Page 97 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

42 GIVE YOUR READER A
KISS

You know the old management acronym: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Well, apart from calling people stupid (which I don’t find very
appealing), it’s a very useful tool when you’re trying to get your
message across.

If you have a simple message or a sales pitch for a simple product or
service, don’t over-complicate it. And if you are selling or promoting
a complex proposition, try to simplify it so the reader can figure it
out quickly. This isn’t dumbing down, just removing all the high
walls, barbed wire fences, and flaming hoops a lot of writers erect
between their message and their reader.

The idea

From a research consultancy
I did some work for a company that published market reports on
different industries and countries around the world. They also had
a consulting division, so if you wanted a report on an industry or
market they didn’t already publish on, they’d put together a custom
report just for you. So far, so profitable.

Their main channel to market for the published reports was direct
mail. Classic b2b mailings with a sales letter and a brochure. The
mailing cost wasn’t excessive—around 60p a pop. You’d send out
1,000 and get around 15 orders, which for the time and the conditions
wasn’t too shabby and paid everybody’s mortgage.

Then someone high up had the bright idea that they could generate
a whole lot of free leads for the consulting division. The order form

88 • 100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS