If Long Copy Stinks, Think Soap

Just two days ago, my friend and copy­writer John Riskowitz pub­lished one of my arti­cles on long copy to his list, to which one of his sub­scribers protested.

Coin­ci­den­tally, his protest points out the fact that com­mod­ity prod­ucts, like soap, do not require long copy. The coin­ci­dence is that I agreed with what this per­son is say­ing, and in fact I actu­ally posted another arti­cle just last week on the very topic of prod­uct cat­e­gories, and the dif­fer­ent approaches, includ­ing copy length, required for each one.

Acad­e­mia labels them as con­ve­nience prod­ucts, shop­ping prod­ucts, spe­cialty prod­ucts and unsought prod­ucts. (Soap, among oth­ers, falls into the con­ve­nience category.)

How­ever, John’s reponse to his sub­scriber not only made sense but also offered a pow­er­ful les­son I wanted to share with you today. In fact, to add more chutz­pah to his reply he used an exam­ple orig­i­nally cre­ated by another top copy­writer, Drew Eric Whit­man, on — of all things — soap!

First, here’s what this per­son said in response to my article:

Wrong.

The copy must be long ENOUGH to work. Long copy does not help the sale of chew­ing gum. Long copy does not help the sale of Copy paper. Long copy was not used to sell Generic prod­ucts in stores.

Chevy doesn’t use long copy. Ford. Toy­ota. GM. Honda. Gen­eral Mills. John Deer. All use short copy.

Here was John’s bril­liant response to this gen­tle­man, reprinted here with his kind permission:

I agree. The copy only needs to be as long as it takes to do the job. For more com­plex prod­ucts and ser­vices, longer copy is needed. But even for chew­ing gum, long ver­sus short is relative.

For exam­ple, let’s take a sim­ple prod­uct like soap. Not the Ivory or Zest gar­den vari­ety. Let’s say you sell scented soap in the shape and col­ors of fruit. In your copy, you could just say, “orange-​​scented bar soap” or “smells like coconut.”

Instead, why not com­pare the soaps to the fresh­est, juici­est slices of Man­darin or Florida oranges?

Or for the coconut-​​scented soap, why not com­pare it to the freshly cut coconuts in the sun-​​soaked west­ern Caribbean… rem­i­nis­cent of the white meaty cen­ters and the sweet, lus­cious, milky juice?

If that seems a lit­tle over the top, con­sider that you’re sell­ing more expen­sive spe­cial­ized soap. You’re not sell­ing Irish Spring.

Your soap has 2 things going for it:

1) It’s visu­ally beau­ti­ful, and…
2) It smells delicious.

To NOT play up the 2 things that make your soap so appeal­ing is miss­ing the boat.

THAT’S what I got out of Michel Fortin’s arti­cle on the sub­ject. He’s not say­ing do long copy just for the sake of being long. And he’s not say­ing use long and BORING copy either. He’s say­ing your copy needs to be long enough and per­sua­sive enough to get the job done. And, you’re right: for commodity-​​type prod­ucts, you don’t need longer copy. If your USP is price, some­times stat­ing that fact alone is enough.

For exam­ple:

Paper clips — $1.99/box of 500
Paper clips — $3.99/box of 500

Which one would you buy? All things being equal, you’ll prob­a­bly go for the $1.99/box one, right?

But what is there was a good rea­son why the $3.99/box one was higher priced? What if they were more heavy-​​duty, or they have lit­tle ridges on them that let them grip the pages bet­ter? If that was the case, and YOU sold those higher-​​priced paper clips, wouldn’t you want to let your mar­ket know about it? Or would you keep the same shorter copy as your cheaper competition.

So long ver­sus short copy is a rel­a­tive thing. You obvi­ously don’t need a 24-​​page mag­a­log to sell chew­ing gum…unless your gum cured can­cer. Or had a spe­cial vit­a­min and min­eral sup­ple­ment that reduced the risk of heart attack and stroke. Then you might need tes­ti­mo­ni­als from doc­tors, phar­ma­cists, and other experts. Tes­ti­mo­ni­als from exist­ing cus­tomers who swear by your gum. You need an avalanche of proof.

And as far as car com­pa­nies not using long copy, some of them do. If you’re on their mail­ing list you might get some. Some of them don’t, because of the way their adver­tis­ing agen­cies work. (Remem­ber those Super­bowl ads? Do you remem­ber any of the prod­ucts in those ads? I’m guess­ing very few.) But they all should use tar­geted direct mail with long copy to sup­ple­ment their exist­ing advertising.

The fact of the mat­ter is, most car com­mer­cials suck, in my opin­ion. You see the same ad all the time: a car dri­ving out in the coun­try or some other place. Do you really remem­ber which car goes with which ad?

Did you ever see David Olgivy’s ad for Rolls-​​Royce? The one with the head­line, “At 60 miles an hour the loud­est noise in this new Rolls-​​Royce comes from the elec­tric clock.” He used longer copy in that ad than most other car com­pa­nies did. Not a 12 page sales let­ter, because it was a space ad. But longer than the other car com­pa­nies’ shorter copy.

And that ad was respon­si­ble for break­ing sales records for Rolls-​​Royce.

I hope I didn’t go a lit­tle over­board here. I just wanted to say that in prin­ci­ple I agree with you. But I also agree with Michel.

What do you think? I always wel­come healthy dis­cus­sion on sub­jects such as these. I always invari­ably end up learn­ing a thing or two.

Best Regards,
John

Thank you, John! And yes, what do YOU think, dear reader? Please add your com­ments below.

About the Author

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