Book summary “How to write a good advertisement”: summary

Introduction

You face a constant business struggle when sales decline and advertising costs rise. Poor copy is usually the root cause of these sales failures and dealer troubles. You need a reliable way to make every dollar pay out.

Mail-order advertising provides the best foundation because it rigidly ties costs to exact results. Victor O. Schwab establishes five fundamental steps of advertising as an unyielding rule for commercial success. You will learn how to build ads that reliably attract attention, prove claims, and compel action.

• How do you craft headlines that force people to read?
• What fundamental human desires must you appeal to?
• Why does longer copy often outperform short text?

1. Get Attention

Writing a successful advertisement requires following five sequential fundamentals that guide the reader from noticing the ad to taking action. An advertisement must first be seen and read, meaning it cannot stimulate sales without capturing attention. The subsequent steps involve showing an advantage, proving it, persuading the reader to grasp that advantage, and finally asking for action.

• Get Attention
• Show People an Advantage
• Prove It
• Persuade People to Grasp This Advantage
• Ask for Action

Advertisers must acknowledge that readers are never waiting for advertisements and treat themselves as unwelcome intruders who must earn readership.

Nobody in the world except the advertiser is waiting for an ad to appear; readers buy publications for news, entertainment, or instruction. Therefore, you act as an uninvited guest who must provide a strong enough reward for reading to compete against editorial matter.

Headline Strategies

Effective headlines promise a desirable personal reward by either showing how you can gain something or how you can avoid something undesirable. Gallup-Robinson research shows that consumer-benefit headlines outperform claim-and-boast headlines by 60 percent.

The negative appeal of avoiding a loss is often much more powerful in advertising than the positive prospect of gaining something. People will fight significantly harder to avoid losing something they already own than to gain something of greater value that they do not own.

Chauncey Depew stated he would not stay up all night to make $100, but would stay up seven nights to keep from losing it. A successful farm magazine advertisement featured the headline "A Little Mistake That Cost a Farmer $3,000 a Year" to spark a specific fear of personal error.

Using specific words, exact amounts, and direct interrogatives in headlines acts like a magnet to draw readers into the body copy.

Psychological Appeals

Advertising copy gains immense power when it promises you that others will admire, envy, or think more of you as a result of using the product. This prestige factor taps into social standing, peer admiration, and the desire to build a personal reputation through product benefits.

The headline "New Cake-Improver Gets You Compliments Galore!" utilizes the BOY PT MOM prestige factor by promising social praise from others.

Layout and Visuals

Layouts capture attention more effectively through striking simplicity or dynamic irregularity rather than through static, perfectly balanced artistic symmetry. To cut through competing advertisements, a layout must avoid looking like an overly professional, static piece of art.

Beau Brummel dominated a fashionable ballroom of heavily frilled men by appearing simply in a plain black and white costume.

2. Show People an Advantage

The primary question consumers ask is what the product will do for them. You must continuously show personal advantages instead of dwelling on the history or physical features of the manufacturer.

You must put on a consumer's outfit over your manufacturer's knowledge to properly portray these advantages.

Dr. Samuel Johnson auctioned the Anchor Brewery by proclaiming he was selling the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Daniel Webster sold a farm by describing the sensory experiences of living there.

Consumer Appeals

Most consumer actions are motivated by four fundamental categories of desires. You must tie product advantages to these universal human aspirations by recognizing that self-interest and fear are core motivators.

• People Want to Gain: Health, Time, Money, Popularity, Improved appearance, Security in old age, Praise from others, Comfort, Leisure, Pride of accomplishment, Advancement (business, social), Increased enjoyment, Self-confidence, Personal prestige.
• They want to BE: Good parents, Sociable/hospitable, Up-to-date, Creative, Proud of their possessions, Influential over others, Gregarious, Efficient, First in things, Recognized as authorities.
• They want to DO: Express their personalities, Resist domination by others, Satisfy their curiosity, Emulate the admirable, Appreciate beauty, Acquire or collect things, Win others' affection, Improve themselves generally.
• They want to SAVE: Time, Money, Work, Discomfort, Worry, Doubts, Risks, Personal embarrassment.

Audience Research

Successful advertising creators must maintain a connection with ordinary people and avoid country-club thinking or relying on unrepresentative circles. Relying on the opinions of a small immediate circle leads to errors based on the law of probability.

You must immerse yourself in popular culture and everyday life to understand the mass-market mind:

• Read comics, newspaper and magazine features, stories, books, and truly great books that bring ordinary people to life.
• See smash-hit movies, television shows, and plays.
• Listen to radio programs that hold the interest of countless people.
• Talk with taxi drivers, laborers, newsboys, clerks, and others outside rarefied social circles.
• Study the appeals and copy of mail-order advertisements that repeat because they pay in direct results.

Copy Structure

The first paragraph of an advertisement is critical because it determines whether the reader will continue past the headline. An unfortunate lead paragraph can cause the reader to stop reading entirely.

An unsuccessful etching ad lead told what the advertiser was doing. A successful one told what the signed originals would do for the home and owner.

You must follow these rules for your lead:

• Follow through with the idea or appeal expressed in the main headline.
• Be short, with quick, easy-to-read sentences.
• Start with a pertinent or challenging question.
• Start immediately to carry out the reward-for-reading promise by compressing major product advantages.

3. Prove It

You must combine emotional response with factual proof, gathering systematic evidence and making claims credible through understatement and specific figures.

Belief is fundamentally a matter of feeling and emotion rather than pure logic. You need facts as logical excuses to justify your emotionally driven purchasing decisions to yourself and others. Almost 80 per cent of those who read 342 national advertisements questioned their veracity, according to a Daniel Starch investigation.

Evidence Collection

Every product has unexploited angles that can be surfaced by dredging company records, sales logs, and competitor studies. You must build strong, credible evidence using inductive copy or deductive copy.

• Gather Construction Evidence: firm reputation and standing, management personnel, production or service personnel, quality of materials or design, patents or machinery, speed of delivery, design or material of container.
• Gather Performance Evidence: product achievements under difficult conditions, use by discriminating or well-known users, increasing popularity, scientific demonstration reasons.
• Gather Testimony of Others: user case-history reports and letters, expert evidence from scientists or physicians, awards and contests won, significant outlets selling the product successfully.
• Gather Test Evidence: manufacturer guarantees, willingness to supply free samples.

Credibility Techniques

To overcome consumer skepticism, you must make advertising facts credible through understatement and specific figures. Understating minor flaws or presenting highly specific details makes overarching claims believable, whereas broad perfection claims trigger immediate distrust.

An automobile campaign that admitted higher-cost cars had better upholstery successfully built credibility by telling consumers something they already knew to be true.

You should apply several specific methods to increase trust:

• Use statements that ring true and tone down startling actual truths if they seem unbelievable.
• Admit relatively minor faults to make the good claims believable.
• Make facts specific using precise figures rather than round estimates.
• Use actual photographs instead of drawings.
• Include clear, logical copy explaining why the promise can be performed.

Effective examples include precise claims such as 99 44/100% pure, 48.5% above government specifications, and 989,000 pens sold.

4. Persuade People to Grasp This Advantage

You must motivate benefits more definitely right before asking for action. Fundamental No. 4 puts wheels under your claims by picturing them in motion within daily life.

You must weave your claims into a staccato clincher copy that pictures benefits in motion and breaks reader inertia.

This clincher copy gathers various threads of claims and proof. It weaves them into a strong close. It often features a more intense, emotional, and staccato style with shorter sentences. You build a tempo that encourages action.

Charles M. Schwab gave a speech at a banquet in 1900. The speech spurred J. P. Morgan and other steel millionaires into immediate action regarding a merger with Andrew Carnegie. The resulting deal reached 600,000,000 dollars in value.

A small, dramatic symbol or added value at the closing stage can break reader inertia. It can push over a sale. The author calls this The Sixth Prune phenomenon.

A boarding house became highly successful after a new management started serving six prunes instead of five. The old management served five prunes, which was a rigid number that caused boarder irritation. The sixth prune acted as a dramatic symbol of a new spirit and better service, overcoming customer hesitation.

5. Ask for Action

Many attractive and convincing advertisements fail because they end without trying to translate interest and desire into specific action. Human inertia dissipates hard-won ground if you do not explicitly guide the prospect.

You must explicitly ask for action using simple, specific instructions and liberal guarantees that remove the cause for delay.

Henry Ford explained to an old crony that he never bought bolts from him simply because the crony never asked for the order.

Forms of Action

Calls to action in advertisements can be categorized into three principal types ranging from simple dealer directions to direct response offers.

• Go to Your Dealer: tells the reader to visit a local store.
• Do-Something copy: gives the reader an interesting action like a test or questionnaire to establish a closer bond.
• Direct response: pulls for inquiries for a free booklet, sample, trial, or contest entry.

A vacuum-cleaner company used a joint questionnaire for husband and wife listing eleven product features to encourage a home conference.

Guarantees and Simplicity

Offering a liberal guarantee removes the cause for delay or inaction and significantly stimulates immediate sales. Experienced advertisers know that only a tiny percentage of customers will take advantage of a refund privilege, which is infinitesimal compared to the increased business a strong guarantee generates. In 1773, an advertisement for Bohea Tea by Theo. Hancock offered a full refund if the tea did not suit the ladies' taste. A magazine issue showed that only 1 out of 90 advertisers backed claims with a money-back guarantee.

Delay is the enemy of a sale, and human inertia causes prospects to give up if choices are too complex or instructions are vague. John Caples found that advertisements became more effective by including exact locations, phone numbers, floor numbers, subway directions, and order coupons, such as 600 Fifth Avenue.

Follow these rules to guide the prospect:

• Make an offer using a hook such as a booklet, sample, free trial, or extra premium.
• Give a time limit on your offer if it is bona fide.
• Point out forcefully if the available supply of the product is limited.
• Emphasize if the price of the product is going up by giving a specific date.
• Use a price reduction to emphasize the desirability of taking advantage of it at once.
• Stress what your reader gains by purchasing immediately or loses by not owning it.
• Offer a guarantee to remove the cause for delay or inaction.
• State the exact location clearly.
• Provide the phone number and specify what department or individual to call.
• State the floor number for the store department.
• Explain how to get to the advertiser's location using transit routes or maps.
• Include delivery charge information for areas beyond free delivery sections.
• Provide instructions on how to measure when ordering textiles.
• Specify what to say when ordering items by phone.
• Provide full details about easy-payment plans.
• Include mail order coupons for remote shopping.
• List the operating hours and evenings when the shop is open.

Consumer reaction tests, opinion ratings, and memory value checks can be misleading if divorced from actual sales figures. The ultimate value of advertising and the effectiveness of a call to action are measured strictly by sales and cash register results. Composer Verdi advised opera impresario Gatti-Casazza to rely strictly on box office reports because they represent facts rather than mere opinion.

6. How Long Should the Copy Be

An advertisement must propel you along a series of eight milestones toward a completed sale. A copywriter should be like an evangelist who holds the audience interest as long as possible to maximize conversions.

You must hold reader interest through longer copy by following twenty-two specific holding techniques and using subheads as booster stations.

To keep readers engaged through longer copy, writers must employ specific techniques that sustain interest and readability.

• Start copy with a pertinent question, to help get people into it.
• Begin with your strongest consumer-benefit fact.
• Give copy news value.
• Avoid vague generalities.
• Speedily identify copy with needs and desires of reader.
• Stick to buying points, concerning reader, not selling points, concerning advertiser.
• Select sales angles with greatest general appeal.
• Get in plenty of emotional appeal.
• Touch people on points of common human contact.
• Avoid flat claims.
• Put as much personality, human interest, showmanship into it as you can, with naturalness.
• Try to make it entertaining to read.
• Make copy relevant to product, not filled with distractive influences.
• Use subheads having news appeal.
• Use vigorous, non-static style to help copy suggest action.
• Use short, simple sentence construction, crystal-clear in meaning.
• Use vivid present tense, singular instead of plural.
• Use active verbs, pictorial nouns.
• Avoid too many adjectives, adverbs, pronouns.
• Use vocabulary of least erudite of your prospects.
• Grammatically, lead carefully from one point of interest to the next.
• Keep it compact, well integrated.

Physical Appearance

Longer copy must be made physically inviting through formatting choices so it does not appear formidable.

• Paragraphs: Short, indented, double lead between each, occasionally centered.
• Copy blocks: Not too wide for proper eye range, vary widths, graduation of type size.
• Subheads: Frequent and bold enough to break up formidable appearance.
• Type size: As large as is consistent with copy length.
• White space: As much as is consistent with the objective.
• Art work: Advance or substantiate copy story pictorially.
• Specification matter: Set technical details in smaller type, boxed.

Sales Angles and Subheads

Omitting a single powerful sales angle or phrase can drastically reduce the pulling power of an advertisement.

An ad for rubber sheeting mentioning Do as hospitals do; protect your bed produced $8,300 compared to $5,000 without it. Men's shorts sold twice as well with the phrase The grip-fasteners won't pop off. Christmas tree lights mentioning that remaining bulbs stay lit if one burns out sold 28,000 units compared to 7,500 without it. Carl Byoir noted that 18 unsuccessful tonic ads were fixed by adding a 36-word paragraph about iron in the blood.

Subheads act as booster stations that break up body matter and bridge gaps to keep readers engaged.

• Don't wait too long to introduce your first subhead.
• Tie the first phrase of a main top subhead directly to the headline promise.
• Make some of your subheads interrogative in form.
• Make your subheads progressively sequential in character.
• Integrate your subheads into the plan and context of the copy.
• Convey in display most of your principal sales points.
• Make each subhead capsulize the news lead of the next paragraph.
• Make your subheads stand out physically in a different type face.
• Do not worry if liberal subhead usage makes the ad look less inartistic.

10 Key Ideas

1. Advertisers must acknowledge readers are never waiting for advertisements and treat themselves as unwelcome intruders who must earn readership.
2. The negative appeal of avoiding a loss is often much more powerful in advertising than the positive prospect of gaining something.
3. Most consumer actions are motivated by four fundamental categories of desires covering what people want to gain, be, do, and save.
4. You must combine emotional response with factual proof, gathering systematic evidence and making claims credible through understatement and specific figures.
5. A small, dramatic symbol or added value at the closing stage can break reader inertia and push over a sale, which is known as the sixth prune phenomenon.
6. A copywriter should be like an evangelist who holds audience interest through longer copy using twenty-two specific holding techniques and subheads as booster stations.
7. Successful advertising creators must maintain a connection with ordinary people, avoiding country-club thinking and the danger of relying on unrepresentative circles or the cumulative effect alibi.
8. You must put on a consumer's outfit over your manufacturer's knowledge with a hard-boiled attitude to properly portray personal advantages instead of dwelling on the history or physical features of the company.
9. An advertisement must propel readers along a series of milestones toward a completed sale, relying on the primacy of the gifted product to drive results.
10. Consumer reaction tests, opinion ratings, and memory value checks can be misleading if divorced from actual sales figures because the ultimate value of advertising is measured strictly by box office results.