Copywriters Podcast

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

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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.

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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

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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/

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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!

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I’m excited that we’re finally doing a show on Artificial Intelligence and Copywriting. This has been a long time coming. Nathan has had quite a bit of experience finding out on real assignments what AI can do and can’t do. I have less experience, but I do have some.

One thing is for certain: AI is here to stay, and it is slithering its way into copywriting. It’s not going to replace all of us tomorrow, but if your skills are limited as a copywriter, you may want to upgrade your skills, or become a real AI jockey, or both.

Today we’re going to talk about what AI does well and how it can save you tons of time, once you learn to use it. Also, what it doesn’t do well yet… and may never really be able to do at all.

We started with my unabashed opinion of what AI is when it comes to copywriting, and things could only get better from there.

In fact, Nathan had a number of positive things to say, including the best uses for AI when you’re a copywriter—things I had not considered or heard before.

However, good copywriter that he is, Nathan doesn’t even think of having the AI engine actually do his writing. He’s saved that for himself.

We also talked about where AI falls short, in ways you may or may not have already realized. Writing copy, after all, is a skill that most people don’t have or even understand. But it is and will remain necessary and vital for an increasing proportion of the world’s business for years to come.

We also took a little peek into the future, to plot where we may be headed.

Find Nathan's website at

https://advertisingcheatcodes.com/

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Today we’ve got an urgent topic that everyone in copywriting has questions about—and we’ve got an expert to give us some much-needed guidance.

The topic is content. What do you do with it. When does it replace copy… when is it inappropriate… and when does content blend with copy and actually enhance the selling power?

And our expert is Scott Aughtmon, founder of Direct Response Content Marketing. Full disclosure: Scott and I have been friends for a while, and he invite me to speak at a marketing class he was teaching at UC Berkeley six years ago.

These days, Scott does a lot of marketing work in the tech space.

He’s also the author of the book “51 Content Marketing Hacks” and created an infographic called “21 Types Of Content We Crave.” That infographic has gone viral, and we’re going to talk about a few of those types today, and give you a link at the end to get the full list.

Scott told us how and why he got into content marketing, and a little bit about the surprising history of the infographic.

If you overlook the importance of content every step of the way in your sales funnels, you’ll want to hear what Scott had to say, because he understands the value of content in a direct response context, and explains it better than anyone else I’ve ever heard.

Scott reviewed five of the 21 items in the infographic, and we discussed why people crave them:

• Content that reminds us there’s more

• Content that inspires us to action

• Content that reminds us we matter

• Content that educates while entertaining us

• Content that creates a fresh point of views, even about common things

You can get a free copy of Scott’s infographic here:

https://www.directresponsecontentmarketing.com/2019/09/12/the-21-types-of-content-we-crave-infographic/

And you can get his training on the 31 Types of Content We All Crave for $79 (instead of $99) and free PDF copy of his book, 51 Content Marketing Hacks.

Offer good until midnight on 3/31. Here’s the link:

https://tinyurl.com/4k3hp45xhttps://tinyurl.com/4k3hp45x

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Our returning champion is Joshua Lee Henry, with a first: He came by to do a GUEST Old Master’s Series show.

Joshua asked me if he take a new look at the work of John Caples, the great copywriter and author. I said OK, as long he talked about something different than we have talked about on the many shows we’ve already done on Caples.

Joshua put together a collection of unique items that filled the bill. So I was really happy to bring him back for this special show!

As you may remember, Joshua is a high-powered copywriter and copy chief for Agora. He started his career 13 years ago writing fundraising letters for victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Joshua has been pastor of a megachurch and as a freelancer, has written for such famous clients as Jay Abraham, Brian Tracy and the Zig Ziglar corporation.

Today, we found out what he discovered, digging into the archives of John Caples.

Joshua broke it down into six lessons:

1. 4 Ways to Profit by Removing The Guesswork

2. How to Secure Testimonials

3. Appealing to the “Lazy Instinct”

4. The Value of Illusion

5. Write Long and Boil It Down

6. The Most Important Quality for a Writer is Sincerity

Joshua rose to the challenge and we appreciate him for it!

Here are a couple links:

A training program Joshua’s part of: World of Financial Copywriting,

https://bit.ly/3CaB9S8

And if you want to reach Joshua personally, his email is:

joshualeehenry @ activatemyadvertising.com

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Our guest today is Meg Casebolt, founder of Love at First Search and host of the Social Slowdown podcast. I think the key words are “love” and “slow,” and let’s see if I’m right.

Meg’s been very successful with a long-term search-engine optimization strategy she uses for her clients. One example that you should find interesting: Meg’s client Sara Frandina showed up third for the keywords “conversion copywriter” -- and this was organic, not an ad -- yesterday when I searched for that term on Google.

Third on the first page of organic search for “conversion copywriter.” Not too shabby!

You may remember legendary copywriter Gary Bencivenga had a huge success with the headline “Get Rich Slowly.” Well, Meg’s approach is similar. She doesn’t go for the black-hat tricks and other gimmicks popular among some marketers.

“We don’t believe in quick-fix formulas that promise the world—but break your heart when you see they don’t work,” she says.

One key element of Meg’s long-term, long-lasting approach: The strategic use of empathy in keyword research. Empathy, which could be seen as an appropriate expression of love.

It’s an approach I’ve never heard of before, in the specific way Meg talks about it. So I was very excited to talk with Meg about it.

She began with a great example -- a stark contrast between a bad example of empathy (that is, hardly any empathy at all) and the good use of empathy. This was for keywords in weight loss.

From there, Meg shared her four strategies for coming up with a comprehensive empathy-based keyword strategy:

1. Empathize with your customers’ journey to find an answer

2. Understanding the WHY / Setting yourself apart

3. Providing a solution

4. Be empathetic when developing content

This was a very valuable look at how to thrive in today’s content-based search engine environment.

Meg’s website is:

https://loveatfirstsearch.com/

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Now that it’s late January, you should be well into your New Years Resolutions or goals for the year, or maybe decided, “Ah… I’ll wait till next year.”

What I’d like to do is niche down to just copywriting. Do you have copywriting goals? I’ve got five skills or skill sets that are worth improving this year, and I want to give you a peek under the hood.

Every one of these can put more power in your copy and more profit in your pocket. They’re not flashy but they are high-octane. And I’ve found the most successful people never stop improving, so it’s worth at least considering these and see if they feel like a fit.

So there are the five skills. You probably have most or all of them already. The idea is that by getting better at any one of them, you copy improves in multiples.

Skill #1: Research

We talked about three kinds of research: fact research, emotional research, and situational research.

Most people know what fact research is, and even getting better at this could really help anyone’s copywriting. But emotional research and situational research take copy to a whole new level.

Skill #2: Rewriting

Building off this quote from Ernest Hemingway:

Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over.

The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself.

We talked about what real rewriting is like… why it’s so important… and the best way to do it.

Skill #3: Metaphors

We were so fortunate to have the Queen of Metaphors, Anne Miller, on the show a few weeks ago. We talked about her book, The Tall Lady With The Iceberg.

Tucked away in the back of the book are a series of very practical, valuable routines on how you can get better and better at using metaphors in your copy—and everywhere else! We cover those in this part of the podcast.

Skill #4: Go Beyond Swiping

There’s a level of copywriting that Gene Schartz talks about in “Breakthrough Advertising” that goes way beyond swiping, or simply following formulas to come up with a headline or body copy.

Gene says, “The idea for an ad or a headline demands its own shape. It cannot be fitted into someone else’s solution. The problem defies a formula. And the third, analytical approach -- with no answers, only guideposts and questions -- offers the only way.”

We talked about these three levels of copy creativity here.

Skill #5: Get Better At Identifying and Writing To Your Prospect’s Level of Market Awareness

This another one of the many gems from Gene Schwartz’ book Breakthrough Advertising.

Here are the five stages in a nutshell:

Stage 1- Ready to buy your product

Stage 2- Has heard about your product, but doesn’t want it (yet)

Stage 3- Wants a product that does what yours does -- but doesn’t want yours (yet)

Stage 4 - Has a need, but doesn’t see connection between his need and your product

Stage 5 - Complete unawareness

We talked about getting more familiar with these five stages, and how to use them.

One more thing: If more than one of these appeals to you and you’ve already decided to improve the skill or skills, don’t dive into all of them all at once. Better to do one at a time. Maybe one a week, or one every two weeks, or one a month.

But, if you can, do something every day to improve one of these skills, and stick with one for at least a week, you will find you have some impressive breakthroughs in 2023.

Book links:

The Tall Lady With The Iceberg, by Anne Miller

https://www.amazon.com/Tall-Lady-Iceberg-Metaphor-Metaphorically/dp/0976279444

Breakthrough Advertising, by Eugene Schwartz

https://breakthroughadvertisingbook.com/

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