Copywriters Podcast

This week I had a great conversation with a Hollywood screenwriting coach and screenwriter himself, and it reminded me about how much people in Hollywood know that copywriters can learn and use.

One of his most important points was there are structures that make stories work. Not rigid formulas or two-dimensional templates, but guidelines with benchmarks that have proven time and time again to act as a container for great stories.

I ...

Today we’re continuing with Part 3 of our Old Masters Series, focusing on the contributions of Albert Lasker. 

That’s because in 1898, Albert Lasker arrived in Chicago to work at Lord and Thomas, which he took over in only a few years.

And what Lasker and the copywriters he hired would do over the next 10 years would change the course of advertising.

We’ve covered lessons in Parts 1 and 2 of this Old Masters Ser...

The world of copywriting and ecommerce almost changed forever last September 29, when Open AI launched something called Instant Checkout.

This new service was designed to let you seamlessly buy something right from Chat GPT.

Instant Checkout crashed and burned over the next six months for a number of reasons.

One, the infrastructure wasn’t there to let it happen. It was launched before there were enough figurative runways, air t...

Today we’re continuing with our Old Masters Series focus on the contributions of Albert Lasker. This is Part 2.

Lasker is the one person in history who, more than anyone else, created the foundation for what advertising is today—at least direct response advertising.

On today’s show, we’re going to review some more of the most important lessons we have learned resulting from his innovations more than 100 years ...

Albert Lasker didn't just become one of advertising's biggest names—he helped invent the way modern direct response marketing works.

In this episode of the Old Masters Series, we explore the principles that transformed advertising from clever announcements into measurable sales systems.

You'll hear the stories behind the ideas that influenced generations of copywriters, from Claude Hopkins to David Ogilvy, and why many of thos...

Our special guest today didn’t start out planning to be a copywriter, but found his way into it after posting online reviews of his favorite martial arts movies in college, and getting his writing compared to that of Dan Kennedy.

He looked up Dan and found what he had to say interesting. But he didn’t become a copywriter or a marketer at the time. Instead, he finished his degree and went from job to job for a few years u...

Last week, we did a show on how content marketing is failing direct marketers when you do it the way everyone else does it.

Basically, social media encourages you to crave attention and approval, instead of get results.

Nathan asked me if we could a completely different version of the show, where we focus on including direct response elements in our content marketing.

I thought that was a great idea! So, we’ll do that, and cover...

Our returning champion today is Kim Krause Schwalm, and she is going to share some amazing and unique information with you.

The late Clayton Makepiece, a legend himself in copywriting, said, and I quote: “Kim Krause Schwalm is one of the hottest copywriters alive.”

Here’s a little background:

Kim was always a marketer who could write copy. Before she launched her freelance career in 1998, she spent years in corporate...

If you’ve always wondered about content marketing, you’re not alone. It’s a confusing term and there’s no standard definition to describe what it means.

It really depends on your point of view.

Well, we have a point of view on this podcast, and it is the point of view of direct-response copywriting.

Now, to be sure, not EVERY word you write is part of a sales letter, even from our point of view.

But every word s...

Social media can be a HUGE waste of time, but sometimes when you’re scrolling you come upon a gem.

I did last week, and it led to all kinds of crazy thoughts.

I was on Twitter/X, and I discovered this post by lesser known but A-plus screenwriting expert Tom Vaughan, who has written eight films.

On Twitter/X, he wrote:

I have noticed many younger writers prefer to forgo a romance in their screenplay. This is fine. You don't NEED a...

If you’re noticing the advertising landscape changing a lot and changing fast, it’s not your imagination playing tricks on you.

Things really are changing.

Our special guest a few weeks ago, Mike Pavlish, pointed this out. He noted that “ugly” ads were outperforming “pretty” ones–that is, user-generated content, UGC, homemade ads of a sort, were vastly outperforming slick, polished, hi...

People always talk about opening your copy with a story, but most of the time, when you say what kind of story, they’ll look at you like you’re an idiot and say, “Hero’s journey, of course,” like there were no other viable options.

Well, the problem with that is, the way the great purveyors of hero’s journey stories, Hollywood Screenwriters, use them is as a macro story. The whole two hour movie i...

Think about these two things:

First, learning to write copy, and

Second, then actually writing it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if those two things, learning to write copy and then doing it, were free of confusion, anxiety, and terror?

That was the burning question that started me on the path of mentoring copywriters. I wanted to make it happen. Because early on, I had such a rough time learning myself.

Learning copywr...

Today we have the fourth and final installment of our hit Old Masters Series segment, Copywriting 101. 

We’ll be talking about the last seven fundamentals.

And if that little voice in your head is asking, “What the heck are we doing reviewing fundamentals?!”, let me remind you of what basketball legend Michael Jordan said: “Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.&rdq...

Our returning champion Mike Pavlish has written dozens of VSLs that have brought in $10 million or more. In fact, over the last 30 years, Mike’s copy has brought in over $810 million in sales.

And his work is still bringing in the big bucks today.

How good is Mike? On his website he’s got testimonials from legends like Gary Bencivenga and Bob Bly. But this one from an eye doctor named David Tavel, who has 24 clinics acro...

We’re going through massive and disruptive upheavals all over the place, and of course copywriting is no exception.

I’m seeing the need for a complete mindset shift to survive, thrive and even dominate in copywriting.

It’s curious to me that the mindset shift is a return to the garden. I know that phrase means a lot of things, depending upon your background.

What I mean by a return to the garden is, going back to bas...

As we return to our hit Old Masters Series segment, Copywriting 101, I’d like to let you know that the first edition of John Caples’s book Tested Advertising Methods was published in 1932–that’s 94 years ago!

Caples updated the book more than once over the decades–the last edition was published in 1998.

But the interesting thing is, over that 60 plus year span, the fundamentals remained the same. And the...

The future for copywriters and AI is pretty clear:

AI will not replace copywriters.

But… copywriters who know how to use AI will replace those who don’t.

Sounds simple enough.

However, once you get into it, you realize using AI to create copy that converts sounds easier than it is.

And the question boils down to: How do you do it?

I’ve been wrestling with that question for a couple years now, and I’ve found the a...

Once again we’re back to our Copywriting 101 segments in the Old Masters Series, picking up where we left off a couple weeks ago.

This is about copywriting fundamentals. It never hurts to review them, and if you weren’t grounded in fundamentals to begin with, it’s never too late to learn what they are.

One of the best sources of an expert list of the fundamentals is John Caples, in his book Tested Advertising Method...