Page 213 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

100 GET TO KNOW PEOPLE

If you want to be a great copywriter, you will, naturally, want to
read all the great books that have been written about copywriting,
advertising, selling, and marketing over the last 100 years or so.
Don’t worry: it’s not such a daunting list; most of the books written
during that period on these subjects are not great.

But reading about copywriting is only part of the story. The real
knowledge you need, the knowledge that will take you further than
any book can, is what you can find out about people. Customers,
prospects, readers, audiences: whatever you call them, these are the
individuals you need to understand and relate to if you are going to
sell to them. And let’s remember, selling is what you—and I—do
for a living.

The idea

From David Ogilvy
I thought it would be a fitting tribute to one of the twentieth
century’s greatest copywriters and advertising men to finish this
list of ideas with one inspired by a remark of David Ogilvy’s. When
a young copywriter at his agency, Ogilvy & Mather, wanted to use a
highfalutin word—“facilitate” maybe or “utilize”—he’d tell them to
get on a Greyhound bus to Idaho and stay there for a week. “If you
hear any of the people there using that word, you can use it too,”
Ogilvy would finish.

One of the best ways I have found to understand how other people
use language is simply to talk, and listen, to them myself. Of course,
depending on where you live, you may have to travel a little. When

204 • 100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS