Direct Response
Copywriter Blog

Direct Mail Warthog Observation

Copywriters come in two flavors.

Those who can write content.

And those who would rather boil in a vat of hot oil.

The content mavens, they have the skills of a journalist and won’t bat an eye when you ask them to fill ten pages by EOD about a Norwegian Elkhound.  

However, ask these voracious scriveners to craft a compelling headline or offer, and suddenly they have to grab their binoculars and add a rare bird to their field journal.

On the other hand …

Advertising copywriters, they swim happily in the Sea of Sales and Customer Acquisition.

They are poets, chiseling away word by word to make a headline perfect, a teaser just so.  

Ask them to write pages and pages of content?  

The comet Kohoutic will arrive sooner.

Within the advertising copywriter genre, the Librarians have given us a sub-subset: those who specialize in DIRECT RESPONSE copywriting.

(I include myself in this heap.)

Our currency is to know how to position the offer … craft compelling headlines … dream up grabby teasers … concoct bullets brimming with benefits … pen reassuring guarantees … all of which conspire to get the audience to take action.

We spike the football and do a little dance when our copy sends response through the roof.

For three decades the soil I’ve tilled has been snail junk mail; i.e., the stuff you get in the mail and throw away.

But — thought experiment (you’d better sit down) — what would happen if you released an old direct mail warthog like me into the office of an in-house, digital, creative team?

Would there be mayhem?  Conspiratorial whispers?

Or would adrenaline and creative juices flow like the Nile?

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