either appreciate him or you don’t.

For some reason, I resisted reading his book, “Winning Through Intimidation,” for some time. Fortunately, I finally tackled it a few years ago and found just one of the many concepts he elaborates to be easily worth 1000 times the price of the book.

He calls this concept “the mutual attorney to attorney respect rule.”

And while attorneys are not most peoples’ favorite topic of conversation, his idea is not about needlessly enriching them but giving yourself the best chance to come out on top in any business transaction.

Ringer advocates no matter how trivial or “in the bag” a transaction my appear, always have your attorney by your side when the other side has theirs…or even when they don’t. Additionally, your attorney should always be the one who writes the contracts even if the other side is General Electric and the fee to draw it up makes you cringe.

The temptation for the small business owner is to acquiesce and save a couple of bucks on legal fees by letting the other side create the documents. But when the documents are yours, you not only avoid many hidden pitfalls, you are the one who sets the agenda.

“Winning Through Intimidation” is squarely on my list of favorite business books.

Turn back the clock 33 years and Robert Ringer was a fledgling self-publisher nobody had ever heard of. He faced the perennial question most people do at the start of their careers which is:

How to get going?

Here is one of the initial space ads he wrote which got the flywheel moving and shortly thereafter landed him on the bestseller list.

Ringer calls his adversing approach “perception preceding reality.”

I found his ad cliched and heavy handed yet brilliant.

It’s one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of a self-publisher making a rapid breakthrough via space advertising.

Here’s a large image of “What’s All the Commotion About?”

There’s a small but vocal segment of direct marketers who say you shouldn’t waste time creating advertising.

You should just horde a bunch of successful copywriting templates, expropriate them and plug in your details.

It must be a popular message because the same copywriting teachers keep at it year after year.

The problem with this superficial approach is it may work occasionally but not over the long haul.

Every product or service is unique and deserves a dedicated and original approach. Sure, you can model successful elements of other ads but wholesale hijacking of someone else’s work is lowbrow and amateurish.

Additionally, assuming you can correctly identify a winning ad in the first place, the market may well reject your ad if it’s perceived as overly derivative. Many advertisers have had their heads handed to them trying to ride on the back of an originator’s successful campaign.

This whole strategy renders swipe files worthless.

But there’s a deeper and far more profitable use of swipefiles…beyond the mere parroting of ad copy. And with it you can…

Successfully Harness Million Dollar IDEAS

As an example, take Robert Collier’s little known ad: Yours Free..A Gift from the Richest Man in the World.

This ad, written fully 30 years before “The Secret,” shows once again there’s nothing new under the sun. But my point has nothing to do with new age thinking, the secret or the content of Robert Collier’s book, strangely titled, “The Secret of the Ages.”

It’s how an aging genius of an adman leverages off the reputation of the wealthiest man in the world.

When you begin to read this ad, you’re immediately confronted with some powerful reason why advertising. Here’s this dynamite secret and the reason it’s being let out of the bag is because the author won’t be long for this world. And he’s generous enough to share it because he wants you, the reader, to apply it so he’s charging $20 for it. He thinks if you invest money in it, you may actually do something with it. Remind yourself of this the next time you find yourself giving free advice.

The two most powerful levers in life are other people and other people’s money and Collier gets a two for one in this ad… thanks to Jean Paul Getty.

This isn’t just another one of those cases in which the premium (J.P.’s book, “The Golden Age”) is as appealing as the main product itself. It’s a calculated strategy by Robert Collier to link himself and his book to the front man, Getty.

Whatever it cost Collier to obtain the rights to J.P. Getty’s book, it was a stroke of genius.

Without it the headline collapeses.

“Yours Free, A Gift from the Wealthiest Man in the World, The Late J. Paul Getty”

becomes…

Yours For $20, A Book By An Aged, Northern New Jersey Adman, Robert Collier

I wish I could tell you how this ad campaign turned out but I have no idea. I am trying to find some more ad insertions. All I know is I owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Collier for passing along this elegant idea.

Some advertising claims are so hard to swallow that their headlines – instead of being an “ad for the ad” – just give readers an excuse to bail out the moment after they’re read.

We’re not talking about unschooled business owners, where “advertiser B” ups “advertiser A’s” promise of losing 12 pounds in a weekend instead of 9.

No, what we’re referring to is the average reader’s reaction to a claim like: ending a lifetime of pain in an afternoon. Or ordering shellfish by mail order. Claims which on their face are far easier to dismiss than believe.

Try to persuade someone with a standard “benefit headline” that there’s a simple $19 shoe insert that’ll vanquish years of excruciating foot or ankle pain and you’ll chase prospects away faster than a firework does a flock of pigeons.

It doesn’t matter how accurate the claim. It’s what your prospects believe that counts.

 Without Belief…There’s No Sale

Take the position of your prospect. Become the doubting Thomas your prospect is. There’s no better place to attack their objection than by raising it yourself in the headline.

Yes, it takes some guts.

The tendency is to make the big promise, tell about all the great benefits and overcome the awkward objection in the fine print. But a lot of prospects flee before you get a chance.

Here are a few examples:

• “Crazy as it Sounds, Shares of This Tiny R&D Company, Selling for $2 Today, Could be Worth as Much as $100 in the Not-Too-Distant Future.” This clever ad writer is acknowledging disbelief in the headline. He knows that without it, you’ll say “yeah right, another pumped up stock pitch” and move on.

• “Who Ever Heard of 17,000 Blooms from a Single Plant?” Eugene Schwartz wrote this ad in 1958 and it cleared the shelves of plant nurseries from coast-to-coast. “Who’s ever heard of this before?” sides with the skeptical reader and acknowledges this is a stretch to believe.

• “If I told you that I can end a lifetime of foot pain instantly, you probably wouldn’t believe me.” Harvey Rothschild of Featherspring International knows his market. And like a master judo practitioner, he absorbs this natural skeptical energy and then channels it in a positive direction toward the sale. His product and his claim demand that he do this instead of the usual ducking for cover.

“They Thought I Was Crazy to Ship Live Maine Lobsters As Far As 1,800 Miles from the Ocean” immediately addresses the objection to lobsters for sale by mail order which someone would still have in 2007 — 50 years later.

But the ad writer goes on to raise every single objection you could have for not buying Maine lobsters by mail and overcomes them all.

He uses a folksy me-to-you style of copy, tells you that you can actually steam the lobsters in the container they’re shipped in without getting your hands dirty, and offers a full money back guarantee.

Of course, he explains the re-icing process that happens when the lobsters are shipped by 1st Class Railway Express. He also cleverly uses specificity by prominently mentioning his 18,685 delighted customers. And then he gives you a choice of which package to order. There’s no “yes” or “no” option. It’s take your pick of four seafood feasts.

How to use the best pulling headline in the history of direct response advertising to boost your response

For over 40 years it was completely immune to control beaters yet any advertiser can channel its psychology with equal power today

Maxwell Sackheim may have written it over 80 years ago, yet it continues to wield tremendous power to this day. No direct response ad ever came close to its four decade plus staying power.

Even the Olympian copywriter, Gary Bencivenga, pulled this headline out of his file in the 1995 ad: “Do You Make These Mistakes in Job Interviews?”

Exactly what accounts for its stunning success?

It’s the word: “these.”

By itself, the word “these” is rather harmless looking. Paired with the word “mistakes” it creates a vortex that sucks the reader into the body copy.

You’ve got to find out what these mistakes are. Since the advertiser knows which specific mistakes, he must know the answers as well. And if he’s got the answers, then he must be an authority.

The word “these” in this veteran ad is a textbook example of a headline proof mechanism. Claims are a dime a dozen but linking powerful proof to a claim in your headline magnifies the pulling power of your ad exponentially.

All this subtle yet potent psychology begins to work on the reader before her eyes read the first word of body copy.

The combination of authority and curiosity work forcefully together. And almost any advertiser can harness this power. Some examples:

• Do You Make These Mistakes in Estate Planning?
• Do You Make These Mistakes in Direct Marketing?
• Do You Make These Mistakes Choosing Vitamins?

You get the idea.

Of course, there are limitations here.

Don’t expect to beat an A-list writer’s control-package headline by swiping, no matter how successful the original. Nevertheless, this strategy can be tremendously successful for 95% of everyday advertisers. You can also try this when a headline isn’t performing or when you want to breathe new life into an old and tired ad.

Notice the great subheads Max Sackheim uses, the powerful benefits you’ll get from taking the course, and the promise of almost instant results. Everything works together like an ensemble as all great ads do.

It’s interesting to note that Sackheim took many earlier swings at the plate for this client with only ordinary results. Once he got the right headline, no ad writer on the planet could conquer it for an astonishing four decades.

Here’s and enlarged version of “Do You Make These Mistakes In English?”

Nearly decade long running space ad for Gerald Loeb’s book: “The Battle for Investment Survival.”

One of the most successful ads in the investment markets.

Here is a large image of: “Why Some People Almost Always Make Money In The Stock Market.”

Ernest Weckesser may not be a household name in direct response marketing but few have had such long-running, profit pulling ads in so many publications.

His ads in the opportunity market are exemplary and few copywriters (past or present) come close to his level of mastery.

Weckesser was a professor at Purdue University when he got bit by the mail order bug. He started by placing classified ads for a report on how to brew your own beer at home.

This quickly turned into the multi-million dollar per year earning company, Green Tree Press.

After Joe Karbo’s “Lazy Man’s Way to Riches,” Weckesser’s ads for the research publication, “Network,” are probably the most successful and longest running in the biz op market.

[Read more…] about Bud Weckesser: Master of Case Study Marketing