http://copywritersroundtable.com Get the free report - sign up for the weekly e-letter! Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:39:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en There's a book, "Making Sense of Wine," by author Matthew Kramer. In it, Kramer writes: "What constitutes quality in wine?... The single greatest standard used in assessing a wine's quality is its complexity. The more times you can return to a glass of wine and find something different in it -- ... http://copywritersroundtable.com/2009/07/03/the-simple-secret-of-complexity/ I love a good analogy. But, like the people who send marriage proposals to jailed serial killers, I sometimes fall in love with a bad one. A bad analogy, that is. Not serial killers. Point being, analogies can be a powerful tool when used well. But they can sabotage your message ... http://copywritersroundtable.com/2009/06/28/analogies-gone-wild/ There's a guy named Jack (just a coincidence). He has a son. The son is in his early 20s and unmarried. One evening after dinner, the father and son have a conversation. "Son, I want you to marry a girl of my choice." "C'mon Dad," says the boy, "I want ... http://copywritersroundtable.com/2009/06/21/how-business-is-done/ It's brevity they say is the soul to wit. And If that's true, I admit... sometimes, I can be a little soulless. I grew up loving what the nuns used to call "25 cent words." In high school, we called them "SAT Words." These are the words, they told us, that make you ... http://copywritersroundtable.com/2009/06/15/short-words-bigger-word-power/ Every great direct response copywriter can tell you what a valuable thing it is to have a "swipe file," that burgeoning bin or desktop folder of winning promos crafted by other copywriters. The idea, of course, isn't to rip off the best of your colleagues... but rather to read, see ... http://copywritersroundtable.com/2009/06/08/inspiration-or-flat-out-imitation/ I got a note from a reader who aspires to a copywriting career and wanted to know how best to get started. You can imagine, I get that question a lot. Here was my reply: 1) Keep on reading the Copywriter's Roundtable! 2) Get some books on copywriting and study them. See ... http://copywritersroundtable.com/2009/06/01/how-to-get-started/ What's more persuasive, email or face-to-face communication? Per a UK psychology study published on this fascinating British psychology blog, gender roles make a difference. So does the level of familiarity. Friends can persuade us more easily, generally, than strangers. But when familiarity levels are low, email is more persuasive for men than ... http://copywritersroundtable.com/2009/05/25/surprising-psychology-secrets-for-marketers/ Here's a quickie insight and useful tip: The common wisdom is that everybody loves a pretty face, right? Not always so, says Bryan Eisenberg over at grokdotcom.  Oh sure, the pretty face does attract attention. But that's the problem. In ads, a real looker can pull a visitor's eyes away from ... http://copywritersroundtable.com/2009/05/18/in-picture-ads-the-eyes-have-it/ Mies van der Rohe, a twentieth-century architect, once said that God hides in the details. And says writer Anne Lamott, "There is ecstasy in paying attention." What is it that they know that we don't? Not much, actually. Since, after all, any good copywriter also knows that when you really... really... want to ... http://copywritersroundtable.com/2009/05/12/the-details-that-close-sales/ Time magazine did a back-o'-the-napkin calculation.  Suppose you estimate about five million of these "25 Random Things" messages in circulation in a single week.  Given 25 details in each note, that's 125 million random facts making the rounds. Even at just 10 minutes to come up with each list, that's roughly 800,000 ... http://copywritersroundtable.com/2009/05/05/is-social-networking-too-social/