The Adweek Copywriting Handbook

Joseph Sugarman

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than . . . a cruelly delicate organism with the overpowering necessity to create, create, create—so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating. —Pearl Buck
The Goal of Copy Throughout this book, I talk about the eventual goal of writing effective copy, namely: “To cause a person to exchange his or her hard-earned money for a product or service.” It’s really as simple as that.
The best copywriters in the world are those who are curious about life, read a great deal, have many hobbies, like to travel, have a variety of interests, often master many skills, get bored and then look for other skills to master. They hunger for experience and knowledge and find other people interesting. They are very good listeners.
I’ve had hundreds of failures and many successes, with each representing a learning experience.
The thirst for knowledge, a tremendous curiosity about life, a wealth of experiences and not being afraid to work are the top credentials for being a good copywriter.
It’s not whether you win or lose in life that’s important but whether you play the game.
Lose enough and eventually you will win—it’s only a matter of time.
Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid camera, said it best when he described his definition of a mistake: “A mistake is a future benefit, the full value of which is yet to be realized.”
Edward de Bono, one of the great creative thinkers of our time, coined the term lateral thinking to describe the process of coming up with ideas by not focusing or thinking of just the problem. Often, by relating the problem to something that has nothing to do with the problem, a new idea emerges.
Copywriting is a mental process the successful execution of which reflects the sum total of all your experiences, your specific knowledge and your ability to mentally process that information and transfer it onto a sheet of paper for the purpose of selling a product or service.
Axiom 2 All the elements in an advertisement are primarily designed to do one thing and one thing only: get you to read the first sentence of the copy.
If you look at many typical JS&A ads, you’ll notice that all of my first sentences are so short they almost aren’t sentences. Some typical ones might be: Losing weight is not easy. It’s you against a computer. It’s easy. It had to happen. Hats off to IBM. Each sentence is so short and easy to read that your reader starts to read your copy almost as if being sucked into it.
Axiom 3 The sole purpose of the first sentence in an advertisement is to get you to read the second sentence.
Just remember that the sole purpose of all the elements of an ad is to get you to read the first sentence. Make that first sentence so easy to read that your reader is almost compelled to read it. If you grasp this, you’ve got an awfully good start and a great understanding of copywriting and the persuasive process.
Once you realize the importance of setting up a buying environment, you’ll know that it must be done in the early stages of an advertisement.
Axiom 4 Your ad layout and the first few paragraphs of your ad must create the buying environment most conducive to the sale of your product or service.
Axiom 5 Get the reader to say yes and harmonize with your accurate and truthful statements while reading your copy.
In fact, it’s been proven that if a reader reads more than 25 percent of your ad, there is a great probability that he or she will read the entire ad. So once you’ve grabbed your reader at the start of your ad with your perfect environment and once they’re reading your compelling first sentence, you’ve got them started down the slippery slide.
Axiom 6 Your readers should be so compelled to read your copy that they cannot stop reading until they read all of it as if sliding down a slippery slide.
I often will start my copy with a story or even pick up a piece of news from a magazine that I feel would be of interest to my readers. The story is often offbeat, always interesting and a great short story.
So save those offbeat articles you come across that tweak your interest and might interest your readers—regardless of how ridiculous or offbeat they may be.
Axiom 7 When trying to solve problems, don’t assume constraints that aren’t really there.
Axiom 8 Keep the copy interesting and the reader interested through the power of curiosity.
Emotion Principle 1: Every word has an emotion associated with it and tells a story. Emotion Principle 2: Every good ad is an emotional outpouring of words, feelings and impressions. Emotion Principle 3: You sell on emotion, but you justify a purchase with logic.
But when I had to explain the reason for my purchase, I ended up using logic—something that I really believed was correct when I used it.
With very few words, I conveyed the feeling of being a concerned company that acts promptly. And even though the phrase makes no logical sense, it has been picked up by several direct marketers and used in their catalogs and print ads.
Often, a phrase or sentence or even a premise does not have to be correct logically. As long as it conveys the message emotionally, it not only does the job, but does it more effectively than the logical message.
Each product has an inherent nature, and understanding that inherent nature will help you sell it.
If you realize that each word has an emotion attached to it—almost like a short story unto itself—then you will also have a very good understanding of what emotion means in the copywriting process.
Axiom 9 Never sell a product or service. Always sell a concept.
You sell the sizzle and not the steak—the concept and not the product.
Axiom 10 The incubation process is the power of your subconscious mind to use all your knowledge and experiences to solve a specific problem, and its efficiency is dictated by time, creative orientation, environment and ego.
More copy will allow you to increase the value of a product and add many more dollars to your retail price. In short, by educating the consumer you can demand more money for your product.
Axiom 11 Copy should be long enough to cause the reader to take the action you request.
It was a genuine expression of thanks and a direct message—all with genuine emotion.
So it is essential that you write your copy as if you are writing to that single individual. Your copy should be very personal. From me to you. Period.
Axiom 12 Every communication should be a personal one, from the writer to the recipient, regardless of the medium used.
we must craft our ads in such a manner that they literally lead our prospect (by the flow of the copy) to ask the question we want to answer.
I would always allow my children free access to the entire seminar process and they had never been a nuisance. In fact, the students liked this family touch.
April’s ad made an important point, which I have reminded each class of since. Good copy can be written at any age and by anybody. Simply understanding the principles and applying them to something you intuitively know is all it takes.
Axiom 13 The ideas presented in your copy should flow in a logical fashion, anticipating your prospect’s questions and answering them as if the questions were asked face-to-face.
Axiom 14 In the editing process, you refine your copy to express exactly what you want to express with the fewest words.
But the goal in writing ad copy is to express the thoughts you want to convey in the most powerful way but with the fewest words.
The more you write, the less editing you have to do. The easier the flow out of your brain, the better you are at expressing the emotional feel of copy and the excitement that each word represents.
It is important that you do make your copy as free from error as possible. If you don’t, it reflects badly on the integrity of your offer. It raises doubts in the minds of your readers. They may think, “If this guy can’t get his grammar straight, how do I know he runs his business right?”
As I just mentioned, your paragraph headings could say anything. I once ran an ad for a radar speed indicator, and as a test I used the most outrageous paragraph headings you could think of. They included “Scrambled Eggs,” “Working and Playing” and “Success and Good Things.” Even though the headings had absolutely nothing to do with the ad copy, they drew absolutely no attention. Nobody ever asked me what the headings meant or commented that they were not consistent with the copy. But had I misspelled a word in the body of the ad, I would have heard plenty about it.
The primary purpose of paragraph headings is to get the reader to read the copy by making the copy look less intimidating.
Although I’ve never tested to see if this was the case, my experience with paragraph headings tells me that curiosity does play a minor role but the main purpose of these headings is to make the copy less intimidating.
what is called a “triad.” Very often when I list examples or attributes of something, I use just three of them. For example, take the sentence, “I went shopping for a hammer, a screwdriver and a pair of pliers.” In copy you list three items in a series with the last item preceded by the word and, and you create a nice rhythm within that sentence.
In your copywriting, let your readers take a stroll down a path with you or let them smell the fragrance through your nose or let them experience some of the emotions you are feeling by forming a mental picture from your description.
The buying transaction is an emotional experience that uses logic to justify the buying decision. You buy a Mercedes automobile emotionally but you then justify its purchase logically with its technology, safety and resale value. So justifying its value is something that the consumer wants to do before making an emotional purchase.
The higher the price point, the more need there is to justify the purchase. The lower the price point or the more value the price represents, the less you have to justify the purchase. In fact, the lower the price, the more greed plays a role.
The ideal satisfaction conviction should raise an objection and resolve it, as I’ve indicated in the previous chapter, but in resolving it, go beyond what people expect.
The satisfaction conviction is a critical part of the sales message and few realize its importance. Yet, if you can create a powerful satisfaction conviction, this simple device will do a great deal for the success of your offers.
Realize that you must understand the nature of the product you are selling or you won’t effectively sell it.
The desire to belong to and identify with a group of people who own a specific product is one of the most powerful psychological motivators to be aware of in marketing and copywriting.
The point is, when selling, whether in print or on TV or the Internet, recognize that there is a very large segment of the population who, for whatever reason, has an emotional need to collect a series of similar products. These products bring great joy and satisfaction and in some cases utility.