The curse of back-to-front copy

… and how it can screw up a good thing. There is an established, tested sequence that gets people to read/listen to/watch your emails, ads – whatever. Any fool can learn it but it many fools don’t. This is because they …

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Should you hire a weirdo or two?

You bet! And here’s why. David Ogilvy once spoke to our heads of agency about where to find good people. A fashion had come in to hire people with MBA’s. I don’t think an MBA is worth a light – …

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How do you make your copy personal?

(Me and my silly leopard hat) Not long ago Akshat Gupta wrote pointing out a typo in my $1 sales page for AskDrayton, which was kind of him. But he also wrote “Your copy is so personal it looks like …

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Does the devil have all the best tunes?

… If so, what can they teach you? Recognise some of these lines? – You won’t believe how these 9 shocking clickbaits work! (number 8 is a killer!) – Man tries to hug a wild lion, You won’t believe what …

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How to get personality into your copy

The first good definition of advertising was ‘salesmanship in print’. I like that definition because it adds a very human elemen. When we like someone, it’s easier to do business with them. That’s why the best salesman have bags of …

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Advice from two great enemies

Few generals have hated each other as much as The Duke of Wellington and Napoleon. After the battle of Waterloo the Duke made a point of sleeping with two of Napoleon’s old mistresses. One was an actress named Josephine Weimer. …

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