Direct Response Copywriting Swipe File

If you’ve heard the story of a young Gene Schwartz working one day in the mail room and a few short years later becoming a mail order millionaire, then here is an interesting ad.

It was written in 1975 by the man who showed Gene the ropes in the early 50s, Cecil Hoge, the founder and president of the Huber Hoge, Inc.

The promise of this ad is essentially a stone’s throw away from the internet marketing pitches that plague us today…but there’s a key difference.

Most of those offers lack the sophistication of even hinting that they might not be for you.

Not here. [Read more…] about Mail Order Ad by Gene Schwartz’s Copywriting Mentor: Cecil Hoge

Helena Rubinstein came to the United States as a penniless Polish immigrant who went on to build one of the largest cosmetics empires in history.

And direct response advertising played a key role in pushing her products at retail stores from coast to coast.

This ad was created by Ogilvy and Mather in 1952 and is part of an incredible series of 20 or so “page-one advertorials.”

Unlike ordinary advertorials, which are ads formatted to look like editorials or news, these ads are laid out like page one of a major newspaper. [Read more…] about Wrinkles FEAR Her

From 1979-1981, Doug Casey’s full page ads proclaiming “the Great Depression of the 1980s” were in newspapers all over America.

His book, Crisis Investing, became the bestselling financial book in history, hit  #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, and stayed there for twelve weeks.

There was a nasty worldwide recession in the early 1980s, but nothing even close to a depression.

Did that put him out of business?

Hardly.

He’s run a lucrative consulting firm for the last 30 years and lived in twelve different countries.

In early 1987, economist Ravi Batra’s book, The Great Depression of 1990, was table talk from coast to coast.

It hit #1 on the Times Best Seller List later that year.

There was a nasty worldwide recession in the early 1990s, but nothing close to a full-fledged depression.

Did that put the damper on Professor Batra?

No.

He’s published a parade of books since, including the 1999 doomsday title, “The Crash of the Millennium.”

Casey and Batra are hardly the only prophets of doom to profit from doomsday predictions but the specificity and severity of their predictions catapulted them into the spotlight in a way others never reached.

Amusingly, some of their supporters have claimed they were right — they were just off by a few years and overstated the financial markets crash of 2008. [Read more…] about Why “Armageddon Advertising” Sells