World Copywriting Blog

The Hardest Working Man In Advertising

The late Madison Avenue legend David Ogilvy was a great copywriter, but not a very happy one.

In a letter to a man named Ray Calt in 1955, he described "my work habits as a copywriter" as "appalling" and confessed:

"I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts."

Ogilvy's letter to Mr. Calt, from The Unpublished David Ogilvy: A Selection of His Writings from the Files of His Partners, was recently posted in full on the excellent blog Letters of Note.

Here are a few highlights:

• "I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years."
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• "Before actually writing the copy, I write down every conceivable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform."
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• "If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone [phonograph]. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of ideas."

You might find it odd that: here I am, admiring and paying homage to what seems like the impossibly hard work of writing copy, when I have dedicated most of my career to make writing copy easier for others (and for myself).

That, of course, is what Fast Effective Copy is all about.

But I do see value in the insane overwork Mr. Ogilvy is confessing to.

The most productive sales letter I ever wrote,for Abacus Travel Management, brought in a cool $40 million over the course of eight years.

I only rewrote that letter seven times.  I'm sure Mr. Ogilvy would have seen me as a hopeless lightweight.

But one thing I learned was that when you're swinging for the fences, you've got to do everything you can to make it the best it can be.

And Mr. Ogilvy was always swinging for the fences.

Many thanks to blogging expert and World Copywriting Blog Executive Contributor Jim Van Wyck for suggesting this post to me!

David Garfinkel
Co-founder, Fast Effective Copy

 

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules For Great Writing

He's the brains behind FX's hit show Justified. He wrote the novel that became the hit movie with Danny DeVito and John Travolta, Get Shorty. He has 8 million books in print.

He's Elmore Leonard, the crime novelist that gets respect in the serious, patched-elbow, pipe-smoking literary world. (My stereotype may be dated, but hopefully, you get the idea.)

He's 86 and still writing two pages a day.  I would call that "going strong."

So, he's not a copywriter, but he sure as hell knows something about writing.

Look at this excerpt from Rum Punch (p 12) to see what I'm talking about:

Ordell heard him say, "It doesn't matter where you were, Reggie, you missed your hearing. Now I have to… Reg, listen to me, okay?" This Max Cherry speaking in a quieter voice than he used on his wife. Talking to her had sounded painful. Ordell placed his athletic bag on an empty desk that faced the one Max Cherry was at and got out a cigarette.

This looked more like the man's den than a bail bond office...

Grammarians, have a field day. All kinds of things "wrong" with what he wrote.

Copywriters, pay close attention. Elmore Leonard knows what he's doing.

This morning, reading an interview with Leonard about his new book in the Wall Street Journal, I discovered he has 10 rules for writing.  Even has a book by that name.

I tracked them down on the Web, and here they are:

1.  Never open a book with weather.
2.  Avoid prologues.
3.  Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4.  Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5.  Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. 
6.  Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7.  Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8.  Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9.  Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10.  Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

While this is more for fiction than for copywriting, you can learn a lot and improve your writing if you pay attention to what he is getting at.

In his book he adds: "My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

Think about that.

How many of these would vastly improve your copywriting... and your results?

David Garfinkel
Co-Founder, FastEffectiveCopy.com

Madison Avenue's latest innovation: the f-bomb

It reminds me of a teenager bursting at the seams, who just can't wait to get rid of his virginity.

And as a 16th birthday gift, Dad takes him to the Bunny Ranch, the famous Nevada brothel, for his very first time.

I'm talkin' 'bout the news from the hip, flashy side of the advertising industry, which suddenly found a way to take the Mad Men attitude even deeper into their daily work.

From today's Wall Street Journal:

"Ads with f-bombs? Get used to it," says Glenn Cole, chief creative officer of 72 & Sunny, a unit if MDC Partners Inc. "Major brands will start to take off the granny pants and create racier content that demands the attention and respect of younger audiences."

Such content would be focused on the Web and certain cable-TV channels.

Hmmm.

I suppose if the job of your copy isn't to sell anything... but it's vitally important to show how f'ing hip you are... then this is a good thing.

What's your take on this earth-shaking development?

David Garfinkel

Co-founder, Fast Effective Copy

P.S. I have no problem with the f-word.

In fact, some of my best conversations include it.

Just not any sales conversations that I can recall ever being successful.