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Tracy Tuten

Letters of Note: I am a lousy copywriter - 0 views

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ogilvy ECUadvertising letter copywriting howto

shared by Tracy Tuten on 12 Mar 12 - Cached
  • On March 22nd you wrote to me asking for some notes on my work habits as a copywriter. They are appalling, as you are about to see: 1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home. 2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years. 3. I am helpless without research material—and the more "motivational" the better.
  • 4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client. 5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down every concievable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform. 6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinion of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines.
  • 7. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.) 8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts. 9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy. 10. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush. 11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.)
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • 12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry—because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.
  • Tracy Tuten on 12 Mar 12
     
    British-born David Ogilvy was one of the original, and greatest, "ad men." In 1948, he started what would eventually be known as Ogilvy & Mather, the Manhattan-based advertising agency that has since been responsible for some of the world's most iconic ad campaigns, and in 1963 he even wrote Confessions of an Advertising Man, the best-selling book that is still to this day considered essential reading for all who enter the industry. Time magazine called him "the most sought-after wizard in today's advertising industry" in the early-'60s; his name, and that of his agency, have been mentioned more than once in Mad Men for good reason. With all that in mind, being able to learn of his routine when producing the very ads that made his name is an invaluable opportunity. The fascinating letter below, written by Ogilvy in 1955 to a Mr. Ray Calt, offers exactly that.
Tracy Tuten

20 Best Marketing Books Of All Time | Six Pixels of Separation - Marketing and Communic... - 0 views

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marketing books

shared by Tracy Tuten on 22 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The 20 Best Marketing Books Of All Time (in alphabetical order): The Anatomy Of Buzz by Emanuel Rosen. Before word of mouth marketing became a profession unto itself, Rosen was busy trying to figure out why certain brands get attention and how they do it. This is one of those classic business books that every marketer should read. The Art Of The Pitch by Peter Coughter. If you are in marketing, you will have to get good at presenting and selling your ideas. I've read countless books on the topic, and this is the only one worthy of reading, studying and applying. Woe the marketer that doesn't heed these words. The Cluetrain Manifesto by Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine. If you could point your finger at one book that changed the face of marketing, it would be this one.
  • Influence by Robert Cialdini. An incredible book about how we make decisions and what influences them (hint: it's not what you think)... and this was published long before behavioral economics became so very cool. This is profoundly powerful because of all of the science and research behind this book. Most marketers haven't paid any attention to this book, and it shows in the vast majority of terrible work that we're exposing the public to. The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. Marketing isn't just about the ads. Marketing is also about the product and how to bring it to market. So many companies do everything right and yet still lose market share. If you're interested in marketing and you haven't read this book, it is a must-read.
  • Life After The 30-Second Spot by Joseph Jaffe. Another one of those seminal books that you can look back at and marvel at just how prescient it was. This one is almost a decade old, but still resonates with some very deep thinking about where advertising is going. The Little Red Book Of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Made To Stick by Chip And Dan Heath. There have been countless books written on viral marketing and how brands should tell a better story. None of them hold a candle to this one. Perhaps one of the best books ever written on how a brand can (and should) tell a story (and how to do it). Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi
  • The New Rules Of Marketing And PR by David Meerman Scott. This book has been updated by Scott many times over. If you're looking for the ultimate primer on social media, what it means and what it can do, this is the perfect book to bring you up to speed. Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy.
  • Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout. This is one of the "must have" books if you're in marketing. It covers a ton of space on the topic of how to brand products and services and how to place them both in market and in the mind's eye of the consumer. This should be the first book that anyone reads when they enter a Marketing 101 course. Re-Imagine! by Tom Peters
  • The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. A wise individual once said to me that Gladwell has a knack for writing books that business leaders feel stupid for not having on their bookshelves. Pretty poignant and true. The Tipping Point is great because it helps marketers better understand the inflection point that happens when a product is ho-hum and how it then takes off like a rocket. It's not really science so much as cultural, but it's fascinating. Waiting For Your Cat To Bark? by Bryan and Jeffrey Einsenberg. The Eisenberg brothers posses an expertise unlike any other. They are experts at understanding and explaining the power of marketing optimization.
  • Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik. If you have spent more than two minutes reading any of my content, you will know that I am an unabashed fanboy of Avinash Kaushik, the digital marketing evangelist at Google. In fact, the notion of Sex With Data from CTRL ALT Delete was heavily inspired by Kaushik's work/thinking. Most marketers eyes glaze over when they hear the word 'analytics,' but thankfully Kaushik is here to help make it fascinating and important. This book is packed with ideas about how to think better about your marketing and what it's capable of doing.
  • Where The Suckers Moon by Randall Rothenberg. Most people in my world know Rothenberg as the President and CEO of the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau). What most people don't know is that in 1995, he authored this book. A book that is, without a doubt, one of the best books on the advertising industry.
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