If you’re in a competitive market and want a leg up, this site can help you.
If you aren’t happy with your ads and want better results, this site can help you.
If you’re trying to angle your product launch to reach the most people, this site can help you.
But what if you’re just starting out? What if you don’t have anything to sell?
College professors.
You know the type. Eccentric, wild-haired keepers of the Ivory Tower. Wearers of bushy eyebrows and unfashionable tweed suits.
Many of them have interesting ideas. But their heads are so full of theory it’s hard to get them to come down from of the clouds and operate in reality.
Probably why Claude Hopkins, the father of modern advertising, had a simple suggestion for improving the advertising textbooks being forced upon students in his time:
“Burn them!”
I can’t say I blame him, either. You’re tired of theory. You want results.
For a long time now, we’ve been thrust into a mass media where “news” is entertainment and “entertainment” is news.
This carefully-constructed bubble is practically inescapable.
It’s the ultimate bread and circus society. Attention spans are shorter. People are shallower. And the rift between a deep, meaningful life and the garbage spewed by popular ads widens daily.
It’s a dopamine-laden paradise. Fast food, shallow friends, and self-medication. Instant gratification. What ever happened to integrity, individuality, and freedom?
You know Paula Deen, right?
She’s that cook on TV with a southern drawl, platinum blonde hair, and a love for butter.
I haven’t had many of her recipes, but the ones I’ve tried threatened to send me straight into a sugar coma. Delicious? You bet. But healthy? No way in the world…
Unfortunately, Paula was diagnosed with Type II diabetes about a year back. And now she’ll probably have to cut back on the sugary, buttery goodness.
Let’s just hope that doesn’t stop her from coming out with delicious new recipes.
Anyways… how is this relevant to writing copy in any way?
Patience, my friend. Give me a second. Paula can teach all of us something about writing better copy.
I’m not going to talk to you about the mechanics of solid copywriting tonight.
I’m going to talk to you about something even more important than that. If you don’t have this, you can have all the fundamentals down but you’ll never write great copy. You’ll slip by with decent stuff, sure. But you won’t write things that knock socks off and cause avalanches of profits.
The only way decent copywriting becomes great copywriting is when it executes a good idea. You can learn all the mechanics in the world. You can become a master of split tests and tracking results. But you can’t join the ranks of the copywriting elite until you add in that element of art – that creative twist – to push your work over the edge.