The Most Important Sentence
in Advertising History?

Dear Marketing Maven,

Quick review…

In my previous Maxim, I shared the Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® explaining what your ads should say for maximum persuasion and response.

Now we’ll look at a simple but profoundly important Maxim that makes the application of this formula much easier and your life as a copywriter or advertiser much richer in several ways.

It’s a nine-word sentence I first read in the book “Reality in Advertising” by advertising genius Rosser Reeves. He said that he had learned this axiom from a legendary copywriter, whom he didn’t name, from an earlier generation. This one sentence made fortunes for Reeves’ clients, as well as my own, and for scores of other advertisers wise enough to apply it rigorously, as I hope you will.

Here it is…

Maxim #13:
A gifted product is mightier
than a gifted pen.

That’s it – the nine-word Maxim so powerful that it has built more fortunes than any other principle in marketing.

To explain its profound insight, let me quote advertising luminary Bill Bernbach, creative director of Doyle Dane Bernbach, the renowned ad agency responsible for the brilliant and enormously successful Volkswagen Beetle ads of the 1960s, voted back in the day to be the all-time greatest general advertising campaign in history.

Bernbach was also named No. 1 on Advertising Age’s 20th century honor roll of advertising’s most influential people.

Said Bernbach, “The magic is in the product,” not in the copywriter’s pen. Or as he put it another way, “Advertising doesn’t create a product advantage. It can only convey it. No matter how skillful you are, you can’t invent a product advantage that doesn’t exist.”

If you’re involved in marketing in any way, this nine-word Maxim may well give you an “Aha!” moment, because it instantly clarifies the roles of everyone involved.

For example…

If you are the client (the advertiser), it means that it’s your job, not your copywriter’s or ad agency’s, to come up with a brilliant product, one with a clear-cut, built-in, immediately understandable, unique, and highly desirable consumer advantage.

It means that if your “research and development department” responsible for coming up with such blockbuster product advantages resides only in your copywriter’s imagination, you’re already in big trouble.

It means that if you’re settling for a “me too” product and hoping that a gifted copywriter will carry you on his or her back to the winner’s circle, you’re kidding yourself.

Remember that most businesses reap their highest profits on repeat sales. While a good copywriter may make a prospect interested enough to try a product, he or she can’t make that customer delighted enough to buy it repeatedly. Only the product and the company behind it can do that.

This nine-word Maxim means it’s your mission as the advertiser to come up with a product so inherently superior that, as soon as it’s effectively explained, demonstrated, or sampled, a high percentage of your prospects have no conclusion to draw except “I want this!”

Create “Wow!” products and services like this, add in great customer service, and something magical happens. Your customers become your auxiliary sales force — a large, unpaid, ever-growing army of raving fans who extol your product to others, causing your market and profits to grow far more effectively than any copywriter can.

This is where real marketing magic is born — in the product itself.

What this means if you’re a copywriter

If you are the copywriter, this Maxim means that the content of your ad should dramatically and credibly focus on how the product uniquely benefits your prospects. It means that your job is to research the product thoroughly to uncover its unique advantages. As I spelled out in prior Maxims, research — deep research — is the launch pad of copywriting breakthroughs.

Your mission is to sell, not entertain

Since the main message of the ad should be why and how the product is so valuable to your prospect, you should resist the temptation to be clever, cute, or entertaining, all of which only calls attention to your creativity and away from the core message of greatest relevance to your prospect.

For example, I consider puns in headlines to be advertising malpractice. I formed this opinion early in my career when, as a newbie, I committed this mortal sin myself, triggering an instant lecture from my first (and decidedly unamused) copy chief.

As David Ogilvy warned — “If you spend your advertising budget entertaining the consumer, you’re a bloody fool. Consumers don’t buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night. They buy the new detergent because it promises a benefit.”

The surest path to fame and fortuneas a copywriter

If you’re a copywriter who seeks fame and fortune, knowing this nine-word Maxim can reward you immensely. Here’s why…

Your career success is tied directly to the performance of the ads you create. Write for great products that enflame consumers with desire, and the product’s success will make you seem like a genius.

Write for a weak product and, even if you put forth a yeoman effort, the smell of the product’s failure will rub off on you.

And remember that your skills of persuasion can take you only so far. You want the facts — and especially strong proof — on your side.

To see why, imagine that you’re a successful defense attorney. You’ve worked for years to become one of the most persuasive people on the planet.

A man charged with murder wants you to take his case. He swears he’s innocent. Unfortunately for him, however, two people who know him saw him commit the crime. His fingerprints are not only on the bullet casing, but also on the gun, which is registered to him. And there’s the troubling detail that he emailed an angry death threat to the victim the day before. In fact, that happened shortly after the suspect’s wife demanded a divorce because she was madly in love with the victim. Moreover, the deadly deed was captured on a storefront video, clearly showing the suspect as the perp, as well as his hasty getaway in his car, with the license plate clearly visible.

Given these facts, would you take this case? If you did, what are your odds of persuading an intelligent jury?

In legal circles, there’s a classic saying: If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If the law is on your side, argue the law. If neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table!

That last resort of pounding the table — i.e., appealing to forceful emotion with little factual support — is often the first choice of many copywriters. But thoughtful consumers, like discerning jurors, easily see right through this tactic and conclude that you simply don’t have any facts to prove your case.

Even worse, thanks to widespread Advertising Avoidance Syndrome, marketers are presumed guilty until proven otherwise — guilty of exaggeration and obvious bias.

As in law, your best copywriting strategy is to have strong facts plus powerful proof elements on your side. And then make the most of them in your ads.

In future issues of Marketing Maxims, we’ll look at many examples of how effectively proof can boost response to your ads.

The most potent combination

If you aspire to be a master copywriter, learn to spot gifted products and become a gifted practitioner of powerful, fact-based copywriting. In all of marketing, there is no combination more powerful than a gifted product and a gifted pen!

How to do this:

1. Commit to improving your copywriting skill by at least 1% a week. The compounding effect is enormous. Future Maxims will show you how.

2. Develop an eye for spotting great products — those that combine clear-cut superiority in their niche and are supported by powerful proof elements.

Then, when you spot an opportunity to write for such a gifted product, you’ll know to seize it and how to present its inherent strengths.

In the meantime, remember this little rhyme as you sharpen your skills and seek opportunities to work with truly gifted products:

To be a master marketer, remind yourself again — A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen.

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

Gary Bencivenga

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