"Learn to Sell or Else…"
Say researchers published in Scientific American, while their isn’t really a measurable “Creativity Quotient” (C.Q.) that they can pin to any set standard, it just so happens that a lot of creative people share some or all of these traits…
* Republished from Nov. 2008, because… property markets might be looking a little more “up” these days, but… remember when? Enjoy… While my wife and I were Stateside recently, we went to see a...
You brainstorm to get ideas when you have none. Ideally, you do so in a group. So you can feed off each other. So you can legitimize sitting around drinking coffee. So you can get others to do all the hard thinking for you. In all those respects, group brainstorming is a good thing. But what do you do when you’re writing in isolation?
I’ve gotten a few copy critiques in my day. I crave them, no matter how harsh, because that’s what makes the writing better. I’ve also given a few copy critiques, too. And I’ve discovered...
Six months before Christmas, I first saw the signs — shopping malls had traded palm trees for pines. / By August, “Jingle Bells” from speakers did blare in hopes that the shoppers soon would be there…
Somebody wrote this, somewhere. But as far as I can tell, he or she never got around to signing it. So how about we just run the following under the byline “anonymous”…
My old friend Michael Masterson ran a fascinating piece of info, which he had picked up from a book by writer Tom Bay, about Harvard Business School Grads and their financial success — or...
Does sex really sell? Not necessarily. In a poll that showed up on BizReport.com, the older the prospect you’re targeting, the more likely they are to dislike s*xy ads. I say that, by the...
“Sleep,” said Shakespeare, “rock thy brain.” Study after study shows it, a good night’s sleep makes for a sharper, more productive mind. And yet, your average worker gets 6 hours and 55 minutes. With...
But in each case, what makes the headline work is not just empathy for a reader’s concerns. That’s only the hook. Where the copy works is in offering a final, credible solution. If you can manage that… well then… you’ve nothing to be afraid of, right?
Alex Osborn, founder of a super-successful New York ad Agency and of the Creative Education Foundation, came up with a list of brainstorming “rules” in 1963: No judgment in early stages: Collect as many...
What’s the single toughest secret you’ll ever learn, if you hope to blow the doors off the world of writing sales copy? For all the clever metaphors you’ll ever come up with, for all...
