Copywriting’s Million-Dollar Difference…

Ogilvy, Schwab, Caples all agreed…

The “appeal” you choose for your headline is THE difference between failure and success, between average and a blockbuster.

First test for the appeal, then for the articulation of the appeal.

James Webb Young made the point that when you have the right interest appeal, you didn’t need screaming bold headlines. That a prospect’s eyes would find themselves unconsciously drawn to the right appeal. He used the example of scanning a newspaper and seeing his home town mentioned in fine print on the bottom of the page. Somehow, someway his eye found it.

I was leaving a restaurant with a client. As we walked out of the lobby he stopped and said, “I’ve got to see what that says”. He was pointing through the restaurant window, across the sidewalk and 10-feet away through the cloudy plastic on a newsstand. There in a sub-headline on a newspaper was the word “Fish”.

As a fanatic fisherman (redundant, I know) his unconscious spotted the word “fish” in his peripheral vision.

Amazing.

And a testament to the power of the right appeal.

What is the single word that will stop your prospect’s dead in their tracks, through a window, across a sidewalk, through cloudy plastic and on small newsprint?

That’s your million-dollar difference.