Gary Halbert Call Part 2 of 4

Gary: I want you to imag­ine that an ad was writ­ten by me. I mean it was just a bril­liant ad… a bril­liant head­line… a bril­liant copy. It just flowed, etc. and it was about knit­ting machines.

Now, I am guess­ing that most of the peo­ple on this call do not knit very often unless Rosie Greer is on the call. I do not think you knit very often and it would not make any dif­fer­ence how much skill I used to write that let­ter but let’s take another scenario.

Let’s say that you are mar­ried and for some rea­son you have to be away from your wife. You can­not be at the hos­pi­tal and while you are gone your wife gives birth to triplets and some guy comes up to you and he is try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with you that you wife just had triplets but his gram­mar is screwed up, his Eng­lish is faulty but is there any way he could com­mu­ni­cate to you that your wife just had triplets that would not be of inter­est to you?

That is the dif­fer­ence between world class response and all this mediocre stuff. It is know­ing what is impor­tant to peo­ple. You know you could… you could write in pig Latin that you wife just had triplets and you could be Shake­speare writ­ing about the knit­ting machine. It would not make any dif­fer­ence. You got to know what is impor­tant to peo­ple. I did not get very far before I stopped my rant, so I will try a lit­tle harder this time.

Michel: That was… that was a per­fect expla­na­tion. Actu­ally, Gary, I use that expla­na­tion when peo­ple ask me that ques­tion. What I…

Gary: You know what I think really… what we should do with that ques­tion… any­body that asks that ques­tion if… if they are in pub­lic, they should be slapped right across the mouth. There shouldn’t even be any discussion.

Michel: Or you should send them your cousin Guido.

Gary: Yes, or send to Guido.

Michel: I… I… I have some­body that com­mented about that and we had a post­ing on my copywriter’s board​.com… some­body said I value my legs too much, I have got to be on this call.

Gary: Here is what I usu­ally say and, by the way, that brings up another thing.

Michel: Sure…

Gary: Every­body in mar­ket­ing almost, is afraid to have a per­son­al­ity. That is what you need to have, a per­son­al­ity, you know, and every­body is try­ing to hard not to offend some­body. I believe what Dan Kennedy says, if you have not offended some­body by noon, you are not a pro.

You know, look I have what I call the Boy George /​ John Wayne the­ory of mar­ket­ing. You know, Boy George has his fans and John Wayne has his fans. Now, never the twain shall meet. Some peo­ple like big macho guys that mow down Japan­ese peo­ple with machine guns and other guys… other peo­ple like sex­u­ally con­fused singers who wear dresses.

There is noth­ing wrong with either of them but never the twain shall meet and the thing about Boy George and the thing about John Wayne is they give you some­thing to say yes or no to, don’t they?

You know, stop this non­sense of try­ing to please every­body. You can­not do it. You give away thou­sands of dol­lar bills and you can­not do it.

Michel: I think you said some­thing in a sem­i­nar not too long ago or quite a while ago, I can­not remem­ber exactly when but you said about… uh… peo­ple are so pre­oc­cu­pied about sell­ing to the foxes with­out upset­ting the dogs.

Gary: Oh yeah… I… I said that… um… when I wrote that per­sonal ad that got me women from all over…

Michel: Uh hum…

Gary: The world… I… you know, there were a lot of fat, ugly women with mous­taches that were offended by my ad and I said I didn’t worry about offend­ing the dogs, I con­cen­trated on sell­ing the foxes and that is some­thing you peo­ple should take to heart. Let’s see how long I can go before I start another rant. Try a question.

Michel: That… that… but that is such a per­fect expla­na­tion I just wanted to add my own com­ment is that I usu­ally tell peo­ple if you were a Steven King fanatic and… and the fact that you are a Steven King fanatic means that you are a per­son who is tar­geted for a Steven King book. Steven King puts out a book and it is 800 pages thick, are you not going to buy it because it is too long?

Gary: No.

Michel: Of course not and not only that, you prob­a­bly will buy it, sit down and read it all in one sin­gle read­ing because you just absolutely love the stuff. You prob­a­bly wished the book was either longer or you will re-​​read the whole book again because it is so fas­ci­nat­ing and that is the key… is the fact that there is a dif­fer­ence between bor­ing copy and a long copy, actu­ally I tell peo­ple there is a dif­fer­ence between long copy and long-​​winded copy.

Gary: Yes, that is a great way to put it. I am going to take credit for that though.

Michel: You sure can Gary.

Gary: There will be a point in time where I will for­get you said it and I will take credit for it. That is a great way to put it, Michel.

Michel: Well, here is another ques­tion that is sort of tied to that, Gary. One of the ques­tions that was asked was, “What is the dif­fer­ence between or how can you write copy that is… um… that is more…uh… that is cleaner, that is less hypey because a lot of peo­ple say they see a lot of hypey copy these days, espe­cially on line.

So how can you tell the dif­fer­ence between, you know, copy that is hypey… how can you write copy that is not as hypey and for whom and how… how do you make sure that you just do not tell out­right lies?

Gary: Well, first of all… um… hypey copy is used by peo­ple who really do not know what they are writ­ing about and if they don’t know what they are writ­ing about, the more adjec­tives there will be in the copy. If you have a lot of com­pelling facts, you don’t need the hype.

Now, hype has a place, I think… uh… but it…it is not nearly where you think it should be. If you will study the mas­ters like Claude Hop­kins or stuff, you won’t say that is hypey copy but the best let­ters… the best sales mes­sages are really hard hit­ting and dra­matic with­out using all those adjec­tives and the peo­ple are using the adjec­tives in… in place of sub­stance and that is the prob­lem with most sales writ­ing today.

Peo­ple don’t do their home­work. You know, they don’t fill it up with sub­stance and if you have a lot of sub­stance, you do not need a lot of hype… um…

Michel: Well, actu­ally that is a per­fect lead in to the next ques­tion is, “What are the biggest mis­takes you see copy­writ­ers commit?”

Gary: Uh… the biggest mis­take that copy­writ­ers com­mit… uh… is they do not know how to do what they are doing.

Michel: That’s…

Gary: And they don’t study. I’m… I’m going to tell you a few things that… um… there are a lot of ways to write a sales let­ter and this is not the only way and it is not the only god way but it is the way John Carl­ton does it and it is the way I do it.

We write the bul­lets first because the only rea­son that peo­ple buy what you are sell­ing from ad for the most part is because of the qual­ity of the bul­lets. Now I have an ad in front of me that has… it was for a book I wrote called Killer Orgasms — How to Have the Best Sex Humanly Possible.

It has 64 bul­lets in it and… um… about 14 of those bul­lets would be irre­sistible to me but the point I want to make is a lot of peo­ple will buy some­thing in a 14 page sales let­ter because they want to know the answer to one bullet.

Now I wrote a bul­let for Entre­pre­neur Mag­a­zine one time and this was back in the 1980s when every­body was doing cocaine and I wrote “Fake Cocaine: A Legal Sub­sti­tute that Fools Every­one, Even the Experts.” And do you know that for years, peo­ple were call­ing in to get that prod­uct just to find out just what the hell that was. And… and I mean it was buried in 150 other bullets.

Now this… ah… the promo for this sex book con­tains 60 bul­lets but I am going to read the one that I would want to know if I did not know the answer. There are very few of them. The real rea­son why Pro­zoc and Zoloft are so pop­u­lar in this coun­try. Almost no one, even doc­tors under­stands the start­ing sex­ual implications.

The sin­gle biggest sex­ual com­plaint women have about men, the sin­gle biggest sex­ual com­plaint men have about women. Now I put a star by this one — A dead give­away that proves a woman is fak­ing her orgasms.

They have to go to another… I am skip­ping over a bunch which I don’t think… um… what les­bians know about sex which men don’t and why more men today are los­ing their women to other women. The sin­gle most impor­tant thing a woman can do to make her­self more attrac­tive to the oppo­site sex. The sin­gle most impor­tant thing a man can do to make him­self more attrac­tive to the oppo­site sex.

And this is the bul­let I believe gets more peo­ple than any­body else, than any other bul­let to buy the book — three sure fire ways to tell if your spouse or sig­nif­i­cant other has had sex with some­one else in the last 24 hours. The No. 1 rule which absolutely must be observed for women to have a truly spec­tac­u­lar orgasm.

And then there is a whole bunch of bul­lets I do not have a star by. Flirt­ing sequence used by almost all women, that 95 per­cent of men don’t even rec­og­nize and how it instantly gets them makes sex ten times more excit­ing when he does learn to rec­og­nize and under­stand these lit­tle known secrets. The one best way to win the true undy­ing love of a mem­ber of the oppo­site sex.

I am skip­ping over some of these because I’m… I’m con­sid­er­ing this a PG call… um… a 15 minute change in the way you shower and dress which may very likely dou­ble your attrac­tive­ness to the oppo­site sex.

Now let’s skip that one. How to guar­an­tee your lover almost never stops think­ing about you and how to make sure her thoughts are super­charged with pas­sion and white hot smol­der­ing antic­i­pa­tion. Very impor­tant but almost unknown trick which will end nag­ging on both sides of the rela­tion­ship forever.

Then there is a bunch more bul­lets I haven’t X’d and we come to one, the sin­gle most impor­tant thing a man can do to win a woman’s love for­ever. The most impor­tant and most lit­tle known qual­ity a man must have if he wants to acquire a truly desir­able woman and have any chance of suc­cess. Women will over­look every­thing except this.

Okay, I have noth­ing else starred but there is some­thing really, really impor­tant about these bul­lets. None of them were hypey and all of them are based on truth and what you have got to know is you have got to know the truth. Now, if there are some women on this call and she… and they are lis­ten­ing to it with a man, you watch the woman when I tell the secret to the bul­let and… um… and they will nod their head yes.

Okay, a dead give­away which proves if a woman is fak­ing her orgasms, do you know what that is? When women have orgasms, they always curl their toes, they can­not help to do it. The can­not help not to do it… um… okay, three sure fire ways… how about if we just change that to one sure fire way to tell if your spouse or sig­nif­i­cant other has had sex with some­one else in the last 24 hours? Is there any hype in that?

Michel: Not at all.

Gary: Not at all is there?

Michel: No.

Gary: But isn’t that some­thing you would really like to know? The one sure way to tell if your woman has had sex with another man in the last 24 hours? Well, there is a way. And I will tell you what it is and you will say aha as soon as I explain it to you.

Let’s sup­pose you or your wife or girl­friend is hav­ing an affair with some­body in the office. They leave the office, go to a motel and they have sex. What is the first thing they do after they have sex? They take a shower… they take a shower to remove the evidence.

They remove the makeup residue, the lip­stick on the col­lar, the scent of the other per­son, etc., etc., etc. so if your spouse or sig­nif­i­cant other is all of a sud­den com­ing home freshly showed at times where she wouldn’t be, like she wasn’t at the gym or the bal­let class or noth­ing, the rea­son that she is tak­ing no show­ers is to remove the evi­dence of an affair.

Well, the thing is… what I am try­ing to point out to you is these things are facts and I have twisted them into bul­lets and these are called blind bul­lets because I do not give away the secret. The No. 1 rule which absolutely must be observed for a woman to have a truly spec­tac­u­lar orgasm and we are going to stop talk­ing about sex here folks because I know some of you are shriv­el­ing but do you know what that No. 1 rule is? The woman has to feel absolutely safe… um… and the… um…

There is another one I like here… um… the one best way to win the true undy­ing love of a mem­ber of the oppo­site sex, espe­cially a woman, you know what that could be? I will tell you what it is… small, unex­pected gifts. Not gifts that you give her for her birth­day, not gifts for the wed­ding anniver­sary, just small unex­pected gifts that are spe­cial unto her. Like you know she likes to col­lect these lit­tle clay Peru­vian fig­urines and you seek out and find one. It might cost you $5.00 and you have it deliv­ered to her with flow­ers, unex­pect­edly, out of the blue and she will love you for that.

Um… and then there is one that… uh… it is not so much about sex as it is about rela­tion­ships and… um… I am going to… I am going to put on my rela­tion­ship counselor…um… hat here and… uh… and it says, a very impor­tant but almost unknown trick which will end nag­ging on both sides of the rela­tion­ship forever.

My girl­friend and I, actu­ally she is my fiancee, is a woman who has the best heart I have ever met. She is also, at least to me, the most attrac­tive I have ever met and I made a deal with her when we first started going out together four years ago, and I have never bro­ken that deal, and she can­not imag­ine that a man would make such a deal with her and here it is… the deal is if I do any­thing that offends you or irri­tates you, you will only have to tell me about it once and I will never do it again.

Now, my girl­friend is Costa Rican, for exam­ple. Every­body in Costa Rica, they never eat with a hat on so I take my hat off when I eat. A very sim­ple thing.

Now that doesn’t mean I am going to let this woman tell me I can never go out on one of my boats again or some­thing like that or I have to change my pro­fes­sion, but you know, the thing is if you do things that irri­tate your loved one, and they are pretty easy to quit, most of them, you know, let’s say that every day you come in the door and you take off your coat and you throw it on the floor and it irri­tates the hell out of her, just don’t do it any more.

We have a con­tract with each other that we never do some­thing that the other one expresses that causes them con­ster­na­tion, we never do it twice and every­body can do that but yet that made a great bul­let but behind that great bul­let was a great truth.

I didn’t have to use any hype to write this ad because… do you under­stand? I was search­ing out strong truths… excit­ing truths and then writ­ing those excit­ing truths and I didn’t have to say… uh…a really killer way to have an explo­sive mind blow­ing rela­tion­ship, you know, that sucks the air out of the room and blah, blah, blah, blah. You just make a sim­ple state­ment of what that is.

Now, when you write… you should… I… I would sug­gest to all of you, start work­ing on your bul­lets first because if you are… you know… every­thing about the bul­lets, your whole piece is about the bul­lets, that’s… that’s what it is about and the rest of the piece is to get them to attract their atten­tion to read the bul­lets and to attract their atten­tion to… or… or to get them to believe the bul­lets. That is the only pur­pose of the rest of your let­ter actu­ally… actu­ally though there is the headline.

For exam­ple, I worked for Sam and Leslie Fish­baum, they had one fur­ni­ture store in Den­ver and they have either five or seven now and… um… they only have cer­tain… you have what you have to sell and that is all you have. So what they had was a wide selec­tion of fur­ni­ture, low prices, no money down, no inter­est, two years to pay, etc., etc., etc. What they had was what they had and we call it the yada, yada, yada — that is what they have to sell but the dif­fer­ence is, if you want to make it killer, you give the reader the­atre and rea­son why.

Now, the­atre would be attach­ing a dol­lar bill to the top of the let­ter as a grab­ber. Do you under­stand that? That would be the­atre. The­atre would be attach­ing a real pho­to­graph to the top of the let­ter or attach­ing a coin or some­thing like that.

A rea­son why is why you are get­ting such a deal on this mat­tress. And one of the let­ters that we wrote told them that they got such a great deal on this mat­tress because we could not sell them in retail although the mat­tresses are per­fect, we could not sell them at retail because the man­u­fac­turer screwed up and sewed the labels on back­wards. That let­ter worked so well we had the man­u­fac­turer sew the label back­wards on all the mat­tresses and, you know, so we would say, you know, it has been rain­ing here lately and we have water dam­age to some of the fur­ni­ture and Sam would go up on the roof and drill a hole in it so that some of the water came down and screwed up some of the furniture.

It’s…it’s a vari­a­tion if you haven’t read the Robert Col­lier book of the scratch and dent sale and that was the rea­son why. That’s… the first thing I described to you was the­atre and the sec­ond thing I described to you is rea­son why.

But it all gets them to… when they read the yada, yada, yada, to believe it and to under­stand it. By the way, I would like to give a lit­tle bit of a pitch here. Um…

Michel: Go ahead Gary.

Gary: The… um… if I had to win a copy­writ­ing con­test or one of my chil­dren would die, the per­son I would least like to have as my oppo­nent is Gary Ben­zevinga and he pub­lishes Benzevinga’s bul­lets and they are free and if you don’t read those, you are miss­ing a mon­ster asset.

Michel: Oh yeah, I agree.

Gary: And… um… it… the last bul­let he wrote was about one of the most impor­tant words in adver­tis­ing which is because and he artic­u­lated it bet­ter than any­body I have ever heard and Gary Ben­zevinga and I have had a mutual fan club… uh… respect for each other for years and one of my proud­est moments is every Thanks­giv­ing he sends a big one ounce gold coin to some­body that has made a big dif­fer­ence in his life and I got one of those coins, you know, and it is one of my most pre­cious pos­ses­sions and I will tell you one fur­ther story about Gary Benzevinga.

Jay Abra­ham came to me and he was show­ing me these finan­cial… uh… sales let­ter­sthat peo­ple were using to sell finan­cial newslet­ters, etc., etc., and I said, Jay, these things are work­ing because I never knew any­thing about that field yet and he said, why yeah, do you think you can do better?

I said Jay I can do bet­ter than this in a coma and I just cranked these out, one right after another, never had a loser. It was easy. It was **** and then I was sit­ting in my apart­ment, an Oak­wood Gar­dens Apart­ment in Bur­bank, Cal­i­for­nia and I read my first let­ter ever writ­ten by Gary Ben­zevinga and I almost vom­ited. Do you know why? Because vaca­tion time was over. From now on I had to work for a liv­ing when I was writ­ing those things because he is so damn good, it is ridicu­lous. So… and he is going to have a sem­i­nar… um…

Michel: In May.

Gary: In… in May and get your ass to that sem­i­nar. I’m… I’m going to pay to go there and be there… I… I mean, there are very few peo­ple for whom I will sit in a seat and learn but I will sit at the feet of Gary Ben­zevinga. I know I don’t have a **** with him.

Michel: I def­i­nitely will be there myself. It’s… it’s… you know if peo­ple want to sub­scribe to his newslet­ter, it is ben​zevingab​ul​lets​.com and the last one was about exactly that…that… the use of rea­sons why and the one word that can trig­ger the most response and it was one of the ques­tions that was asked a lot on that… uh… web page that we set up Gary and… and that leads me to a cou­ple of things that I just wanted to throw in her.

You know, a lot of peo­ple ask… um… what kind of scarcity tac­tics do you like to use because a lot of peo­ple nowa­days, espe­cially on line, they go and visit this… this web site that sells some kind of ebook that says you have got to buy before X date and peo­ple know that they have this cod­ing behind there that changes it every day when­ever they visit the web page so they say, are there…

Gary: At first every­body knows that’s a lie and I don’t think that you should write lies. Uh… every­body knows if you say you will only sell 500 and peo­ple order 700, you are going to take the other 200 orders so stop doing that.

Michel: Uh hum…

Gary: Now, if you are talk­ing about scarcity, you know, for your copy­writ­ing ser­vices, be good, there won’t be any scarcity. You know, I… I remem­ber Denny Hats used to write a newslet­ter called who is mail­ing what and he mocked guys like me and Gary Ben­zevinga who said we could not take any more clients that we were booked for a year. Hell, Gary Ben­zevinga would be booked for two or three years in advance, the bastard!

Michel: So are there any other scarcity tac­tics, Gary, that you would like to… uh… to propose?

Gary: Well, I will tell you one and… uh… it is an impor­tant one that I use but it… it also… the tac­tics need to be based on truth. I tell peo­ple I can only take so many clients and that is the truth. I only can.

You know, I mean, I… I could… I could write con­tin­u­ally but I like to take time out to see my girl­friend and my grand­chil­dren every once in a while, you know, so that… the scarcity tac­tic, first of all, do not lie about it because… but I will tell you one thing that I have learned to offer people.

If you buy some­thing from me, like a fairly expen­sive set of tapes that I have to sell, you know what you get with it? You get free access to me for an entire year to answer your mar­ket­ing ques­tions. They can­not dupli­cate that on Ebay.

Michel: Great… good answer. Actu­ally, one of the things I wanted to go back on was bul­lets because one… one of the most com­mon ques­tions that I have got­ten is, Gary, a lot of the copy that you write you seem to alter­nate your bul­lets between bold and unbold and so on and so forth…

Gary: It is a tech­nique that pro­vides eye relief.

Michel: Got you, per­fect. In terms of… of head­line and… and I… I believe truly myself that the sin­gle great­est part of your copy, besides the bul­lets that you just men­tioned, Gary, the sin­gle great­est part is the headlines.

Gary: The head­line is the sin­gle great­est part of the copy. By the way, I have got a great head­line, I want some­body to help me fill in what comes after — half dead Cuban washes ashore in Miami with strange secret that can dou­ble the income of most U.S. citizens.

Michel: Awesome.

Gary: You know what the hottest head­line I ever wrote was?

Michel: That was one of the ques­tions, go ahead.

Gary: Toba Borg­nine swears under oath that her new per­fume does not con­tain an ille­gal sex­ual stim­u­lant and the whole city of Los Ange­les was say­ing does it con­tain… is a sex­ual stim­u­lant legal? And we got 7,000 peo­ple to come out for her per­fume launch, the biggest per­fume launch in his­tory and we couldn’t get any more in because the fire mar­shal wouldn’t let any more peo­ple into the Cen­tury Plaza Hotel.

Michel: Wow.

Gary: And one of the sub­head­ings was wife of famous movie star agrees to give away 1,000 sam­ples of her new fra­grance in order to prove it is really safe to wear in pub­lic.” A lit­tle the­atre there.

Michel: Well, here is a ques­tion that was actu­ally based on that, the ques­tion was specif­i­cally for Gary Hel­ber, do you think in this extremely cyn­i­cal age that your tra­di­tional Toba Borg­nine style pro­mo­tions are still valid?

Gary: That ques­tion is almost too moronic to answer. What I do was valid when peo­ple were carv­ing out their mes­sages on a chisel on a piece of stone and they will be valid 2,000 years from now… uh… when every­body is get­ting text mes­sages on micro­scopic cell phones imbed­ded into your brain.

Sell­ing is sell­ing is sell­ing and it is all the same. The Inter­net has not changed any­thing about sell­ing. Let me tell you about sell­ing. There are only three things involved. You have a prospect, a pitch and a deliv­ery sys­tem for the pitch.

All the Inter­net is, is a deliv­ery sys­tem for a pitch. That is what you need to remem­ber and peo­ple say, writ­ing for the Inter­net and I know you do that, it is no dif­fer­ent than writ­ing for the news­pa­per, which is no dif­fer­ent than writ­ing for direct mail which is no dif­fer­ent than writ­ing for television.

The… the… what makes a good pitch is what makes a good pitch and let me tell you guys what you are all doing wrong, all the on line com­mu­nity, every­body is doing this wrong, you try and get some­thing from the reader before you have deliv­ered a lot of value he can­not get any place else.

I would ven­ture to say I have one of the most prof­itable web sites on the Inter­net and I, hon­est to God, put that web site up after I had received thou­sands and thou­sands and thou­sands of let­ters from peo­ple telling me how my life had changed… how my infor­ma­tion had changed their lives.

Mostly it was about money but some­time it saved them from com­mit­ting sui­cide, it inspired them to go on and make it and save their mar­riage or what­ever and I thought, well, hell if it is that valu­able to peo­ple, I will just go ahead and start throw­ing it up on the Internet.

And, you know, I started putting them up and after about two or three months, peo­ple started writ­ing me and said don’t you have any­thing to sell? I want to buy some­thing from you and they started… and the last time I sent… um… a full fledged newslet­ter out, my **** rat­ing, you know, jumps up and down whether I am putting stuff on the side or not, it was 1,630 and I… I don’t even know how to link my web site to some­body else.

I don’t even know how to work Google Ad Words. I know a lit­tle bit about that. I don’t even know how… uh… to max­i­mize the effec­tive­ness of a web site. I don’t know any of that stuff. You know why my newslet­ter is so pop­u­lar? Because it con­tains con­tent and a lot of you dorks out there are try­ing to make a lot of money with­out first fig­ur­ing out how to serve people.

Michel: Good point.

Gary: I get riled when I talk. I… I… um… you know I talk about sex and pol­i­tics this way too. Actu­ally, I don’t.

Michel: Well, here… here’s another good… and you… you prob­a­bly nailed…uh…about a good 50 ques­tions right there, Gary, but one of the ques­tions about the head­line was, you know, a lot of peo­ple say they have seen so many of these very long head­lines. First of all, are they still effec­tive and what kind of for­mula do you use when­ever you write a headline?

Gary: Well… uh… okay, I am going to try and get down to the level of some­body who would ask such a ques­tion. Um… I can get down to anybody’s level, I just give myself a lobot­omy here and lower my IQ about 70 points, yes, long head­lines are effec­tive. Let me give you a few tips about headlines.

Um… if you are stuck, just start with the words “how to.” Uh…how to… and by the way, if you want to learn to write head­lines, every one of you should have a copy of I can never get it right by Julia Hadel­man or Hadel­man Julius… the first 100 million…

Michel: Right.

Gary: That is the basis of all good head­line writ­ing in Amer­ica. Read the first 100 mil­lion and you will know every­thing you need to know for the rest of life about writ­ing head­lines. Yes, long head­lines do work, Patri­cia. Short head­lines work too. You know, for exam­ple… uh… you will see lit­tle ads and it will just say corns?

Every­body is going to pass by that lit­tle ad unless they hap­pen to have corns and that’s… that’s all it needed was that one word. You know, I mean, if you are deal­ing with a junkie, you would say, want to score some hero­ine? That is long enough. But most of you prob­a­bly aren’t deal­ing with peo­ple who have corns for the **** mar­ket and…

Michel: I think… I think John Carl­ton when­ever he says… he says a great word, he says… he called it pithi­siz­ing which is a big dif­fer­ence between being brief and being pithy because there is a dif­fer­ence between try­ing to be short and not send­ing the mes­sage you need to say rather than say­ing the mes­sage that you can say to the right kind of peo­ple in the short­est amount of words pos­si­ble and… and a lot of peo­ple some­times they have these very long head­lines that are just… you fall asleep and I agree with that because you just don’t have the right copy but… uh… I have writ­ten headlines…

Gary: Wait, I will tell you one of the biggest dif­fer­ences between the peo­ple who really make it in this busi­ness and the peo­ple who don’t, the peo­ple who make it buy every­thing that is out there by every good guy there. You should have every­thing John Carl­ton has ever produced.

Michel: Oh yeah… oh yeah… definitely.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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