Get It Read

The benefits are not the most important thing. Getting people to read the copy is.

All the elements in an advertisement are primarily designed to do one thing and one thing only: get you to read the first sentence of copy.

Nothing else. Each element. Every elements, serves a single purpose. To get you to read the first sentece of the copy. Don’t challenge it. Just accpet it. The logo? You think it has some other function? it doesn’t. It’s to get you to read the copy. really.

check out Victoria Secret Ad.

Then, make first sentences so easy to read they suck you in. Short.

So short and easy to read your reader start to read almost as if being sucked in. The locomotive. when the ? starts to chug from a standingstil, it really works hard.the amount of commitment and every the train must exert is monumental. but once the train starts to move, intertia takes over. It gets easier and easier to fly down the track. So it is with copy.

Opening copy it aimed at holding reader’s attention at all costs. Don’t worry about features and benefits. Just get them captivated.

If your reader is not riveted to every word you write in the first few sentecnes, your chances of having them read the pitch are remote.

Just remember that the sole purpose of all the elements of an ad are to get you to read the first sentence. make that sentence so easy to read your treader is almost compelled to read it. grasp this and you’re off to a great understanding of copywriting and the persuasive process.\

You want your copy to be so compelling people can’t stop reading. Like a car wreck. They can’t look away. Everyone knows you shouldn’t look but you can’t look away.

Start with stoeis. Offbeat, interesting and short. They don’t even have to be related to your product.

He was a prisoner confined to a cell block. “give him one last with” his wife pleaded… (heading and sub)… then he sold a rowing machine.

^ so, what are the features of your product? how can you relate them to something else? he wrote this and then confessed to making it up at the end of the ad. “copywriting is not easy and sometimes you go a little bonkers.”

Collect unusual stories!

Most of his stories were unrelated to the actual product. But they were fun to read and people read the ads and bought.