Several years ago a guy named Frank Miller created a comic book
called “Sin City”—a dark and gritty comic book with lots of
violence, crime and action.
As is always the case when a popular new “style” emerges in a
business, the comic book industry became glutted with imitations.
Everyone started shamelessly aping Frank Miller’s stories, drawing
style and characters.
The result?
Every single “copycat” title was eventually cancelled.
Some within just a few issues of their debut.
And this happened even though there was a huge demand for these
dark and gritty crime comics, and even though many of Frank
Miller’s competitors had a lot of talent.
Question is, why?
Why did they fail while Frank Miller STILL thrives today in the
same niche?
Because the imitators simply copied the surface elements of Frank
Miller’s comics—and never bothered to figure out exactly what
makes them “tick.” All the stuff that makes Miller’s stories work—the balance of
humor and drama, the three dimensional characters, the themes
that surface as the stories progress—were completely absent.
What does this have to do with your copywriting?
Everything.
Because this is one of the main reasons so many ads fail today—
and have always failed since the beginning of direct response
marketing. Far too many ads are nothing more than formulas with a bunch of
product benefits “plugged” into them.
Structurally, they’re correct:
They have the headline.
The opening paragraph.
The story.
The bullets.
The offer.
The P.S., etc.
But there’s nothing people can sink their teeth into that prompts
them to buy. Fact is, anyone can give you a pile of world-class ads and tell
you to write them out by hand. Or collect and read everything that
comes in the mail. Or show you all the latest gimmicks and “tricks.”
But if you want to write what Ken McCarthy calls “Battleship copy”
—the kind that launches new businesses or product lines almost
overnight—you have to dig deeper. You have to learn how to identify exactly what makes a sales letter work and then extract that information so you can apply it to your
own ads.
This goes way beyond writing hundreds of headlines on note cards,
building a gigantic swipe file, or memorizing formulas.
Those are all great tools to have in your toolbox.
But they are only the “surface” elements of great copywriting.
The real breakthroughs happen when you can identify and analyze
sales letters on your own and draw out multiple ideas, solutions
and tactics for your own ads.
It’s one of THE most important skills you can learn.
And yet almost nobody teaches it.
In fact, the only person I know of who teaches this skill is Ken
McCarthy in his advanced copywriting course. And it’s just one of the many things that makes Ken’s copywriting course perhaps the most unique and powerful on the market today.
Speaking of which:
The $1,000 off sale on his course expires tomorrow.
Just one more day left.
After that?
This offer vanishes like a ethics in Washington DC.
Ben Settle
