Page 12 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

connection between what they’re doing and selling. Or don’t want
to see it. But it’s worth reminding ourselves that we are salespeople.
It sounds good to tell your friends you’re a copywriter. You imagine
they see you as some kind of über-wordsmith, composing witty and
creative advertising copy on a laptop while swinging to and fro in
your Scandinavian-designed office chair listening to cool music
on your iPod. Yeah, right. When I tell other parents I meet in my
boys’ school playground that I’m a copywriter the usual reaction is
either, “OK, what’s that?” or “That’s interesting because I’ve got an
idea I want to copyright.” Hmm. Now I say, “I help companies sell
more by writing about their products. You know, for mailshots and
websites.” Then everybody gets it. So, you’re in sales. I am too. The
question is, are you any good?

Well, you buy books on copywriting. That means you are very good
already or you intend to become very good. It’s only the ignorant,
the uninterested, and the unambitious who don’t read books that
could help them get on professionally. So what about this one? I’m
guessing it’s not the first book on copywriting you’ve read or even
bought. And it’s a very different kind of book to the majority out
there on Amazon and the shelves of your local bookstore.

For a start, you don’t need to read it all the way through. The 100
ideas presented here all stand alone. You could read one printed
on a trackside poster at a rail station and it would do its job. Nor do
you have to read the ideas in sequence. This book, and the series
of which it forms a part, is expressly designed for you to dip in and
out. Some of the ideas have explicit titles you could flick to to solve
a particular problem; Idea 5, for example, shows you how to handle
objections in your headline. Others are more elliptically titled, such
as Idea 76, Act like a magpie.

What it won’t do is teach you about the theory of copywriting. Or
how to write specific kinds of copy, emails for example, or press

100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS • 3