Jul

22

Soap Operas Suck… you in

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As a copywriter, you gotta get hip to human nature. And one of the best ways to do so is to observe what’s going on inside of yourself.

I recently hung out at a friends house, and she’s absolutely nuts about an absolutely ridiculous Spanish soap opera.

Now, while I was there, this soap opera got aired, and of course she had to watch it.

(These soap opera fans are dependent on their daily dose).

Now, I don’t speak Spanish, and I watched the soap opera just from the periphery of my eye… well, at least intially.

The characters? Mainly women who were trying to poison each other so they could marry the handsome rich guy. Guys that would beat each other up or hire tugs to get rid of an adversary. It was completely ridiculous, over the top. But you know what?

I suddenly noticed myself asking my friend: “What did she just say?” and then again and again.

The addiction hit me too.

Despite how candidly crappy the actors were, how much the script sucked – I got hooked on the story. Because it was about jealousy, greed, despicable acts, romantic love,  intense hate and injustice, compassion, joy and sorrow – all pact together so densely into such a short time frame.

So if we want to get out copy read – could we actually learn from those soap opera script writers to get readers hooked?

Nov

17

God’s Press Conference

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All right, this is not exactly about copywriting, but it’s about GOOD writing:

http://budurl.com/PressConferenceByGod

Jun

23

Copywriting Kung Fu Novice

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You remember those old kung fu movies? Shin-zueng wants to learn kung fu, so he goes to the Sacred Water Mountain temple. The monks reject him. But he’s not one to give up easy. He sleeps outside the temple and waits for the monks to come out the next day. They tell him to go home. He doesn’t, he just waits. And waits. And waits. He spends several days in front of that temple… nothing. Weeks… nothing. Months… his hair grows long, his beard grows, he’s getting thin and skinny and smelly… but he just waits. Finally, the head monk is so impressed (… or takes pity) that he accepts to train him.

I think it’s never been easier to learn from the masters.

Look – if anyone’s a wannabe with writing copy, it’s me.

Yeah, I write here, but I’m not delusional – my writing stinks.

But hey, you gotta start somewhere and take it from there.

And look what happens.

I asked one of best copywriters in the world a question – and he actually replied. A real reply (that’s: answering my question in a way that I understand, giving me a new insight).

Now how cool is that?

I don’t think there ever has been a time in history where it was so easy to get access to the worlds best teachers.

Great times.

(And if you also did not fully understand the concept of GAP analysis or Problem, Tease, Agitate & Solve then head over there).

Jun

20

OPT – Other People’s Thoughts

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You probably know that movie with Danny Devito where he talks about OPM (Other People’s Money)Now the movie Other People’s Money is based on the book Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It by Louis Brandeis.

You know that to get rich you need OPM.

But Dan Kennedy says to get rich you also need to get rid of OPT.

Because most people are way to busy thinking about what other people think about them, and they never get anything done. And what they do is mediocre so other people approve it.

But better read it from the man himself – “The Power Of Conquering Fears”.

He talks about how much power we give away because we are obssessed with what other people think about it.

Look, this one’s great, I gotta quoet it here:

the famous exchange between Churchill and Lady Astor; she said to him, “You are disgustingly drunk” and he said, ‘Yes, madam, I am drunk, but you are ugly, and I will be sober in the morning.”

Jun

20

Kid Clueless

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I just read John Carlton’s last blog post “Shutting People Up”.

Now, he’s writing about cars there. Mostly cars I’ve never heard about and features I can’t imagine what they look like.

But the funny thing is: it still sucked me in. Reading about cars is an interesting to me as reading about accounting (maybe even less). But the way he writes is just so “juicy”…

next thing I did was went over to Michel Fortin’s blog and read “Apply The Law of Contrast to Build Desire“. And it’s about copywriting – something I want to learn. But it reads so boring to me! It reads like a textbook… and what I got out of this lenghty scholarly post was really just that I should spray a little sand in the customers wounds and tell them about how good the relief feels once you put that magic balm on, if I want to sell them my soothing balm…

but then Michel sold I-don’t-know-how-many-millions with his writing compared to my I-never-sold-no-nothing-writing, so that just shows me I still got a long way to go if I can’t even find a gold nugget in front of my nose.

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