God Doesn’t Shoot Craps!

What the heck does that even mean and why am I using it as a headline for today’s post?

God Doesn’t Shoot Craps is quite possibly the world’s first, and most certainly the world’s best novel about direct marketing.

If you’ve ever wondered if two losing propositions can be combined into a single winning outcome. Or what a pair of casino dice teach us about the origin of the universe. Or if a lap dance from a stripper in Las Vegas really is worth twenty bucks…

… Then just ask Danny Pellegrino, the junk-mail con man who at the opening of the novel is on his way to Atlantic City to test a new dice system called WINNING BY LOSING!

I enjoyed this book so much I interviewed its author.

Read on to discover this outspoken copywriting Einstein’s unique and controversial views on:

>>> How to brainstorm a killer hook…

>>> The secret outline trick that makes your writing more fluid and conversational…

>>> How to stamp out writer’s block once and for all…

>>> Why John Caples was wrong, wrong, wrong when he said “keep hammering away at the reader with YOU, YOU, YOU”…

>>> Plus more.

Enjoy!

Daniel Levis — I’m continually fascinated by the amazing variety in the backgrounds of people who find themselves writing copy for a living. In many cases, necessity has been the mother of invention, and I think it was Gary Halbert who summed it up best when he said something to the effect of, “I look at teaching people to write copy as saving their financial lives. Because if you don’t knuckle down and get this, do you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to have to work for a living, and it’s going to KILL you!” Leave it to Gary to put it so eloquently.

So tell me the story of those early days, what were you doing before you began, what events lead up to your indoctrination into the world of copywriting and direct response marketing?

Richard Armstrong — When I was in my twenties, my goal in life was to become an actor. But like every actor, I had to take a day job to pay the bills, so I started working as an office boy for a direct-mail fundraising agency in Washington, DC. My duties mostly consisted of stuffing envelopes and fetching coffee for the important people in the office.

One day, an account executive was tearing his hair out because he had to write a fundraising letter and it wasn’t going well. I had read some of the letters our agency was producing while stuffing them into envelopes, and it didn’t look all that hard to me, so I said, “Why don’t you let me try it?” He did. The client liked my letter. They mailed it. It worked. And suddenly, I was a copywriter.

At the time, I didn’t even know what “copy” meant. I remember being in this meeting where the president of the agency outlined all the copy that would be needed in the coming months – most of which was now my responsibility – and after the meeting, I sheepishly had to ask someone what the hell “copy” was. I said, “Oh, you mean the boss wants me to write all the letters?” I was relieved. I thought he wanted me standing at the photocopier for the next two months. Writing letters seemed easy by comparison.

I worked at that agency for about three years and eventually became Creative Director, then the inevitable happened: I was fired. The boss never really understood or appreciated my use of double martinis as a creative elixir.

When I got fired, I said hallelujah! This is my chance to go back to what I really wanted to do all along – become an actor. So I moved to New York City and tried to make it big on Broadway. But Broadway wasn’t terribly interested. And the next thing you know, I found myself taking freelance copywriting assignments to pay the bills.

Finally, I had to come to the realization that while I was a lousy actor, I was a pretty good copywriter. So I’ve been concentrating on that for the last twenty-five years or so, and I only draw upon my acting skills for the occasional arguments with my wife.

But over the years, I’ve noticed that many, many copywriters have some kind of background in the theater. Emily Soell, the genius copywriter who was responsible for much of the success of Rapp & Collins, was an actress. A leading freelancer of the 1980s, Bob Matheo, had been a successful actor in his youth.

It’s not surprising when you stop and think about it. A good copywriter needs an actor’s skills to get into the heads of people who are reading his letter … and the person who is supposedly writing it. If I could build a copywriter from spare parts like the Bionic Man, I would make him one part actor, one part door-to-door salesman, and one part scientist (because testing and analysis of results are so important in our business). Ironically, I don’t consider writing skills to be all that important.

Daniel Levis — One of the things I think a lot of people misunderstand about copywriting is the amount of research that goes into it, versus how much of it is actually putting pen to paper, so to speak. Suppose you had just accepted an assignment to write a sales letter for something you knew very little about. (Let’s say some sort of new vegetarian diet, for the sake of example). Can you describe the research process?

How do you go about becoming knowledgeable in a hurry, before writing a lick of copy? What are your methods, in detail?

Richard Armstrong — I don’t do any independent research in libraries or on Google, because I don’t like it and I’m not good at it. But I always tell the client to “back up the truck” and dump everything they have on me. Then I sort through it and decide what’s useful and what’s not.

After I’ve identified the material that’s worth studying, I read it closely and take extensive typewritten notes on it. (My notes on a project can run to 100 typewritten pages or more.) You’re right, this is a very important stage of the process and often overlooked.

If there’s one key difference between how I used to handle a project when I was in my 20s and how I handle it nowadays is that I spend so much more time studying now. Back then, I’d read the material until I got my first great idea for a creative concept – which usually happened in the first thirty seconds or so – then I’d abandon the research and start writing copy.

Nowadays, I still get good concepts in the first thirty seconds, but I’ve learned that you have to continue to do the research in order to make that concept work. I’ve also learned that you’re bound to find a better concept later on, too.

I enjoy this phase of an assignment very much and especially if it’s in a field I’ve never worked in before. I like learning new stuff and getting up to speed about it quickly. I find it much more frustrating and difficult to be faced, for example, with writing my 1,000th direct-mail letter on natural healing. I’d prefer to tackle something unusual, like promoting a newsletter for beekeepers.

Yes, you have to get up to speed on beekeeping pretty quick, but that’s the fun part. The problem, of course, is that the natural healing gurus can afford to pay my fees, but the beekeepers cannot!

Daniel Levis — One of the most important things I’ve found in coming up with a successful sales letter or advertisement is the “hook”. Some kind of a big idea that dramatizes the item I’m selling. Obviously I want to attract attention, and draw readers into the body of the piece, and inspire people’s imagination.

Can you tell me some of the techniques you’ve developed over the years for mining those golden nuggets? I mean, what are some of the thought processes you’ve found to be most effective in uncovering the “hook”? It would be wonderful if you could site some specific examples as well.

Richard Armstrong — The “hook” is the magical part. It’s the part that just comes to you, and there’s no technique or strategy (that I know of) for making it happen.

Well, I take that back. Most copywriters, including myself, use some form of the process outlined in the classic little book “A Technique for Producing Ideas” by James Young. But there’s nothing in there that you’re probably not already doing. There’s no surefire formula for finding the big idea. You have to keep an open mind and trust that it will happen. It always does. If you’re not a naturally creative and imaginative person, you should probably be looking at another career path.

But as I said before, the hard part is not coming up with the hook, it’s figuring out how to make the hook work. Don’t fall in love with it too soon. Keep pressing yourself to come up with other hooks and ideas. The effort is almost never wasted, because you’ll usually find a home for these other ideas somewhere in a sidebar, a lift letter, a brochure, or a sub headline.

Daniel Levis — Before putting pen to paper, most copywriters spend some time outlining what they are going to say, and how they are going to say it. How do you organize your thoughts? Do you have a specific method, maybe even a set of templates you’ve put together over the years to fast track the development of the right outline for a given piece?

Please describe the various essential building blocks that go into an outline, and some of the most important processes and constructs you use to develop them.

Richard Armstrong — I’m a compulsive outliner. My outlines can run up to twenty pages or more (for a four-page letter!) and contain minute detail about the points I want to make and the back-up for those points in the research.

But here’s the funny part. Once I’ve spent two or three days developing this extensive and complex document … I throw it away!

Well, I don’t actually discard it. But I do set it aside and try not to look at it unless I absolutely need to. Then I just try to write the copy quickly off the top of my head. But if I get to a point in the letter where I want to say, “As Professor Jones said in the Journal of American…” oh, hells-bells, what was the name of that journal? – I can look it up and find the information instantly in my outline. So I don’t get slowed down by being stuck for a fact, and I never have any hesitation about where the copy should go next. I know that after I talk about how this product will save you time, I want to segue into how it also will save you money, and so forth.

So even though the outline appears to be confining and regimented, it’s actually a tool for writing more quickly and conversationally. There’s a little irony there, I guess.

As far as the structure of the outline goes, yes, I have a fairly simple formula. I start with my hook. After a few paragraphs, I write what I call the “billboard” … which clearly spells out what the product and offer is. (I hate to leave the reader wondering for more than a few seconds what the hell is this all about.) Next, I enumerate the benefits one by one. Then I spell out the offer. Finally, I close with a strong call to action and a powerful postscript.

It’s essentially the AIDA formula – attention, interest, desire, and action. It’s certainly possible to write a good letter without using this formula, but why re-invent the wheel? Ever since the days of ancient Greece, playwrights have been writing in three acts that consist of conflict, complication, and climax. There’s no point trying to improve upon these fundamental structures. Writers who rebel against them are only hurting themselves.

Daniel Levis — I look at copywriting as a transfer of energy and passion. Personally, I need to get psyched up before anything worthwhile seems to bubble up to the surface. And it’s challenging sometimes. If I’m locked away in front of my computer for days trying to pump out a bunch of stuff in order to meet a deadline or whatever, sometimes it’s difficult to find that spark. This is especially true for me, when I try to rewrite something. How do you deal with this? What methods do you use to stay stoked, and fresh?

Richard Armstrong — Well, I liked the way you asked this question, but it’s really the old writer’s block question in disguise. “How do you handle writer’s block?” My answer is that I don’t believe in writer’s block. I don’t think professionals ever get it. Amateurs probably do, but not professionals.

Have you ever heard of a garbage man who gets “garbage man’s block?” Or a cabbie who gets “cab driver’s block?” Of course not!

Now, I’m sure they have days when they don’t feel like going to work. I’m sure they also have days when their work isn’t at its best. I’m sure they have plenty of days when they’d rather be fishing. We all have such days.

But the difference between a professional and an amateur is that the professional shows up for work on those days and does his job anyway. We continue to do our work even if we’re not all that enthusiastic about it on a given day and our work product isn’t as good as what it could be.

Here’s something you may find interesting. I generally take between four to six weeks to complete one direct-mail project. That’s 30 working days. But on most of those projects, I will probably only have one good day when everything flows beautifully … when I’m at the top of my game … when my enthusiasm and energy levels are extremely high … and the great ideas are popping out of my head like fireworks on the 4th of July. One good day, that’s all! The other 29 days are just plain old blood, sweat, and tears. But I have to keep at it, because I wasn’t born rich.

The ironic and surprising thing is that sometimes the stuff you crank out with your teeth gritted on the days when nothing is coming easily is actually BETTER than the stuff you write when you’re in the throes of inspiration. Tiger Woods is never more impressive than when he’s playing poorly and grinding out yet another victory.

Daniel Levis — I don’t know if there is any definitive answer to this question, but it is certainly a very important, and fundamental question I hope you can comment on. Based on your experience and testing, when does it make sense to use a two-step or even multiple step process, versus a single step “go for the jugular approach” in your advertising?

When does it make good business sense to try and generate expressions of interest, by offering some kind of a free report or something (in order to gain a lead you can then follow up on), versus driving for the sale? And are there any circumstances where you feel it makes sense to do both with the same piece of copy?

Richard Armstrong — This is actually not a question about creative strategy, it’s a question of financial strategy. If you’re selling a watch, for example, and you can afford to buy a full-page ad in the National Enquirer with an allowable cost-per-order, then by all means sell it off the page with a one-step ad.

But if you find it’s more cost-effective to take out a classified in the Enquirer offering “free details” about the watch, then follow up with a direct-mail letter to the people who raise their hands and say they’re interested, then do it that way.

It’ll often come down to the cost of the product and the homogeneity (is that a word?) of the advertising medium. If you’re selling your watch in “Watch Aficionado Magazine,” the one-step full-page ad will probably work best. If you’re selling it in a general-interest publication, you’re probably going to need the two-step in order to get your target to “self-select” by responding to an ad for more information.

Direct marketing is half creative strategy and half financial strategy, and you need to be good at both … or have a partner who’s good at the other half.

Some of the great partnerships in this business were formed in exactly that way. Tom Collins was the creative genius and Stan Rapp was the financial wizard. Max Sackheim was the brilliant copywriter and Lester Wunderman was the maestro of direct marketing economics. (I’m re-reading Wunderman’s terrific book, “Being Direct,” right now and I’m amazed that you don’t often see it on the list of great books for direct marketers. It belongs at the top.)

My novel, “God Doesn’t Shoot Craps,” actually addresses this very question in a peripheral way. When the main character, Danny Pellegrino, sells a lucky charm, he buys a full-page ad in the Enquirer and he makes a ton of money. But when the secondary character, Virgil Kirk, tries to sell a craps system through a one-step classified ad in the Enquirer, he bombs. Why?

Because lucky charms are cheap and they will appeal to most of the people who read the Enquirer. But craps systems are expensive, and they will only appeal to a portion of the Enquirer readership. When Virgil goes to his mailbox, he doesn’t find a single order. But he finds a ton of letters from mail-order consultants saying, “You’re doing it all wrong. You need to do a two-step!” If you’ve ever put a one-step ad in the classified section of a magazine, you’ve probably had that unpleasant experience.

Daniel Levis — I think you would agree with me when I say the “voice” you use in a given piece of copy is critically important, and it should resonate with the market your sales letter or ad is targeted toward as closely as possible.

For example, if you are selling to car racing enthusiasts, the more you use “trackside” language in your sales copy, the higher your rapport and therefore conversion. So in some ways, you are like an actor getting into character. What methods do you use to get into “character” quickly and effectively?

Richard Armstrong — It goes back to what I was saying before about the surprising number of ex-actors you find in this business. It’s not just “getting into character,” so to speak, but also a sense of the drama and storytelling that goes into an effective piece of copy.

Storytelling is out of fashion in copywriting nowadays. Most copywriters today think that ads like “They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano” are not only hopelessly dated in their language and approach but they won’t appeal to today’s semi-literate customers who allegedly don’t like to read. Well, maybe so. But the master storytellers among freelance copywriters continue to beat the controls and make the big bucks.

My friend and colleague, Josh Mannheimer, is probably the best in the world at this right now. He almost always writes his direct-mail letters in a first-person voice and begins by telling a story. Josh holds, or has held, the control for virtually every major consumer magazine in the country.

Clayton Makepeace is a terrific storyteller, too. About half of Clayton’s work is for financial newsletters, and writing for financial newsletters is not about stock prices and P/E ratios, as you might suspect … it’s about telling stories! It’s about coming up with a believable story for why the XYZ stock is about to shoot through the roof and make its investors rich beyond their wildest dreams. People buy stocks on the basis of good stories, and they buy financial newsletters for the same reason, only more so.

Looking back on my own career, I can say that almost without exception my biggest hits in the mail were packages where I adopted a first-person voice (sometimes I even signed the letter myself!) and began by telling a compelling story about the product.

Daniel Levis — You’ve just finished writing out a first draft on a piece of copy. Now it’s time to edit. But here’s the problem. You’re too close to the copy. Are there any techniques you use to step out of yourself, and look at that piece of copy objectively, with fresh eyes when it comes time to edit?

Richard Armstrong — That’s an easy one. You simply set the copy aside. For a decade or two, if possible. If not, overnight will work. But the longer the better. The longer you let it ferment, the fresher your eyes will be when you return to it. And you’ll be able to slash-and-burn through the copy like General Sherman’s march to the sea.

Daniel Levis — Will you tell me the story of your wildest advertising success, and explain why you feel that particular campaign was so effective?

Richard Armstrong — I’ve had a handful of huge successes in my career, but I have a terrible confession to make:

I had almost nothing to do with making them successful!

Looking back, in almost every case, it was a matter of me being invited to participate in a project where a slam-dunk product was being offered to an audience that was hungry to own it at a price and an offer that no sane person could refuse. In other words, all the hard work was done before I ever got involved and the only thing you could possibly give me credit for is that I didn’t screw it up!

But here’s the ironic thing. Ninety-nine percent of all copywriters WILL screw it up in that situation! Especially, Madison Avenue copywriters. If you really want to see what bad copywriting looks like, by the way, just turn on your television set every night. I’ve always believed that you could fire a high-powered rifle down the center of Madison Avenue at high noon on a Monday and not be in danger of hitting anyone who knew the first thing about advertising.

But I digress …

Yes, I once wrote a direct-mail package for a horse magazine that drew a response rate close to twenty percent. I wrote a package for a Rodale book about blood sugar not long ago that blew the hinges off their mailbox. I wrote a control for Kiplinger’s that lasted for six years under a barrage of constant testing. I wrote the direct-mail launch package for “The Limbaugh Letter,” which instantly became the bestselling newsletter of all time.

But in each case, I was simply offering a great product to an audience that really wanted it at a price they couldn’t refuse. All I did was get out of the way and let it happen.

But if I could translate my experience into some useful advice, it would be this. The reason many copywriters, especially those on Madison Avenue, can turn a slam-dunk success into a failure is because they constantly reach for the outlandish or “creative” solution to the problem instead of the obvious one.

There’s a saying in medical school about making a good diagnosis: “If you hear the sound of hoofbeats, think horses … not zebras.” In other words, if the patient has a runny nose, a sore throat, and a bad cough, the correct diagnosis is more likely to be a common cold than West Nile Virus, even though the symptoms may be similar.

It’s been my experience that if you simply TELL your readers what you’re selling, a certain number of them will buy it. Yet how often do you see an ad that violates this absurdly simple rule? How often have you watched an amusing commercial on television and said, “Hey, that’s a great ad … what was it for again?”

Daniel Levis — It’s been said selling is transference of enthusiasm, and I believe that’s true. Some would call this hype. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a valuable tool but only so far as the promise responsible for generating that enthusiasm is credible and believable. What are some of the subtle techniques you employ to maximize the believability of the promises you are conveying in your copy?

Richard Armstrong — I spent $5,000 to attend Gary Bencivenga’s “Farewell Seminar” and 90% of what he said there could be boiled down into these six words: Sell the proof, not the promise.

I won’t give away all of Gary’s secrets for doing that, but he’s absolutely right. The big promise was enough to work in John Caples’s day, but in the intervening 75 years or so, we have been bombarded with trillions of advertising messages and the American consumer has become extremely skeptical.

How do you overcome the skepticism?

A lot of it simply comes to explaining the “mechanism” behind the promise. The headline “THIS PILL WILL CURE YOUR COLD IN TWO DAYS OR LESS” won’t work anymore, even if it happens to be true. “THIS PILL WILL CURE YOUR COLD BECAUSE IT CONTAINS A SECRET INGREDIENT WHICH ‘TURNS OFF’ THE VIRUS’S ABILITY TO REPLICATE ITSELF” almost certainly would work … if you could only come up with such a pill!

As Bencivenga is fond of saying, the reader’s typical response to the first headline is, “Yeah, sure!” But the reader’s response to the second headline is, “Hmmm, that’s interesting.” So now you’ve got him hooked to read your ad.

But beyond that, I keep coming back to that issue of “voice” when it comes to credibility. That’s why I choose to write so many of my letters in a strong first-person voice. I think John Caples was wrong when he said that you should keep hammering away at the reader with “you, you, you.” It’s certainly true that a good letter is about the reader’s self-interest, his concerns, his worries, his fears, etc. But I think it’s more important to make liberal use of the word “I” than you, so the reader has a strong sense that he’s communicating with a real flesh-and-blood human being.

Look at Joe Karbo’s famous ad for “The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches.” There are very few occurrences of the word “you” in there. Most of it is about Karbo’s life, Karbo’s story, Karbo’s discoveries. In reading the ad, you come to know this man and, more importantly, you come to trust him. So when he turns to you at the end and says he can do the same for you, you’re inclined to believe him.

Daniel Levis — In your opinion, what are the three most powerful human motives to work on in your copy, and why? And how do you go about getting into the head of a specific type of buyer, so you know which buttons to push for maximum response?

Richard Armstrong — I have a theory that in today’s society, buying things is mostly about self-expression. Nowadays, most of our genuine needs are already met – food, shelter, clothing. If there are people in this country who are missing those things, their names probably don’t appear on our mailing lists.

What we really need, what we really miss in life, what we really CRAVE, is the chance to tell the world something about ourselves. Who we are, what we value, what amuses us, what pleases us, what we think is beautiful or important.

In our society, celebrities and artists get to live lives filled with self-expression and significance … but the rest of us lead lives of quiet desperation and envy where the only outlet many of us have for expressing ourselves is deciding what we’re going to buy.

I am critical of Madison Avenue, as you know, but this is one thing they tend to get right. Have you noticed how much stuff nowadays has the label on the outside of the product? When I was growing up, the label on a pair of jeans, for example, was discreetly tucked into the back side of the waist band. Now it’s boldly emblazoned on the back pocket. The label on a blouse or shirt used to be on the inside of the neckline, and someone was committing a terrible faux pas if the label was flipped up on the outside. Nowadays? Hell, the label is embroidered right on the back of the shirt, as if it were a design element.

And look at the prices we’re willing to pay for stuff nowadays! I wanted to buy a handbag as a gift for my wife a few weeks ago, so I strolled into a store in Atlantic City where they were selling Fendi bags and Yves St. Laurent. There were no prices listed. I guess it was like the old story about J.P. Morgan, i.e. “If you have to know the price …” But fool that I am, I asked the salesgirl for some prices anyway. When she told me, I couldn’t stop laughing! Heck, why don’t I just buy my wife a Mercedes while I’m at it.

So I went next door and bought her a perfectly nice leather bag from Coach (which isn’t cheap itself!) for about one-tenth the price. So I ask you, why would someone buy a Fendi bag? Because of the workmanship? The durability? The style? Hell no! They buy it because of the label! Because the woman can walk out of the store and say, “I’m rich enough to own a Fendi bag.” Actually, that’s what a man would say. A woman is saying, “My boyfriend loves me enough to buy me a Fendi bag.” It’s all about self-expression. That’s not to say that style, workmanship, and durability aren’t important, because they are. But those are the excuses we give for buying, the reason we buy is self-expression.

All well and good when you’re selling handbags, you say, but how does it apply to the kinds of products we sell in mail-order? Well, take a look at the project on my desk right now. It’s a subscription-promotion package for a newsletter called “Practical Sailor,” which is kind of a “Consumer Reports” for people who own sailboats.

The Fendi lesson wouldn’t seem to apply to these people, but it does. Sure, the magazine is about making hard-nosed choices between one kind of winch or windlass and another. But that’s not really why people buy it.

They buy it because they have a certain image of themselves in their mind about what kind of sailor they are. They hate the rich yuppies who buy a sailboat with all the most expensive equipment on it and only use the boat twice a year. They see themselves as the kind of guy whose got saltwater in their veins and mud under their fingernails … and they would rather buy a handheld GPS for $200 instead of $500 not because it saves them money, but because they’ve discovered that the $200 unit is really better than the more expensive one …

“Take that, you yuppie! I got a better GPS than you did, and I paid $300 less.” It’s not about the money, it’s about self-image.

So when a guy places his subscription order for “Practical Sailor,” he’s only doing it in part because he wants to save money on sailing gear. The real reason he’s doing it is because he wants to stand up and say to the world, this is the kind of sailor I am. I’m not a rich yuppie who wastes money. I’m a guy who loves his boat inside and out and is willing to work harder to get the right stuff for it. And so on.

I believe that good direct-mail copy does not attempt to persuade, debate, inform, or educate the reader. It should attempt to resonate with him. It’s you and me, brother. We’re in this boat (or sailboat!) together. It’s us against them. And by the way, here’s this product I’ve found that has helped me in my struggle to make myself heard, and maybe it can help you, too.

When our customer buys stuff, they’re really talking to us. They’re saying this is who I am. This is what I believe. This is what’s important and valuable to me. So when we write an advertisement, we want to resonate with what they’re saying by putting our message on the same frequency and wavelength on which they’re transmitting.

I used to demonstrate this idea in lectures and seminars with two tuning forks. Both forks were tuned to the same wavelength. I’d strike one fork with the gong, let it hum for a while, and then something strange would happen … the other fork would start making a sound, even though I hadn’t touched it!

But I got tired of carrying the damn tuning forks with me wherever I went (try explaining a tuning fork to an airport security guard!), and I always worried that if people were really understanding how important this message was. They’d always say, “Oh, yeah, we’ve heard that before. Tell us more about how many lines a paragraph should be in a direct-mail letter.”

Sometimes the most basic lessons in this business are the hardest ones to grasp and act upon.

Daniel Levis — In your experience, all things being equal, where are the best places (i.e. headline, lead, offer, guarantee etc.) to begin split testing alternative insertions in a piece of copy, generally speaking?

Richard Armstrong — The fundamental rule of split-testing is that you want to test things that are: 1) meaningful; and/or 2) significant. By “meaningful,” I mean that if you go to all the trouble and expense of conducting a split test, you want to LEARN something from it.

A test of two headlines, “GET RID OF BLACKHEADS QUICKLY AND EASILY” versus “HOW TO GET RID OF BLACKHEADS QUICKLY AND EASILY” might yield a significant difference, but it doesn’t tell you much.

If, however, you test “GET RID OF BLACKHEADS QUICKLY AND EASILY” versus “HOW WOMEN CAN GET RID OF BLACKHEADS QUICKLY AND EASILY,” and the second headline wins by a wide margin, well, now you’ve learned something extremely important. You’ve learned that your audience is mostly women, and that’s gonna have a huge impact on how you conduct your business from here on out.

When I say you should test something “significant,” that means test something that’s going to yield substantial results. Testing the teaser on the outer envelope almost always will have a big impact on results. Testing the color of your BRE rarely will move the response rate .001% one way or the other, so it’s not even worth the money you spent on the test.

The only exception to this rule is when you have a longstanding control and you’re conducting lots and lots of different tests on it. That is, you’re not only trying to beat it with radically different approaches and significantly different headlines, but you also have the luxury of testing some of the minutiae as well.

This doesn’t happen too often in the real world. The only example I can think of is the famous Kiplinger Letter — one of my most cherished clients, by the way.

In the middle part of the last century, Kiplinger found itself in a very unusual situation: They had a truly unbeatable control letter. From about 1935 to 1975, they had a one-page letter (it started out “More growth and inflation ahead?”) that simply could not be beaten, and they tested the bejesus out of it.

They not only tested radically different concepts and headlines, but they got down to the point where they tested things like … Will a blue signature outpull a red signature? Will a live stamp outpull an indicia? If we use a live stamp, is it better to put it on in the normal way, or slightly askew?

It’s no exaggeration to say that about 50% of what we know about such things in the direct-mail business comes from the tests that were conducted on the Kip Letter. I actually attended a seminar in the late 1970s where a Kiplinger executive gave a final rundown on all the testing they’d done over the years. It actually got to the point where the tests were so esoteric, the audience was laughing at him …

“Then in the summer of 1968, we tested whether cherry-flavored adhesive on the back flap of our BRE would outpull boysenberry …”

It was crazy, but I can’t remember a seminar I’ve ever attended where I came away with more little tidbits. I also think it says something nice about our industry that we have a general tendency to share this kind of information rather than hide it from each other.

“The Wall Street Journal” had a control (“One fine spring day …”) that lasted for 25 or 30 years, too, but I don’t believe they tested it quite as relentlessly. Sometimes when you have a long-lasting control it means that it’s a really great letter, and sometimes it simply means you’re not trying hard enough to beat it. But the folks at Kiplinger’s will test anything that isn’t nailed down.

Daniel Levis — One of the biggest things marketers struggle with is differentiation. What creative ideas would you offer someone trying to build a Unique Selling Proposition for a very mundane product or service that doesn’t really offer anything unique?

Richard Armstrong — There’s a classic advertising anecdote about Claude Hopkins that deals with this very question. The one about Schlitz beer being put into steam-cleaned bottles.

I won’t even re-tell it here because your audience is very sophisticated about advertising history, and it’s probably familiar to most of your readers. But the point is, it doesn’t matter if your product has been “commodified” and there’s no way to distinguish it from the competition. It’s only a question of whether or not your competitors have chosen to talk about a given benefit or feature yet.

Nowadays, for example, almost all modern cars are loaded with safety equipment. Yet Volvo continues to be the only manufacturer that pins their USP on safety. Do Volvos really contain some safety gizmo that the others don’t have? I doubt it. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they’ve claimed that USP and they’ve won the battle for that little piece of territory in the customer’s brain.

When other manufacturers say, “Hey, wait a minute, our cars are safe, too!” they’re wasting their breath. Volvo owns that USP and nobody’s gonna take it from them until someone builds a car that’s demonstrably more safe – like a tank.

So my advice would be to look at your competitors ads and look what territory they’ve chosen to defend, and more importantly, which territory they’ve chosen NOT to defend. It doesn’t matter how trivial it may appear to be. What could possibly have less impact on the flavor of a beer than the method you use to clean the bottles? But Hopkins proved that such a thing can make all the difference.

Daniel Levis — What advice do you have for new market entrants? How can someone with little or no track record enter a market with a new product or service and profitably compete with entrenched players?

Richard Armstrong — Well, the first piece of advice I’d give is don’t stay out of a given marketplace just because it’s big and crowded. This is a difficult lesson for many companies to grasp, because its counter intuitive. But the big and crowded marketplaces are like what Willie Sutton said about robbing banks: It’s where the money is!

The last thing you want to hear from a prospective client is “nobody has ever made anything like this before” or “nobody has ever published a newsletter on this subject before” or “nobody has ever written a book about this before.”

Clients are usually so proud to make those pronouncements, but they’re basically writing their own epitaph. Blazing a new trail is rarely a good idea in marketing and advertising. On the contrary, you want to enter markets where there are lots of buyers, they’re easy to reach with magazines and mailing lists, they have tons of money to spend, and they’re desperately eager for new solutions to their problems.

The diet market is a good example of what I’m talking about. I would never advise a client to stay out of the diet market just because there are a lot of big and entrenched players in it. What I would advise them is to make sure they’ve got something new to say, something that really works, something that’s easy to grasp and explain, something that people will believe in and tell their friends about. Then we’re in a position to make some serious moolah.

Daniel Levis — OK, closing question, thinking back over your career to date, what was the single biggest “income boosting” aha moment … the one idea, technique, or revelation that made the biggest difference in your results from that point forward?

Richard Armstrong — From a copywriting standpoint, it was when I realized that the quickest, fastest, and easiest way to beat a control is to get in there with a screwdriver and start tinkering with the offer. The offer is to an advertisement what a carburetor is to an automobile. You make tiny little adjustments, and you see huge results in overall performance.

Of course, lots of times the client won’t let you change their offer. In which case, you pitch a hissy fit and insist on it. And if they still won’t change it, then you change the way you express the offer. Changing “half price” to “buy one, get one free” is the classic example.

From the standpoint of running my own freelance copywriting business, it was when I realized that I would make more money by turning business away. I actually wrote a seven-page report on this subject once. And rather than regurgitating it here, I would refer readers to my website, http://www.goddoesntshootcraps.com/main.html where I give that report away for free. No strings attached. Nothing to buy.

Thanks for letting me pontificate, Daniel, I enjoyed it!