Page 117 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

52 ANOTHER HEADLINE
IDEA: USE “HOW . . .”

Just before reopening this document I took a phone call from
a freelance writer who specializes in business and technology
journalism. She was talking about how she looks for headline ideas.
“I often look at song titles,” she said. You know the sort of thing.
“Stairway to Devon” for a travel magazine. “Smells Like Green
Spirit”* for an article on a new apple-flavored liqueur. “You’ve got
the red-nose pain, dear” for a piece on sinusitis.

In editorial writing, headlines share part of the job they do in sales
writing: enticing the reader to read on. But there’s rarely a need
to sell, so the emphasis is on the article’s content, not on any
benefit of reading. There is a common approach that works. It’s to
use “How . . .”

The idea

From Dale Carnegie, Stanley Kubrick, and others
One of the, if not the, best-known self-help books ever published,
and certainly one of the first, was Dale Carnegie’s How to Win
Friends and Influence People. It’s such a great title, quite honestly,
they might as well have just printed the title, the price, and a toll-free
number and started reeling ’em in. Then, there’s Stanley Kubrick’s
cold war masterpiece, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the Bomb. What is the enduring power of How?
It has to do with what comes next.

* In a weird moment of synchronicity, as I write this idea on a train, the lady opposite
me is reading Soldier: the Magazine of the British Army, and one of the cover lines
reads TEEN SPIRIT.

108 • 100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS