Copywriters Podcast

You can’t go a day in copywriting without someone bringing up AI. It may not have taken over copywriting yet, but it has definitely taken over the conversation. In case you haven’t gotten your feet wet yet with GPT 4, Jasper, Copy AI or any other one of the handful of AIs people are currently using, I can tell you, people ARE using it, in predictable and unpredictable ways. Today Nathan and I discussed what we’re hearing and what we’re doing. We started with a really interesting discovery Nathan made that not only saves massive amounts of time on a project, but also slashes the learning curve on how to get AI to do exactly what you want it to do. I shared what I’ve heard from two clients who have an unusual amount of expert knowledge about AI… as well as being top-notch copywriters on their own. You’ll be surprised about one expert’s prediction on who will thrive and who will suffer in copywriting, thanks to AI. Different probably than what you’ve heard before. And another expert solved a tough business problem of his own… in about 10 minutes! Beyond that, a little bit of AI news that may surprise, scare or delight you! Download.

Today we look at bullet points in an exciting new way. Now, in copy, bullet points in copy are specialized and different from bullet points everywhere else. Because in most forms of writing, bullet points condense facts and offer a summary. Not in copy, though. See, in copy, bullet points are condensed, emotionally driven, focused statements or promises that are sometimes powerful enough, by themselves, to make the sale. A few episodes ago, Nathan mentioned that when he’s looking at sales copy, he looks at the bullet points first. I’d never heard anyone say that before, and I thought it was interesting. I gave it some thought. I realized that bullet points do a lot more for Nathan—and for nearly everyone else reading copy—than most people realized. Then I went through three classic ads—one by Ted Nicholas, one by Gene Schwartz, and one by Mel Martin, all hall of fame copywriters. I hand-copied more than 60 of their bullet points onto a giant sheet of paper. That was quite an emotional roller-coaster ride, all by itself. In the process, I realized these master copywriters were doing a lot more with their bullet points than what we usually think of when we write our own bullet points. I’ll tell you about my findings and share the exact bullet points the greater copywriters wrote. To get us started, so we can all remember the enormous sales power of bullets, let me share with you a story I told six years and two months ago, on one of the earliest episodes of this podcast: An Afghanistan vet and his wife went to the housewares department of a “big box” store. They were looking for an electric can opener. The vet was an amputee. He only had his right arm. The salesman showed the man and his wife the best model, and started rattling off all the features: U.L. Approved, cordless operation, easy to clean, 5 star reviews online. The couple listened politely but didn’t say a thing. This made the salesman nervous. “Are there any questions I can answer for you?” he said. “Just one,” the vet said with a smile. “If I get this model, can I open a can with just one hand?” The salesman was embarrassed that he had failed to mention this, but he recovered quickly enough. He said yes—and the couple happily bought the new can opener. Every customer is like the vet. I don’t mean that every customer is an amputee. What I mean is that there’s usually one performance, or benefit, that towers in importance over all others. Maybe they don’t realize they’re looking for it, but when they find out, that alone may be enough to get them to buy. Bullet points are where you highlight individual benefits. Usually not features, but benefits. It’s worth getting good at them, because better bullets mean more sales. We covered some major highlights of all bullet points, and then dug into the copy of the three great copywriters: Ted Nicholas, Gene Schwartz, and Mel Martin. We looked at how each of them used the following types of bullets: 1. Bullets that answer objections 2. Bullets that assert benefits 3. Bullets that create curiosity 4. Bullets that stun and fascinate 5. Bullets that deliver a warning Download.

Today we return to Old Masters Series with a guy I’m going to call The Godfather of Creativity, Alex Osborn. He’s best known for inventing brainstorming, which was first used at his advertising agency BBDO (the O was for Osborn). But he has done a lot more than that. For example, in 1954 he co-founded the Creative Education Foundation. And he’s written a number of books. The best-known one was the bestseller Your Creative Power. However, a lesser-known book, Wake Up Your Mind: 101 Ways To Develop Your Creativeness, is what we’re going to use today to get into some really interesting, practical ideas about creativity and writing copy. First, we went over over a few things about creativity as we define it. First of all, creativity is not coming up with harebrained ideas like lizards that play golf to sell life insurance. Not in the way we’re talking about today. Creativity is finding better ways to get a prospect excited about and committed to buying what you are selling. No lizards required or desired. Second, in his book, Osborn says something dear to my heart: Schools teach the wrong things for creativity. This was back in the day; this book was published in 1952. I don’t know what schools teach these days, but, if the main purpose of school is to teach kids to score high on standardized tests so they can get into a platinum-level college, that works against developing creative abilities. Someone named Burdette Ross Buckingham wrote a book in 1926 called “Research for Teachers,” and Osborn says ever since that book came out “educators have increasingly leaned on statistics. This has led to accumulation of facts, and deprecation of the generation of ideas.” He goes on, “Creativity necessarily lacks exactness.” One of the guiding questions of schools is, “Can it be tested?”, and Osborn says this question gets in the way of schools developing creativity skills. That is, since creativity is not exact, so you can’t test or measure it. Now science, technology, engineering and math are survival skills in the jobs economy these days, but remember that the people who built the companies that hire all those people, had far greater imaginations than most of their employees. That is, they have much better practical creativity skills, among other things, than your average bear. Something to think about. The third thing that’s really important before we got into these seven steps of creativity: In real life creativity may not work this way exactly, and Osborn says so in his book. Sometimes you take these steps out of order. Sometimes you don’t take all of them. He writes: “The more I study and practice creativity, the surer I feel that its process is necessarily a stop-and-go, a catch-as-catch can, a ring-around-the-rosie; and the more I doubt whether it can ever be ‘exact’ enough to rate as scientific.” Osborn says, “The most we can honestly say is that it usually includes some or all of these phases.” I would have to agree. There’s no set formula for creativity, but knowing these seven steps will put you in a better place to come up with profitable creative ideas than not knowing them will. Osborn had an unusual comment about the importances of mental and emotional effort in creativity. He says “Writers recognize as ‘rhythms of creativity,’ the ups and downs of their power to produce. Since each person’s talent is the same from day to day, those cycles must be solely cycles of energy—a fact which helps prove how dependent upon our drive creativity can be.” We then proceeded to go through Osborn’s Seven Steps, and added a tip about reading books a special way to increase your creativity. A good show, well worth taking in. Link to the out-of-print 1952 book this podcast is based on: Wake Up Your Mind-100 Ways To Develop Creativeness, by Alex Osborn https://www.amazon.com/Wake-Your-Mind-Develop-Creativeness/dp/B0000CI7JO Download.

Three weeks ago we did a selection from my half of the no-longer-available Guerrilla Copywriting audiobook. It was so popular, we thought we’d do it again. Here’s some background: Sixteen years ago, in 2007, I produced an audiobook with my friend and mentor Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the bestselling Guerrilla Marketing series. Jay and I originally thought about doing a book together, but that never happened. However, we did do an audiobook. It was called Guerrilla Copywriting. Unlike a lot of things he did and I lot of things I’ve done, this one didn’t sell that well. I don’t think either of us had the bandwidth to promote it, but there may have been another problem -- we tried to jam too much good information into too little time. We had sixty really powerful tips for writing copy. Jay would do one, then I would do one. It ended up being 60 tips in 60 minutes. Plenty of value, but maybe we would have been better off slowing down and taking some time to talk about each tip. Well… the audiobook is out of print now, so I’m free to share my half of the material. I took a look at it the other day and, I gotta admit, it’s pretty good. A couple things needed to be updated -- a lot has happened in 16 years. But for the most part, we’ve got eternal principles that are completely workable today. OK. Today we cover about quarter of my part, and we’re going to take 25 minutes to half an hour to discuss. You’ll see why it makes more sense to do it that way. I’m starting to think the original was four times as fast as it should have been! Some of this you’re familiar with but you’ll probably see in a new light. And you may hear a few things that are new to you. Everything’s useful, and it stays to true to one of the main goals Jay and I had when we did this originally: It’s designed to make you more profitable, and it’s information you can put to use right away. Download.

People outside of marketing and copywriting might think “swiping” is something you do on your phone with a dating app, or maybe that it’s slang for shoplifting. Not wrong, but today we’re talking about what copywriters and marketing strategists mean when they say “swiping.” And that is, taking a proven form (whether that’s actual words or something a little more conceptual) and finding a way to use it yourself. It could be word-substitution in a headline. For example, we’ve seen countless examples of headlines that have swiped the originals: Who Else Wants A Whiter Wash? and Who Else Wants A Beach Body? Swipes would be Who Else Wants A Six-Pack That Gets Admiring Stares? Who Else Wants More Free Time Than You Ever Dreamed Of? Our guest today has a much broader and, I would say, more profitable vision of what swiping is and what it can be. His name is Corey Haines and he has a lot of experience in SaaS marketing. In case you’re not familiar with the term, SaaS stands for “Software-as-a-Service.” He also writes a weekly newsletter on SaaS marketing with more than 18,000 subscribers. Corey’s also cofounder of SwipeWell and has a whole lot of knowledge and wisdom on swiping than I’ve ever heard from anyone else. Here are the questions we covered on the show: - How do you definite “swipe file”? - Where did the concept of a swipe file come from? - Why is a swipe file valuable to a marketer and copywriter? - Where do you find good marketing inspiration to swipe from? - What are some examples of using a swipe file day to day? - What are some examples of taking inspiration from other industries to come up with creative marketing campaigns? To get a free trial of the software, go to: https://swipewell.app To find out more about Corey, go to: https://corey.co Download.

We’ve got a very special episode today in our Old Masters series—featuring some wisdom from David Ogilvy. He was legendary in advertising during the Mad Men days. Kenneth Roman wrote a book about Ogilvy called “The King of Madison Avenue.” I believe his book “Ogilvy on Advertising” was the only book on the subject to reach widespread bestseller status, far outside the reaches of the industry. Over 100,000 copies sold. For a business book, that’s like over 1 million sold for a novel or general-interest book. Ogilvy was more of a team leader and team builder than a solo operator. More like a Joe Schriefer or a James Patterson—Patterson was an executive for J. Walter Thompson before he became a best-selling novelist—Ogilvy was more like those guys than like a Gene Schwartz or a Gary Halbert. But don’t get me wrong. Ogilvy was also a terrific copywriter. He started out in direct response and understood the principles of that kind of copywriting inside out. I found something the other day, paging through Ogilvy’s autobiography, that’s a perfect fit for this podcast. Ogilvy had 11 rules for copywriting. Four of them are more focused on big ad agencies, but seven of them are great for us, and that’s what we’ll cover today. So what talked about today comes from is “David Ogilvy: An Autobiography.” This guy had quite an adventurous life, and after he retired he moved to live in a chateau in France. Here on the cover of the book you can see him staring menacingly at you, smoking a cigar. There are swans in the background. Ogilvy had this thing about trumpeter swans, which have the largest wingspan of any swan known to man. I don’t know if those are trumpeter swans on the cover, but there’s a really good chance they are. Ogilvy was an eccentric man with wide-ranging interests and an adventurous spirit. But when it came to copy, he was straightforward, and serious. And he was focused on getting results, even when he was writing consumer advertising with no response mechanisms. The rules we covered today come from his years of hard work, both writing copy himself and leading other copywriters. We talked about Ogilvy’s stance on studying advertising throughout your career, how much difference in response you can get when you improve the copy in an ad, whether a Big Idea matters or not, and a lot more. A link to get the book “David Ogilvy, An Autobiography”: https://www.amazon.com/David-Ogilvy-Autobiography-Trailblazers/dp/0471180025 Download.

Sixteen years ago I produced an audiobook with my friend and mentor Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the bestselling Guerrilla Marketing series. Jay and I originally thought about doing a book together, but that never happened. The audiobook was called Guerrilla Copywriting. Unlike a lot of things he did and I lot of things I’ve done, it didn’t sell that well. I don’t think either of us had the bandwidth to promote it, but there may have been another problem -- we tried to jam too much good information into too little time. We had sixty really powerful tips for writing copy. Jay would do one, then I would do one. It ended up being 60 tips in 60 minutes. Plenty of value, but maybe we would have been better off slowing down and taking some time to talk about each tip. Well… the audiobook is out of print now, so I’m free to share my half of the material. I took a look at it the other day and, I gotta admit, it’s pretty good. A couple things needed to be updated -- a lot has happened in 16 years. But for the most part, we’ve got eternal principles that are completely workable today. OK. Today we cover about quarter of my part, and we’re going to take 25 minutes to half an hour to discuss. You’ll see why it makes more sense to do it that way. I’m starting to think the original was four times as fast as it should have been! Some of this you’re familiar with but you’ll probably see in a new light. And you may hear a few things that are new to you. Everything’s useful, and it stays to true to one of the main goals Jay and I had when we did this originally: It’s designed to make you more profitable, and it’s information you can put to use right away. Download.

Today we took a new look at an old question: What does it take to become a really, really good copywriter? I wanted to answer this question by zeroing-in on the path of mastery. I’ve been learning about the path of mastery for a long time. What I found out goes against what I learned in school and what I see on TV and in the movies. Our culture celebrates achievers but it does NOT respect the path of mastery very much. I’m lucky in that I know a number of copywriters who are well along this path, including a few who are personal friends and a few more who are my mentoring clients. To prepare for this show, I went back to the books I’ve been reading since 2009 to flesh out my ideas and observations. A few surprises, some new information. But nothing that goes against anything I’ve noticed and concluded up until now. So what I did was pick some key points from great books about mastery, and weave all that together with some practical, down-to-earth tactics and approaches for getting really, really good at copywriting. The way I see it, in copywriting, the word “mastery” is a term to describe having so many skills and so much knowledge at your fingertips that what you do looks effortless to someone watching you. It’s not really effortless, but it’s certainly different, when you do something after having prepared yourself to get really good and having done it in a certain way. And there is a known and documented way to get to this place. A better way to say it is: to get on this path. Because mastery, it turns out, is much more a path than a place. It’s more a journey than a destination. It’s more a way of continuously working on your skills, rather than a badge that you put up on your website. When you’re well along the path of mastery, you may be able to solve problems and come up with ideas in a fraction of the time it takes someone with less experience to do the same thing. When you do it, often seems effortless to the person watching. If they knew what was going on under the hood, they would know better. It’s not excruciating, but it’s not always that easy, either. In copywriting at the highest levels, being able to perform at a high level is important. Why? Because somehow, as copywriters we find ourselves, in situations where we have to fix things or change directions under great time pressure. If you have the ability to go with the flow in situations like that, it can make all the difference in the world. On today’s show, we didn’t talk that much about the amazing feats of master copywriters. But we took a really good look at how they got there and how you can get there, too. Because when the heat is on, you’ll want to be there yourself. When everyone’s counting on you, you want them to feel good about how you perform. The advantages are: you have more choices and more opportunities. You end up working with more interesting people on more interesting projects. And, last but not least, you end up getting paid a lot more money. Here are the four parts of today’s show: Part 1: Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect — But Practice for Mastery Keeps Making You Better and Better What famed cello player Pablo Casals said about practicing. The definition of the kind of practice that makes mastery possible from the leading expert in the field, Anders Ericcson. Plus more from author Daniel Coyle and Robert Greene. Part 2: The Two False Flags On The Path Of Mastery My favorite expert on mastery is the late writer George Leonard. Some important insights from him on what the path is like, along with two misleading signs to watch out for, and why they occur from time to time. Part 3: So What Do You Practice, Anyway? Killer wisdom from martial art great Bruce Lee, as well as a couple other great insights from master teacher of hypnosis Igor Ledochowski and author Robert Greene. Also, a key finding from neuroscience about mastery, from author Daniel Coyle. This part of the show gives you a clearer picture of how practice fits into your journey as a copywriter. Part 4: What Gets You On The Path And Keeps You Going The surprising personal quality that gets and keeps you on a path to mastery. Spoiler alert: It’s not innate intelligence or talent. But, according to Robert Greene, it IS genetic. Books mentioned: Mastery, by George Leonard https://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Keys-Success-Long-Term-Fulfillment-ebook/dp/B01ND0X91Y Mastery, by Robert Greene https://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Robert-Greene-ebook/dp/B007V65PBK The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-Born-Grown-ebook/dp/B0026OR1UK Peak, by Anders Ericcson and Robert Pool https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-ebook/dp/B011H56MKS Download.

Today we returned to the Old Masters Series, but with a twist. We used some secrets from one Old Master to look at the famous work of another. This all came about last week, when I was going over the chapter on Intensification in Breakthrough Advertising with a client. Breakthrough Advertising, of course, is Gene Schwartz’s masterwork on copywriting. Part 2 of the book is seven chapters on “the basic techniques of breakthrough advertising.” And the first of those seven sets of techniques is what Gene Schwartz calls “Intensification.” Basically, how to get your hands on your prospect’s feeling of desire, and push it through the roof. I was struggling with how to put this on a podcast. And then I had an idea: Why not take John Caples’s famous ad, “They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano… ” and see how Caples used the intensification techniques. You might not be surprised that, even though the ad was written nearly 40 years before the book was, Caples knew what he was doing and used a bunch of the techniques. So, as we get started, you should know there are actually 10 Intensification steps in this chapter. Plus three other tricks. Again, this is all in one of 14 chapters of the book. We only covered five of the 10 Intensification steps today. First, because we did not have time for all 10. Second, I wanted to leave out five so you’ll be encouraged to get your own copy of Breakthrough Advertising from Brian Kurtz. We’ll give you a link in the show notes. Really, it’s one of the best copywriting books ever written. As you have already gotten a glimpse of there is so much in each chapter that you can spend years, and make a fortune, learning what’s in the whole book. Now, as to Caples. Gene Schwartz actually mentions this ad as a great example of one of the intensification steps, and we’ll cover that step. But it turns out Caples included more of than one Instensification step. It’s interesting to look at this ad, one of the most famous in history, because of the unusual way Caples uses the steps. He skips around from the normal order you would put them in. You’ll see what I mean in the full podcast. Here are the five Intensification steps we covered: 1. Present the product. 2. Put the claims in action. 3. Bring in the reader. 4. Bring in an audience. 5. Make a damaging admission. And a link to get Breakthrough Advertising: https://breakthroughadvertisingbook.com/ Download.

Today’s podcast is about a topic that is so important, we quote from three Old Masters, even though this is not an Old Masters Series show. The topic is: making your copy believable. Two of the Old Masters, right now. In his book “Ogilvy on Advertising,” David Ogilvy writes these words: “Says James Webb Young, one of the best copywriters in history: ‘every type of advertiser has the same problem: to be believed.’” And that only makes sense, when you think about it. Because no matter how good your copy is, if people don’t believe it, what good is it at all? We’re going a long way to solve that problem on today’s show. First, something from the third Old Master. We did a show on this topic a year and a half ago as part of our Old Masters Series. I’ll do a speed recap of the best of what we covered about believability then from a chapter A.O. Owen wrote in an old copy book about 100 years ago. His tips were: 1. Use exact numbers. Instead of “around 150,” use the actual amount, like, for example, 154—if that’s what it is. 2. Use the actual names of streets, cities, states or provinces, countries, and people’s name. Owen’s example was It is more believable to say “styles now reigning from Rue de la Paix, Paris, to Fifth Avenue, New York,” than to say, “styles now reigning from the fashion centers of Europe to those of America.” 3. His third tip was what we call today “the damaging admission.” Basically, admit you’re not perfect. In an sales letter by Million Dollar Mike Morgan that brought in over $10 million, one line that’s a great example, in the voice of the finance guru he was writing for, went like this: “No one has a crystal ball to predict the future—not even me.” 4. And the fourth one from this podcast was to mention motivation—your reason-why for doing something or the self-interested reason why your prospect should respond. This from a successful promotion I wrote years ago for Mendelson Auto Body Inc. in San Ramon, California: Here's A Special Offer To Keep Your Car Looking New! Plus, You Get A FREE Gift To Protect Your Car All Summer Long Two very self-interested reasons for people to take him up on his offer. So those four tips from A.O. Owen, with some modern examples, are as valid in 2023 as they were 100 years ago. But let’s move on to what we’ve got for today. It’s brand new, yet the advice is eternal. I pulled most of what we’re gonna talk about from a new book I’m writing which I’ll tell you more about in a month or two, when I should be ready to publish. For today, I took some copy for a bonus in an imaginary info-products course. It was pretty good to start with. Then I screwed it up four times, each with a different believability destroyer. All in the service of hopefully helping you avoid making the same mistake! Download.