World Copywriting Blog

Women and Copywriting

Important:

If you are a woman who writes copy, wants to write copy, doesn't want to write copy but has to write copy... or... supervises others (men or women) who write copy, please sign up for my World Copywriting Newsletter.

This week I will be releasing a Special Report of great interest to you... and... there will also be a time-limited opportunity (at no cost) for additional resources. Only available to subscribers.

To sign up, click here.

By the way, in the next couple weeks there will be a regular newsletter issue, of interest to men and women alike!

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter
To subscribe, click here

Bric-a-Brac

Random thoughts and interesting opportunities
for people interested in copywriting...
people just like you

It's Tuesday, October 26. That's important because the link I'm about to give you is for the current day's version of "Non Sequitur," a less-than-always-optimistic comic strip I see in my newspaper. If you'd like a little cynical humor, check this out. But if you are reading this after October 26, be sure to click on the calendar on the site so you can see the strip entitled "Job Openings in Marketing" ...

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I have a couple of interesting reports in the next three weeks coming up - free - in my World Copywriting Newsletter. If you haven't subscribed yet, why not join today? Just click here.

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If you're in sales, you might be wondering how copywriting applies to you... or, you might have a story to tell if you already know (please add a comment below).

The short answer is, copywriting is far and away, hands down, bar none, the best way in the world to "cherry pick" your prospects. You get qualified, interested, often pre-sold (or nearly pre-sold) leads coming to you.

Other than being in love on a fine spring day -- what's better than that?

Voices

The Most Bizarre Show on Talk Radio Has
A Pot of Gold For You, Amid The Absurdity

One of my guilty pleasures is listening to non-stop weirdness known as The Phil Hendrie Show. It's three hours, five days a week, and 100% spoof.

97 stations in 38 U.S. states carry it, as well as two Ontario stations in Canada. If you get XM Satellite radio, it's on channel 152.

What's so weird about this show? The guests. Not one of them is real, but every one of them is outrageous. All are offensive -- racially, or sexually, or socially, or religiously. No politically-correct stone gets left unturned.

But the most amazing thing of all about this show is...

Dude

Rock Star Winemaker Doesn't Advertise, But His
New Releases Sell Out Faster Than A Speeding Grape

It's the triumph of will over reason.

"Science is asking the wrong questions," winemaker Sean Thackrey told the San Francico Chronicle in a story published yesterday.

"A winemaker is not asked to make scientific decisions. You're there to create a pleasure. You don't have to get a degree in food science to be a chef."

Thackrey lives 29½ miles from me in the lost-from-the-world town of Bolinas, California, where people are so jealous of their privacy that they routinely rip down road signs on the freeway telling people how to get there.

In fact, eccentric covers nearly everything about Thackrey. But if you look closely at what he does, you'll realize his way of thinking and way of doing can make your copy as irresistible as his wines, if...

Stories

The Six Words That Will Rivet The Attention
Of Anyone Who Reads Or Hears Them

Here they are:

"Let me tell you a story."

Many "story experts" say we are hard-wired to deliver our full (and uncritical) attention at the very prospect of hearing a story. It's genetic. To survive, we developed a reflex to blot out all else to hear stories. This was particularly important when all wisdom (including information about how to survive) was passed along in spoken form.

The good news: It works in writing, too. There's nothing like a story to get people engaged in reading what you've written.

A few days ago, I got an email from...

Source

Red Hot Super Tab Rakes In The Dirt,
But Serves Up Gems For Copy Scribes!

I am one of two copywriters ever to have been featured in a profile by the National Enquirer, and it's not because I'm so darned good at writing copy.

It's because I openly admitted that a lot of my success in pulling orders from my copywriting came from what I learned reading America's Favorite Newspaper.

(The other copywriter is some guy named Gary who announces from the audience at Internet marketing seminars that more people read the Enquirer each week than have read the Bible in all of history -- a claim I don't even think the Enquirer would make.)

My new Enquirer (October 25 issue) arrived in the mail today and I can't wait to read it. Here's why...

Slice of Life

The Way Real People Really Talk
Can Add Real Power to Your Copy

A long time ago, I thought I might become a screenwriter. In the Hollywood sense.

(I guess anyone who writes to be read on someone else's computer screen could be called a "screenwriter"... but... I had something else in mind at the time.)

Agents and lawyers and stars, o my! Hey, it hasn't happened yet and, the more I learn about the way Hollywood works, the more I think I'm in the right business as a copywriting mentor and educator (and copywriter).

Anyway... one time I took this screenwriting class in Marin County, California. It was back in the '90s, and we had the most interesting assignment -- one that would work exceptionally well for copywriters, too.

See Ya Monday

I'm headed up the coast to Portland to spend some time with family.

See you in the new week,

David
David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter
To subscribe, click here

Bookshelf

Once You Get Your Hands On This Book,
You'll Never See Life The Same Way

Yesterday I read a book that changed my life.

Before you decide I'm being overly dramatic, understand that this has happened many times. I have a life that is open to change.

It happens. And books are one of the main ways.

As a writer, I have a pretty accurate B.S. detector. And, believe it or not, becoming a copywriter has only increased my ability to sort out the genuine and authentic from everything else.

The book I read yesterday was, hands down, the genuine article. It was called...

Pinpoint

How To Exactly Present Your Business To Your Market?
Here's a Surprising Source of Information for You

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter -- it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."
- Mark Twain, in a letter to author George Bainton

Sooner or later, you have to set yourself apart.

This is true whether you are you, yourself, and thou; you are a business; or you are method-acting as the client or business you are writing copy for.

The tightrope you walk is just about the biggest upside/downside risk that exists:

● Get your unique identity in the marketplace right (stay on the tightrope all the way to the other side), and huge rewards are yours;

● Miss it by a hair (fall off the tightrope) and you're condemned to mediocrity in the marketplace -- at best -- or miserable failure at worst.

So how do you get your pinpoint identity identified and stay on that elusive tightrope?