Very Good Copy: 207 Micro-Lessons on Thinking and Writing Like a Copywriter

the Japanese company behind Hello Kitty. People don’t know Sanrio’s creative department invented over four hundred characters—all with unique looks and personalities and backstories—before they made Hello Kitty, which became a phenomenon.

Testimonials prove. The more, the better: having two reviews is good, but displaying two hundred reviews is impossible to ignore. Testimonials make your prospects think, It worked for them; it’ll work for me.

Life, after all, is a constant struggle between doing what we want and doing what’s expected of us.

The dialogue itself should tell the whole story. Your tags should be invisible.” “How do I make them invisible?” asked Junior. “Well, first of all, you don’t always need to use one.” “Ah.” “And when you do use one, only use two verbs: said or asked. No adverbs.” “That’s it?” “That’s it.”

Twenty percent of your advertising depends on the strength of your creative, which is a combination of three things: copy, design, and format.

“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting,” she explains, “and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it,” she writes. “If you’

AI can help writers and copywriters establish the dots to help us start writing (which is often the hardest part). But it cannot connect the dots like we can. It can’t be personal like us, human like us.

Volvo = Safe. Brand = Adjective. What’s your brand’s adjective?

“You will get all you want in life,” said author Zig Ziglar, “if you help enough other people get what they want.”