Robin Williams and Direct Response Copywriting

Robin Williams and Direct Response Copywriting

In 1979, Robin Williams won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Recording for his album, Reality ... What a Concept.

Robin Williams was an expert at bending and shaping reality on stage, changing his voice and mannerisms with remarkable speed. Though this short article isn't really about Robin Williams, I just have to give the man his due: he was a genius in his field.

Creating effective, winning direct marketing copy has everything to do with reality and concepts.

What does that mean? It means knowing the product or service completely (i.e., the more you know about it, the more real it is to you, thus "reality"). It also means knowing the prospect as well as you can, through whatever sort of research necessary. What are their attitudes or emotions about the problem that your product or service solves?

With this product and prospect knowledge, you can you easily generate concepts to describe the benefits of the product/service in ways that get the reader engaged, interested ... wanting the product or service. If you don't have a firm reality on the product/service and the prospect, your concepts are likely to be off-target—not "real" to the reader.

If that still doesn't quite make sense, look at it this way: Think about a movie you have not seen, a book you have not read or a kind of food you've never eaten. How real are these things to you? Without that reality, how can you possibly succeed in getting someone else interested in the product or service?

You would have to rely on hype and empty promises. It wouldn't work.

I recently wrote a marketing video script for a company that makes a line of soft-sided coolers. They provided me some info about the product and their prospect base but they also wisely sent me one of the coolers to use. This made all the difference: to have the actual item, see how it's constructed, to use it and abuse it a bit. I found things about the actual product that I liked. I got interested and excited about it myself. The company loved the script I wrote for them and hired me to write several more.

When I write a marketing piece about a book or information product (my preferred area of work), I read it through several times until I know the contents as well as the person who wrote it. I get excited about it. I collect information from my client or elsewhere about the prospect, so I know the right emotion to emphasize.

Then I apply time-tested direct response copywriting techniques to create copy that will connect with the reader and create want for the product.

So, in direct response copywriting, reality is everything.

Tim St. John

Increasing Traffic To Your Brand By 400X, Cutting Ad Costs by 40-70% In The Process!

9y

Good stuff Steve! I just do whatever I can to make phones ring without any money out of pocket from the business owner. The magic comes from helping unconditionally. You and I have good strong reality on that, don't we? ; )

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