Last year, I had the chance to talk to former Ogilvy & Mather CEO, Ken Roman, after the release of his outstanding biography on David Ogilvy.
One of the things we discussed was the extraordinary series of print ads that Ogilvy & Mather Direct published in the 1960s and 1970s.
The O & M house ads were created to attract new clients and new business, and demonstrated David Ogilvy’s magic lantern in action.
The magic lantern revealed all the principles, techniques and takeaways the agency discovered through its advertising campaigns. All new hires at O & M were required to watch slide and film presentations about the magic lantern.
“How to create financial advertising that sells” is a perfect example. This ad, and many of the ads in this series, was written by world class copywriter, Joel Raphaelson.
The ad starts off:
Ogilvy & Mather has created over $100 million worth of advertising for clients in many financial fields — banking, insurance,investments, credit cards.
Here are twelve of the things we have learned.
The ad then goes on to detail these twelve things.
More on The Magic Lantern: Financial Advertising That Sells
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So, what makes a great order form?
I’ve got three words for you.
Last things first.
Lots of copywriters tackle the sales letter first.
Some start by writing pages of bullets and culling the best for the headline.
Others prefer building an elaborate outline and filling in the spaces as they go.
But I’m partial to the “last things first” approach by starting with the order form.
Why?
More on 6 Rules: How To Write an Order Form
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What’s the power concept in copywriting?
Why do you need it?
And how’s it different from a hook?
We’ll get to that in a minute, soldier.
For now, just know the ad you’re looking at and its back story will make it all clear.
Upon approving this print ad, the creative director immediately sent a letter to the client which read:
This is one of the best headlines I have seen in 30 years in this business. If you never run another advertisement run this one.
The client, Robert Young, never wrote this ad, though he often claimed he did.
Who was Robert Young?
More on The Power Concept In Copy
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Here’s a free publicity case study I’ve been meaning to post for a while.
Years ago, when I first heard marketing consultant, Jay Abraham, talk about getting control of a marketing asset you don’t posses, I understood the concept but didn’t have the faintest idea how to execute it.
Here’s a paint-by-the-numbers way to do it and how it resulted in over $52,000 in traceable business for my most important client at the time: my wife.
But to really grasp the nuances of what I’m about to share, you’ll need to imagine a world quite different from ours today.
And it’d help if you’re acquainted with Bizarro World in D.C. Comics — the place where incompetence is rewarded, stupidity is praised and ugliness is treasured. Interestingly, Bizarro World boasts a popular financial instrument called the Bizarro Bond, “guaranteed to lose money for you.”
The backdrop for this story gives Bizarro World a run for its money.
Imagine a place where…
- Little things like collateral, income and creditworthiness are totally irrelevant factors when buying a home.
- Property values can go nowhere but up.
- Generous credit lines are given to anyone with a beating pulse.
- And similar to the Bizarro Bond, something called the sub-prime note is the preferred ruinous investment of choice.
Well, you needn’t imagine it. This was that very strange year known as 2005 and the place was the good ole’ US of A.
But don’t worry. Even if you resided elsewhere, we almost certainly exported these to a place near you.
More on $50 Thousand In Free Publicity And The “Mystery Briefcase”
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“Consumer confidence is the degree of optimism on the state of the economy that consumers are expressing through their activities of saving and spending. This confidence is measured by the U.S. Consumer Confidence Index (CCI). In the United States, the CCI is issued monthly by The Conference Board, an independent economic research organization.”
Yakety-yak.
For the last few years, I’ve found a far more reliable indicator I can see (and taste) up close.
And though this data will never make it into a General Accounting Office publication, I trust it implicitly.
What is it?
Why, it’s the Costco Confidence Index: a simple measure of consumer confidence, easily gauged by going to your nearest Costco, and seeing how much stuff is in shoppers’ wagons.
Costco is is the largest membership warehouse club chain and the third largest retailer in the U.S.
What’s interesting about Costco, unlike Walmart, is you can just as easily be standing on line behind a single working parent who’s stocking up on toilet paper, as you can a surgeon buying brie and bordeaux for a dinner party.More on The Costco Confidence Index
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Bud Weckesser was easily one of the most versatile direct response copywriters of all time — equally gifted at writing ads in biz-op, weight loss, self-publishing or how to reports like: “How To Make Your Own German-Style Lager Beer For Only 12 Cents A Bottle!”
Unlike a lot of his colleagues, he never set foot in an ad agency.
He was a professor at Penn State Behrend, Kent State University and Purdue University and received his doctorate in speech communication from Michigan State University in 1963.
After he was bitten by the mail order bug, he quickly became one of the most visible print advertisers in the States.
His specialties were:
- Using numerous detailed case studies, which served as strong proof elements
- Offering a test to the reader as a hook to delve into the body copy
- Including his phone number near the top of an ad to overcome mail order skittishness. Here is an example from his 1977 ad, “The $220,000 Man.” “We belong to the Dunkirk Chamber of Commerce. Our telephone number is 716-555-8300. We’re there from 9-5 on weekdays.”
This ad of Professor Weckesser’s is another one of my favorites. It sold over one million copies of a $12.95 book through print advertising sans back end.
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If you live in the U.S. and have ever acted on a hot stock tip, chances are you receive your fair share of pump and dump stock promotions.
These are the kind of mail pieces that trumpet everything from obscure small cap companies, touting the latest miracle technology that’s rivaled only by time travel… to mining and mineral companies on the cusp of discovering the motherlode of the ages.
But it doesn’t really matter what the company is, or what product they’re selling because you’ve gotta get on board right now before the stock takes off.
That’s always the message: get in now or get left behind.
If you only bought 1,000 shares of xyx company last year, why now, you’d be cradling a pina colada on the beach in Maui.
More on Chairman Mao Wants You To Be Rich!
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Many direct response copywriters look at agency people as scared, pseudo-practitioners hiding out in their cushy offices and insulated from the real world results of their craft by layers of decision insurance.
I’ll admit the level of direct response competence has taken a dive at the agency level. I don’t see companies like Ogilvy & Mather, J. Walter Thompson or Foote, Cone & Belding doing anything remotely as good in print as they did 25 or more years ago.
For that matter, the quality of print advertising as a whole is far less incisive than it used to be — leaving ample room for smart direct response practitioners to succeed in this medium.
But there are plenty of great examples of direct response distinction in space, if you know where to find them.
This one hails from the fabulous series I keep telling you about — “The Wall Street Journal. It Works.”
(Hey, Rupert Murdoch, if you’re reading this, maybe it’s time to take these print ads out of retirement and spruce up your ad revenue.)
So, who is John O’Toole?
He was the president of Foote, Cone and Belding who grew the agency’s revenue ten-fold during his tenure.
And he started off in the biz as a copywriter under the legendary ad man and copywriter, Fairfax Cone.
Some of the nuggets from this ad.
On life with Fax Cone:
A magnificent teacher. His prime lesson: write to a single individual, not the hypothetical masses. Fax would never let writers get tangled up in a web of creative conceit: you quickly learned that no matter how hard you worked on an ad, you could make it better. Fax believed writers had the ability to step back from their work, and look at it through the eyes of a consumer. He was as tough on himself as he was on the writers who worked for him.
On long copy:
Persuasion by essay. A powerful technique that lets you speak to the consumer as a friend. You tell your story leisurely, but without wasted words. You put forth logic and facts that lead to persuasion. Good copy is read — be it long or short. But provided your premise is accurate. Long copy increases the power of persuasion, and without decreasing readership.
On print:
Print may well be the strongest medium of all, if you have the energy and skill to deal with the discipline of the printed page. It tests the skills of the writer, for the persuasion of the copy is critical to success. It tests the abilities of the art director for the clarity of design is critical to readership. Finally, print is the most controllable of all media, with the ultimate product clearly reflecting the skills of just two or three people. If it’s strong, and memorable, and persuasive, it’s your achievement — not that of platoons of specialists who can make a weak idea look good.
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If you’ve ever wondered how sales letters with atrocious copy can mail multiple times, you’re not alone.
This direct mail letter, “How To Legally Rob Slot Machines In Any Casino,” mailed frequently around 2005.
While the copy looks pathetic to the trained eye, this mail piece gets the core appeal right for this market.
Probably more than any other market, respondents to “gambling systems” have a reputation for being dupes. As one of the characters in Richard Armstrong’s wonderful book,“God Doesn’t Shoot Craps,” says: if gambling systems actually worked, casinos couldn’t afford to put volcanoes out front.
The American television news magazine, 60 Minutes, did a segment recently on the psychology (and pathology) of the slot machine player. It’s worth watching if you’re interested in this market.
How To Legally Rob Slot Machines In Any Casino (8 megabyte PDF, 12-pages including lift letters and reply envelope.)
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Here’s a Gene Schwartz ad published in 1981 for Giraud W. Campbell’s A Doctor’s Proven New Home Cure for Arthritis.
From the marketer’s vantage point, the arthritis market is an evergreen one and Schwartz’s take on it (and everything) is valuable.
Haven’t seen this one before last week.
The book also gets close to 5 stars on Amazon with 10 reviews.
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