Breakthrough Copywriter 2.0: An Advertising Field Guide to Eugene M. Schwartz' Classic: Masters of Copywriting

Preface

A PUBLIC MEETING ABOUT Disasters brought this book to life.

This meeting was simply to help people get organized so they could help each other when the worst happened. Saving lives, property, everything of real value. So human life could get going again after Nature got through with its extreme weather.

What the person was talking about had solutions to anyone who was caught in a real emergency situation could use – with only your neighbors and your own two hands to do something about anything.

It's the first 60 minutes where you can save lives around you – your own, your family, any neighbors you can reach.

What makes a disaster is any time the local and higher levels of government get too busy to answer everyone's personal emergencies. People need to personally act at those times, and they need to know what to do – before that next disaster happens.

And the worst part of any disaster happens when people don't know what to do. That's when most deaths can be prevented.

The biggest problem at that meeting was their paltry turnout. Something like only around a dozen people attending for a small city of over 11,000 and a surrounding county containing at least as many more. Rural. But rural areas get hit more often than large cities – even though they are seldom covered in the press other than maybe a picture or a few lines of text.

It doesn't mean that the lives saved or lost are any less valuable.

In a disaster, you need at least one person well-trained in emergency procedures to save lives on every city block. That was the core message. One that only the dozen people attending actually heard.

The poor turnout was because this meeting wasn't effectively marketed – the needs and wants, the emotional connection – all missing. Even though this city sat near the U. S. Tornado Alley and had weathered two traffic-stopping blizzards and multiple ice-storms in the last 5 years, as well as a couple of bad droughts in summer that strained their water and electricity supplies..

The cheerful-but-boring presentation also tended to keep people from acting rather than inspire them. A Power-point with no emotional heart-tugging. Video's that didn't work – well, not on a screen you could see.

Vital information which actually saved lives had been communicated in such a fashion that only a few were interested in finding out about it or doing anything with it.

And those few were lulled into complacency.

The moral:

Marketing (and copywriting) is a form of communication.

It sits at the point where emotion and logic meet to cause action.

Poor or missing marketing results in inaction.

Marketing and copywriting isn't just another mind-control game to make money for shysters and scammers.

It's your way to help people find services and products which can improve or even save lives. The more profit you make, the more people you can help. Sales income is a measurement of value you've delivered.

IT WAS A FIND OF ONE of Gary Halbert's old columns which led me to find this book and bring it to you.

As someone wise beyond his years, Halbert pointed out that humankind hasn't noticeably changed as to their reactions and motivations – it was the old classics, tested over years and modernly, which still give the core data you need to study.

You have to study successful advertising and marketing to get your own marketing and advertising success. You don't need to invest a lifetime in discovering them for yourself, when other successful marketers have already done that discovery and written them up.

Breakthrough Advertising was listed right up there with Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples, How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab, and Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

At the end of that list, he said to burn anything else. Really. (And it wasn't his advice, but Hopkins'.)

Because you only need the basics. You can work everything else from that.

In my other studies of current legendary copywriters (and self-proclaimed experts) I've found that they are all standing on the shoulders of these giants – and every thing they say has already been said before. The newer books just have modern words, in the way we talk now. Marketing on the Internet still utilize the same precise principles as printed magazines and road-side billboards have since they were the latest craze.

(The worst among those modern guru's don't even credit those who've gone before – or put some other special spin on rules, laws, and principles these earlier authors found by intensive and lengthy testing. Then marketing becomes even harder to learn...)

But even worse for Schwartz' masterwork, it's only available as an expensive hardback.

This is the reason I brought this guide to you in this form. His breakthroughs need to be available to copywriters everywhere.

This short review is simply an assist to your study of his original work. And for that, you'll need to get your own copy by buying used or visiting https://www.breakthroughadvertisingbook.com/

THIS REVISED EDITION is to streamline the original research and organize it for improved flow after seven years of regular sales and use.

The other books Schwartz, Halbert, and others recommended are also being dusted off and updated as part of a complete series of study guides – even self-paced courses as well as both hardcopy and ebook versions of each.

The point is to help others as I've been helped – and continue to pay it all forward.

Good luck to all of us.

Dr. Robert C. Worstell

Dec 14, 2013 / Jan 4, 2020

Notes on Usage:

I'VE MADE MY OWN OUTLINE and notes in studying Schwartz' classic. I won't be necessarily separating his text from my own. I may or may not set off his text in quotes or with other emphasis. This is to make the book as readable and usable for you as possible.

While Schwartz set these principles down, the ideas themselves are universal and may be discovered in other texts.

This is a review, not a book of excerpts. The reason is to bring these principles to life again, to make them available for your success.

This book doesn't follow Schwartz' original structure. It is a study aid. I've rearranged his concepts (slightly) in order to make more logical sense of them. This review is no substitute for thorough reading and studying his original book (see that link above and in the Bibliography).

How to Study This Book

INSIDE ONE OF Gary Halbert's old newsletters (http://calm.li/HalbertHandsOnExp) was the secret to mastering effective breakthrough copywriting.

Schwartz' book is one of a series of classic books that keep showing up on Halbert's and every legendary copywriter's list of must-reads out there. But just reading them or having them on your shelf for reference won't enable you to internalize their breakthroughs for your own use.

Right there in Halbert's article are the methods that continue to prove out – the simple three steps that have made and continue to make top-flight copywriters.

The reason for all this is, again, to transmute the data in this book you are reading, plus the other widely-recommended few, into a native facility. Skills you use instinctively, consistently, and habitually – from this moment until the end of time, if not longer.

Starting now.

The proven steps to study internalize these are to follow Halbert's advice:

1. Read the classics (see bibliography) once through, each.

*2. Schedule your day to start spending some time each day writing out the truly great ads long-hand – in your own handwriting. This will enable you to learn by doing, to absorb the text on a personal basis. (*Key – this is coming up repeatedly as the one step that separates the also-rans from the top-flight copywriters.) Use The 100 Greatest Advertisements by Julian Watkins to start with.

3. Then go back and study these classics through once again – taking notes and dog-earing, tabbing, bookmarking, highlighting all the points you see as key. You'll see even more the third time and every subsequent time after that. Start re-reading all these at least once annually.

Halbert included more added steps, but those three steps will put you right on the road to success. Unlimited success.

Good Luck.

A Mini-Course in Breakthrough Advertising

1– Why Only Analyzed Solutions Work

EUGENE SCHWARTZ LAYS out the premise and breakthrough of his classic Breakthrough Advertisingwithin the few pages of its introduction:

"I've written this book – not from the mail order perspective alone – but from the universal problem of all copy writing: How to write a headline – and an ad that follows it – that will open up an entirely new market for its product.

"An ad that will give a new product immediate profit; that will give an old product a brand-new slant; that will give a competitively-battered product a new weapon – not only to protect itself against its imitators but to actually damage or destroy the loyalty of their following.

"These objectives cannot be achieved by following somebody else's formula – no matter how successful it was for them. they demand creativity they demand a brand-new headline; a brand new approach to the market: a literal advertising 'breakthrough.' Hence the title of this book.

"This, then, is a practical book – of practical rules that produce, and exploit, creativity – and that are meant to pay off on the very first ad.

"In copy writing there are the hopes and fears and desires of millions upon millions of men and women, all over the world. And the copy writer does not create the desire of millions of women all over America to lose weight; but he can channel that desire onto a particular product, and make its owner a millionaire."

The key point Schwartz makes here is the same one which is driving Internet Marketing as a subject down into a very deep hole:

•  There are millions if not billions of variations of the basic human desires.

•  As forces of human nature, no two desires are exactly alike.

•  While it is simpler to think of these in terms of a few, realize that for every niche – no matter how small – these each have subtle variations which have to be discovered and channeled onto your product.

•  But only one specific mass desire can be channeled in any ad for a single product.

Schwartz explains:

"And the same advertising appeal, that builds an industry in reducing (weight loss), collapses completely when applied to health foods, even though both advertisements may reach exactly the same audience.

"Why? Because no formula works twice. Each and every formula is simply the written solution to a particular problem that occurred in the past. Change even one part of that problem, and you need an entirely different formula. That's why... rewriting somebody else's headlines won't make you a copy writer.

"What will work? Innovation, of course. Continuous, repeated innovation. A steady stream of new ideas – fresh new solutions to new problems. Created – not by the impossible route of memory – but by analysis.

"And what is analysis? Analysis is the art of asking the right questions and letting the problem dictate the right answers. It is the technique of the break-through. And it can be learned – just as surely as grammar, mathematics or spelling.

"The first part of this book is about analysis, applied to the profession of copy writing. Its basic thesis is this:

"Every new market – every new product – every new advertisement is a fresh new problem that never existed before on the face of this earth.

"Past advertising successes – no matter how brilliant – can provide no answers for this new problem. They can only furnish jump-off points, yardstick questions, approximate solutions to lead you into the right direction.

"The correct solution, the right headline, the perfect ad lies buried in the problem itself. It has never been written before. It cannot be produced by rote, carbon-copying or mutations.

But it can be sprung to the surface – automatically – by asking the right questions.

Most Internet Marketing simply tells you how to build a sales page by using swipe files. What they don't tell you is that these sales pages only ever really worked on a certain audience of customers for one specific product. Borrowing them for another product, especially in a different niche, just makes them less and less effective with every re-use.

According to Schwartz, they only ever really worked effectively just once.

He lays out the three levels of creative copywriting:

Word Substitution – most widespread and ineffective. Taking a list of successful headlines, you then change a word or two and hope for the best. They aren't tailor-made to the current market demands. Those headlines only remind you of another product that went before.

Formulas – the copywriter memorizes a series of principles and pours his product headline and body copy through these. These rules say how a headline is expressed, how the copy must flow. What they don't tell you is what to do for that particular desire or that particular product for that particular audience.

Analysis - this implies that there is only a single solution to every product, every ad. It means hard work of studying your product and your market and your prospects – each and every time you get an assignment. It is not easy. It is not fast. But it works as well as you invest yourself into that solution.

Remember: When all you have is a single hammer, every problem is a nail needing your one solution. Breakthrough Advertising gives you a complete toolbox of tools.

Why do you need more than a single formula? People are wising up as they read or watch or listen to more and more ads. It's become the buyer's market, not the seller's. One explanation of this likens these two styles as the difference between a harpoon or a net.

"One school hammers the reader with red headlines, yellow highlighting, and aggressive copy that grips the reader like a terrier shaking a squirrel.

"The other school develops a compelling personal voice, nurtures a relationship with the reader, and uses soft-sell