Copywriters Podcast

Last week, we held a prize fight between a human copywriter and an AI, or, at least a virtual prize fight.

Here’s the background:

In late September, here in San Francisco, a man named Frankie LaPenna held three cage fights against robots in a cage match. Human vs. robot. And he won two of them.

Five days later, the California State Athletic Commission sent him a cease and desist order, to him and “all persons holding, promoting, advertising or sponsoring unsanctioned human versus humanoid robot cage fights.”

So, to stay on the right side of the law, the battle we are holding today is not a cage fight. It’s the REMATCH of last week’s prize fight, and takes place only in virtual space between an AI and a human copywriter.

No robots or people will be harmed by the events about to take place on our show today.

What we are going to do is give each fighter–the human copywriter, and the AI–10 new tasks, and let them fight it out to see who the champion really is.

RESOURCE:

My new book, The Persuasion Story Code

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

In late September, here in San Francisco, a man named Frankie LaPenna held three cage fights against robots in a cage match. Human vs. robot. And he won two of them.

Five days later, the California State Athletic Commission sent him a cease and desist order, to him and “all persons holding, promoting, advertising or sponsoring unsanctioned human versus humanoid robot cage fights.”

So, to stay on the right side of the law, the battle we are holding today is not a cage fight. It’s a prize fight, and takes place only in virtual space between an AI and a human copywriter.

No robots or people will be harmed by the events about to take place on our show today.

What we are going to do is give each fighter–the human copywriter, and the AI–10 tasks, and let them fight it out to see who the champion really is.

RESOURCE:

My new book, The Persuasion Story Code

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

What do you do when your offer stops working?

First step: Keep breathing.

An offer that stops working may feel like a disaster. But you need more

information so you can decide whether it is indeed the end of the world, or,

a problem you can fix.

In other episodes of this show, we’ve talked about a sales letter that lasted

40 years… and comic-strip sales letter that lasted more than 50 years…

things that seem to have had nearly eternal life.

These days, the life-cycle is much faster. Because things are changing all

around us so quickly, and ultimately, those changes affect our offers.

I’ve got a whole lot of proven techniques to tell you about, to fix an ailing

offer… as well as a couple of situations where the fix is to replace it

completely.

Resources:

Breakthrough Advertising

https://breakthroughadvertisingbook.com/

Chris Dyson’s Post

https://x.com/ChrisLDyson/status/2105928385289388519

The Persuasion Story Code

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

What are the little things we do in our copy that have an overly large impact on our sales?

It’s a good question, because it’s so easy to get caught up in headlines, stories, offers and bullet points that sometimes we don’t pay enough attention to all the little roadblocks we might be putting up for ourselves.

All of which has to do with the question: How easy is it for the prospect to actually READ our copy?

Today we’re going to review a number of simple ways to make our copy as easy to read as possible.

But then we’ll go further. We’ll look at some little-known, high-quality scientific research I uncovered that gets right to the heart of how readers respond unconsciously and are more likely to buy, because of certain easy-to-control X factors in our copy.

Stuff most people weren’t even aware of.

Article by scientists in The Psychologist magazine:

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/if-its-easy-read-its-easy-do-pretty-good-and-true

Earlier Podcast: How to Make Your Copy Easy to read:

Youtube: https://youtu.be/RmNZSlF4644

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6WQ3Gbwt25Lqrs3r1VjaSp

My book, The Persuasion Story Code:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

A couple weeks ago, we did an entire show to answer the question:

“Are there eternal truths of advertising copywriting that are as true today as they were 40, 50, even 100 years ago?”

It turns out, there are. 

In fact, we were only able to cover about half of them on that show.

Today we’ve got seven more for you, with easy to understand examples from the past as well as from this decade–sometimes, this year.

You’ll be impressed with how little has changed in terms of human nature and what we respond to.

Resource:

The Persuasion Story Code

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

A powerful mindset forces you to write scripts for TV and movies that compel viewers to watch. Keeps them glued to the screen, in fact.

There’s a nearly identical mindset like that for writing copy.

We’re going to look at both today, and how you can put the copywriting mindset to work for you right away.

This all stems from the prolific and controversial playwright, screenwriter and author David Mamet. He’s written tons of stuff but you may be most familiar with his devastating movie about sales, “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

Well, in 2006 Mamet adapted a memoir from a special ops soldier into a breathtaking TV series called The UNIT. 

He wrote a memo to his writers room on the show that was leaked and became legendary in Hollywood.

A little later on in the show I’ll share important insights from the memo–important for copywriters–and tell you how you can get a free copy for your own use and enjoyment.

I’ve also pulled out 5 rules for writing drama from one of his books, and these rules are easily adapted to writing compelling copy.

RESOURCES:

Book: 3 Uses of the Knife, on the Nature and Purpose of Drama

https://www.amazon.com/dp/037570423X

The famous Mamet memo to writers of The UNIT

https://www.slashfilm.com/508254/a-letter-from-david-mamet-to-the-writers-of-the-unit/ 

The Persuasion Story Code

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

For as long as I remember, new people coming into direct response marketing believe that the old rules no longer apply, and they are in an entirely new game.

It’s just human nature.

As bestselling author Robert Heinlein told the Washington Post in a 1984 interview, “every younger generation that has ever come along thinks they invented sex.”

This comes to mind because of a comment I saw the other day on social media, where a successful young copywriter was asking with some annoyance where he could find some up-to-date social feeds on present-day copywriting info, and not on stuff on what worked 40 years ago.

That got me thinking, because a lot of what we do here on Copywriters Podcast is go over Old Masters material which is even MORE than 40 years old.

Now, to be sure, 40 years ago they didn’t have video sales letters online, or Facebook ads, or lead magnets… or really, any kind of Internet marketing. That didn’t start until the late 1990s.

There are certainly new technologies and techniques that we all want to keep up to date on. And sometimes we cover those here.

But as I was thinking about all of this, my question was more fundamental:

“Are there eternal truths of advertising copywriting that are as true today as they were 40, 50, even 100 years ago?”

It turns out, there are. Today I’ve got seven of them for you, with easy to understand examples from the past as well as from this decade–often, this year.

You’ll be impressed with how little has changed in terms of human nature and what we respond to.

RESOURCE: The Persuasion Story Code

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

It’s kind of unusual when someone you work with bursts into your office with an urgent problem, and then you proceed to develop a solution to that problem and simplify it over the next 10 years, and then your solution ends up becoming one of the most important books in business history.

But that’s what happened with our Old Masters Series selection today. Its origin story, nearly 100 years ago, begins when James Webb Young is working at ad agency J. Walter Thompson in Chicago.

A frantic ad sales manager for a magazine shows up out of nowhere and asks Young the following question:

“You have produced a lot of advertising ideas. Just how do you get them?”

No one had asked Young that question before, and he didn’t know the answer himself. At first. At least, at a conscious level where he could explain it.

He had to think about the question for years, but by 1940 he had the answer and he published it in a book. It’s the shortest book ever in our Old Masters Series, and really, considering how important and valuable it is, one of the least well known.

How short is it? Just over 5300 words. About 15-20 pages in regular-sized books, but around 50 pages in the smaller printed books it’s sold in today. You can easily read it in less than an hour.

Most people want to read it more than once. I’ve lost count myself but it’s at least a dozen times I’ve read it. Because it’s so precise and so powerful.

It’s easy enough to read. And the book will only cost you a few dollars.

But what James Web Young came up with over the decade while he was pondering the question, is, well, priceless.

And that’s what we’ll cover today.

Resources

A Technique For Producing Ideas, by James Webb Young

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4XRLVPJ/

The Persuasion Story Code

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

It turns out in the larger world of culture and fashion, we’ve reached a breaking point. This is important for copywriting because of something we’ve always known and practiced, and today we’re going to take a wide-ranging look at the opposing forces of perfection, which is not real, and authenticity, which is not perfect.

Both perfection and authenticity have been used to sell stuff.

And we’ve seen a lot of people, especially in social media, stretching notions of perfection about as far as it can go.

So the perfection trend seems to have reached the breaking point I was just talking about.

I saw this in an interesting article exploring the trend in Bloomberg Businessweek:
“We’ve been looking at perfect faces and vacations and homes on Instagram for more than 15 years, and on TikTok for most of a decade, during which time creators have pursued new audiences by pushing what already works further toward a logical extreme—the uncanny perfection of everything.

“At this point so little is left to upgrade, they’re now positing ways to improve the color of one’s armpit skin.”

The article is titled “The Optimization Backlash Has Begun,” and it’s all about how people are really getting tired of having images and standards of false perfectionism rammed down their throats.

Writer Amanda Mull took a good look at the new trend: Showing your flaws as part of marketing, movies and social media.

We’ll go much further than the recent past to set the stage, and then burrow into some great ways you can take advantage of this trend in your copy and video marketing.

RESOURCE:

The Persuasion Story Code

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

He is known for one of the most famous sayings in copywriting: “Enter the conversation already going on in the prospect’s mind.”

Yet most copywriters don’t know much about him, or even who he is.

That would be Robert Collier, who introduced the concept to copywriting 90 years ago, when he published The Robert Collier Letter Book.

I first learned about the book from Gary Halbert, more than 30 years ago. Halbert said it was one of a handful of books every copywriter needs to read.

Robert Collier himself used direct mail to sell all kinds of stuff. He sold raincoats for $14.65 by mail. Made-to-measure suits for $37.50. Sets of books. Magazine subscriptions. 

And Collier tested everything. When a letter worked, he wanted to know why. When it flopped, he wanted to know that, too.

The Robert Collier Letter Book is where he showcased his work. You get a chance to look at what he wrote, and read about the reasoning behind his decisions.

We went through the book and pulled out seven lessons. Each one starts with Collier's own words and then we'll talk about what each lesson means for you, today, whether you’re writing Facebook ads, youtube scripts, or full-fledged sales letters.

RESOURCES:

The Robert Collier Letter Book

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GKQPG89G

The Persuasion Story Code

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ