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Showing posts with label copywriter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label copywriter. Show all posts

Saturday, 30 January 2010

On sundry stabbings - and why occasionally someone makes me feel I'm not wasting my time

You can safely say that doing business my way is not quite how they do it in those agencies with receptions that look like restaurants.

I just had a comic exchange with an old acquaintance (and new client if we ever get our shit together) about the dramas of domestic life.

I think I managed to top his stories by saying that "As someone who has been stabbed by one ex-wife and one ex-mistress and still has a scar on his face from another who hit an artery I laugh at your puny adventures."

But to change the subject entirely, a year or so ago a Croatian TV interviewer asked me why I'm still in this bloody business. I replied as best I could, but this email which I got yesterday gives the best reason of all.

Hi Drayton

I wanted to send you a personal note (well as personal as an email can be) to thank you for inspiring me in my career.

Let me explain.

25 years ago I was a copywriting rookie at Sun Alliance. A graduate on that slippery road of irrelevant brilliance...ideas aplenty, most of them useless. Thankfully this was accompanied by an overwhelming desire to learn.

I was sent on a 2 day direct marketing conference in London. Almost by accident I meandered into a seminar you were running. I can remember feeling daunted but intrigued by you and I became completely engrossed in what you had to say.

On a screen you flashed up examples of adverts - good, bad, horrendous and brilliant. I squirmed when you thoroughly denounced an advert by Sun Alliance. Thank god I had not written it.

Then you flashed an advert, a simple classified ad for a B&B in the Dales that spun a beautiful story in just one paragraph. You pointed out the descriptions and the words and told us that great copywriting began with simplicity and relevance, with compelling descriptions and more. I wonder if you can remember?

Over the years I have never, ever forgotten your brilliant advice. I love telling stories and getting paid for them and I have mentioned your name on countless occasions when talking to people about the art of copywriting. I still feel like a rookie, just an older one!

I found you on Twitter and started following you. This galvanised me into writing to you.

I get a few like this. Sorry if it's a bit maudlin of me to quote that one, but last week was mostly crap, and it cheered me up no end. I still use that example, too. Good things don't age.

Thanks for taking the trouble, Dee.

Thursday, 28 January 2010

"Make money while you sleep" - and other half-truths

If you can't steal from your relatives, who can you steal from?

"Originality is the most dangerous sin in the advertiser's lexicon," said Rosser Reeves, and - taking him at his word his brother in law David Ogilvy happily quoted this in "Confessions of an Advertising Man" and everywhere else for years after without attribution.

I was reminded of this when I saw a hoary old favourite re-emerge for the umpteenth time on one of those scamsters' twitter pages. "Make money while you sleep" it promised. Why be original when you can steal? Of course, even the best of misrepresentations works better if you can improve it - perhaps by saying "Make $452 to $3,217 a month extra while you sleep". Even a half-truth is improved by precision.

One of the world's best copywriters reproved me a while ago for being too modest I ignored him; it is an English thing. Then someone came to see me yesterday and repeated the criticism. If I have to boast a little in this fatuous world of legends and superstars I will say this: I probably know more good stuff to copy than anyone.

I first saw this "while you sleep" line used by Ed Axel one of the rather roguish American copywriters I met in the early '60's. He had a great ad for a product called "Slumberslim", with the headline: "Lose weight while you sleep through the miracle of auto-oxidation"

I said, "What's auto-oxidation, Ed?" "Sweating, kid - sweating," he replied. Ed had the greatest-ever guarantee: "Just tear the cover off this book and send it back to me to get your money back." I think he went off to Scandinavia to become a pioneer in the world of porn.

Lots of those guys were just brilliant. There was Monroe Kane, whose lawyer probably made more money than him for keeping out of serious trouble. Gene Schwartz was another. As Denny Hatch observed, I think in "Million Dollar Mailings", a lot of his stuff was very close to the mark. Gene asked me to write copy for him, and gave me a job to do. I came up with a line almost identical to the one he'd already written and decided I wasn't good enough.

Gene explained the trick with these outrageous promises: you sold a book, not a product, and based your incredible claims on what the author said. Joe Karbo, who also asked me to write for him was another master. His "Lazy Man's Way to Get Rich" - which must be one of the most copied headlines was just a book half on self motivation and half on how to get into the mail order business.

I learned a lot from that book. Dreaming of what you want does work. But not as well or as quickly as these crooks tell you, believe me. And remember the old Polish curse: may your dreams come true.

Now I guess I should make some outrageous claims about my Get Rich Slow programme as it gets perilously close to being launched. Instead I will just tell you that if I can swing it the free drinks will be on me when you register - which you can't yet because my website still sucks, and I need a decent microphone for my webinars.

There I go again. This modesty will be the death of me.

Tuesday, 12 January 2010

When you've stopped laughing about Mr. Exploding Underpants, read this

This was sent to me by that excellent copywriter Andy Owen - though it's nothing to do with marketing.

Frankly, having seen what's happened here, I think it makes eminent sense and is not just scaremongering - though it is scary. I am old enough to remember hiding in a bomb shelter during the second world war.

Juval Aviv was the Israeli Agent upon whom the movie ' Munich ' was based. He was Golda Meir's bodyguard, and was appointed to bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.

In a lecture in New York City he said things we all need to know -- but that the U.S. government - or any other - has not yet revealed.

He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week. O'Reilly laughed, and mocked him saying in a week he wanted him back on the show.

Within a week the attack took place. I remember that day very well.

Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the Middle East ) to the Bush Administration about 9/11, a month before it occurred. His report specifically said they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments.

Congress has since hired him as a security consultant.

Now for his future predictions. He predicts the next terrorist attack on the U.S. will occur within the next few months.

Forget hijacking airplanes, because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as they know the people onboard will never go down quietly again. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke - that we have been reactive rather than proactive in developing genuinely effective strategies.

For example:

1) Airport technology is outdated. We look for metal when the new explosives are made of plastic.

2) Some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire. Because of that, now everyone has to take off their shoes.

3) A group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives. Now we can't bring liquids on board. He says he's waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on his underwear; at which point, security will have us all traveling naked! (See my post last week)

Every strategy used is reactive. We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates.

Aviv says if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times on the front end of the airport when/where people are checking in. (Remember the Glasgow bomber?)

It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom or get a drink, and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved.

In Israel, security checks bags BEFORE people can even ENTER the airport.

Aviv says the next terrorist attack in America is imminent and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places where large groups of people congregate. (i.e., Disneyland, Las Vegas casinos, big cities (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, etc.) and it will include shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, etc., as well as rural America (the hinterlands ( Wyoming , Montana , etc.).

The attack will be characterized by simultaneous detonations around the country (terrorists like big impact), involving at least 5-8 cities, including rural areas.

Aviv says terrorists won't need to use suicide bombers in many of the larger cities, because at places like the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, they can valet park a car loaded with explosives and walk away.

Aviv says all of the above is well known in intelligence circles, but the U. S. Government does not want to 'alarm American citizens' with the facts. The world is quickly going to become 'a different place', and issues like global warming and political correctness will become totally irrelevant.

On an encouraging note, he says that Americans don't have to be concerned about being nuked. Aviv says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons. They like to use suicide as a front-line approach. It's cheap, it's easy, it's effective; and they have an infinite abundance of young militants more than willing to 'meet their destiny'.

He also says the next level of terrorists, over which America should be most concerned, will not be coming from abroad. But will be, instead, 'homegrown', having attended and been educated in schools and universities in the U.S.

(It seems to me that too many are indoctrinated in Britain, where people like the thugs who insulted dead British soldiers in Luton are not dealt with properly by idiot magistrates. In a parallel case in Saudi Arabia they'd probably have been beheaded. And incidentally, if you want Sharia law, live in Pakistan,Sudan or Nigeria).

He says to look for 'students' who frequently travel back and forth to the Middle East . These young terrorists will be most dangerous because they will speak English, will fully understand the habits of Americans; but that Americans won't know/understand a thing about them.

Aviv says that Americans are unaware and uneducated about the terrorist threats we will inevitably face. America still has only a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in intelligence networks, and it is critical that we change that fact SOON.

So, what can America do to protect itself?

Aviv says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence and instead, follow Israel's, Ireland's and England's hands-on examples of human intelligence, from an infiltration perspective and to pay attention to, and trust 'aware' citizens to help.

However, the U. S. government continues to treat its citizens like babies. It thinks they 'can't handle the truth' and will panic if they understand the realities of terrorism. Aviv says this is a deadly mistake.

Aviv recently carried out a security test for Congress by placing an empty briefcase in five well-traveled spots in five major cities.

The results?

Not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In Chicago, someone tried to steal the briefcase!

In comparison, Aviv says that citizens of Israel are so well 'trained' that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by citizen(s) who know to publicly shout, 'Unattended Bag!' The area would be quickly and calmly cleared by the citizens themselves.

Unfortunately, America hasn't been yet 'hurt enough' by terrorism for their government to fully understand the need to educate its citizens or for the government to understand that it's their citizens who are, inevitably, the best first-line of defense against terrorism.

Aviv also was concerned about the high number of children in America who were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11, who were 'lost' without parents being able to pick them up, and about schools that had no plan in place to best care for the students until parents could get there. In New York City , this was days, in some cases!)

He stresses the importance of having a plan agreed upon within your family, of how to respond in the event of a terrorist emergency. He urges parents to contact their children's schools and demand that the schools too, develop plans of actions, just as they do in Israel .

Does your family know what to do if you can't contact one another by phone? Where would you gather in an emergency? He says we should all have a plan that is easy enough for even our youngest children to remember and follow.

Aviv says that the U. S. government has a plan, that in the event of another terrorist attack, EVERYONE's ability to use cell phones, blackberries, etc., will immediately be cut-off, as this is the terrorists' preferred communication source and often the way their bombs are detonated.

How will you communicate with your loved ones in the event you cannot speak to each other?

If you believe what you have just read, you should send it to every concerned parent, guardian, grandparents, uncles, aunts, whomever. Besides sharing this via e-mail, he suggests you discuss it with whomever it makes sense to. Make contingency plans with those you care about. Better that you have plans in place, and never have to use them, than have no plans in place, and find you needed them.

He ends rather frighteningly with: If you choose not to share this, or not to have a plan in place, and nothing ever occurs -- good for you!

However, if something does happen, and even more, it directly affects you and your loved ones, then this will haunt you forever.

Strong stuff. More later.

Monday, 11 January 2010

Two intriguing product launches worth study

First, a confession: I'm getting schizophrenic.


This blog's content is split somewhat haphazardly. Partly ravings, moans, comments, jokes, reminiscences and general vituperation; partly stuff about business and marketing.

So I'm going to cut it in half. Those of you who - like me - are torn between rage and hilarity at what goes on in the world can revel in my ruminations on life in general. And those who - like me - are also desperate money-grubbers of the low and vulgar sort can read the other. Or, both.

When I get my head round it I will formalise this schism.

To change the subject, astounding sums of money have been made online in recent years, and nowhere more than in the Magic Grotto of The Product Launch. This is a sort of commercial striptease you're no doubt all familiar with.

I'm watching two with great interest right now, because they use segmentation. This is hardly a new idea - pretty basic targeting really. However, few on-line marketers have bothered with it. They were making too much money from what I call spray-gun marketing: spew out tons of stuff and enough will stick to make it work.

Today, though we have two fascinating launches going on. One, aimed at "Working Moms", will reveal how they can make tons of moolah without driving their family mad. Its heroine is MaryEllen Tribby who has worked for people like Forbes and Weiss Research with the most amazing results.

The other is aimed at those with a social conscience and a greed for gold (which pretty much covers all of us). This is from Shel Horowitz with Jay Levinson, the Guerilla Marketing whiz. Some of the proceeds will go to Muhammad Yunus’s marvellous Grameen project, which lends money to poor people who can't otherwise get credit. I recall his original borrowers were poor village women in Bangladesh who astonished all the sceptics by being amazingly diligent in repaying loans.

Shel Horowitz demonstrates something I have long believed and said: benevolence and self-interest march hand in hand.

As a footnote, Shel says Jay thought up the Marlboro Man. Not really. As any student of Watkins' 100 Best Advertisements book knows, Draper Daniels was the man behind that. I met Draper in 1961 when I worked at Leo Burnett. Dryly funny, and a great copywriter: he had two ads in the 100 best.