Timeless tips from copywriting legends

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Demian Fanworth is the head copywriter at Copyblogger. He compiled 13 good ideas from some of the top copywriters through history:

1. Decide the effect you want to produce in your reader — Robert Collier

2. Show your product in use — Victor Schwab

3. Open like a Reader’s Digest article — John Caples

4. Tap into one overwhelming desire — Eugene Schwartz

5. Make the advertiser the character — Maxwell Sackheim

6. Develop a Unique Selling Proposition — Rosser Reeves

7. Find the inherent drama in your product — Leo Burnett

8. Write to one person, not a million — Fairfax M. Cone

9. “Reason why” copy — Albert Lasker

10. Go after points of maximum anxiety — Mel Martin

11. Transubstantiate your product into something else — Bill Jayme

12. Everybody in the world divides his mail into two piles — Gary Halbert

13. Do not worship at the altar of creativity — David Ogilvy

Get the whole skinny here:
13 Damn Good Ideas from 13 Dead Copywriters - Copyblogger

Here is an excerpt on Bill Jayme:
"Jayme channeled his creativity and persuasion into his notion of transubstantiation: the idea that a product or service must be transformed into something magical.

For example, in a letter selling a course on mastery of personal computers, Jayme didn’t talk about drives, memory, software, coding, or programming. No, he focused on the deeper benefits of personal computing … the one people actually cared about:

Success.

Jayme’s letter begins:
You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If you’re planning to succeed in business over the coming decade, you’ve now got just two choices left. You can come to terms with the computer. Or you can marry the boss’s daughter.
~ Bill Jayme
In other words, he’s not selling features or facts (which you need). He’s selling a new life. And mastering the basics of computing are the gateway to that life."

Here is the Cool Friday letter that kicked off Jayme's career as one of the best magazine subscription copywriters of all time.
http://www.warriorforum.com/copywrit...er-letter.html

BONUS POINTS to Jayme for the phrase "Shattered shibboleths."

More Bill Jayme swipes here (link is to a PDF):
http://www.andyowencopyandcreative.c...f_them_all.pdf
#copywriting #legends #timeless #tips

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