Copywriting Quotes

A creative ad creation process involves a minimum of three professionals – a market research expert, copywriter and creative director.

Some copywriters write tricky headlines – double meanings, puns and other obscurities. This is counter-productive. In the average newspaper your headline has to compete with 350 others. Readers travel fast through this jungle. Your headline should telegraph what you want to say.

The hallmarks of a potentially successful copywriter include: Obsessive curiosity about products, people and advertising. A sense of humor. A habit of hard work. The ability to write interesting prose for printed media, and natural dialogue for television. The ability to think visually. Television commercials depend more on pictures than words. The ambition to write better campaigns than anyone has ever written before.

It's not whether you win or lose in life that's important but whether you play the game. Lose enough and eventually you will win. It's only a matter of time.

People think copywriters are obsessed with words. This isn't correct. The word should be 'infatuated' - it fits the context better.

Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren't diseases, they're marketing ploys. Doctors didn't discover them, copywriters did. Marketing departments did. Drug companies did.

We are not in the business of being original. We are in the business of reusing things that work.

Copywriting is a design muse, it carves a beautiful masterpiece in an imaginative way.

Grade your performance as a copywriter on sales generated by your copy, not on originality.

Experienced copywriters turn those features into customer benefits: reasons why the reader should buy the product.

Most good copywriters’, says William Maynard of the Bates agency, ‘fall into two categories. Poets. And killers.

Copywriters are salespeople whose job is to convince people to buy products.

cultural change occurs whenever a new meme is introduced and catches on. It might be romanticism or double-entry book-keeping, chaos theory or Pokemon. So where in the world do new memes come from? sometimes they spring full-blown from the brains of artists or scientists, advertising copywriters or teenagers. often a process of mutation is involved in the creation of a new meme, in much the same way that mutations in natural environment can lead to useful new genetic traits.

Direct marketing . . . is the only form of accountable advertising.

the words in your copy should be “like the windows in a storefront. The reader should be able to see right through them and see the product.

When copywriters argue with me about some esoteric word they want to use, I say to them, ‘Get on a bus. Go to Iowa. Stay on a farm for a week and talk to the farmer. Come back to New York by train and talk to your fellow passengers in the day-coach. If you still want to use the word, go ahead.

Aldous Huxley, who was once a copywriter, said, ‘It is easier to write ten passably effective sonnets than one effective advertisement.’ You cannot bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it.

By late August, I’m on my second sublet, and I’ve been working as a copywriter long enough to know I’m not good at it. I seem to be reliving the life I had when I was twenty-two, but I’m about to run twenty-eight, which feels like the opposite of twenty-two.

Effective content marketing is about mastering the art of storytelling. Facts tell, but stories sell.

Clever advertising can convince people to try a bad product once. But it can’t convince them to buy a product they’ve already tried and didn’t like.

Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren't diseases, they're marketing ploys. Doctors didn't discover them, copywriters did.

Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.

One of my favorite sayings, which I stole from the venerable copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis, is: Sell results, not procedures. Any time you want to figure out how to get more money for what you sell, ask yourself this question: “How do I make what I give my customer more of a finished result and less of a procedure?

What comes full of virtue from the statistician’s desk may find itself twisted, exaggerated, oversimplified, and distorted-through-selection by salesman, public-relations expert, journalist, or advertising copywriter.

I once worked as a writer for a big New York ad agency. Our boss used to tell us: Invent a disease. Come up with the disease, he said, and we can sell the cure. Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren't diseases, they're marketing ploys. Doctors didn't discover them, copywriters did. Marketing departments did. Drug companies did. Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance.

Vision, emotion, sincerity, passion and creativity. Without these attributes a writer has only his pen with which to speak to his audience

The first step in persuasion is to entice your target to imagine doing the thing you want them to do.

Avoid pompous words and fancy phrases.

Good first impressions....are good for business.

Copywriting basically consists of taking something dreadful, putting it in a box with a shiny ribbon, and presenting it to someone. Any disappointment the recipient has upon opening the box is entirely due to their own high expectations and therefore their fault.

To sell, your copy must get attention . . . hook the reader’s interest . . . create a desire for the product . . . prove the product’s superiority . . . and ask for action.

The object of advertising is to sell goods,

The more your copy sounds like a real conversation, the more engaging it will be.

Referring to an event in an untold story is a powerful technique rarely used.

People use big words to impress others, but they rarely do. More often, big words annoy and distract the reader from what the writer is trying to say.

Begin your career as a copywriting lover, not a fighter, and you will always be doubly blessed — with good money and goodwill.

When people ask me about the definition of a copywriter, I say, "If I become a good copywriter, I will have the ability to bring nonliving people to life.

Real copywriting is the deconstruction of marketing goals, and the construction of salesmanship. 

In their pamphlet “Why Don’t Those Salespeople Sell,” Learning Dynamics Incorporated, a sales training firm, cites poor ability to present benefits as one of ten reasons why salespeople fail to make the sale.

Anna had her pets and she was blind to her pets. And she was not always good at rewarding hard work,” Seymour, the copywriter, said of Anna’s management style. “She fell for a lot of people who were blowing smoke.

I asked an indifferent copywriter what books he had read about advertising. He told me that he had not read any; he preferred to rely on his own intuition. ‘Suppose,’ I asked, ‘your gall-bladder has to be removed this evening. Will you choose a surgeon who has read some books on anatomy and knows where to find your gall-bladder, or a surgeon who relies on his intuition? Why should our clients be expected to bet millions of dollars on your intuition?

the surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definite, and concrete. The greatest writers—Homer, Dante, Shakespeare—are effective largely because they deal in particulars and report the details that matter.

Designers and copywriters were at the top of the moral flexibility scale, and the accountants ranked at the bottom. It seems that when “creativity” is in our job description, we are more likely to say “Go for it” when it comes to dishonest behavior.

Instead of creating aesthetically pleasing prose, you have to dig into a product or service, uncover the reasons why consumers would want to buy the product, and present those sales arguments in copy that is read, understood, and reacted to—copy that makes the arguments so convincingly the customer can’t help but want to buy the product being advertised.

Content, in writing, is supreme.

Staren is ook schrijven.

I came to Canada as a teenager with no money, no contacts, and no knowledge of English.

you can make a fortune selling people what they want, but you can go broke selling them what they need.

Bureau, consumers are exposed to more than twice as many ads today as fifteen years ago, but pay attention to only 20 percent more.

The more tools you have to work on a problem in the form of experiences or knowledge, the more new ways you can figure out how to solve it.

Most of us find it easy to knock things. We always know what we don't like, and we tend to highlight problems and issues rather than build on the elements that we do like.

Confidence walks into a room differently.

Your right people will hear you differently.

For professional hackers, copyrights shall be reserved and for ethical hackers, the rights to copy shall be served

Too busy focusing on my grass to worry about whether yours is greener.

Don't seek popularity, seek integrity and authenticity. Everything else will follow.

Adopt a clear mindset. Strive for pure ideas. Communicate in a matter that needs no further explanation. Avoid shades of grey. Focus on the fundamentals, and share them to the world

We humans are pretty bad at knowing the truth. In fact, our brains suffer from so many distortions, omissions and biases that our perceptions can be completely at odds with reality.

tried-and-true copywriting formulas he invented back in the 1930s, like Picture—Promise—Prove—Push: “You start by painting a word picture of what the product or service will do for the reader. Then promise that the picture will come true if the product is purchased. Offer proof of what the product has done for others. Finally, end with a push for immediate action.” Henry

If you tell your prospect how bad things are in a way they can identify with and relate to, then they know that you know the way it really is because that is the way it really is for them.

Number one is talk about the unique achievement, status or other specialties. Number two is personalize the greatness in your offer. Number three is show the reader how easy it is to achieve this.

A: “Nobody Knows It but Me” is by ad copywriter Patrick O’Leary. Many readers asked for the text. Here it is: “There’s a place I travel when I want to roam, and nobody knows it but me. / The roads don’t go there and the signs stay home, and nobody knows it but me. / It’s far, far away and way, way afar. It’s over the moon and the sea / and wherever you’re going that’s wherever you are. / And nobody knows it but me.

Of course, I have never agreed that creativity is the great contribution of the advertising agency, and a look through the pages of the business magazines should dramatize my contention that much advertising suffers from overzealous creativity—aiming for high readership scores rather than for the accomplishment of a specified communications task. Or, worse, creativity for self-satisfaction. —Howard Sawyer, Vice President, Marsteller, Inc.

Another factor that makes a great copywriter is the experience of running your own company and being responsible for every word you write. The really great direct marketing copywriters often don’t work for advertising agencies, but rather run their own companies and experience their own successes and failures. Ben Suarez, Gary Halbert, the late Gene Schwartz and dozens of others recognized as top copywriters have owned their own companies and learned over years of trial and error—years of both big mistakes and great success. You can’t beat that type of experience.

When I say we, I'm referring to society: copywriters, companies, and overall general opinion; I am in no way taking personal responsibility. We/they market to women like they are giant toddlers. This endless, pejorative, female-targeted infantilization of the English language when it's directed toward women: "Mama Bear needs her beauty rest!" "Rockstar gal gets her glam on!" "Work it, she-entrepreneur!" "Be a diva-licious ass-kicker in stilettos! The biggest, badass, boss-babe in herstory! The fiercest, she-matologist working in the blood lab!" This pervasive rhetoric is basically watered down, digestible empowerment designed to get a woman's money. It's the advertising equivalent of a "Live Laugh Love" sign.

I once worked as a writer for a big New York ad agency. Our boss used to tell us: Invent a disease. Come up with the disease, he said, and we can sell the cure. Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren't diseases, they're marketing ploys. Doctors didn't discover them, copywriters did. Marketing departments did. Drug companies did. Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance. When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.

The maker of an advertised article knows the manufacturing side and probably the dealers side. But this very knowledge often leads him astray in respect to customers. His interests are not in their interests. The advertising man studies the consumer. He tries to place himself in the position of the buyer. His success largely depends on doing that to the exclusion of everything else. This book will contain no more important chapter than this one on salesmanship. The reason for most of the non-successes in advertising is trying to sell people what they do not want. But next to that comes lack of true salesmanship. Ads are planned and written with some utterly wrong conception. They are written to please the seller. The interest of the buyer are forgotten. One can never sell goods profitably, in person or in print, when that attitude exists.

Julian and his team of copy-writers had noted that the phrase ‘Lest we forget’ had so far been reserved for fallen soldiers. In minutes they had created a viral post accusing ‘crazed trans multi-cultural zealots’ of claiming that a dead transsexual was as much an English hero as the fighter pilots who had died during the Battle of Britain. Malika’s algorithms then swiftly sent the message to the people most likely to be annoyed by it.

What content types best meet the needs of our target audience and their changing, multiple contexts? What content types best fit the skills of our copywriters? What content types do we already have? What contexts are appropriate for the delivery of our content, and how will we translate our information into multiple content types appropriate for different screens, resolutions, locations, and contexts? Is existing content still good? Is it still current, relevant, and brand-appropriate for our needs, our users’ needs, and the context in which we want to deliver it? How will we get more content to bridge the gaps between what we have and what we need? What is the workflow that already supports that, and do we need to refine it? How will we make the case for these new content types to other team members who help shape the user experience? Who will do this for launch? Who will maintain content on an ongoing basis? Who will train them? How will we help people find the answers, definitions, and other information they need? What are the relationships within our content?

There’s a story about legendary copywriter Gary Halbert, who once asked a room of aspiring writers, “Imagine you’re opening a hamburger stand on the beach—what do you need most to succeed?” Answers included, “secret sauce,” and “great location” and “quality meat.” Halbert replied, “You missed the most important thing—A STARVING CROWD.” Your job is to find that “starving crowd” who can’t live without what it is you have to offer. What we want to do in terms of targeting is to find good, prospective customers for our business that can be reached affordably, that are likely to buy, that are able to buy, and preferably who already know of us, or are likely to trust us. Once you get this down, and you nail exactly who your slam-dunk customer truly is—the person you absolutely want to do business with over and again—then you’ll be able to make your marketing “magnetic” because you’ll be using words and phrases that’ll attract your target audience. This makes your job much easier, because you can talk to them using language they relate to about what it is they really want.

Mr. Bredon had been a week with Pym's Publicity, and had learnt a number of things. He learned the average number of words that can be crammed into four inches of copy; that Mr. Armstrong's fancy could be caught by an elaborately-drawn lay-out, whereas Mr. Hankin looked on art-work as waste of a copy-writer's time; that the word “pure” was dangerous, because, if lightly used, it laid the client open to prosecution by the Government inspectors, whereas the words “highest quality,” “finest ingredients,” “packed under the best conditions” had no legal meaning, and were therefore safe; that the expression “giving work to umpteen thousand British employees in our model works at so-and-so” was not by any means the same thing as “British made throughout”; that the north of England liked its butter and margarine salted, whereas the south preferred it fresh; that the Morning Star would not accept any advertisements containing the word “cure,” though there was no objection to such expressions as “relieve” or “ameliorate,” and that, further, any commodity that professed to “cure” anything might find itself compelled to register as a patent medicine and use an expensive stamp; that the most convincing copy was always written with the tongue in the cheek, a genuine conviction of the commodity's worth producing—for some reason—poverty and flatness of style; that if, by the most far-fetched stretch of ingenuity, an indecent meaning could be read into a headline, that was the meaning that the great British Public would infallibly read into it; that the great aim and object of the studio artist was to crowd the copy out of the advertisement and that, conversely, the copy-writer was a designing villain whose ambition was to cram the space with verbiage and leave no room for the sketch; that the lay-out man, a meek ass between two burdens, spent a miserable life trying to reconcile these opposing parties; and further, that all departments alike united in hatred of the client, who persisted in spoiling good lay-outs by cluttering them up with coupons, free-gift offers, lists of local agents and realistic portraits of hideous and uninteresting cartons, to the detriment of his own interests and the annoyance of everybody concerned.

A copywriter is a combination of a professional advertising engineer and a salesman.

almost all copywriters these days write in a conversational manner.

The way a crane creates, then erases itself, from the skyline." He'd been referring to how I, as a copywriter, created R.H. Macy's, but the same metaphor might easily have been applied to how I, as a mother, was creating my son.

The GCHQ staff were sporty, providing most of the players in the Foreign Office football team that won the Civil Service Football Cup in 1952. This could present some peculiar problems. When local reporters covered matches in Cheltenham, they were told they could name the goal-scorers of the visitors, but not of the local team. Reporting these games tested their copywriting skills to the very limits.

Frank Hummert was a Chicago copywriter in the ’20s. In 1930 he met Anne Ashenhurst, a former newspaperwoman who became his assistant and, five years later, his wife. The Hummerts had a formula that was surefire: appeal to the lowest common denominator, make it clear, grab the heartstrings, and reap the rewards. With writer Robert Hardy Andrews they created The Stolen Husband, one of radio’s earliest soaps. Hummert went on to do the most notable serials of the daytime. His name was added to the agency Blackett & Sample, though he was never a partner and owned no part of it. He left Blackett-Sample-Hummert and moved to New York. His new company, Air Features, Inc., turned out (among many others) Just Plain Bill, The Romance of Helen Trent, Ma Perkins, Our Gal Sunday, Lorenzo Jones, and Stella Dallas. It was estimated that Hummert at his peak bought 12.5 percent of the entire network radio schedule, that he billed $12 million a year, that his fiction factory produced almost seven million words a season.

They wanted the benefits of direct response copy in their business: they wanted to leverage their time, energy and money, while marketing one-to-many and automating their sales and marketing to free up their time and allow them to reach more people than they could without it… But they hated how it made them feel. Inauthentic. Hype-y. Sales-y. Slime-y. Like a used car salesman.

It’s also best (although not required) to have a project in mind as you go through the system. For instance, maybe you want to write (or rewrite) your website, or maybe you want to craft a sales letter.

Hãy viết mỗi ngày để mài ngòi!

The cultural divides within the advertising industry became wider when web pages became part of the marketing mix, beginning in 1995. Early web pages were like printed catalogs, and traditional advertising agencies knew how to design catalogs – they were just pictures and words in a different medium, right? The rub was that web pages seemed to clients and agencies more like the domain of software folk, like computer programmers, rather than the domain of traditional copywriters and art directors. An automotive company that wanted to put up web pages to help consumers choose car models and features was more likely to go to a group of programmers than to a traditional agency. The web production costs were exceptionally high, too – the hours spent by web designers and programmers far outstripped the creative hours spent on catalogs. Wasn’t the business of web design (and later, web advertising) a separate business? Traditional

For a lie to add piquancy to a story the story would be factual. Fantasy needs no lie to stimulate or excite. But if the factual story is contrived or fallacious then it’s the fantasy that is the lie.

The effective ad tells an interesting, important story about the product. And, like a novel or short story, the copy must be logically organized, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Arthur found a job in the pharmaceutical industry, at Schering, the drug company where he had freelanced as a copywriter in his student days.

Here’s what I sent: Hi there! You’re looking for a copywriter to spruce up a psychologist’s website and make it a little more client-friendly. I'm a copywriter who loves writing and revamping web pages and has experience writing for a therapist. You can view one of those pieces in my UpWork portfolio if you’re interested.

La vita del nomade digitale è stata mitizzata, probabilmente a causa dei social network. Non troverete molti operai di fabbrica nomadi digitali, ma copywriter, esperti SEO, startupper, e anche imprenditori e CEO di aziende online.

Een goed verhaal kan de waarde van uw product met 4000% doen stijgen.

Staren is ook werken.

to make him pay you for your product, you must make it pay him to read about it.

The right words are powerful and create a world in your reader’s mind. In copywriting, just as in fiction, you’re finding the words to invoke a specific dream.

Start your day with a delicious cup of sparkling ideas and inspiration.

Good copy invites the reader to become conscious of the story they’re living right now—and offers a vision of their deepest desires made real.

Every ideology is a mental murder, a reduction of dynamic living processes to static classifications, and every classification is a Damnation, just as every inclusion is an exclusion. In a busy, buzzing universe where no two snow flakes are identical, and no two trees are identical, and no two people are identical- and, indeed, the smallest sub-atomic particle, we are assured, is not even identical with itself from one microsecond to the next- every card-index system is a delusion. “Or, to put it more charitably,” as Nietzsche says, “we are all better artists than we realize.” It is easy to see that label “Jew” was a Damnation in Nazi Germany, but actually the label “Jew” is a Damnation anywhere, even where anti-Semitism does not exist. “He is a Jew,” “He is a doctor,” and “He is a poet” mean, to the card indexing centre of the cortex, that my experience with him will be like my experience with other Jews, other doctors, and other poets. Thus, individuality is ignored when identity is asserted. At a party or any place where strangers meet, watch this mechanism in action. Behind the friendly overtures there is wariness as each person fishes for the label that will identify and Damn the other. Finally, it is revealed: “Oh, he’s an advertising copywriter,” “Oh, he’s an engine-lathe operator.” Both parties relax, for now they know how to behave, what roles to play in the game. Ninety-nine percent of each has been Damned; the other is reacting to the 1 percent that has been labeled by the card-index machine.

Michael Artime is CEO & Founder of Ecom Honey which leads a small, focused team comprised of designers, copywriters, and other marketing professionals working together to create email and SMS marketing campaigns that convert. The company boasts significant increases in client revenues and has worked with over 100 popular e-commerce brands. Mr. Artime is a University of Central Florida alum and enjoys golfing. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee where Ecom Honey is headquartered.

I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes.” Philip Dusenberry

[19th century copywriter] John Powers had given us all we’ve ever really needed to know. Be interesting. Tell the truth. And if you can’t tell the truth, change what you’re doing so you can. In other words, live the truth.

O filósofo britânico Sir Roger Scruton diz que, se você não lê (livros, que fique bem claro), se está preso apenas à televisão e à internet, se só vive o tempo presente,e se desconhece sua história pessoal e a História da sociedade onde vive, então seu passado vira um porão escuro e desconhecido, que guarda coisas das quais você jamais poderá desfrutar. Para ele, ao viver apenas na ignorância do presente, você está irremediavelmente escravo de uma ditadura terrível. Tal como os camponeses da Idade Média, condenados a apenas existir e trabalhar sem parar até a morte.

Meet one of the leading creative directors Roger Hooks, Jr. He is a renowned “S&P 500 Creative Executive”, who has successfully established his name in the creative industry. He possesses a boasted portfolio in package design of Pacific-Rim makers of entertainment PC peripherals and add-on cards with category best sellers up in down the aisles of Fry's Electronics, Micro Center, Ritz Camera, Best Buy, and Good Guys in their brick-and Mortar Hey-Day. Also, he is a Platinum Award winner in copywriting, a Gold Award winner in advertising campaigns, and a Gold Award winner in special events. So, if you are searching for a professional creative strategist, you must contact Roger Hooks, Jr. Feel free to reach out.

In addition to examining a few ads from beginning to end, I also reproduce a few of the JS&A ads that show my principles in action. If you’ve had a problem understanding any of the principles, this is where you’ll get greater understanding and clarity. It was during this part of my seminar when participants would often comment, “Now I feel I can do a great ad myself.” And they often did.

Finally, you did not have to pay $3,000 to get this knowledge as my seminar participants did. In Section Three we take all that you have learned and crystallize it into practical knowledge by examining many of the ads that were used as examples in our seminar. This is an important section, for here you see how all the pieces you have learned fit together. We also examine a few ads where the pieces didn’t quite fit together and we show you how they could have been done more effectively.

the first two sections of this book I have taught you most of the copywriting techniques I taught my seminar participants. You have learned techniques that took me many years to develop. You have learned concepts that I didn’t discover and personally use until well into my career. And most importantly, you have learned from my failures—an education that has cost me dearly but that you do not have to experience on your own.