One of the best lessons on copywriting I ever received – and most still don’t get it
I have been reading Samuel Pepys Diary.
On 9th March 1662 he wrote that the crowns of Cromwell’s day were selling for 25 and 30 shillings each.
This may mean nothing to you until you realise two things.
1. A crown was worth 5 shillings.
2 Oliver Cromwell had only died four years previously.
This means people were already paying four to five times the face value of those coins. They had become collectable.
Collectables and charities are two types of enterprise that call for special understanding.
In 1976 I got a call from the Franklin Mint asking me to write a letter for them. I charged as much as I could think of – about the equivalent of £5,000 today.
The copy was not easy to write, as it was about some medals celebrating the achievements of the Belgian Kings, which could easily fit on the back of postage stamp.
That is, if you exclude Leopold, who enslaved the Congo – one of the beastliest monarchs who ever lived.
When I came back with my work my client, a lovely man called Ed Segal, read the first couple of sentences out loud.
Then he gazed at me over his glasses and asked kindly, “What do you think the reader would like to know next?”
I got the point and scurried way to rewrite.
Most writers do not structure their stuff very well, and particularly do not ask the question Ed asked often enough.
If you want to know about writing better copy, you have three options.
1. Come to www.eadim.com where you will learn from me and several other very able writers, including Steve Harrison – the best I know
2. Come to Southwark Cathedral on 3rd October and see Howie Jacobson and I talk about copy for Adwords – and join you in getting 12 copy ideas for your own business, there and then
3. Get my course How to Write and Persuade where in two hours, fifty minutes and forty nine seconds you can learn what I have over the last 53 years in this game.
If you do not want to know about writing better copy, or at the very least judging it, good luck. It’s going to be a rocky ride from now on.
As a purchaser of “How To Write and Persuade,” I’d like to say thank you. No, really. THANK YOU. Now I have to go back and listen to them again. I learn something new every time I listen to them. Heh…
Drayton you did it again.
As a glowing testament to Draytons copy skills… I was convinced I should buy the ‘write and persuade series’ then realised I had already bought it once before! 🙂
Oh dear, Duncan, you must be getting like me. I am always reading books and forgetting I read them – much to the mirth of my beloved. I think it is the next step beyond skip-reading: leap-reading:-) For what it is worth I am preparing a new edition of How to write a salesletter that sells which will include emails and a few videos featuring my wrinkled face and soothing tones.