Who Do You Rate As The Number One Copywriter Of All Time?

Wow, so many greats. I can't imagine narrowing it down to just 1.

My favorites are...

Gary Halbert
John Carlton
Gary Bencivenga
Joe Sugarman
Clayton Makepeace

There are many others that I'm forgetting as well. Older and younger than those mentioned above.

I have a huge stack of copywriting books, and I think the best is Eugene Schwartz's Breakthrough Advertising. No other copywriter has gone so deep into the psychology of why people buy and what makes ads work.

If you're new to Schwartz, here are his 8 rules of copywriting (not from the book, but from a speech):
1. Be the best listener you ever met.
2. Work extremely intensely in 33 minute spurts.
3. Never create. Know the product to the core and combine the details in new ways.
4. Write to the chimpanzee brain. Simply. Directly.
5. Channel demand. Never sell.
6. Think about what a product does -- not is -- and demonstrate this.
7. Make gratification instantaneous (that's why I'm posting this list here!)
8. Failing often and testing big differences shows you are trying hard enough.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Brett

Saul of Tarsus - seriously.

Show me another writer with a control that's been running for two thousand years.

Rather than give even more plaudits to the ones mentioned (I've been doing it for years and have any of them ever said thanks? lol. After all the money I've spend with them. I appreciate the deceased ones can't).

Makepeace probably wins because he's still working and sells more stuff.

But the best copywriter varies all the time...

It's the one who persuaded you to buy whatever it was you last bought.


Steve

I wonder what Claude Hopkins would say about this thread?

My fav's are:
Claude Hopkins

Claudes nemesis; J. Walter Thompson, was pretty good too

Ben Hart, just because he was my mentor and got me started writing copy.

John Carlton

Dan Kennedy

Jimmy D. Brown

Marlon Sanders

Paul Myers

Bill Glazer

Of course everyone mentioned above

Mel Martin

Ralph Ginzburg

They all do different things and you can learn from all
of them.

One key characteristic of great copywriters is they have
their own unique voice so picking the number one is likely
to be impossible because you're comparing apples with
oranges.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

P.S. Most of the greats have already been mentioned
in this thread so I won't do that again.

Check out this list. No I'm not there but some of my students are:

phrase HQ

-Ray Edwards

Consider that Robert Collier sold millions of dollars of products during the Great Depression, with unemployment as high as 25% how could he not be one of the greats? Almost all by sales letters direct to consumers.

Frank Cawood had 100 employees during his peak, he's still going strong by running full page ads in newspapers. Hard to beat his track record.

Ben Suarez has sold billions just with his copy alone, let alone his in-house copywriters too. And by the way Ben wrote most of the ads you see in PARADE and USA Today and Weekend for the Eden Pure Heaters (Sales have topped a Billion with that product).

Rod Napier has written most of the ads for the Amish Heater, also selling millions of dollars of products.

Many guys whom you have never heard of, John White for example, have written copy which tops most of what Halbert/Kennedy/Abraham have done.

So, if it is about results and numbers, add these guys to your lists, OK?

gjabiz

I don't know who the best is, but I do know who has helped me along the most:

Gary halbert
Dan Kennedy
Michael Masterson

these three are directly responsible for all the successes I've had.

- Jon Webb

John Carlton - amazing! Read his book!

If you're just basing it on how much money they made for their clients...

it would have to be Lou Taylor Evendole.

Lou wrote letters in the 50's and 60's that made almost 4 billion for his clients.

The guy was a genius.

He wrote a book that only sold 149 copies...but all 149 people that bought the book became millionaires.

I did an extensive search back in 83' for the book and found it...it's beyond words...

I'd recommend anyone dig, scratch, claw, tunnel their way to a copy of his book.

Eugene Schwartz

After mailing out my batch of letters in an attempt to make money with a chain letter, (and yes, I did send out the $1 to each name on the list as to not jinx the effort) I received a sales letter from:

Tom Mudry

I couldn't buy what he was offering quick enough, which was a how-to about direct mail marketing..

"Direct-Mail & Direct Response Advertising Techniques - the "Experts" Don't Want You To Know About!"

It definitely delivered what he said it would.

I bought any product from him I could afford.

He get's my vote...

-Chris

What are the basic requirements for one to be rated a good copywriter? It's hard to say choosing one coz there is a bunch of these people...

These threads are pointless and ridiculous. There is no such thing as the best copywriter ever. And I find it especially humorous that some random list of copywriters on tumbler is being passed around as the 101 best copywriters ever. And the ones passing it around are the ones with their names on the list LOL.

I imagine if the top copywriters in direct mail, the ones writing for 6 and 7 figure mail drops which bring in 10s of millions, looked at that list, 80 of the names would prompt them to ask, "Who the hell is <insert IM copywriter name here>?"