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Complaint Copywriting

Last week I got this really intriguing email. It led to a website with this copy on it: “Look, I know everyone hates saxophones. And with good reason. Excluding Colin Stetson’s amazing work, and Tom Waits of course, I also tend toward hating on saxophones myself. “But is it really fair to judge an instrument by it's past misdemeanors ? Can the sax be rehabilitated and made sexy again ? “He...

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Control Emails, with Brad Nickel

People use the term “control freak” like it’s a bad thing. And let’s be clear. Sometimes it is. But our guest today is obsessed about control and controls in the best possible way. He’s copywriter Brad Nickel, originally from Madison, Wisconsin and now living in Valencia, Spain with his girlfriend and their French Bulldog, named Renée. Disclosure: Brad’s a client of mine. He writes co...

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Seven- and Eight-Figure Exits, Thanks to Copy with Jim Van Wyck

I have often wondered whether direct-response copy would work in large, more conventional businesses. Our guest today put my question to rest. Let me introduce you to my friend Jim Van Wyck. He’s been a direct marketer since the early 1990s. And because of businesses he built with direct-response copy, he’s had two seven-figure exits and one eight-figure exit. In case that jargon doesn’t mea...

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Teaching Kids Copywriting

I’ve been wanting to do a show on this topic for quite a while. I kept hitting a roadblock in my mind every time I started to prepare. Now, with the coronavirus keeping so many kids out of school and at home, I realized I needed to get past the roadblock. And, ironically, it was the stay-at-home order that cleared the mental roadblock out of the way. Here’s an outline of what I came up with. ...

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Short Copy

When I first started writing copy, before there was an Internet, we had an old saying: “There’s no such thing as copy that’s too long. Only copy that’s too boring.” Great point back then. Because short copy was what you would see on wasteful print ads, and on tv commercials that were trying to convey a feeling, instead of trying to sell something. But try talking smack about short copy ...

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Time Tricks and Productivity Secrets for Copywriters from Robert Updegraff

Have you ever given up on time management, because every technique and system you’ve tried just doesn’t work for you? If so, it’s not your fault. Time management systems don’t work for creative people in most cases. But in our second Old Masters show with Robert Updegraff, we’re going to show you an approach that does. It’s from a 1958 book “All the Time You Need” by Robert Updeg...

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Copywriting - The New Normal

Tell me if you’ve had this experience: You get up in the morning, and within a few minutes this sharp pang of confusion runs through your body as you wonder, “What world am I living in?” Yep. These are disorienting times, that’s for sure. We’re all doing the best we can to adjust to it. And based on my very limited view of what’s going on, most people are doing OK. I know some people a...

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How Ideas Go Viral with Robert Updegraff

Today in our Old Masters series, we have someone a little different whose work we’re going to look at. His name is Robert Updegraff. He wasn’t really a copywriter, but experienced copywriters and marketers know him. In today’s show, we’re going over a short book he published originally in 1916. It’s called Obvious Adams and it’s a story about a copywriter that took the business world b...

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Trigger-Happy Facebook Posting, with Nathan Fraser

You may know Nathan as the producer and my confabulation partner on Copywriters Podcast, and some of you know he’s an accomplished and profitable copywriter himself. But not everyone knows another aspect of Nathan’s public face, and that is as a very provocative Facebook poster. His posts trigger people in a way I’ve never seen before. A lot of them are funny and nearly all of his posts are ...

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Old Masters Series - Robert Collier

We’re back with another episode in the Old Masters Series. Today we’re going to talk about Robert Collier. Most people know of him as the author of The Robert Collier Letter Book, which we’ll talk about in this show. But it’s important to know that besides being one of the best copywriters of the first half of the 20th Century, Collier was also a prolific and highly successful author. One ...