Winning Ads Are Great Teachers

Dear Marketing Maven,

In his landmark book, “How to Write a Good Advertisement,” legendary copy chief Victor Schwab said that people don’t want to read advertisements, so you must make your ads “easier to read than to skip.” Make them irresistible!

How do you do that?

The most consistently successful way I know was summed up in Maxim #16…

Make Your Advertising Itself Valuable

In today’s issue and in several to follow, I’ll share excellent examples of outstanding ads that apply this Maxim and became breakthrough winners.

At the link below, you’ll find today’s example. It’s a direct mail package I wrote to sell the book, “New Choices in Natural Healing.” I’m guessing that when you just read those odious words “direct mail package,” you may have mentally winced, thinking, “Oh please, don’t ask me to read a boring direct mail piece! I can’t stand them and throw them away the instant I get them.”

That’s how almost everyone feels about direct mail. My solution to this deep-seated aversion became one of the most successful direct response advertisements of all time.

When you see the ad at the link below, your first impression will be that, unlike the vast majority of direct mail pieces you receive, this one was designed from beginning to end to deliver value immediately, much more so than typical direct mail pieces.

In fact, this promotion doesn’t look like a typical direct mail package. It wasn’t even inserted in an envelope. Instead, it was designed from beginning to end to be a valuable, free-standing booklet, filled with scores of examples of highly interesting natural health remedies. All were examples from the book we were selling.

On the Internet, this ad has been described as follows: “This piece is widely considered a ‘Grail-level’ swipe in the direct response world. It is frequently cited as the definitive example of how to build immense credibility and reciprocity before asking for the sale.”

How to Get Really Sharp at Judging Ads

You can get really good at judging any ad by asking if it lives up to the core Maxims you’ve been learning in these issues. Most importantly…

• Does it seem like the writer adhered to Maxim #6: Research the market and product like an obsessed detective? Or was the research lazy?
  
  And how does the copy align with the four pillars of the Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®? That is…
• Does the ad address the market’s most urgent problem(s)?
• Does it offer unique promises to solve them?
• Does it back up its promises with unquestioned proof?
• Does it close the sale with a user-friendly proposition?
• Does it open the sale by “throwing the monkey’s fist” as explained in Maxim #15, i.e., making the first step (in this case, reading the ad itself) easy and virtually irresistible?
• And does the ad itself contain valuable information as “free samples” of what the product will deliver?

When I wrote this ad, my aim was to apply every one of these principles.

How Did It Do?

At the “Very Good Copy” website, there’s an article titled, “How to Write Copy People Notice, Read, and Trust,” by Eddie Shleyner. It features an interview with Pat Corpora, the former president of Rodale Books, publisher of “New Choices in Natural Healing,” the book described in this promotion. When Eddie asked Pat about how many pieces of this ad were mailed, Corpora replied, "Oh, I’m sure we mailed 50 million copies...It was a huge number.”

Then Eddie asked Pat how many books this ad sold, to which Pat replied, “Oh, millions.”

“Millions?” Eddie asked.

“Millions. It was our most successful mailer ever….That’s the power of great copy.”

Once you start reading the ad, you may well be tempted to order the book yourself. It’s an excellent book, but I must warn you that this direct mail copy was written several decades ago. The book has been through many editions since, so the page references mentioned in this original direct mail piece may no longer match up with the latest edition’s contents.

I’ve read that this ad has been used to teach copywriting techniques, and printed copies of the mailing piece itself have sold online at prices ranging from $1 to over $700. No need to pay any such price.

You’ll find your free copy here…

Sincere wishes for a good life and (always!) higher response,

Gary Bencivenga

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