VeryGoodCopy
Newsletter Archive
144 Issues
November 2022 — February 2026
by Eddie Shleyner
Email Types in This Archive:
Newsletter: 115 issues --- The core essays: micro-lessons on copywriting and creativity
Announcement: 11 issues --- Community updates, new features, book/course news
Promotion: 9 issues --- Sales and course waitlist campaigns
Commercial: 8 issues --- Sponsorship and advertising pitches
Resources: 1 issue --- Free resource collections for subscribers
The winningest copywriter of all time [VIDEO]
November 9, 2022 [Announcement]
Eugene Schwartz is the winningest conversion copywriter of all time. In this short video, Eddie explains the salient principle behind his remarkable success --- and introduces something new. The principle: Schwartz believed that desire cannot be created, only channeled. Great copy doesn’t create desire in readers --- it harnesses desire that already exists. The copywriter’s job is to find the mass desire that already lives in the market and channel it through the product.
Links
Welcome! Your 6 courses & series are inside 👉
November 9, 2022 [Announcement]
Welcome to VeryGoodCopy! Eddie will email whenever he creates something new: micro articles, interviews, series, and courses --- about copywriting and creativity. 6 subscriber-only micro courses and series included. Please reply ‘Yes’ to help email providers recognize the newsletter and keep it out of spam.
Links
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[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/hire-eddie]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/sponsor-a-newsletter]{.underline}
I won’t be sending these anymore:
November 14, 2022 [Promotion]
Last day to join the course waitlist for 50% off ($399 → $199). VeryGoodCopy Transformational Landing Pages course. Benefits of waitlist: 50% discount, lottery for prizes worth hundreds, ‘Can I expense this?’ templates, satisfaction guarantee. Newsletter will return to normal ‘micro’ content about copywriting and creativity moving forward.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
Top 16 VGC articles of 2022
December 22, 2022 [Announcement]
VeryGoodCopy #313 Top 16 articles of 2022: VGC crossed 50K subscribers, won HackerNoon ‘Email Newsletter of the Year’ for second consecutive year, 600+ people supported course presale. Year-end roundup includes: Say something first and you own it, Horrible copy, Me against the Russians, Good copywriting practice, To make copy more real, How to write immersive stories, 115-word sales letter as poetic masterpiece, Copywriting fantasy, Writing & robbing, Gobsmacked - 12 revelations on way to 300 articles, A picture is worth 400 words, Zero-ending storytelling technique, Ideas/storytelling/growth, Writing slow, This may explode copy’s response, The analog-to-digital loop.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
VeryGoodCopy is BACK!
January 26, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #314 Tapping into your prospect’s very humanity: Dimensionalization --- drill down through benefits by asking ‘So what?’ again and again. Benefit of the benefit of the benefit. Reader Nick asked when you’ve reached the bottom. Answer: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs --- that IS the goal. Drew Eric Whitman’s Life-Force 8 in Cashvertising: survival, food enjoyment, freedom from fear/pain/danger, physical companionship, comfortable living, superiority, care for loved ones, social approval. Align benefits with inborn desires. ‘These powerful desires are responsible for more sales than all other human wants combined.‘
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/vgc-masterclass]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/writing-in-images]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/the-cross-out-test]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/1-on-1]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/hire-eddie]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/sponsor-a-newsletter]{.underline}
The odds of creative success:
January 31, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #315 The odds of creative success: SmartLess podcast. Will Arnett calls bullshit on ‘old SNL is better’ nostalgia. ‘You know, if you get one or two good sketches a show, that’s a great show.’ David Spade agrees. SNL writers prepare 40-50 sketches per week; only ~8 make the episode; if a quarter land, that’s great. The odds of creative success are remarkably low --- even for the best in the world. Anticipate this, expect it. Quality almost exclusively comes from quantity. Welcome failure --- it will no longer stifle your progress.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/vgc-masterclass]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-10/leonardo-da-vinci-creativity]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/copywriting-and-energy]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/1-on-1]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/hire-eddie]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/sponsor-a-newsletter]{.underline}
This copy feedback system will give you scars (and fantastic ads):
February 2, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #316 The CRIT System: Gary Bencivenga co-founded an ad agency guaranteeing to beat any ad by at least 10%, or pay back the ad spend. He was confident partly because of the CRIT system. Everyone in the agency --- receptionist, account execs, art director --- reads and rips the copy apart. Hundreds of notes and comments. Volume is the secret because it reveals overlap and themes. 11 out of 12 confused by the headline? That’s consensus, not an outlier. Painful but invaluable. Now accessible via Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, or platforms like Wynter.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/vgc-masterclass]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/raymond-carver]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/find-your-writing-style]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/1-on-1]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/hire-eddie]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/sponsor-a-newsletter]{.underline}
You against the writing machines:
February 7, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #317 You against the writing machines: Eddie asked AI to describe meeting a first born. AI produced 88 generic words of joy and warmth. Eddie wrote his own 88-word version --- real, specific, human: the quiet newborn who didn’t cry, wearing masks during COVID, the nurse saying ‘He’s saying hello,’ Eddie’s ‘Hello, son.’ AI cannot connect dots like humans can. It can’t be personal, human, feel the gravity of a birth. Specifics and granularities collected through lived experience belong to us. AI cannot replace writers --- only some writing. The Human Condition belongs to us.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/vgc-masterclass]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/spurring-creativity]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/writing-rules]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/1-on-1]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/hire-eddie]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/sponsor-a-newsletter]{.underline}
Love, explained by a copywriter:
February 14, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #318 Love, explained by a copywriter: When asked ‘What’s it like being in love?’ Eddie zooms in on a specific moment --- waking up without Kelsey, rolling to her side of the bed, hugging her pillow because it smells like her shampoo. A small moment that represents a huge universal concept. Lesson: Next time you need to articulate a huge concept efficiently --- love, business, anything --- zoom in. Focus on one specific moment tied to that concept. If readers can relate, the moment carries the weight.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/sponsor-a-newsletter]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/vgc-masterclass]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/hire-eddie]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-10/marketing-and-giving]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-10/how-to-with-john-wilson]{.underline}
F-r-e-e ideas:
February 21, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #319 Free ideas: Eddie loves talking to Uber drivers. Wife Kelsey and friends Brandon and Katie at dinner. Brandon: ‘I never talk to Uber drivers.’ Eddie initiates conversations, asks about their craziest experience. ‘People love talking about themselves. And the more you listen, the more they say. And sometimes they say incredible things.’ Brandon: ‘The man loves talking to strangers. Must be a copywriting thing.’ Eddie: ‘You bet. Free ideas.‘
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/sponsor-a-newsletter]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/vgc-masterclass]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/hire-eddie]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/imposter-syndrome]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/emotional-writing]{.underline}
The VeryGoodCopy book:
February 27, 2023 [Announcement]
Quick announcement: Eddie is considering publishing a book. Asking readers to vote on LinkedIn: A = yes (any kind), B = yes (copywriting/creativity only), C = no. Waitlist benefits: first to learn more, pre-order discount, chance to win 1 of 50 signed copies.
Links
All compelling stories have these things in common:
February 28, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #320 All compelling stories have these things in common: Two symbols --- >< (conflict) and +/- (change). Blake Snyder in Save The Cat!: every scene must have conflict (man vs. man, nature, or society) and emotional change (plus to minus or minus to plus). Story: Mike at Super Bowl party, close-talking loudly after four Delirium Tremens beers. Dinner toasts him on his birthday. Conflict and change are primal, baked into psychology. Leverage this to make stories more compelling.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/sponsor-a-newsletter]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/vgc-masterclass]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/hire-eddie]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/ideation-and-writing]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/compelling-headlines]{.underline}
When a single word speaks volumes:
March 8, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #321 When a single word speaks volumes: Justin Schmidt’s Sting Pain Index --- stung by 83 venomous insects and rated the pain. Paper wasp (1.5/4): ‘A single drop of superheated frying oil landed on your arm. Burning, throbbing, and lonely.’ The word ‘lonely’ stayed. Most adjectives are unnecessary (William Zinsser). But a well-placed adjective speaks volumes. ‘Lonely’ brings us emotionally closer --- we understand loneliness even if we can’t feel the sting. One unexpected, perfectly chosen word creates connection. A single word speaks volumes.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-8/writing-and-ego]{.underline}
Fix the game (or, how successful creatives stay successful):
March 14, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #322 Fix the game: Bryan Buckley --- ‘King of the Super Bowl’ --- directed 72 Super Bowl commercials since 1999. His secret: ‘I like to fix the game. I try to choose the best projects that have the shot to win.’ He turns down ‘stinkers.’ At the beginning of a career, say yes to everything. Eventually you’ll earn a selection. When you have a selection, be selective: choose projects with a clear path to success. Don’t be a hero. Fix the game.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-11/copywriting-fantasy]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-10/copywriting-art]{.underline}
Browse these photos before writing copy:
March 21, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #323 Browse these photos before writing copy: John Koenig coined ‘Sonder’ --- the realization that every passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own. Copywriters write to strangers, yet must connect with them personally. Sonder is profound but fleeting. To induce it: browse street photography. Vivian Maier, Robert Doisneau, Garry Winogrand. Street photography shows strangers’ tenderness, vulnerability, humanity. Browse it before writing as an emotional warmup. It triggers empathy, which is the foundation of persuasive copy.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-10/do-you-have-something-to-say]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-10/the-best-headlines]{.underline}
“Bad reading” for new copywriters:
April 6, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #324 ‘Bad reading’ for new copywriters: Joyce made Ulysses dense, puzzle-like, unclear by design. But reading copy should always feel easy, effortless. The moment readers feel confusion, they stop. They won’t reread. Cryptic literature bred bad habits in Eddie’s early copywriting --- ‘You write like a firehose,’ his editor said. ‘You need to be a nail gun.’ Advice: avoid Joyce, Burroughs, Faulkner. Read Vonnegut, Hemingway, Bukowski, Cisneros, Rooney --- authors who write clear, concise, powerful sentences. These authors write like copywriters.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-10/bill-bernbach-creative-teams]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/selling-creative-work]{.underline}
[https://twitter.com/VeryGoodCopy/status/1643230000949215235]{.underline}
[https://twitter.com/VeryGoodCopy/status/1641418853333757952]{.underline}
Writing, slow:
April 11, 2023 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy #325 Writing, slow: Obama writes only longhand: ‘computer word processors give the first draft too much polish, and more opportunity to make half baked ideas tidy enough to appear passable.’ Eddie writes on his phone with one finger --- slow, methodical. Writing slow is thinking slow. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman: slow thinking produces clear, coherent thoughts. To write well, write slow. Create bottlenecks between your thoughts and the page. Write longhand. Write with one finger. Write with physical restrictions.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://twitter.com/VeryGoodCopy/status/1645769774452944898]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-11/branding-genius]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/how-to-be-competitive]{.underline}
Primal copywriting:
April 18, 2023 [Newsletter]
Speak to primal stakes. The wedding ring story: a jeweler doesn’t sell metal and stones. He sells the moment she says yes. The promise of a life together. Primal stakes are universal: love, safety, belonging, status, survival. Connect your product to one of these and you stop selling features. You start selling meaning.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-10/ideas-storytelling-growth]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-10/copywriting-formula]{.underline}
[https://twitter.com/VeryGoodCopy/status/1646149347627655171]{.underline}
[https://twitter.com/VeryGoodCopy/status/1647618219169939457]{.underline}
To be a good copywriter:
April 26, 2023 [Newsletter]
You have to be a slow looker. Jennifer Roberts, a Harvard art history professor, requires students to spend three hours looking at a single painting before writing about it. The lesson: most people don’t look long enough. They see the surface and move on. Good copywriters look longer. They find the detail that makes everything click.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-11/analog-to-digital-loop]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-9/copywriting-success]{.underline}
Impossible headlines:
May 2, 2023 [Newsletter]
Some headlines make a promise so big, so bold, so specific that you can’t help but read on. They feel almost impossible. That tension---between skepticism and curiosity---is what pulls readers in.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-10/good-copywriting-practice]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-10/preemptive-claims]{.underline}
New Micro-Interview & more:
May 4, 2023 [Announcement]
Kevin Rogers on what separates good copy from great copy. Plus: new micro-lesson, new swipe, and more resources from the VeryGoodCopy archive.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
How to →predict← the success of an ad campaign:
May 8, 2023 [Newsletter]
The 40/40/20 Rule. Direct response legend Ed Mayer popularized it decades ago. The idea: 40% of your ad’s success depends on the list (who sees it). Another 40% depends on the offer (what you’re selling and how). Only 20% depends on the creative (copy, design, everything else). Kim Krause Schwalm---one of the top A-list copywriters alive---recently reminded me of this rule. It’s a useful frame for predicting and diagnosing campaign performance.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
Compete with the immortals:
May 18, 2023 [Newsletter]
‘First name?’ says the man behind a computer. His name tag says RICK. ‘Your library card will take a few minutes to print, so feel free to pick out some books. Where would the advertising books be?’ Rick turns his monitor so I can see. ‘Have you seen this video---it’s called A Conversation About Advertising with David Ogilvy?’
At the very end, the interviewer asked Ogilvy: ‘Have you any advice to offer young creative people?’
1/ Compete with the immortals: ‘Be more ambitious. When you get a job,
try to hit the ball out of the park every time. Don’t bunt. Compete
with the immortals. Be more ambitious.‘
2/ Know your product: ‘Really work on knowing about the product. The
more you know about the product, the more likely you are to sell it.
Work like a sonofabitch.‘
3/ Use your unconscious: ‘Most great ideas come from the unconscious. I
never wrote an ad in my life in the office. I always did it at home, at
night---or after dinner, maybe, if I had a good bottle of wine, which
helps you get in touch with the unconscious. Or shaving!’
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-11/storytelling-exercise]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/verygoodcopy-blogs-11/copywriting-dimensionalization]{.underline}
Overcoming the hardest part of creative work:
May 23, 2023 [Newsletter]
The movie ends. The screen fades to black and the credits roll. I look at Kelsey. She’s asleep. My office is at the top of the stairs. The door is open. The light is pouring into the hallway. I look inside and make a face. It’s my desk: There are books and pens, papers. There are cups and mugs and bottles. Everything is scattered.
‘I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are best creatively,’ said writer Toni Morrison. ‘They need to ask themselves: What does the ideal room look like? What do I need in order to release my imagination?’
I begin to clean my desk until only the essentials remain. Something had happened. The space looks different now. It feels different, frictionless. Whatever your discipline, a clean, organized space will probably help you hit the ground running. Coming into an orderly space in the morning propels me into the creative act.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
Every writer working through the AI revolution should read this:
June 1, 2023 [Newsletter]
Every writer working through the AI revolution should read Robin Williams’ monologue in Good Will Hunting. AI is a genius, cocky, scared kid. It’s able to do so much, so quickly---except be human. It can’t do that. Only you can access yourself. Only you can share your life, the happenstance moments. Your move, Chief.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
For every writer:
June 5, 2023 [Newsletter]
Every writer working through the AI revolution should read Robin Williams’ monologue in Good Will Hunting. Williams’ character, Sean Maguire, is a therapist working with Will Hunting: ‘You’re just a kid. You don’t have the faintest idea of what you’re talking about. So if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. But I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. If I asked you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable.’
AI is just that: a tool, a machine designed to fetch information. Like Will Hunting’s brain, it’s beautiful in its recall but flawed in its ability to connect, to be personal, vulnerable. Only you can share your life, the happenstance moments, the trials and triumphs. Because we’re all the same. Do you want to write about yourself, who you are? Because then we’re fascinated---we’re in.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
This 7-step formula is behind one of America’s longest-running ads:
June 8, 2023 [Newsletter]
In copywriting: A ‘control’ is the best-performing ad, the version pulling the highest response rate. Some ads are so dominant, they persevere, outselling and outlasting the competition for years, even decades.
Decades ago, a copywriter named Bob Stone wrote one such ad, a direct-mail piece for The Kiplinger Letter, that went unbeaten for more than 35 years. Stone used a 7-step formula: 1/ Benefit 2/ Expansion 3/ Positive 4/ Proof 5/ Negative 6/ Summary 7/ Action.
Step 1: Begin with your strongest benefit. Step 2: Expand on it, future-pacing its impact. Step 3: Explain what the prospect will get and de-risk with a guarantee. Step 4: Prove the value with past experience and testimonials. Step 5: Explain the consequences of inaction---people sprint from pain. Step 6: Summarize the benefits. Step 7: Ask for action clearly and specifically.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffolsoncommunications/]{.underline}
Easy weekend reads:
June 16, 2023 [Announcement]
--- --- --- → Get my first book ** Next week:
I’m launching something special, which means this week I’ve been short
on time, unable to write a new essay. (Keeping the main thing the main
thing.) ** So, in lieu of something new:
I’ve compiled 10 LinkedIn carousels I’ve shared so far in 2023. Easy
weekend reads (or, perhaps, re-reads) for you to enjoy: To make your
copy feel more real and compelling: 449 words How to write immersive
stories: 668 words Good copywriting practice: 415 words This 115-word
sales letter is a poetic masterpiece: 517 words You against the writing
machines: 393 words Love, explained by a copywriter: 224 words When a
single word speaks volumes: 358 words Browse these photos before writing
copy: 446 words To be a good copywriter: 505 words Every writer working
through the AI revolution should read this: 813 words Before you go…
Please ensure the VGC newsletter lands in your inbox: Gmail users: If
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the email address at the top of this email and press the “Add to VIPs”
button. Easy. Thanks again for being here --- and as always, enjoy!
Copyright
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
A thank you + something neat:
June 20, 2023 [Newsletter]
A message from Eddie Shleyner, founder & author of VGC: You can also read this in your browser A message from Eddie Shleyner, founder & author of VeryGoodCopy: I recently passed 100k followers on LinkedIn: Thank you for reading my stuff, folks. 🥲 VeryGoodCopy is such a strange and wonderful thing that happened to me --- and I owe it to you, your readership and support. So, to celebrate this milestone: I’m giving away my flagship course to 100 VGC readers living in developing nations. Everyone else will enjoy 50% off Transformational Landing Pages until the end of the week. I’m giving away 100 free licenses of my video course, Transformational Landing Pages, to folks living in developing nations. Entering is easy: → leave a comment (simply stating the country where you live) on this LinkedIn post. → winners will be selected at random (by AI) and tagged in the same post you comment on when the offer ends on Friday, June 23. If you do not live in a developing nation, I’m offering the course for 50% off this week only. Thank you for supporting my work. It’s so humbling, and I don’t take it for granted at all. Copyright
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
This will help you create excellent landing pages:
June 21, 2023 [Announcement]
A note from Eddie Shleyner, founder & author of VGC: You can also read this in your browser A note from Eddie Shleyner, founder & author of: I recently passed 100k followers on LinkedIn: Thank you for reading my stuff, folks. 🥲 VeryGoodCopy is such a strange and wonderful thing that happened to me --- and I owe it to you, your readership and support. So, to celebrate this milestone: I’m giving away my flagship course to 100 VGC readers living in developing nations. Everyone else will enjoy 50% off Transformational Landing Pages until the end of the week. I’m giving away 100 free licenses of my video course, Transformational Landing Pages, to folks living in developing nations. Entering is easy: → leave a comment (simply stating the country where you live) on this LinkedIn post. → winners will be selected at random (by AI) and tagged in the same post you comment on when the offer ends on Friday, June 23. If you do not live in a developing nation, I’m offering the course for 50% off this week only. When this offer ends on Friday, June 23: I’ll be closing Transformational Landing Pages, which has benefited thousands of students. Thank you for supporting my work. It’s so humbling, and I don’t take it for granted at all. Copyright
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
Your source of truth (when creating an ad):
June 22, 2023 [Newsletter]
Growing up, I loved Peanuts, the cartoon. And I still love Peanuts. And I think the world loves Peanuts, too, because the characters are so relatable, the stories so familiar. It’s not hard to see ourselves in those kids. It’s not hard to see ourselves in their happy times, their painful times, their self-conscious moments. Peanuts, really, is a collection of vignettes about the human condition, the human experience. And what’s interesting is it’s all based on only one person’s experience: Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts. We know this because he said so: “This whole business of Charlie Brown,” said Schulz, “these are memories of my own miserable days. I think Charlie Brown is just a little bit of what all of us have inside of us,” he said. “Mainly me. Mainly, I’m Charlie Brown.” Charles Schulz is Charlie Brown. But in a way, he’s also like the other characters. This is made clear in Who Are You, Charlie Brown? --- the excellent documentary about Schulz’s life and career: The wishy-washy part of him belongs to Charlie, yes. But the philosophical part of him belongs to Linus. And the sarcastic part belongs to Lucy. And the dreamer, of course, is Snoopy. And this speaks to a broader, more important point: what genuinely resonates with audiences --- whether it’s in entertainment or in advertising --- the things people truly, deeply connect with come from a singular point of view, one person’s point of view. Because when you speak from your own experience --- your own perspective, your own truth and vulnerability --- what you are doing is opening the door for others to understand you and relate to you. And the majority of the time, they will understand you, and they will relate to you. Because we all share the human condition. We’ve all felt the same core feelings and emotions. We’ve all had the proverbial football pulled out from under us, so we’ve all felt Charlie Brown’s pain after he whiffs and lands on his head. This truth is why I don’t worry about AI. But I digress. Another example of one person’s point of view finding an audience: VeryGoodCopy, my blog and newsletter, where I so often use my own life --- my family, my experiences; my joys, my sad moments --- to frame and explain concepts about copywriting and creativity. I started doing this because it’s what I knew. I found it easier to weave technical concepts into stories about my life and my people. But over the years, I realized Readers connect with my work because they see themselves in it. They don’t see me. They don’t see my experiences, my family, my life. Not really, no. They see their partners and their children and their circumstances in the personal things I share. People can’t help it. We see ourselves in others because we’re all the same. We are. So knowing this, how can a “persona” --- an amalgamation of characteristics --- be your North Star when writing an ad? It should not be. It’s not real. Marketing great, Sean D’Souza, said it best: “A persona is a Frankenstein,” he said. So I don’t lean on personas to create ads, especially not landing pages. Instead, I build around one person --- sans “a” --- one individual. And this person’s singular point of view becomes my “source of truth” as it were.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
2 ways to get the TLP course for f-r-e-e:
June 23, 2023 [Newsletter]
Hey folks, I’ve had a change of heart: Instead of giving 100 people free access to Transformational Landing Pages, I’m going to give everyone from a developing country (who has so far expressed interest by commenting on this post) a license. This week, I’ve received so many messages from copywriters and marketers and business owners who truly believe studying the process I teach in this course will give them the knowledge and confidence to change their circumstances and create a better life for themselves and their people. And whether this will be true for everyone, or only some, having heard from many hopeful winners --- about their ambitions and aspirations, often choked by iniquity --- it now feels wrong to cut off the giveaway at 100, effectively declining many people the opportunity to invest in themselves by learning (or improving on) a profitable skill. So again, I’ll be giving everyone from a developing country a license. It’s the least I can do.
How to claim your course:
STEP 1 → Screenshot your entire comment (make sure your name, picture,
country, and timestamp are visible).
STEP 2 → Email your screenshot to support@verygoodcopy.com by 5 pm CST
on Monday, June 26 with subject line “TLP WINNER”.
Thank you for being here, for supporting my work, and for helping me achieve this 100k milestone. VeryGoodCopy is such a strange and wonderful thing that happened to me --- and I owe it to you, your readership. I’m so lucky to be part of this community.
Links
Last call:
June 23, 2023 [Newsletter]
You can also read this in your browser Learn to create landing pages that compel more prospects to buy, download, and subscribe to your content. Get instant access to 2.5 hours of video spread across 86 self-paced, “micro” lessons. Hi, I’m Eddie Shleyner 👋🏼 I’m a copywriter, content marketer, the founder of VeryGoodCopy, and creator of this video course, Transformational Landing Pages, which is based on my experience writing conversion copy for large SaaS and tech companies. At midnight tonight, I’ll be closing down Transformational Landing Pages, which has benefited thousands of students. Copyright
Links
TLP Course Winners (+ expense template):
June 23, 2023 [Newsletter]
Hey folks, I’ve had a change of heart: Instead of giving 100 people free access to Transformational Landing Pages, I’m going to give everyone from a developing country (who has so far expressed interest) a license. I’ve received so many messages from copywriters and marketers and business owners who truly believe studying the process I teach in this course will give them the knowledge and confidence to change their circumstances and create a better life for themselves and their people.
How to claim your course:
STEP 1 → Screenshot your entire comment (name, picture, country,
timestamp visible).
STEP 2 → Email to support@verygoodcopy.com by 5 pm CST Monday, June 26,
subject: “TLP WINNER”.
Thank you for being here, for supporting my work, and for helping me achieve this 100k milestone. With humility & gratitude.
Links
Closing down:
June 23, 2023 [Newsletter]
You can also read this in your browser Learn to create landing pages that compel more prospects to buy, download, and subscribe to your content. Get instant access to 2.5 hours of video spread across 86 self-paced, “micro” lessons. Hi, I’m Eddie Shleyner 👋🏼 I’m a copywriter, content marketer, the founder of VeryGoodCopy, and creator of this video course, Transformational Landing Pages, which is based on my experience writing conversion copy for large SaaS and tech companies. I found success in this space when I began applying certain direct-response copywriting principles and techniques to modern SaaS and B2B landing pages. The results were often remarkable… In many cases, the results were transformational. At midnight tonight, I’ll be closing down Transformational Landing Pages, which has benefited thousands of students. Copyright
Links
Pay monthly instead:
June 24, 2023 [Promotion]
You can choose to pay monthly, instead. Same course. Same 50% discount. Just way less upfront: only $49.75 a month for 4 months. Or pay all at once. Same course, same 2.5 hours of video spread across 86 self-paced, “micro” lessons. Read 75+ reviews, watch the first lesson, and swipe a template you can use to expense the course.
Links
Re: TLP WINNER
June 28, 2023 [Announcement]
Hey there, it’s Eddie from VeryGoodCopy 👋 I’m so excited to share Transformational Landing Pages with you! As promised, you’re about to get free access to the full course. No strings attached --- enjoy every lesson.
The most powerful element in advertising:
July 6, 2023 [Newsletter]
I was mid-sentence when the client raised his hand. “Sorry to cut you off,” he said, “I’m just noticing something---” I stopped talking and leaned into the screen. “---looks like you replaced a lot of exclamation marks with periods?” he said. I nodded and leaned back. “Yeh, I think I removed all of them, actually,” I said. “I was gonna suggest replacing all of them with periods.” “All of them?” he said, his tone incredulous. “I’m not arguing, by the way,” he showed me his palms. “I did hire you to edit this thing,” he took a beat. “I’m just curious because I liked them, you know? I thought they created energy?” “The most powerful element in advertising,” said copywriting great Bill Bernbach, “is truth.” And exclamation marks are, very often, less “truth” and more contrived enthusiasm, hype. And, very often, The Reader sniffs this out, resenting the manipulation. Years ago: A direct marketer named Michael Senoff did a fantastic interview with copywriter, Ben Settle: “One question people ask,” Michael said, “is how can you avoid sounding too ‘hype’ in your copy without losing the impact of the big promise, of the benefits?” Ben didn’t hesitate: “One way to do this really, really fast,” he said, “is just to either get rid of all the exclamation marks or use them really sparingly. That alone will kind of take away that ‘hype’ feeling,” he said, “especially if what you’re saying is true, which it should be anyway.” He goes on: “If you’re saying something that someone really needs to hear,” said Ben, “it doesn’t really matter how you say it… so much as just saying it. Just saying it alone makes it exciting.” Indeed, truth is the ultimate exclamation mark. Put something truly valuable, truly beneficial in front of the ideal prospect, the ideal market --- and you won’t need to shout to make it compelling. Just saying it --- with a period --- makes it exciting. I leaned into the screen again. “Honestly,” I said, “it’s a great question and thank you for asking it.” The client nodded. “Really, I’m just curious,” he said. “I’m sure there’s a reason.” I sipped some coffee. “Have you heard of Bill Bernbach?” I said.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
A (re)branding story:
July 11, 2023 [Newsletter]
“Vile!” said the man. He was one of a dozen focus-group members trying a new beverage product. The year was 1986. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but this tastes horrible.” Others in the group nodded. “What the hell is it?” “It’s called Red Bull,” said the facilitator. The man sniffed the liquid and recoiled. “It’s vile,” he said. “I’m sorry, it is.” Meanwhile: An Austrian marketer named Dietrich Mateschitz looked on through double-sided glass. Mateschitz created Red Bull in 1984 after visiting Bangkok, where he tried a similar drink, an “energy tonic” called Krating Daeng. Full of caffeine, sugar, B-vitamins, taurine, and a carbohydrate called glucuronolactone, Krating Daeng was traditionally used by the Thai working class to stay alert and focused, productive. Thick and sweet, like medicine, the drink was utilitarian. It was popular because it worked. In Thailand, Krating Daeng was about the effect. It promised energy, not taste. It was about purpose, not pleasure. Krating Daeng, ultimately, was a tool. But in Europe, where Mateschitz wanted to bring it to market, it was still just a drink: “Vile!” So he set out to change this perception. First: Mateschitz updated the name along with: * The packaging: a short, thin aluminum can stood out on the shelf. * The tagline: “Red Bull gives you wiiings” made a promise. * The price: at more than double the cost of soda, Red Bull was positioned as an expensive, functional alternative. Only the logo --- two muscular, charging red bulls against a yellow sun --- remained untouched. Second: In a stroke of genius, he partnered with The Dolomitenmann. Billed as “the world’s toughest team race” The Dolomitenmann was a combination of running, paragliding, kayaking, and mountain biking. In 1988, it was brand new and seeking sponsorship. Mateschitz won the bid, putting Red Bull’s logo on every piece of equipment, aligning the brand with the pillars of extreme sports: vitality, flight, energy. Millions across Europe tuned in --- and received a clear message: Red Bull is, in fact, a tool.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
Ideas, ads, AI --- and you:
August 3, 2023 [Newsletter]
by EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy, founder Before AI: Ideation was an entirely human task. In advertising agencies, for example, a creative director might ask their copywriters for twenty campaign ideas. Then the onus would be on the CD to narrow down those ideas, to isolate and develop the strongest concepts, together with their writers. This second step --- recognizing good ideas and turning them into viable ads --- is the true creative work. And nothing illustrates this better than one particular storyline in the show, Mad Men: Don Draper is the creative director at an ad agency. One of Don’s best ads promotes Glo-Coat, a popular floor wax in the 1960s. In the beginning, the screen is black… We hear spaghetti Western music, then a young voice: “Let me outta here\!” The blackness begins to fade. We make out a pair of hands, fingers wrapped around bars… A cowboy hat comes into focus. We see a face, very young… It’s a boy, sitting cross-legged under a table. The chairs have been turned upside down and placed atop the table. The boy is clutching the spindles on the back of a chair, peering through the slats. He’s pretending to be jailed while mom waxes the kitchen floor with Glo-Coat. Peggy Olson is Don’s copywriter. She worked with him on the Glo-Coat campaign. In fact, it was her idea. She claims this to Don in private: “You know what---” says Peggy, angry over her lack of recognition “---here’s a blank piece of paper---why don’t you turn that into Glo-Coat?” Don looks at her. “Are you out of your mind?” he says. “You gave me twenty ideas and I picked out one of them that was the kernel that became that commercial.” “So you remember?” says Peggy. “It was something about a cowboy,” says Don. “Congratulations.” “No\!” Peggy’s yelling now. “It was something about a kid locked in a closet because his mother was making him wait for the floor to dry, which is basically the whole commercial.” “It’s a kernel…” says Don. “---which you changed just enough so that it was yours.” “I changed it into a commercial,” says Don. “What are we gonna shoot him in the dark, in the closet? That’s the way it works.” Indeed, an idea is not an ad. Don took a raw concept and thoughtfully, skillfully, gave it concrete structure, form, narrative, humanity. Ideas are important but they’re also cheap, a dime a dozen. Always have been. Except now, compared to sixty years ago, AI tools can help copywriters generate more ideas, faster. Don’s right: Without the benefit of a skilled human, an idea is a kernel, this hard, tasteless, inedible thing. It needs heat to become something useful. It needs a warm body. It needs you.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
I’ve been working on this for almost a month:
August 21, 2023 [Newsletter]
Hey folks, Eddie here --- The VGC newsletter will return next week. Sorry for the delay: I’ve been heads down, focusing on a project for almost a month. More info about it in this post. I’m also answering questions about it all day in the comments. Ask me anything.
Links
57 examples of the single-most important copywriting skill:
August 22, 2023 [Newsletter]
Hey folks, it’s Eddie --- The VGC newsletter will return next week with brand new content. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I’m sharing 57 “fascinations” I wrote about my course: Fascinations are a copywriting technique I teach (in great detail) inside Transformational Landing Pages. There’s a reason many elite copywriters swear by these special sentences, including internet marketing pioneer, Ken McCarthy, who said: “Writing fascinations is the single-most important copywriting skill.” Because if you know how to write a good fascination: You know how to write a compelling headline, subject line, and just about any other line that conjures curiosity, creates intrigue --- and ultimately compels action. Which is why since their invention in the 1960s, fascinations have been used in every direct-marketing asset imaginable: from physical mailers and sales letters to emails and, of course, landing pages. It’s also why I’ve been teaching folks about fascinations for years (but I’ve yet to break down my process as thoroughly and completely as I have in Module 5 of TLP).
Links
If you’re a busy creative person seeking balance, read this:
September 5, 2023 [Newsletter]
by EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy, founder Probably the most important (and poignant) advice I’ve heard came from a stranger: His name is Brian Dyson. He’s the former CEO of Coca-Cola. His advice is not specifically around the topics I write about --- copywriting, creativity, storytelling --- but it does, I think, apply uniquely to the folks who work in these disciplines… Because creative work can be so personal and, of course, demanding. It can engulf you, if you let it, swallowing your time, your relationships, your thoughts, everything, all of it. It can take and take until there’s no sense to anything, to the structure of anything. In this way, the advice Dyson gave to Georgia Tech graduates during his commencement speech some thirty years ago affected my work --- and life --- more than any single creative technique or principle I’ve learned. What he said changed my perspective, which changed everything: He told the audience to imagine life as a game of juggling five balls --- and the goal is not to let any of them fall. The five balls are work, family, health, friends, and spirit. All the balls are glass except the work ball, which is rubber. If the rubber ball falls, it will bounce back, intact, unaffected. But if one of the glass balls were to fall: “It will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, even shattered,” said Dyson. “It will never be the same.” In hindsight… Reflecting on my own life --- the missteps and blunders, the mistakes at the office, at home, and everywhere else --- Dyson’s analogy rings true, remarkably so, painfully so: After all the follies and failures, all the breaks and interruptions, my work always rebounded. But when a glass ball became damaged, it was impossible to make whole again: the cracks forever visible, the chips forever vacant space. And yet so many creative people, consciously or otherwise, prioritize their work --- and not for livelihood but for legacy\! For pride\! “Don’t undermine your worth by comparing yourself with others,” said Dyson. “Don’t set your goals by what other people deem important. Only you know what is best for you.” “Don’t take for granted the things closest to your heart,” he pleaded. “Cling to them as you would your life, for without them, life is meaningless.” I remember this often. Especially since we had Beau, our first. And now, just weeks before we welcome our second, a girl, I remember it constantly, obsessively. And it’s given me a path to what’s perhaps the only source of true happiness and wealth, true peace: balance. If you’re a busy creative person… I hope this perspective can help you, too.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
The normalization of plagiarism:
October 4, 2023 [Newsletter]
by: EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy, founder --- --- --- get my first book
** This is a true story.
Last week, my work was plagiarized by a fellow “writer” with over 130K
followers on LinkedIn. Plagiarism is a huge problem in our industry ---
and every day, it’s becoming easier to perpetrate and harder to spot,
especially in a creative discipline, where most concepts can’t be owned
and “originality” is born out of connection, the combining of old
things in new ways. Writers who write about advertising and creativity,
like me, are largely talking about the same things, the same principles
and techniques, many of which have also been passed down, taught to us
by previous generations, the shoulders we stand on. So “what” we write
about is not as protected as “how” we write about it, the style and
approach we use to engage and teach The Reader. ** The “how” is
uniquely ours, and it must be respected.
That said, you can’t really plagiarize the “what” --- it’s usually
too old, too many people before you have already written about it,
talked about it, taught it. But you can absolutely plagiarize the
“how” --- it’s as easy as copy/pasting someone else’s writing,
verbatim, and passing it off as your own without attribution or credit.
And that is exactly what happened to me. Last week’s incident was not
an unintentional citation mistake, which, while still wrong, can and
will happen to the best of us. We’re all human and imperfect, so when
confronting plagiarism, it’s important to consider its source, the
offender, their history and their response. The Plagiarist’s history,
in this case, is that of constantly and unabashedly aggrandizing himself
and his influence among his writing peers --- and doing so without
paying credence to those who came before him (which only makes his
actions more suspect). And The Plagiarist’s response to the indictment
is more egregious than the crime itself: completely unacceptable from
anyone, much less a “teacher” of the craft with tens of thousands of
followers. If you did something wrong, own it. Don’t gaslight and
minimize and then rationalize it to your audience. The Plagiarist does
all this and more --- and you’re about to see it and marvel at his
behavior. Plagiarism is not murder. It’s a mistake, a lapse in
judgment. We all make mistakes. But to correct them, we must own them
--- and vow to do better, vow to be better. If we don’t, it’s not a
mistake. It’s a mindset, a culture, one that has no place in our
community. And even though The Plagiarist has a platform --- and
therefore deserves exponentially more shame for what he did --- I opted
to conceal his identity. I don’t hate this person. And I don’t want
this to be his scarlet letter, a character-defining incident. I’d much
rather use his actions as an anonymous example of what not to do and how
not to respond. Because I do hate his actions, which I’ve curated
chronologically in this piece, as I think there’s much to learn from
this incident and his handling of it, which is a scourge on the
copywriting and marketing communities --- on LinkedIn and everywhere
else writers go to honestly share their work. What you’re about to read
sheds light on the exact behavior and thinking and justifications being
used to excuse and even normalize plagiarism by lazy, immoral people.
And it cannot be tolerated. ** It must be called out and condemned.
So I wrote an essay about the incident. Please join me in fighting the
normalization of plagiarism by reposting it or contributing to the
conversation in the comments. Our community should be talking about
this. And speaking of community, I was overwhelmed and genuinely moved
by all the messages I received about this incident from the folks who
caught it. Thank you all for caring about me and my work. 🫶🏼 EDDIE
SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy, author & founder Copyright
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/vgc-masterclass]{.underline}
The rules of “real” writing:
October 31, 2023 [Newsletter]
by EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy, founder There’s realism and then there is real writing. Realism is a genre. Realist authors write about common people in familiar places discussing typical things, regular things. The point is to convey life as honestly and candidly as possible, which creates a kind of intimacy with The Reader. Real writing, as I like to call it, is more so a technique, a set of rules the writer follows to create imagery, which helps The Reader visualize the story, like a mental movie. I’ll explain these rules in a moment but first, a vignette: Sanpaku Eyes: “I gotta go to the bathroom,” I say. “Me too,” says Kels. “Go ahead,” I say, “we’ll wait here.” I pick up Beau and step to the side of the waiting area. There’s a tv above the host stand. Sunday Night Football is on. “Oh-kay,” says Kels, “two minutes.” She squeezes our son’s foot before turning around and walking away. I lean against the wall and catch the host smiling at Beau. “How was your dinner?” she says, leaning in across her stand. Beau looks at the host and smirks and blinks and then looks away, pressing his cheek into my neck. “Was it yummy?” she says. Beau doesn’t look back. He presses harder. “He’s being a shy-guy,” I say. “So cute,” she says. There’s a man on my right. I’m just noticing him. He’s older than me. Maybe twenty years older? Maybe more? He’s wearing a tuxedo. It’s a casual restaurant, a chain restaurant. He’s very close to me. I can smell him. He smells like cigarettes. I take a step left. The man looks at me. “Why are you watching football?” he says. He’s monotone. I look at him. “What?” I say. “Why are you watching football?” “Why am I watching football?” “Yes, why are you watching it?” I look at Beau. He’s looking at the tv. I look back at the man in the tux. “I dunno,” I say. “Because it’s on? We’re just waiting for Mom.” “You like the hits, don’t you.” “I like the hits,” I say, “but not the injuries.” “Oh,” he says, “I love the injuries. I love the broken bones and torn ligaments,” he says. “And I love watching them bash their brains together over and over again.” I cock my head and purse my lips. “What?” I say. I’m looking at the man now, into his eyes. I can see the whites above his irises. In Japan, his eyes have a name: sanpaku. “I’m sick this way but nobody knows it,” he says. “And I can’t tell anyone.” “Hey---” I’m walking backwards now. “My kid can hear you,” I say. “What are you doing?” “You don’t understand,” he’s following me now, “I can’t tell anybody.” “HEY---” I’m in the middle of the waiting area now. “BACK UP---” “You’ll burn---” I turn around. Kelsey’s standing there. “Your turn---” she says. “You still gotta go?” “No,” I say, “I’m not leaving you with this guy.” My wife makes a face. “What guy?” Real writing: It’s efficient and deliberate, intentional and functional. Like copywriting, there is no excess. I love this technique because it conveys so much with so little. It generates images in your mind’s eye --- and with such efficiency, such language economy. The rules are simple: 1| Never let The Reader inside the mind of a character. You’re only privy to seeing what people do and hearing what they say, a character’s actions and/or dialogue. 2| Avoid giving too much information. Too many details fills in the holes for The Reader, which is counterproductive. 3| Use the present tense. Writing in the present tense can make the events feel like they are unfolding in real-time, live, as they would on tv or on stage. Every copywriter should study real writing. Because it reflects what good marketing does: it gives people an opportunity to envision themselves in a situation, to visualize a scenario, good or bad, painful or pleasant. It’s made my copywriting better, I think. And it can help yours, too.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://themarketingmeetup.com/events/copywriting-its-more-important-than-you-think/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/book]{.underline}
Explaining one of the great ads of all time:
November 9, 2023 [Newsletter]
by EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy, founder I’m sick and tired and nervous. Sick because my toddler’s sick. Tired because my newborn’s restless. Nervous because public speaking frightens me. But when Joe Glover invites you to talk about copywriting on The Marketing Meetup with folks like Dave Harland and Vikki Ross, you don’t let stage fright deter you. You say yes, please, thank you --- and you go. “Eddie,” Joe says, “I’ll pick on you next.” His question: “What’s your favorite piece of copy and why?” Explaining one of the great ads of all time: My daughter, Sofia, is only a few weeks old. Her brother, Beau, our first, is two. It’s interesting: when he was Sofia’s age and I was a brand new dad, cradling my son, I don’t think I understood what I was holding. I knew it was something precious, of course, something priceless. But I couldn’t grasp what he would mean to me as time went on. I couldn’t grasp the enormity of fatherhood, the bond it creates, the love it creates. It was hard to conceptualize these things before I actually lived them. But now, years on, the pendulum has swung. I’m awake, and it’s completely overwhelming. And every day is getting more intense. And all the little things they do --- every milestone, every first --- it all feels very profound to me. And I’ve been told it works both ways: all the little things I do, all the typical things I do (or don’t do, for that matter) will eventually feel profound to my kids. This ad captures this verity, I think, which is why it resonates so universally. It’s Chivas Regal’s Father’s Day ad. One of the revered, timeless examples of print marketing, composed by copywriting great, David Abbott. It almost always gets me. Especially lately. And it’s just this stupid thing, this stupid ad he wrote to sell stupid whiskey. But it’s also not: “This ad is about Chivas Regal,” said Abbott, “but it’s also about me and my father. It’s a risky ad and, for some people, it’s sentimental,” he said, “but I know others who say that it vividly echoes their own experience.” Let me explain the “vividly echoes” bit, because it’s what makes this ad great. People saw themselves in Abbott’s own world --- and for many, including me, it was even a kaleidoscopic experience. For example: I read it as a son and I think about my own dad, about how I’m not close to him, about how our relationship is fractured in many ways. We don’t hug when we meet, me and dad. Sometimes we won’t even look at each other. So I read this ad as a son and I can’t relate to it. And I feel pain. But when I read it as a father, thinking about my own kids, it’s aspirational. I think dear God if I got a note like this from Beau, or from my daughter, it would be the happiest moment, the most incredible thing, knowing my kids feel this way about me. And so these thoughts I’m having --- these connections I’m making between an ad about whiskey and the most important people in my life --- is evidence that writing great copy often boils down to illustration: How well can you show the prospect a moment in time? Because copywriting is all about moments, these small slices of life. And if you can impart these things in a way that generates a feeling and then you connect that feeling to a product: This is how you compel people. This is how you sell things. And David Abbott does so masterfully in this ad. It’s a masterclass in show-don’t-tell writing, short on details, leaving holes for The Reader to fill in with their own memories, their own life. This, ultimately, is the source of its emotion and power: it vividly echoes the human experience. We’re not being told a message. We’re being shown scene after scene. And the result is a kind of mental movie. And it affects us, as a good movie would.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/book]{.underline}
This will make your Readers happy:
November 16, 2023 [Newsletter]
by EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy, founder Paulo Coelho wrote a beautiful book called The Alchemist. When Tim Ferriss interviewed Coelho, he asked the author about the most common mistake first-time novelists make. Coelho’s answer is excellent advice for all writers: “Trust your reader,” he said. “He or she has a lot of imagination. Don’t try to describe things. Give a hint and they will fulfill this hint with their own imagination.” He’s referencing a writing style called Minimalism. Minimalist authors generally favor brevity and avoid adverbs and lean on cursory descriptions of people and places and things. These guidelines, when followed together, give The Reader tremendous agency over the story: what the scene might physically look like as well as what the situation might mean. I like how the literary scholar Robert Clark puts it: he says Minimalism lets The Reader take an active role in creating the narrative, in visualizing it as well as interpreting it. For example… An excerpt from Hemingway’s famous short story, Hills Like White Elephants, comes to mind. It’s remarkably sparse and, yet, at once, vivid writing: The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry. Notice how Hemingway eschews the details. He only produces the elements that set the scene --- the woman; the man; the girl; two glasses of beer; two felt pads; white; brown; dry --- and then, as Coelho suggests, he trusts The Reader to imagine, to fill in the blanks, to color it all in. In other words… He does the minimum. And then The Reader, happily, does the rest.
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How to write a compelling sentence:
November 21, 2023 [Newsletter]
9 rules & 57 examples: In copywriting, a “compelling” sentence leaves The Reader curious, intrigued, wanting more. Copywriters have a specific name for sentences like this: we call them fascinations. “Writing fascinations,” said internet marketing pioneer, Ken McCarthy, “is the single-most important copywriting skill.” Why? Because if you know how to write a good fascination, you know how to write a compelling headline, subject line, and just about any other line that creates curiosity and intrigue, intensifying desire and, ultimately, moving people to take action. This is why, since their invention in the 1960s, fascinations have been used in every direct-marketing asset imaginable: from physical mailers and sales letters to emails and, of course, landing pages. They just work. For example: I wrote 57 fascinations about my course. Then I split-tested TLP’s landing page with and without the 57 fascinations. Suffice it to say, the version with the fascinations won (by an eye-popping margin). And now I’m sharing these 57 fascinations below, along with the 9 rules I followed to write each one. Enjoy! First, the rules: (Note: the following is a truncated excerpt from Transformational Landing Pages, Module 5.) Rule #1 → Write more than you need: Quality is the product of quantity. For example, a brilliant copywriter named Parris Lampropoulos always writes 7 times more fascinations than the promo calls for. (So if he needs 20 for the ad, he’ll start with 140 and gradually pare down.) This ensure he’s using his best writing. Rule #2 → Prove it with specificity: At the very least, every fascination needs a benefit. Because your landing page visitors, consciously or otherwise, are always thinking: “What’s in it for me?” “What’s my benefit here?” “What do I get by taking action?” So every fascination must answer these questions. But here’s the thing: specificity makes any claim --- any promise you’re making --- more believable. So in theory, the more specific the benefit, the more compelling the fascination. Rule #3 → Prove it with a source: Specificity makes your claim more believable, yes. And so does a trusted source, someone credible and relevant. Onward. Rule #4 → Clarity beats concision: Fascinations don’t need to be short. In fact, some of the best fascinations are long --- paragraph length --- because the copywriter prioritized clarity over concision. Rule #5 → Use simple words: The easier you make it for people to read, the longer people will read. When you use sophisticated language, you risk making people stop and think. You don’t want this. You don’t want people to think. You want people to feel. And it’s hard to feel something when you’re focused on the words, and how to pronounce them, and what they might mean. Rule #6 → Use the prospect’s language: In copywriting, if given the choice between using a simple word and a sophisticated word, you almost always want to use the former, yes. You want to keep it simple. You don’t wanna make The Reader think, no. The exception here is if your audience typically communicates using certain terms or shorthand. Rule #7 → Avoid “transactional” language: For example, the words “buy” refers to a transaction, to an exchange of money for something. When writing fascinations, you can’t assume the prospect is ready to buy. You’re still very much selling the benefits and intensifying the desire. So don’t remind her of the transaction. Instead, remind her what she stands to gain. Rule #8 → Avoid “work” words: Similar to avoiding transactional language, you also wanna avoid “work” language. For example, the word “learn” is usually a turn off for people because it implies there’s thinking ahead, effort. And again, people hate thinking. We hate effort. Fascinations hinge on presenting things simply, making things easy. Don’t make The Reader feel like they’re back in school. No. Make them feel excited, hopeful. Make them feel like your solution has “turn-key” value: low effort, high reward. Rule #9 → Create variance: Variety is interesting. It can keep The Reader focused, engaged. This is where fascination “filters” come into play. A filter is like a formula you can use to frame your fascination. And by framing your fascinations in different ways, you naturally create variance in style and length. This keeps your writing fresh. It also helps you, as the copywriter, start writing, which is almost always the hardest part. EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy, founder & author Copyright
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This is it:
November 24, 2023 [Promotion]
Hey folks, it’s Eddie --- The VGC newsletter will return next week with brand new content. Stay tuned. In the meantime, this is it: your last chance to pick up VeryGoodCopy’s only video course, Transformational Landing Pages, for half-off the regular price. “Enjoy!”
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To everyone who emailed me:
November 27, 2023 [Newsletter]
& author from copywriters, marketers, and creative leaders, including: Compel more landing page visitors to buy, download, or subscribe: Compel more landing page visitors to buy, download, or subscribe: countdownmail.com Copyright
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Copywriting, art, and the strangest DM I’ve ever received:
December 7, 2023 [Newsletter]
This is a real message in my LinkedIn inbox. The subject line is famous. It’s Hemingway’s remarkably concise and evocative, six-word story. I click the thing. It opens with a series of abstract, cryptic phrases. You want my advice? My honest take? Here it is: Marketers and copywriters don’t get paid to make art. We’re hired to solve business problems. So I don’t think you’ll be happy in marketing. I don’t think you’ll enjoy writing in a discipline that prioritizes clarity and brevity. I’m not sure you value these things. I think you value expressing yourself. You value writing in a way you find beautiful, and meaningful. You value being an artist. And I applaud this! But while making art is a noble and important pursuit, it has little to do with making ads. Art and ads have a key difference: Great art starts with the maker. Great ads start with the market. Rick Rubin was asked to give young artists some advice: “Be the audience---” said one of our most prolific music producers, “you be the audience. Make the thing for yourself. And it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. You can’t make art with someone else in mind. I don’t believe you can. I don’t believe it can be good.” Art versus copy: Art is self-indulgent: you can’t make art with someone else in mind. Copywriting is the opposite: you can’t make an ad without someone else in mind. Eugene Schwartz was asked to give young copywriters some advice: “Look---” said one of our winningest direct marketers, “if you want to write poetry, if you want to write prose, if you want to write novels, and if you want to write literature, go outside of advertising,” he said. “Because the words in advertising are like the windows in a store. You must be able to look right through them and see the product. If you see the window, it’s dirty --- and you’re going to see yourself or you’re going to see the smear. You’re not going to see the product, and you’re going to lose.” Of course, I wish you the best. But you asked for my advice: This brand of writing is just not good for business. EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy, founder & author
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The most important issue of the year:
December 18, 2023 [Newsletter]
Hey folks --- This isn’t a typical issue of VeryGoodCopy (the regular
micro-essay newsletter will return in January, 2024) but it’s perhaps
the most important of the year… Because it’s about the health and
wellbeing of a real person, my former manager --- and forever friend ---
Devin Bramhall.
Devin is one of our own: A beloved marketer, writer, and self-employed
creative battling a form of cancer so rare, only 60 other cases have
ever been found. Today, I’m writing to bring our community together to
support Devin through the long and expensive treatment ahead.
There are several ways to contribute, and of course… 100% of the
proceeds will be given to Devin’s GoFundMe. You can: Invest in
VeryGoodCopy’s landing page masterclass --- 100% of the proceeds will
be donated to Devin’s GoFundMe. Register to learn from top marketers
and strategists --- 100% of the proceeds will be donated to Devin’s
GoFundMe. Or contribute directly to Devin’s GoFundMe campaign.
Thanks for being here --- And thank you for contributing anything you
can to one of our finest, most generous marketers, even if it’s simply
commenting or reposting this fundraiser on LinkedIn.
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VGC: The Book
February 1, 2024 [Newsletter]
Hey folks --- Been a while. I took some time to really focus on a
project, an anthology of my best work. The past couple months, I’ve
been editing and compiling my most compelling “micro” essays --- some
old, some new, some unreleased --- into a book. It’s something I’ve
been wanting to do for a while. Now feels like the right time: I’m a
decade into VeryGoodCopy and I’ve built up a body of work and I’d love
to share it in a fresh, new way. Of course this wouldn’t be happening
without you, my Readers, without your motivation and support. I’m
honored to have it. And what’s more, most of you are my peers and
colleagues --- copywriters and marketers and writers yourselves --- and
this makes your readership all the more remarkable to me. So I’m
grateful. And I think that’s why I work hard on VGC. Because I deeply,
genuinely appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.
The Book will be available this spring. Please read a small excerpt from
The Book’s foreword, written by David Ogilvy’s right-hand marketer, my
copywriting hero, Drayton Bird: “I have read goodness knows how many
books about copy and even written some. But I was flabbergasted by Eddie
Shleyner’s book. Its style is unlike anything I have come across. And
the book is the most comprehensive I can recall. It gives you more
sound, simple advice per page than anything I have read.”
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The lazy writer’s way to success:
February 8, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author A few years ago: The prolific writer and artist Austin Kleon gave me some advice. I didn’t know it at the time but he was telling me exactly how to sustain my writing career. In a profession plagued by burnout, he was giving me the antidote for weariness and fatigue, a prescription for creative longevity: “If you get into that productivity trap, Ed---” he said, “there’s always going to be more work to do…” I nodded and waited for him to say more. A few months ago: I read a book that changed how I work: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. Burkeman highlights Robert Boice, a psychology professor who studies the various habits and routines of writers. His research uncovered something counterintuitive, and revelatory: Writers who made writing a smaller, shorter part of their day were decidedly more productive and successful than their toiling contemporaries. And the prevailing technique among these “lazy” writers? They worked against a sensible timer: anywhere from ten minutes to no more than a few hours. When the timer went off, the session was over. No exceptions. This is the salient, simple-not-easy thing: they always stopped. Austin Kleon called this approach time-based work: “You can always make more,” he told me. “I think that’s why I’m a time-based worker. I try to go at my work like a banker. I just have hours. I show up to the office and whatever gets done gets done.” I nodded some more. “I’ve always been a time-based worker,” he said. “You know, like, did I sit here for three hours and try? I don’t have a word count when I sit down to write. It’s all about sitting down and trying to make something happen in that time period --- and letting those hours stack up.” Robert Boice called it radical incrementalism: Don’t race to the finish line day after day. This is impatience masquerading as zeal --- and it’s precisely how creative people burn out. Instead, follow the clock. And if this means leaving your work amid a flow state, with the wind at your back, so be it. Cut it off. It feels counterproductive, yes, even wasteful, like you’re squandering the energy and enthusiasm you could’ve used to create something good. It feels uncomfortable, even painful, like a loss. But it’s not a needless loss: Stopping helps strengthen the muscle of patience that will permit you to return to the project again and again, and thus sustain your productivity over an entire career. In other words, your immediate, short-term sacrifice will pay dividends in the long-term. It will help you cultivate the mindset and the pace necessary to sustain a long, successful creative career.
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A potent, haunting way to exercise your imagination:
February 15, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author A friend sends me a link. “What’s this?” I say. “Too Hard to Keep---” she says. I click it. “It’s an art exhibit,” she says. “You might like it.” I begin scrolling. “People send the artist pictures they can’t look at anymore,” she says. “He curates them.” “In the mail?” I say. “They send physical pictures?” “Yes.” “No backstory?” I say. “No.” The artist is Jason Lazarus. He explains Too Hard to Keep in his creative manifesto: The project started in 2010 with the idea that these pictures are the type of photos that, for whatever reason, are too painful to keep. Sometimes literally pictures of things that are hard to look at. There might be a stack of images where it’s not anything specific --- any image that is so obviously difficult --- but maybe those images were made on a trip with someone or they’re from a period of your life that it feels more productive to purge that stuff rather than look at it. I keep scrolling. It’s one picture after another against a white background, much negative space. Some pictures feel wholesome and sweet, happy times. Some are the opposite of these things: they feel disturbing. Some feel profoundly sad. They all feel very personal. “I guess we fill in the backstory for ourselves,” I say. Now and then, I still look at Too Hard to Keep. As a copywriter, I find it a potent, haunting way to exercise my imagination: creating a narrative for these anonymous pictures, giving them life. And it reminds me it’s okay to withhold details, to not tell the whole story, to respect The Reader’s own innate ability to fill in the blanks. Because our imagination is baked into us, an essential part of us. So using it is a natural and incredibly satisfying thing to do. And the more we use it, the more vivid it gets --- and this can only help us create richer, more compelling marketing stories.
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You against the writing machines:
February 22, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author I asked one of the big AI writing engines a question: Can you describe meeting your firstborn child? The AI thought for a moment, then produced 88 words: Meeting my firstborn child was a truly magical experience. It was a moment of joy and excitement that I will never forget. When I held my newborn for the first time, I felt a wave of love and warmth that I had not experienced before. I was filled with so much joy and pride that I was now a parent. My little one looked so peaceful and content in my arms. Seeing my baby for the first time was an unforgettable moment that I will cherish forever. I read it, then wrote my own description: “He’s so quiet,” I said, looking up at the nurse. She smiled behind her mask. We all wore masks. Gowns, too. Gloves and hairnets, too. “Is that ok?” I said. “Is it ok he’s not crying?” “It’s ok,” said the nurse, “he’s quiet but alert,” she said. “Just look at him looking at you.” I looked. “He’s looking right at you.” He was. He was looking in my eyes. “He’s saying hello,” she smiled. “Hello,” I said. I felt like crying. “Hello, son.” AI can be a remarkable productivity tool. I use AI as an instrument, an aid for sourcing and organizing ideas. But you know, it cannot connect the dots like we can. It can’t be personal like us, human like us. These are uniquely human things. And so, AI cannot write like us. It can’t tell stories like us. Because the specifics, the details, the granularities we collect through our lived experiences belong to us. The Human Condition --- its nuances and imperceptibles, its vastness --- belongs to us. So will AI replace writers? No, it will not. AI may eventually replace some writing. But it cannot replace writers, people, everything we know and feel and emote. We are, as it were, too much to bear.
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You against the writing machines:
February 23, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author I asked one of the big AI writing engines a question: Can you describe meeting your firstborn child? The AI thought for a moment, then produced 88 words: Meeting my firstborn child was a truly magical experience. It was a moment of joy and excitement that I will never forget. When I held my newborn for the first time, I felt a wave of love and warmth that I had not experienced before. I was filled with so much joy and pride that I was now a parent. My little one looked so peaceful and content in my arms. Seeing my baby for the first time was an unforgettable moment that I will cherish forever. I read it, then wrote my own description (limiting myself to the same 88-word count): “He’s so quiet,” I said, looking up at the nurse. She smiled behind her mask. We all wore masks. Gowns, too. Gloves and hairnets, too. “Is that ok?” I said. “Is it ok he’s not crying?” “It’s ok,” said the nurse, “he’s quiet but alert,” she said. “Just look at him looking at you.” I looked. “He’s looking right at you.” He was. He was looking in my eyes. “He’s saying hello,” she smiled. “Hello,” I said. I felt like crying. “Hello, son.” AI can be a remarkable productivity tool. For example, I use AI as an instrument, an aid for sourcing and organizing ideas. AI can give writers and copywriters the dots to help us start writing. But you know, it cannot connect the dots like we can. It can’t be personal like us, human like us. It can’t feel the gravity of a profound moment, like a birth, much less the essence of another person. These are uniquely human things. And so, AI cannot write like us. It can’t tell stories like us. It can’t. Because the specifics, the details, the granularities we collect through our lived experiences belong to us. The Human Condition --- its nuances and imperceptibles, its vastness --- belongs to us. So will AI replace writers? No, it will not. AI may eventually replace some writing. But it cannot replace writers, people, everything we know and feel and emote. We are, as it were, too much to bear.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
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Will you be a writer who does this?
February 27, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author Every writer working through the AI revolution should read Robin Williams’ monologue in Good Will Hunting. Williams’ character, Sean Maguire, is a therapist working with Will Hunting, a troubled mathematical prodigy played by Matt Damon. During a session, Will disrespects Sean’s late wife. A few days later, Sean addresses it with him: “I thought about what you said to me,” Sean says. “I stayed up half the night thinking about it. Then something occurred to me and I fell into a deep, peaceful sleep and I haven’t thought about you since. You know what occurred to me?” “No.” “You’re just a kid,” Sean says. “You don’t have the faintest idea of what you’re talking about.” “Why, thank you,” Will says. “It’s alright,” Sean says. “You’ve never been out of Boston?” “Nope.” “So if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo. You know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the Pope, sexual orientation --- the whole works, right?” Will doesn’t speak. “But I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling.” Will doesn’t speak. “If I asked you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus of your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy.” Quiet. “You’re a tough kid,” Sean says. “If I ask you about war you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me --- Once more into the breach, dear friends --- but you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap and watched him gasp his last breath, looking to you for help.” Quiet. “If I asked you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet,” Sean says. “But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable, known someone who could level you with her eyes. Feeling like God put an angel on Earth just for you, who could rescue you from the depths of hell --- and you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her be there forever, through anything, through cancer.” Quiet, quiet. “I look at you and I don’t see an intelligent, confident man. I see a cocky, scared kid,” Sean says. “But you’re a genius, Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presumed to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine and you ripped my life apart.” The camera’s on Will now, a placid expression on his face. “You’re an orphan, right?” Sean says. Will looks down. “Do you think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are because I read Oliver Twist?” Sean says. “Does that encapsulate you?” Will looks up. “Personally, I don’t care about all that because you know what?” Sean says. “I can’t learn anything from you I can’t read in some book. Unless you wanna talk about you, who you are. Then I’m fascinated --- I’m in,” he says. “But you don’t wanna do that, do you, Sport? You’re terrified of what you might say.” I’ll never tell you not to use AI writing tools. Because I use them --- and I know how they’ve helped me work faster, smarter. But for all its potential, all its genius, AI is just that: a tool, a machine designed to fetch information. Like Will Hunting’s brain, it’s beautiful in its recall but flawed in its ability to connect, to be personal, vulnerable. AI is a genius, cocky, scared kid. It’s able to do so much, so quickly --- except be human. It can’t do that. It’s able to tell you about anything, about art and war and love --- but it can’t express these things in a patently human way, a nuanced way. It can’t. It can’t crawl your brain, regurgitating your personal experiences and emotions. Only you can access yourself. Only you can share your life, the happenstance moments, the trials and triumphs, the details that are unique to you but understood by all, felt by all. Because we’re all the same. Only you can do these things. But do you want to? This is the question. Do you want to write about yourself, who you are? Terrifying as it may be, will you? Will you be a writer who does this? Because then we’re fascinated --- we’re in. “Your move, Chief,” Sean says. He stands up and walks away, leaving Will to consider what he must do to evolve. Yes, indeed: your move.
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Good copywriting practice:
March 6, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author I created an email account for my son. He doesn’t use it. He’s a baby. I use it: I send him things, messages, little notes and pictures. I tell him things, where we went and what we did. I tell him about his mother. Sometimes I give him advice, lessons learned from my own missteps, my own mistakes. I share anecdotes and happenings with him, just little things, little moments. Once I wrote this: Beau--- We went to a lake house last weekend. Me and you and mama. Brendan and Carly were there, too. Chris and Carolyn were there, too. We had dinner at the big table and you sat between me and mom in your booster chair. You ate Cheerios and looked around at the people. Sometimes you were very serious and sometimes you babbled and smiled and the people saw your teeth, the bottom two. Oh my gosh. “He’s such a charmer,” Carolyn said. “He’s so sweet and calm.” I put another Cheerio in your mouth. You took it and smiled and everybody clapped. You smiled bigger. The people clapped louder. I gave you another. Pride is such a hard feeling to describe. It feels like you could cry. ok. ~ Dad I used to free-write in the mornings to warm up my brain. Whatever came up, came out. I didn’t have an audience in mind. There was no face or personality in my head as I wrote. Now I write to Beau. I give myself fifteen minutes and I write to him. I give him something. And he gives me something in return: I still write about whatever comes to mind, except now I write around him, bending and shaping the anecdotes, the happenings, the little things --- the moments --- for him. Now, I’m writing for Beau. I see his face when I write. “Write to please just one person,” said Kurt Vonnegut. He was a novelist. But copywriters say this, too: “Never write for anyone, always write for someone.” And since replacing my free-writing with Beau-writing, I’ve noticed a difference in the way I compose copy: writing for someone has become more automatic, more intuitive. It just happens. I don’t really think about it anymore. I wasn’t anticipating this. I just wanted to write to my son each day, for him. Turns out it’s good copywriting practice to consistently write something, anything, for someone, anyone, you love.
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Good copywriting practice:
March 7, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author I created an email account for my son. He doesn’t use it. He’s a baby. I use it: I send him things, messages, little notes and pictures. I tell him things, where we went and what we did. I tell him about his mother. Sometimes I give him advice, lessons learned from my own missteps, my own mistakes. I share anecdotes and happenings with him, just little things, little moments. Once I wrote this: Beau--- We went to a lake house last weekend. Me and you and mama. Brendan and Carly were there, too. Chris and Carolyn were there, too. We had dinner at the big table and you sat between me and mom in your booster chair. You ate Cheerios and looked around at the people. Sometimes you were very serious and sometimes you babbled and smiled and the people saw your teeth, the bottom two. Oh my gosh. “He’s such a charmer,” Carolyn said. “He’s so sweet and calm.” I put another Cheerio in your mouth. You took it and smiled and everybody clapped. You smiled bigger. The people clapped louder. I gave you another. Pride is such a hard feeling to describe. It feels like you could cry. ok. ~ Dad I used to free-write in the mornings to warm up my brain. Whatever came up, came out. I didn’t have an audience in mind. There was no face or personality in my head as I wrote. Now I write to Beau. I give myself fifteen minutes and I write to him. I give him something. And he gives me something in return: I still write about whatever comes to mind, except now I write around him, bending and shaping the anecdotes, the happenings, the little things --- the moments --- for him. Now, I’m writing for Beau. I see his face when I write. “Write to please just one person,” said Kurt Vonnegut. He was a novelist. But copywriters say this, too: “Never write for anyone, always write for someone.” And since replacing my free-writing with Beau-writing, I’ve noticed a difference in the way I compose copy: writing for someone has become more automatic, more intuitive. It just happens. I don’t really think about it anymore. I wasn’t anticipating this. I just wanted to write to my son each day, for him. Turns out it’s good copywriting practice to consistently write something, anything, for someone, anyone, you love.
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This 115-word sales letter is a poetic masterpiece:
March 12, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author Ohio, 1990-something. After generations of service, the pipe organ at First Baptist church finally broke down. “How much will it cost to fix?” said the pastor. “Oh---” the technician said, “it’s beyond repair.” The pastor looked down and nodded. “How much to replace it then?” he looked up. The technician drew a rag from his back pocket. “An instrument like this---” he wiped his hands, “maybe eighty thousand?” he said. The church appointed a committee to raise funds. They called each member of the congregation, soliciting donations. After hundreds of calls, they raised fifty thousand dollars. Still short. To make up the difference, the committee hired a direct-response copywriter to write a sales letter. His copy, but 115 words, drove forty thousand donation dollars. Why did it work so well? One: it went out to a warm, highly receptive list. Two: the copy is technically sound, clear and concise, easy to read. Three: it’s nostalgic, and poetic, compelling. The copywriter used rhetorical devices --- anaphora; rule of three --- to create a rhythmic cadence. The words flow, like a sermon. Let’s read it: Dear Church Member, Nothing gives like a church organ. It gives joy at weddings; strength at funerals; family greetings at baptisms. It gives wings to worship; power to praise; humility to Thanksgiving. It gives rest to the weary; welcome to strangers; binding ties to friends. It gives to congregations of sons who follow fathers and then gives way to sons and sons again. It finally gives itself. For over five generations the present church organ at First Baptist has given, freely, generously, bounteously without stint. Think of an organ’s gifts, as you have received them; as your children will in days to come. Then give to a church organ, like a church organ… freely, generously, bounteously… without stint. Now let’s focus on the opening: Note the nostalgia: It gives joy at weddings; strength at funerals; family greetings at baptisms. It gives wings to worship; power to praise; humility to Thanksgiving. It gives rest to the weary; welcome to strangers; binding ties to friends. The copywriter connected these memories to the pipe organ and, in effect, to the church, the congregation, the community itself. He dimensionalized its true value. He put it in perspective. He gave it weight. And he did so rhythmically, elegantly, like a poet. Note the anaphora: It gives joy at weddings; strength at funerals; family greetings at baptisms. And the rule of three: It gives joy at weddings; strength at funerals; family greetings at baptisms. The copywriter tied the emotions of these life events to a pipe organ, this inanimate, lifeless thing. And in doing so, he gave it life --- meaning and significance --- because he made it about The Reader. He made it personal. Amen.
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Search click swipe OH:
April 24, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author Hello. It’s Eddie. Been a while. Almost a month and a half, in fact, since I sent my last newsletter. I took some time to complete a project, my first book. It’s nearly done (if you care), on sale next month. A month ago: I ordered an Uber going downtown. “Oh---” said the driver, “you’re going to One Six Seven?” “Yeh,” I said, “One Six Seven Green.” “Oh OK---” he said, “oh-kay, oh-kay… that’s the one with the court, right?” I looked up. “That’s right,” I said, “I heard there’s a basketball court on the seventeenth floor.” I buckled up and rolled down the window and took a breath. Breathing felt good. “You been there?” “Ya on TikTok.” “Ya?” I reached for my phone. Search, click, swipe --- OH. “Oh,” I said. A few months ago: Devin Reed called me. “Yo!” “Yooo---” “Come be on my podcast?” “I’m there.” He told me the details. “You’re filming it?” I said. I took a breath. Breathing felt good. Reed Between The Lines is Devin’s new show. Devin and the team crossed the country to create something unique for our space, something I feel undeserving to be around. I did what little I could --- mostly sipped water and glistened and looked pale --- while Devin was the consummate interviewer. Making something so difficult look and feel very easy, very simple, is a rare thing. We talked for an hour: About something I wrote called The Normalization of Plagiarism --- and Devin’s own experience with plagiarism. About imposter syndrome --- and facing my public speaking fears. About storytelling --- and how to think like a documentarian. About balance and burnout --- and how to oscillate between growth and craft. Thanks for being here.
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Introducing: The VGC Book
May 15, 2024 [Newsletter]
Hey folks, it’s Eddie. I’m coming up for air. Things take the time
they take, I guess. This book took me 10 years to write. And I spent the
last 6 months editing it, which is why I haven’t been sending
newsletters (but that’s about to change). And now, in just a few short
weeks, the paperback will be available on Amazon. And there will be an
ebook, too.
Until then, there’s still time to join the waitlist: You get the early
bird discount. You could even win one of 50 free, signed copies.
On a more personal note: Shipping this was hard. I knew it would be, but
I wasn’t expecting to struggle and agonize quite as much as I did. And
were it not for my Readers---who have been a bottomless source of
motivation---this book wouldn’t exist. Thank you all for your support,
in all its forms and dimensions. I don’t take any of this for granted.
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How to create interest:
May 31, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author “So, Milt---” said John, “how the hell did you come up with this swing?” The Triple Coil Power Swing helps golfers hit longer, straighter shots. In the 1980s, a golf instructor named Milt Wallace invented the technique and created an instructional video. Then, he hired copywriter John Carlton to create the ad for his new info product. “How did I come up with it?” Milt said. “Yes,” John said, “I’m curious.” “Well, it’s based on a guy I met years back,” Milt said. “This guy ripped one of the longest, straightest drives I’ve ever seen…but he did it on one leg.” “Oh,” John said. “Yeah, so I asked him about it,” said Milt, “and he told me that balancing on one leg created tension in his hips, like a coil.” He stood on one leg and demonstrated the motion. “This supercharged his swing---and that’s where I got the idea.” In marketing, a “hook” creates interest. So when John heard this story---this curious, fascinating thing---he knew he had found the hook for his ad. And out of it came a remarkably efficient, now-famous headline. Years later, John explained the headline’s origin story at a copywriting seminar. And he left the audience with this invaluable lesson: “You’re not gonna find your story in the company line,” he said. “If you go to your own brochure to find a hook, you’re not gonna find it. You’re gonna find it by talking to the secretaries. You’re gonna find it from the feet-in-the-street guys, the salespeople. You’re gonna find it from the guy who invented the product in the first place, the guy who put it together. And if you’re your own boss, you may need to go outside of yourself to find it.” John calls this hook-searching process “sales detective work” because the most compelling marketing stories are often inconspicuous. They’re hiding, tucked away---and as copywriters, we must find them. How? We ask questions. Then, we listen. On listening: The title of the sensational true-crime documentary, Don’t F*ck With Cats, was not conceived by the film’s writer and director, Mark Lewis. It was spoken off-the-cuff, during an interview with one of the film’s subjects, Deanna Thompson. “On the internet there’s an unwritten rule,” said Thompson. “It’s unwritten but it’s understood. Rule Zero. And Rule Zero is don’t eff with cats.” It came out extemporaneously, in a moment of passion. Lewis heard it, liked it, thought about it, and ultimately decided to make this spontaneous turn of phrase the title of his film. Copywriter Eugene Schwartz once listened to a client talk about their product for hours. He recounts writing the ad after the meeting. “About 70 percent of the copy was the client’s own words,” he said. “And the headline was a direct quote!” The ad pulled well, the product sold out, and the client was delighted. “You don’t need to have great ideas,” said Schwartz, “if you can hear great ideas.”
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Shock copy:
June 3, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author You’re at a wedding ceremony, in a church, in a pew. The processional is almost over. Canon in D begins to play. Everyone turns to see the bride. She looks beautiful, confident as she walks down the aisle with Dad, a middle-aged man, well-built, clean-shaven, slightly gray. He looks handsome in his tan suit. When they reach the altar, he turns to his daughter. He hugs her and kisses her and tells her he loves her. “I love you, baby.” “I love you too, Daddy.” She looks up to hold back her tears. He looks down to hide his. And that’s when he sees it. You see it, too. Everybody sees it, the groom, the guests, the bride. You all see it. Dad’s tan pants are dark. Somebody behind you gasps. It’s urine. This story is an ad. It’s actually my recreation of a hook I once read in the prostate health niche. I lost track of the original ad years ago, but the wedding scene stayed with me. So, I used it as a prompt and wrote my own version. The words are different, but the technique---the shock copy---is the same. If you’re jarred, you should be. Shock copy illustrates the consequences of a problem in a severe way. This not only jolts The Reader, dominating her attention, but also creates urgency for your solution. So, it’s best used when you know The Reader is particularly resistant to taking action. For example, when it’s time to schedule an annual prostate exam.
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Authors who write like copywriters:
June 5, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author In college, I took a course dedicated to the study of only one novel, James Joyce’s magnum opus, Ulysses. My class spent an entire semester analyzing this strange text, dense with obscure references, allusions, innuendos, and red herrings. What’s more, each chapter takes on a different theme. One is a play. Another is saturated with literary devices, like onomatopoeia and alliteration. And the last chapter, believe it or not, is almost entirely stream of consciousness, thousands of words punctuated by only eight periods. “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles,” Joyce said, “that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant.” Joyce purposefully made his authorial intent unclear. His intention, it seems, was to puzzle The Reader, to make her think and hypothesize and put the pieces together, one by one, slowly, meticulously, until the reference, the chapter, the book itself suddenly clicked. He didn’t want The Reader to immediately understand. Joyce wanted her to earn each moment of clarity. This approach to writing goes against everything copywriters stand for. Reading copy must never feel like work. It should always feel easy, even effortless, because people won’t endure a confusing ad. They won’t push through. They won’t go back and reread and try to understand it. They’ll simply move on. “If you confuse them,” said marketer Donald Miller, “you’ll lose them.” My advice to developing copywriters: What you read during this formative time will inform how you write. So avoid Joyce, Burroughs, Faulkner, and other verbose, cryptic authors lest their style rubs off on you. I speak from experience: “You write like a firehose,” said my first editor after college. “You need to be a nail gun.” In the meantime, I recommend reading more accessible authors: Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski and Ernest Hemingway, Joyce Carol Oates and Sandra Cisneros and Sally Rooney. These authors write clear, concise, simple sentences. These authors write like copywriters.
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Copywriting and vignettes:
June 7, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author A vignette is a short passage that captures a moment, a scene. A few examples below. First example: In fifth grade, I got a Nintendo 64. My favorite game was GoldenEye 007. It’s a first-person shooter. I was James Bond. It was me against the Russians. Babushka watched me play for weeks. Then, one day, she said, “You’re shooting Russian soldiers in this game.” I heard her, but I wasn’t listening. I played dumb. “They’re Russian?” I said. Babushka didn’t say anything. She just sat, watching me shoot the 64-bit polygons, the Russians, sometimes in the torso, sometimes in the chest or the shoulder or the head. Sometimes in the neck. When they were shot in the neck, the soldiers clutched their throats and struggled, silently, crumpling to the ground and dying. And then they immediately disappeared. Death was very clean in GoldenEye, very neat. Babushka watched this. “So what?” I said. “We’re not Russian.” My family lived in Kyiv for generations until 1989. Ukraine and Russia were still united when we left. In 1986, when Chernobyl happened in Ukraine, millions of Russians came to aid the cleanup. “No, we’re not,” she said, “but Russians are still our people.” “Eto nashi lyudi,” she said. “These are our people.” This never left me. And now, I’m thinking about it more than ever. Now, confronted with images on TV of the brutality, the viciousness of war---for the Ukrainians, of course, and also for the Russians---the profound sacrifices being made by both sides in this colossal tragedy, this complete and utter focking waste of life. “Eto nashi lyudi.” Dear God. Second example: Mom pulled out the photo album. We sat at the table and flipped through the pages. She stopped on a picture. “This was our last apartment before we left,” she said. “It’s the last place we lived in Kyiv.” “Which building?” I said. “On the left.” “This one?” “Da, the yellow one.” She tapped on the picture. “This was our balcony.” She tapped somewhere else. “This was our window, and this one, too.” I studied the building. “I didn’t know that,” I said. “Da, da,” she said, “you lived there.” I took the picture out of its sleeve and looked at it. Mom reached across the table for a napkin. She folded it in her hand. “I just hope nothing happens to it,” she said. Third example: I turn on the music. The first song is Unchained Melody. I let it go. It plays as I lay down on the carpet next to the dog bed. Sydney’s in there. She’s being sweet. I scratch behind her ear. She looks tired, and old. I look at her leg. It’s busted now. She limps now. Oh, Sydney girl. As a copywriter: I’ve found writing vignettes to be great practice because it teaches you how to zoom in on a moment, how to tighten that moment or expand it. A vignette is compelling on its face because it’s emotional. It’s also practical, lending itself to the perspective of modern readers: “Quick, make me feel something.”
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Copy, credibility, and cold-blooded m*rder?
June 10, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author A well-dressed man is sitting on the ledge of a tall building, smoking a cigarette. Behind him, on the roof but out of earshot, there’s a small group of people. They’re standing in a tight circle, whispering. “He needs to be careful sitting there,” says a woman. “He’ll fall off.” “That’s it!” says a man, wide-eyed. “He had too much to drink. Then, he came up here and had an accident.” Everyone in the group nods. Everyone is in agreement except a tall, soft-spoken, twenty-something named Chris. He’s shaking his head. “Who’s going to do it?” says another man. Everyone looks at Chris. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about!” Chris says, his hands on his face, his fingertips digging into his cheeks. “We’re talking about him having an ac-ci-dent,” says the first man. “Just walk up to him, put your hand on his back, and give him one big push.” The Push is a reality show about social compliance. It’s an experiment, really, created by Darren Brown, a British magician and TV personality. He designed it to test how far people can be “pushed” to obey, to comply. Chris is one of his test subjects. Everyone else is an actor, including the man on the ledge (who’s strapped into a cable in case he does, in fact, get pushed). Brown’s goal is to persuade a decent person to commit murder. To achieve this, he hires more than fifty people, including actors, special effects artists, and stunt coordinators. He also rents a venue as the setting for his experiment, a fake fundraiser for a made-up charity. Brown does many things to not only create the situation leading up to the scene on the roof, but also to legitimize this scenario, to make the experience feel real for his subject. However, he uses one persuasion technique that utterly sells Chris, convincing him he’s actually involved in a life-or-death situation: Brown asked his celebrity friends to record endorsements. “This charity literally helps transform the lives of people,” says Martin Freeman, who played Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. Chris sees the famous actor on screens throughout the venue, along with Stephen Fry, Tom Daley, Alfie Boe, Robbie Williams, Matt Lucas, Denise Welch, David Tennant, and other celebrities who also recorded fake endorsements. These video testimonials, perhaps more than anything else, authenticated the experience for Chris. They made the fundraiser, the venue, and all the events leading up to the murder conspiracy believable. Indeed, video testimonials---especially those from notable and trusted people---are among the most potent sources of credibility and validation, mainly because they’re so damn hard to procure. “Proof,” said copywriter Joe Sugarman, “is the rarest component to manufacture.” And getting a reputable person to endorse you on camera is perhaps the rarest form of proof there is. Therefore, whenever possible and appropriate, use video testimonials in your marketing---and your response will almost certainly increase.
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A good start…
June 12, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author The rotary phone rang once, twice, three times. “Aloh?” “Yana, it’s Vasya.” “Oh, hey, ” said Yana. “How are---” “Listen!” Vasya cut her off. “LISTEN!” he said. “Something happened in Pripyat.” “What’s in Pripyat?” “The plant,” said Vasya. “The nuclear plant.” Vasya cleared his throat. “It blew up.” “It what?” “It focking exploded!” Silence. “Leave Kyiv. Trust me. Go east.” Silence. “Go as soon as you can,” Vasya pleaded. “If you don’t, you’ll get cancer.” Yana is my mom. In 1986, the nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Ukraine erupted. My mom lived 200 kilometers east of ground zero when Vasya called her. I wasn’t born yet. I learned the full story 30 years later, when I watched Chernobyl, a scripted series based on the event. This is accurate. The show arrests you almost immediately. Minutes into the first episode, we’re witnessing the explosion, the disaster, but we don’t know how it occurred. We just see the carnage and confusion, the profound drama---and we’re left wondering how it happened? And why? We’re left with far more questions than answers. Stories that start this way---in the middle of things---are inherently compelling. In fact, there’s a name for it: In Medias Res. In Medias Res: Winning Time is a scripted series about the genesis of the Los Angeles Lakers dynasty. It starts in the waiting area of a doctor’s office. A young woman is sitting, reading a magazine. Next to her, a small boy is playing Game Boy. Above them, Brook Shields is on TV giving an interview. It’s 1991. Behind the counter, two nurses are whispering. “Is he still in there?” “Room 12.” “There’s a photographer in front,” says one. “They want to let him out the back. Just to make sure nobody sees him.” “Okay,” says the other, “thanks.” She walks away. Suddenly, we see Magic Johnson. He’s sitting in an examination room, quiet and calm, waiting. “Earvin---” says a voice. It’s his manager. He’s standing with the nurse. Magic looks up. “Right,” he smiles. “Right on.” He stands up and walks out of the room, toward the back. People look up at him as he passes. Magic smiles at everyone. They leave and get in a car. His manager starts the engine and backs up, only to stop short. He stops the car and begins to whimper. Suddenly, he’s crying, sobbing, bent over the steering wheel, wailing. Magic, meanwhile, doesn’t say anything. He sits there, quiet and calm, waiting. Then, the screen goes black. This is how the show starts. We see this even before the opening credits. When the episode’s director, Adam McKay, was asked why he started the series with something so heavy, he said, “I mean, it goes back to my initial reading of the pilot script. Right away, I was in it; right away, I knew this wasn’t gonna be just fun times and alley-oops. I was immediately engaged,” he said. Latin for “in the middle of things,” In Medias Res drops the audience into a problem, a climactic moment, an argument or a fight or a revelation---some integral event involving the main character---without preamble. This does two things: One, it creates tension, drama. Two, it makes the audience curious. We want to know how and why the situation transpired---and as a storyteller, the sooner you do this, the more likely it is the audience will get hooked, sucked into the narrative. It’s no wonder In Medias Res is so common: The Iliad starts in the throes of the Trojan War. Saving Private Ryan begins amid the horrors of Omaha Beach. Breaking Bad opens with the main character nearly naked in the scorching New Mexico desert. Winning Time, of course, starts with Magic Johnson’s HIV diagnosis, then leaves the audience starved for context and details, eager to learn more. As a copywriter, you can do this, too. You can start your next sales email, for example, In Medias Res, opening with a clear, concise, vivid depiction of your prospect’s biggest problem, something deeply painful. Now, promise to make it go away, presenting a credible and accessible solution. Now, withhold some information; don’t paint a complete picture. Now, ask the prospect to “learn more” about your product. Now, that’s a good start.
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The formula behind one of America’s longest-running ads:
June 18, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author In copywriting, a “control” is the best-performing ad, the version pulling the highest response rate. As a conversion copywriter, you have one job, your sole purpose: beat the control. When a control is outperformed, it’s replaced by the version that beat it, the new control. But some ads---very few---are so dominant that they persevere, outselling and outlasting the competition for years, even decades. These are the ads you want to read, study, transcribe, and emulate. Copywriter Bob Stone once wrote such an ad, a direct-mail piece for The Kiplinger Letter, a financial newsletter. Stone’s promotion, now considered a masterpiece, went unbeaten for more than 35 years, out-pulling countless tests, including many submitted by preeminent copywriters. Stone’s secret? I’ll tell you exactly. He used a seven-step formula to outline his copy. This formula is now called “Bob Stone’s Gem.” It’s simple: 1) Benefit: begin with your strongest benefit. 2) Expansion: expand on your strongest benefit. 3) Positive: explain what the prospect will get. 4) Proof: prove the value with past experience. 5) Negative: explain the consequences of inaction. 6) Summary: sum up the benefits. 7) Action: ask for action. Years ago, Stone used it to structure a physical sales letter, old school. But you can still use it today to create articles, emails, pitch decks---anything intended to persuade and compel The Reader. It continues to work because the formula is timeless, rooted in psychology, so it’s as enduring and universal as the human condition itself. Let’s break down Stone’s famous ad step by step: 1) Begin with your strongest benefit: Benefits sell, which, in part, is why Bob Stone’s Gem is so compelling. It immediately asks the copywriter to focus on the strongest, most profound piece of value (usually in the headline). In this case, the salient benefit is the promise of knowing the answer to an important economic question. Stone writes: Will There Be BOOM and More INFLATION Ahead? 2) Expand on your strongest benefit: You can do this by “future-pacing” the benefit, or helping The Reader see its impact on her life tomorrow, next week, or even a year from now. The word “will” may force us to think ahead, triggering this effect. Stone writes: The next few years will see business climb to the highest level this country has ever known. And with it…inflation. Not a boom, but steady growth accompanied by rising prices. Those who prepare now for the growth and inflation that lies ahead will reap big dividends for their foresight…and avoid the blunders others will make. 3) Explain what the prospect will get: Make your offer using clear, specific language. Tell The Reader exactly what she will gain and why she needs to act immediately. Then, de-risk the decision with a guarantee, which Stone positions as a “try-out” in his ad. He writes: You’ll get the information you need for this type of planning in the Kiplinger Washington Letter…and the enclosed form will bring you the next 26 issues of this helpful service on a “try-out” basis. The fee: only 6 for the six months just ahead, a savings of almost 24% over the regular rate. 4) Prove the value with past experience: Lend credibility to your claims with facts, statistics, and testimonials. In his ad, Stone references some of Kiplinger’s accurate and potentially life-changing predictions. He writes: During the depression, in 1935, Kiplinger warned of inflation and told what to do about it. Those who heeded his advice were ready when prices began to rise. Again, in January of 1946, Kiplinger renounced the widely held view that a severe post-war depression was inevitable. Instead he predicted shortages, rising wages and prices, and a high level of business. And again, those who heeded his advice were able to avoid losses, to cash in on the surging economy of the late 40s, early 50s and mid-60s. 5) Explain the consequences of inaction: People jog to pleasure, but we sprint from pain. Indeed, we are all far more driven to avoid discomfort and suffering than to acquire satisfaction and delight. Copywriters must always keep this in mind. Stone writes: Now Kiplinger not only foresees expansion ahead, but also continuing inflation, and in his weekly Letter to clients he points out profit opportunities in the future…and also dangers. 6) Sum up the benefits: Revisit the impact, reminding The Reader of everything she stands to gain. Stone writes: The Kiplinger Letter not only keeps you informed of present trends and developments, but gives you advance notice of new government policies…political moves and their real meaning…money policy…foreign affairs…taxes…prices…union plans and tactics…employment…wages…anything that will have an effect on you, your job, your personal finances, your family. 7) Ask for action: Explain, clearly and specifically, what The Reader must do to claim your offer. Stone writes: To take advantage of this opportunity to try the Letter and benefit from its keen judgements and helpful advice during the fast-changing months ahead…fill in and return the enclosed form along with your $16 payment. And do it with this guarantee: that you may cancel the service and get a prompt refund of the unused part of your payment, any time you feel it is not worth far more to you than it costs. I’ll start your service as soon as I hear from you, and you’ll have each weekly issue on your desk every Monday morning thereafter. Years ago, Bob Stone invented a remarkable copywriting formula. Ever since, copywriters have been using it to create simple, versatile ads that compel people to take action. Now, will you?
Links
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VGC + HubSpot:
June 19, 2024 [Newsletter]
Hey, it’s Eddie. If you’re enjoying my VGC micro-essays, I think you’ll love my new HubSpot column: Moving forward, once a month, I’ll be publishing a long-form essay about writing, thinking, and living like a copywriter on the HubSpot blog, a fantastic resource I’ve been reading for over a decade---and couldn’t be more proud to partner with. My first piece is already live, ready to read.
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Becoming a copywriter:
July 15, 2024 [Newsletter]
↴ By EDDIE SHLEYNER VeryGoodCopy founder & author Twelve years ago… I walked into an office in a high-rise in downtown Chicago. The man behind the desk was wearing a suit. So was I. We shook hands. “Thanks for coming in,” he said. “Of course,” I said. “Thank you.” We sat down, and I produced my resume. The man took it and studied the paper, pursing his lips and nodding. I waited quietly. “You majored in English---” he put the paper down and looked up at me. “So did I.” We talked about literature and writing for a while. Then he asked me a question about his business. “Do you know how we make money here?” “Your website is a job marketplace,” I said. “Employers pay you to advertise their open positions.” He nodded. “And do you know why we hire copywriters?” I took a beat. “Because the ads they submit could be better?” I said. “Because the ads they submit are horrible,” he winced. “They’re bland and redundant and just---” he winced again, “just horrible.” He had some coffee and put the cup down with a thud. “It’s a big problem.” He told me job seekers respond well to engaging ads. “They want to visualize themselves in the role.” He closed one eye and finger framed, like a director. “They want to feel excited about doing the work.” I nodded. “The more excited they feel, the more likely they are to apply, which is how we make money.” He slurped some coffee. “So this is why we hire copywriters.” He told me it’s an entry-level contract position, paid hourly. There’s no insurance or PTO, but I get to write all day (and every other Friday, the team orders pizza for lunch). He told me there’s a performance review every three months, and if my ads are converting enough applicants, I’ll get a contract extension. He offered me the job right there in his office. I had no copywriting experience whatsoever. “You’re a writer,” he said. “Copy isn’t literature, but you’ll pick it up quickly. I’ve faith.” I was 23 years old and badly wanted to write for a living. I wanted it more than medical insurance or paid time off or job security. I stood up and shook his hand. “Thank you.” I smiled. “I accept.” That night, I typed “becoming a copywriter” into Google. Twelve years later, my newsletter is among the most-read copywriting resources on the internet, endorsed and recommended by the same marketing and advertising leaders who helped build this industry. How did this happen? I’ll tell you exactly: First, I began obsessively studying the craft. I read books and articles. I watched interviews, seminars, and presentations. I transcribed and analyzed sales letters and print ads by renowned copywriters, the shoulders we stand on: Eugene Schwartz, Joe Sugarman, Drayton Bird, David Ogilvy, Rory Sutherland, Brian Clark, Phyllis Robinson, John Carlton, Gary Bencivenga, Clayton Makepeace, Kim Krause Schwalm, Claude Hopkins, Bill Bernbach, David Abbott, David Deutsch, Ben Settle, George Lois, Sean D’Souza, Austin Kleon, Ken McCarthy, Bob Bly, Joanna Wiebe, and many others. I also drew inspiration and creative wisdom from artists, actors, musicians, comedians, playwrights, poets and novelists, movies and TV shows. I consumed a lot. Then, I wrote about what I learned. When I came across an insight---a technique or principle that helped me write better or think more clearly---I challenged myself to explain it in writing. If I can do this, I thought, it will prove I understand the concept and am ready to use it in my own ads. I did this in earnest for some time. Years passed. Eventually, I found new work as a copywriter, this time at an agency. But I never shared my “personal” writing. In fact, I kept it hidden, stowed away in a running Word document I titled “micro-lessons.” I often wrote at my desk during lunch. And because I had a literary background, I framed many lessons with stories, using characters and dialogue. I was writing vignettes. “Is that a book?” My colleague was standing behind me, looking at my screen, a puzzled expression on her face. “What is that?” she said. I told her what it was. “Can I read it?” she said. “You want to read this?” I said. “I’m curious,” she said. It was Friday afternoon. I shrugged and sent her the document. On Monday morning I saw her in the office kitchenette. She was leaning against the counter, looking at her phone, waiting for the coffee maker to beep. She smiled when I walked in. “I read your micro-lessons,” she said. “Oh?” I felt embarrassed. “They’re very good,” she said. “Start a blog already!” I shrugged, smiled back, and said thank you. Her feedback surprised me. It felt good. So I shared my writing with others. More goodness, more encouragement. Okay, I thought. I bought the VeryGoodCopy.com domain. Eventually, the blog became a newsletter, which grew very slowly for a while---and then very, very fast. Suddenly, my work was being read and shared. Suddenly, it had an audience. Suddenly, I was becoming a copywriter in public. This book is the culmination of my self-education so far---my best micro-lessons on how to think and write in this line of work. Enjoy!
Links
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An antidote for creative gaslighting:
July 18, 2024 [Newsletter]
I’m about to ship the book I’ve been editing since January. It’s 207
chapters across 457 pages. I don’t know how it happened, but there it
is. I’m holding it, flipping through it. Proud, yes, but also tired.
It’s been work, pouring over the words and sentences and paragraphs.
Sometimes adding and sometimes omitting, but always questioning, and
often agonizing. Sometimes I even gaslighted myself. There were levels
to this:
When the light was dim, familiar words suddenly seemed misspelled and
punctuation marks suddenly seemed misplaced. When it was brighter,
hotter, sentences I once liked suddenly seemed tired or superfluous or
even incoherent. And when the light was brightest, red-hot, nothing made
sense or sounded good or felt right. It was as though I scratched my
brain and every edit was suddenly worse or different, but certainly not
better.
This is when I’d stop writing and switch my focus. I would work on a
“no pressure” project: I’d make these little buildings out of pieces
from the very first Architecture Studio set (since retired). It’s the
only Lego set, as far as I can tell, to come without Building
Instructions. So everything I constructed was improvised---and I wasn’t
precious at all. I completed each building in roughly the amount of time
it took to find the blocks and snap them together. I was playing,
really, the same way my small son plays with blocks---spontaneously,
instinctively. And when the building was complete, I’d stage a little
photoshoot. I was playing, but now with shadows and filters and angles
and scale. I wasn’t doing this for work, per se. That is, nobody needed
to see it or approve it---or approve of it. I was doing it for myself,
making something purely for the sake of making it. No pressure.
This was one of the most creatively therapeutic things I did while
working on The Book. Making something on the fly, without premeditation,
recharged my confidence---my self-trust---because it affirmed my
creative intuition. “You need to trust yourself,” explains Anne Lamott
in Bird By Bird, her excellent book on writing. “Don’t look down at
your feet to see if you’re doing it right,” Anne tells us. “Just
dance.”
Trusting yourself is having the courage to follow the instincts you’ve
acquired after much practice, experience, or study. But it’s possible
to temporarily lose this part of yourself---your creative
confidence---especially when you’re under pressure and every decision
feels so weighty and consequential, so final. When this happens: A “no
pressure” project can be the antidote. Making something devil-may-care,
creating without urgency or stress or any degree of planning or
expectation. Try it and you’ll see, these types of projects tend to
turn out well---often producing something you’re happy with, or even
proud of---simply because you’re not working, but playing, intuiting,
trusting yourself, dancing. And in the process you’re reminded that you
can, in fact, still bring it on the floor.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/book]{.underline}
Becoming a copywriter:
July 19, 2024 [Newsletter]
Twelve years ago… I walked into an office in a high-rise in downtown
Chicago. The man behind the desk was wearing a suit. So was I. We shook
hands. “Thanks for coming in,” he said. “Of course,” I said. “Thank
you.” We sat down, and I produced my resume. The man took it and
studied the paper, pursing his lips and nodding. I waited quietly. “You
majored in English---” he put the paper down and looked up at me. “So
did I.” We talked about literature and writing for a while. Then he
asked me a question about his business. “Do you know how we make money
here?” “Your website is a job marketplace,” I said. “Employers pay
you to advertise their open positions.” He nodded. “And do you know
why we hire copywriters?” I took a beat. “Because the ads they submit
could be better?” I said. “Because the ads they submit are horrible,”
he winced. “They’re bland and redundant and just---” he winced again,
“just horrible.” He had some coffee and put the cup down with a thud.
“It’s a big problem.”
He told me job seekers respond well to engaging ads. “They want to
visualize themselves in the role.” He closed one eye and finger framed,
like a director. “They want to feel excited about doing the work.” I
nodded. “The more excited they feel, the more likely they are to apply,
which is how we make money.” He slurped some coffee. “So this is why
we hire copywriters.” He told me it’s an entry-level contract
position, paid hourly. There’s no insurance or PTO, but I get to write
all day (and every other Friday, the team orders pizza for lunch). He
told me there’s a performance review every three months, and if my ads
are converting enough applicants, I’ll get a contract extension. He
offered me the job right there in his office. I had no copywriting
experience whatsoever. “You’re a writer,” he said. “Copy isn’t
literature, but you’ll pick it up quickly. I’ve faith.” I was 23
years old and badly wanted to write for a living. I wanted it more than
medical insurance or paid time off or job security. I stood up and shook
his hand. “Thank you.” I smiled. “I accept.”
That night, I typed “becoming a copywriter” into Google. Twelve years
later, my newsletter is among the most-read copywriting resources on the
internet, endorsed and recommended by the same marketing and advertising
leaders who helped build this industry.
How did this happen? I’ll tell you exactly: First, I began obsessively
studying the craft. I read books and articles. I watched interviews,
seminars, and presentations. I transcribed and analyzed sales letters
and print ads by renowned copywriters, the shoulders we stand on: Eugene
Schwartz, Joe Sugarman, Drayton Bird, David Ogilvy, Rory Sutherland, and
many others. I also drew inspiration and creative wisdom from artists,
actors, musicians, comedians, playwrights, poets and novelists, movies
and TV shows. I consumed a lot. Then, I wrote about what I learned. When
I came across an insight---a technique or principle that helped me write
better or think more clearly---I challenged myself to explain it in
writing. If I can do this, I thought, it will prove I understand the
concept and am ready to use it in my own ads.
Eventually, I found new work as a copywriter, this time at an agency.
But I never shared my “personal” writing. In fact, I kept it hidden,
stowed away in a running Word document I titled “micro-lessons.” “Is
that a book?” My colleague was standing behind me, looking at my
screen. “What is that?” she said. I told her what it was. “Can I read
it?” she said. I shrugged and sent her the document. On Monday morning:
“I read your micro-lessons,” she said. “They’re very good,” she
said. “Start a blog already!” I shrugged, smiled back, and said thank
you. So I shared my writing with others. I bought the VeryGoodCopy.com
domain. Eventually, the blog became a newsletter. Suddenly, I was
becoming a copywriter in public.
Links
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/book]{.underline}
My very best writing:
August 2, 2024 [Newsletter]
Enjoy! You can also read this in your browser A newsletter about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner
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All about you:
August 6, 2024 [Newsletter]
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Attention alchemy:
August 13, 2024 [Newsletter]
Almost every episode of Breaking Bad begins with a “cold open,” a
short, standalone sequence designed to immediately captivate the
audience. These openers typically use flash-forwards or flashbacks to
create suspense and draw you in. But an episode called “Fly” uses
another technique. All you see is zoomed-in footage of a house fly.
It’s ultra-close. It’s cleaning itself, the way flies do,
meticulously, moving quickly and deliberately. It’s horrid. All you
hear, meanwhile, is a woman’s voice in the background. She’s somewhere
far away. She’s reciting a lullaby, the way mothers do, gently, singing
slowly and softly: Hush, little baby, don’t say a word/ Mama’s gonna
buy you a mocking bird. It’s soothing. It’s at once soothing and
horrid---and you can’t stop watching it.
This is remarkable because, on its own, footage of a fly cleaning itself
isn’t necessarily captivating. Neither is audio of a lullaby. But put
them together and some strange alchemy happens. One plus one equals
three. This is because contrasting things---words, concepts, colors,
images---create drama, tension, energy. Great creative work often
happens when opposite things and concepts intersect: Loooong + shrt.
Clean + diRtY. Dark + light. BIG + small. New + old. Together, each
works to highlight the other, commanding your attention in the process.
Links
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The copywriter’s lifestyle:
August 16, 2024 [Newsletter]
You can also read this in your browser A newsletter about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner : Did someone forward this to you? Click here to learn more about VeryGoodCopy & join 70,618 valued email subscribers “Please, God, can everyone involved in advertising---and not only copywriters---just read this book …I loved every moment.” ---RORY SUTHERLAND Ogilvy Vice Chairman and author of Alchemy Already own it? Thank you! Please take a moment to leave a rating or review
Links
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Drama
August 19, 2024 [Newsletter]
: You can also read this in your browser A newsletter about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner : Did someone forward this to you? Click here to learn more about VeryGoodCopy & join 70,744 valued email subscribers “Please, God, can everyone involved in advertising---and not only copywriters---just read this book …I loved every moment.” ---RORY SUTHERLAND Ogilvy Vice Chairman and author of Alchemy Already own it? Thank you! Please take a moment to leave a rating or review
Links
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Are you trying hard enough?
August 22, 2024 [Newsletter]
: You can also read this in your browser A newsletter about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner : Did someone forward this to you? Click here to learn more about VeryGoodCopy & join 70,827 valued email subscribers “Please, God, can everyone involved in advertising---and not only copywriters---just read this book …I loved every moment.” ---RORY SUTHERLAND Ogilvy Vice Chairman and author of Alchemy Already own it? Thank you! Please leave a rating or review on Amazon and/or Goodreads
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Taglines, mind movies, and irresistible marketing:
August 27, 2024 [Newsletter]
VeryGoodCopy x HubSpot → You can also read this in your browser A newsletter about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner : Did someone forward this to you? Click here to learn more about VeryGoodCopy & join 71,023 valued email subscribers “Please, God, can everyone involved in advertising---and not only copywriters---just read this book …I loved every moment.” ---RORY SUTHERLAND Ogilvy Vice Chairman and author of Alchemy Already own it? Thank you! Please leave a rating or review on Amazon and Goodreads
Links
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Here you go…
August 29, 2024 [Newsletter]
Enjoy! You can also read this in your browser A newsletter about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner : Did someone forward this to you? Click here to learn more about VeryGoodCopy & join 71,120 valued email subscribers “Please, God, can everyone involved in advertising---and not only copywriters---just read this book …I loved every moment.” ---RORY SUTHERLAND Ogilvy Vice Chairman and author of Alchemy Already own it? Thank you! Please leave a rating or review on Amazon and Goodreads . ** VeryGoodCopy #367 My most compelling writing, explained
Links
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Person(a):
September 10, 2024 [Newsletter]
I love Peanuts, the cartoon. It’s hard to not see myself in those kids. I relate to them when they’re happy or self-conscious or when they’re hurting. Many people do. After all, the show is a composite of stories about the human experience. But what’s interesting is it’s all based on only one person’s experience: Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts.
‘This whole business of Charlie Brown,’ Schulz said, ‘these are memories of my own miserable days. I think Charlie Brown is just a little bit of what all of us have inside of us. Mainly me. Mainly, I’m Charlie Brown.’
This speaks to the fact that the most resonant stories often come from a singular point of view. Because when you speak from your personal experience, you open the door for others to understand you and relate to you.
A persona isn’t real, but a person is. Lean into this when doing your research. Work to understand the perspective of an individual---one prospect---and very often, their personal hopes, needs, and desires will be your most honest and accurate source of information.
Links
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Reintroducing VeryGoodCopy…
October 31, 2024 [Newsletter]
I haven’t sent a newsletter in a while---a couple months or so---because I’ve been moving email platforms: after 10+ years with MailChimp, I’ve switched VeryGoodCopy to KIT (formerly ConvertKit). This short, simple email is part of the migration process. The goal is to ‘reintroduce’ VGC to your email provider and keep future newsletters out of your spam.
To ensure my emails reach your inbox: Please reply to this email. I’ll personally see your message, so feel free to say anything you like. Even just a one-word reply will help your email provider recognize and trust this newsletter.
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Nothing understands a human like:
November 9, 2024 [Newsletter]
I’m watching Grotesquerie. The main character is detective Lois Tryon. She’s working a case when her Police Chief gets her attention. ‘I’m not asking you to retire,’ says the Chief. ‘They’re cutting 65% of the force. They flew me to Saint Paul last week for a presentation.’ ‘On what?’ ‘Emerging technologies in policing. Artificial intelligence. Autonomous cruisers. A whole network of cameras with a centralized brain.’
‘Getting AI to do your work…that’s the first step, certainly. If you don’t, your boss will. The second step is to take the time you’ve freed up and do work that the AI can’t do.’ ~ Seth Godin
‘No, no,’ says Tryon. ‘I’ll solve this case---like I solved all my other cases---because I have an actual brain. And a heart. Just like a perp. Nothing understands a human like another human.‘
Links
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All that is wrong:
November 12, 2024 [Newsletter]
It’s 1997. I’m a small boy in bed. I’m awake. It’s early on a Saturday morning. My parents are still asleep. The house is quiet. I get up and get dressed, sweatpants and a t-shirt. I’m going to the couch. It’s GoldenEye time.
GoldenEye 007 is a first-person shooter developed by Rare. Despite many delays, it went on to defy all expectations and define a generation of gaming. But before the accolades came pouring in, the creators had major doubts.
‘When we were making it,’ said Doak, ‘we were just trying to get it finished.’ ‘You see all that is wrong with it,’ said Hilton. ‘You get to the end of the game and you are blind to what’s good about it and all you can see is all the things that were on your wishlist that you haven’t had the time to do. So you kind of only see its flaws.’
We have no idea what we’ve made until we let it go. My dad’s up. He’s standing behind me, watching the television. ‘What’s this?’ he says. ‘It’s a James Bond game,’ I say. ‘Is it good?’ he says. I nod. ‘It’s perfect.‘
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Introducing: The Lesson Vault
November 13, 2024 [Newsletter]
The Lesson Vault is a new email series inside the VGC newsletter. As a subscriber you’ll get an evergreen, ‘fan-favorite’ micro-lesson every few days.
‘Do you floss?’ he said. I was at the dentist, in the chair, feet up. ‘You should do it every day,’ he said. ‘It gets the little bits of leftover food out of your teeth.’ ‘Because you know---little bits of food are like termites for your teeth. They’ll eat right through them.’
Our brains actually think in images, not words. Copywriter Eugene Schwartz explains this in his book The Brilliance Breakthrough. It’s easier for your brain to decode a picture into words than it is to encode words into a picture. Therefore, communicating in images will increase the clarity of your message. The word ‘termite’ is concrete, clear. When you hear it, you see the thing, the bug, its legs, its pincers, the mouth, eating your teeth like moist wood rotting in a crawl space.
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Ignore this:
November 15, 2024 [Newsletter]
The French have an expression: ‘l’esprit de l’escalier’, or ‘staircase wit’ in English. It describes the feeling you get when you think of the ideal thing to say in a situation, but you’re already gone, down the stairs. So only in hindsight does it arrive.
I got a message out of the blue asking about social media engagement. My answer was trite and hackneyed---and reflects my discontent with the question itself. For engagement and reach on social media is a false proxy, a misleading indicator, a flawed measure of the actual quality of your work.
Seth Godin writes about this phenomenon in his book, The Song of Significance: ‘The proxy of the Times list has been so manipulated that it’s now meaningless---and the work publishers and authors put into shifting their efforts into this antiquated measurement is distracting and ultimately wasted. A false proxy is convenient, vivid and unhelpful.’
L’esprit de l’escalier, indeed. I should’ve replied, simply: ignore false proxies.
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The most powerful element in advertising:
November 16, 2024 [Newsletter]
I was mid-sentence when the client raised his hand. ‘Sorry to cut you off,’ he said, ‘I’m just noticing something---looks like you replaced a lot of exclamation marks with periods?’ I nodded. ‘Yeah, I think I removed all of them, actually.’
‘The most powerful element in advertising,’ said creative director Bill Bernbach, ‘is truth.’ And exclamation marks are, very often, less ‘truth’ and more contrived enthusiasm, hype. The Reader sniffs this out, resenting the manipulation.
‘One way to do this really, really fast,’ copywriter Ben Settle said, ‘is just to either get rid of all the exclamation marks or use them really sparingly. If you’re saying something that someone really needs to hear, it doesn’t really matter how you say it. Just saying it alone makes it exciting.’
Truth is the ultimate exclamation mark. Put something truly valuable in front of the ideal prospect, and you won’t need to shout to make it compelling. Just saying it---with a period---makes it exciting.
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Copywriting and windows:
November 17, 2024 [Newsletter]
Copywriter Eugene Schwartz said something I think about every time I write an ad. ‘The one thing I hate most in the world,’ he said, ‘is when somebody comes up to me and says, “Wow! That headline is so beautiful. Where did you get those words?”’ ‘I say, Oh no, you’re seeing the words; you’re not seeing through the words.’
‘Look,’ said Schwartz: ‘If you want to write poetry, if you want to write prose, if you want to write novels, go outside of advertising. Because the words in advertising are like the windows in a store. You must be able to look right through them and see the product. If you see the window, it’s dirty.’
Conversion copy should not call attention to itself. It should call attention to the prospect, to her problems. Or to the product, to the pleasure it produces or the pain it prevents. Keep your windows clean.
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Copywriting or design?
November 23, 2024 [Newsletter]
‘Copywriting or design---’ he says, ‘which comes first?’ ‘Which comes first?’ I ask. ‘Yeah, like, in general,’ he says, ‘when you’re making an ad, does design follow copy, or is it the other way around?’
For a long time, ads were made a certain way. The copywriter studied the brief, wrote the words, and slipped the work under the art director’s door. Then, the art director designed around the writer’s concept and vision. So, it wasn’t a collaborative process. It was an assembly line---and the order was copy first, design second.
Until 1959, when creative director Bill Bernbach tried something new. He put the copywriter and art director in a room together to think, work, and create simultaneously. Bernbach’s ‘creative teams’ went on to make remarkably innovative advertising, including the famous VW Think Small campaign.
‘So,’ I say, ‘I think the idea comes first.’ Advertising, first and foremost, is about ideas---and the best ideas come out of collaboration and teamwork, not isolation.
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Meeting your firstborn child:
November 24, 2024 [Newsletter]
I asked one of the big AI writing engines a question: ‘Can you describe meeting your firstborn child?’ The AI thought for a moment, then produced 88 words: ‘Meeting my firstborn child was a truly magical experience…’
I read it, then wrote my own description (limiting myself to the same 88-word count): ‘He’s so quiet,’ I said, looking up at the nurse. She smiled behind her mask. We all wore masks. ‘Is that okay?’ I said. ‘Is it okay he’s not crying?’ ‘It’s okay,’ said the nurse. ‘He’s quiet but alert. Just look at him looking at you.’ He was looking in my eyes. ‘He’s saying hello,’ she smiled. ‘Hello,’ I said. I felt like crying. ‘Hello, son.’ My son, Beau.
AI can be a remarkable productivity tool. For example, I use AI as an instrument for sourcing and organizing ideas. But it cannot connect the dots like we can. It can’t be personal like us, human like us. It can’t feel the gravity of a profound moment. These are uniquely human experiences. So, will AI replace writers? It will not.
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How to write a compelling sentence (9 rules + 57 examples):
November 26, 2024 [Newsletter]
In copywriting, a ‘compelling’ sentence leaves The Reader curious, intrigued, wanting more. Copywriters have a specific name for sentences like this. We call them fascinations.
‘Writing fascinations,’ said internet marketing pioneer, Ken McCarthy, ‘is the single-most important copywriting skill.’
Why? Because if you know how to write a good fascination, you know how to write a compelling headline, subject line, and just about any other line that creates curiosity and intrigue, intensifying desire and, ultimately, moving people to take action.
Rule #1: Write more than you need. Quality is the product of quantity.
Rule #2: Prove it with specificity. Every fascination needs a benefit.
Rule #3: Prove it with a source.
Rule #4: Clarity beats concision.
Rule #5: Use simple words.
Rule #6: Use the prospect’s language.
Rule #7: Avoid ‘transactional’ language.
Rule #8: Avoid ‘work’ words.
Rule #9: Create variance. Variety is interesting.
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Modern marketing meets classic direct-response copy:
November 28, 2024 [Newsletter]
At its core, Transformational Landing Pages teaches you how to apply classic direct-response thinking and writing to modern digital landing pages.
Links
This is it:
November 29, 2024 [Promotion]
It’s been a year since I last discounted my video course, Transformational Landing Pages: After today, it’ll probably be another year before you can get life-time access to this resource for any discount whatsoever, much less 50% off the regular price.
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Writing the picture:
November 30, 2024 [Newsletter]
Kels gave me a Polaroid camera for my birthday. It came in a box with two types of film: black-and-white and color. Every Polaroid picture is special, I think, because it’s one-of-a-kind, pure: one take, one print. Taking a dozen pictures on your phone and posting the best one feels, somehow, less pure. But a Polaroid is impossible to contrive.
“Eddie---” I look up from my chair. A flash goes off. “Nice,” I say. “We’ll see---” Kels says, putting the picture in a cabinet to develop in the dark. She walks away. I’m still sitting, holding Beau, watching him chug his bottle. He’s scarfing it down, ravenous. Serious eating. I pull the bottle out of his mouth and tell him to chill, chill, chill, until he gives me a look, and I give him back the milk.
Do you have a Polaroid picture somewhere? Dig it up. Any picture will do. Dig it up and write it---‘write the picture’---by giving it context, animating the subjects, and showing us what they’re doing and saying before and after. Use figurative language, sensory language. Make us feel the tone of the picture, the mood. This is an excellent storytelling exercise. Great practice.
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Don’t despair:
December 1, 2024 [Promotion]
If you’re among the folks who emailed me yesterday, distraught about missing the Transformational Landing Pages Black Friday deal, my one and only discount of the year: Don’t despair! That’s what Cyber Monday is for. Compel more visitors to buy, download, or subscribe: If you use a landing page to get visitors to buy a product, download a resource, schedule a demo, or subscribe to a newsletter, this course will show you exactly how to improve your conversion rate.
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Quantity vs. quality:
January 5, 2025 [Commercial]
↴ Eddie Shleyner VeryGoodCopy, founder Work with me → I studied literature in college. One semester, I enrolled in a course about writing vignettes. On the first day of class, the professor asked us to count off by twos. “One.” “Two.” “One.” “Two,” I said. “One.” “Two.” And so on until everyone sounded off. “Okay,” said the prof, “listen up.” “If you are a one,” he said, “you will be graded solely on the quality of your final submission, the last vignette you turn in.” The class murmured. “If you’re a two,” he went on, “you will be graded solely on the quantity of vignettes you turn in. The more you turn in, the higher your grade will be, regardless of the quality. Fifty vignettes gets you an automatic A-plus.” Hands shot up. The professor pointed at someone. “Is that really fair?” said the student. “Shouldn’t we all be graded on the quality of our work?” “I agree,” someone interjected. “Vignettes are art---and art is about quality, not quantity. Anyone can write a bunch of crap!” The professor nodded, walked around his desk, and sat on the edge. “I’ve done this for a long time,” he said, “and you wanna know something?” The class was quiet. “The people with the highest quantity of submissions always---always,” he winced for emphasis, “produce the finest quality work, too.” I wrote fifty vignettes that semester. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done for my writing.
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Being a copywriter:
January 9, 2025 [Commercial]
↴ Eddie Shleyner VeryGoodCopy, founder Work with me→ It’s 1968: Don Draper, the creative director at an ad agency, meets Lloyd Hawley, a supervisor at LeaseTech, a company that installs computers, which, back then, took up an entire room. “You must have a hell of a business right now,” Don says, gesturing towards the machine Lloyd’s team is wheeling into his office. “We’ll see,” says Lloyd. “It’s tough, because we both sell IBM’s product and compete with them.” “Who’s winning?” Don says. “Who’s replacing more humans?” “Well I go into businesses every day,” says Lloyd, “and it’s been my experience these machines can be a metaphor for whatever’s on people’s minds.” “Because they’re afraid of computers?” says Don. “Yes,” Lloyd says. “This machine is frightening to people, but it’s made by people.” “And people aren’t frightening?” “It’s not that,” Lloyd says. “It’s more of a cosmic disturbance. This machine is intimidating because it contains infinite quantities of information, and that’s threatening, because human existence is finite.” He shifts his weight. “But isn’t it godlike that we’ve mastered the infinite? The IBM 360 can count more stars in a day than we can in a lifetime.” Don looks at him. “But what man laid on his back counting stars and thought about a number?” This conversation is fiction, an excerpt from Mad Men. But the sentiment---the fear---is real, an accurate reflection of the tension people felt in the late 1960s when the emergence of computers was both a practical threat and an existential one. Back then technology evoked awe for what humans created, but also anxiety over being eclipsed by it. In 2025, people everywhere, in almost every line of work, feel the same way. Once again, we’re feeling this insecurity, this dread, this loss of control, a “cosmic disturbance” as Lloyd puts it. It’s dehumanizing, in a way, a poignant reminder of our own finitude: “The IBM 360,” Lloyd says, “can count more stars in a day than we can in a lifetime.” “But what man laid on his back counting stars and thought about a number?” says Don. As a copywriter, I love this exchange and think about it often. I think about Don’s position, about his reluctance to quantify the stars. Instead, he prefers to dream about them, to create stories about them. This mindset---this propensity to imagine and wonder and make meaning rather than merely calculate---is a big part of being a copywriter.
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Vignettes:
January 12, 2025 [Commercial]
↴ Eddie Shleyner VeryGoodCopy, founder Work with me →
A vignette is a short passage that captures a moment, a scene.
A few examples below.
First example:
In fifth grade, I got a Nintendo 64. My favorite game was GoldenEye 007.
It’s a first-person shooter. I was James Bond. It was me against the
Russians. Babushka watched me play for weeks. Then, one day, she said,
“You’re shooting Russian soldiers in this game.” I heard her, but I
wasn’t listening. I played dumb. “They’re Russian?” I said. Babushka
didn’t say anything. She just sat, watching me shoot the 64-bit
polygons, the Russians, sometimes in the torso, sometimes in the chest
or the shoulder or the head. Sometimes in the neck. When they were shot
in the neck, the soldiers clutched their throats and struggled,
silently, crumpling to the ground and dying. And then they immediately
disappeared. Death was very clean in GoldenEye, very neat. Babushka
watched this. “So what?” I said. “We’re not Russian.” My family lived in
Kyiv for generations until 1989. Ukraine and Russia were still united
when we left. In 1986, when Chernobyl happened in Ukraine, millions of
Russians came to aid the cleanup. “No, we’re not,” she said, “but
Russians are still our people.” “Eto nashi lyudi,” she said. “These are
our people.” This never left me. And now, I’m thinking about it more
than ever. Now, confronted with images on TV of the brutality, the
viciousness of war---for the Ukrainians, of course, and also for the
Russians---the profound sacrifices being made by both sides in this
colossal tragedy, this complete and utter fucking waste of life. “Eto
nashi lyudi.” Dear God.
Second example:
Mom pulled out the photo album. We sat at the table and flipped through
the pages. She stopped on a picture. “This was our last apartment before
we left,” she said. “It’s the last place we lived in Kyiv.” “Which
building?” I said. “On the left.” “This one?” “Da, the yellow one.” She
tapped on the picture. “This was our balcony.” She tapped somewhere
else. “This was our window, and this one, too.” I studied the building.
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “Da, da,” she said, “you lived there.” I
took the picture out of its sleeve and looked at it. Mom reached across
the table for a napkin. She folded it in her hand. “I just hope nothing
happens to it,” she said.
Third example:
I turn on the music. The first song is Unchained Melody. I let it go. It
plays as I lay down on the carpet next to the dog bed. Sydney’s in
there. She’s being sweet. Elvis is singing in the background. “Oh, my
love…my darling…” I scratch behind her ear. She looks tired, and
old. “Time goes by so slowly…and time can do so much…” I look at her
leg. It’s busted now. She limps now. “Lonely rivers flow…to the sea,
to the sea…” Oh, Sydney girl. “Godspeed your love…to me…”
As a copywriter:
I’ve found writing vignettes to be great practice because it teaches you
how to zoom in on a moment, how to tighten that moment or expand it. A
vignette is compelling on its face because it’s emotional. It’s also
practical, lending itself to the perspective of modern readers: “Quick,
make me feel something.”
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What if…?
January 14, 2025 [Promotion]
↴ Eddie Shleyner VeryGoodCopy, founder Work with me→ February 3, 2001 was one of NBC’s highest-rated Saturday nights. The premier of the XFL, a new football league, earned an unprecedented 9.5 rating (up 86 percent). It was a momentous achievement for the copywriters behind the XFL’s advertising. “NBC had the most advanced marketing team in television history,” said Dick Ebersol, who led NBC Sports at the time. “They sold NBC from third place to first place, and during that entire time they were led by John Miller.” Ad executive John Miller on the set of ESPN’s documentary, This Was the XFL. John Miller launched shows like ER, Seinfeld, Law & Order, and The West Wing. But unlike these programs---which were fully baked products by the time they reached Miller’s desk---the XFL was just a concept. “I’m not exactly sure what it was because in truth, we never saw what it was,” said Miller. “And in about six weeks, we had to show the advertisers what this could be. But we didn’t have any team names. And we weren’t sure who the football players were gonna be. And we really didn’t know exactly what the game was going to be,” he said. “The XFL was just described to us as this smash-mouth football league---take no prisoners, no holds barred---that would be vicious and tough. So we asked ourselves,” said Miller, “how would the XFL train? What if we were watching the athletes practice, what would we see?” As a copywriter, when you don’t have all the information, ask “What if…?” Many novelists also work this way, especially those who write without an outline. Stephen King is a prime example. He uses the “What if…?” trick to give his books a starting point: * What if… vampires descended on a big city? (Salem’s Lot) * What if… a huge, rabid dog was loose in a small town? (Cujo) * What if… a community is suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field? (Under the Dome) Ask, then let your imagination go: Miller’s commercials showed XFL athletes running through minefields, catching balls fired from tanks, tackling Mack trucks and getting hit by industrial wrecking balls. “Was there some hyperbole?” said Miller. “Perhaps there was,” he smiled, “but it looked tough, and it was very easy for the football fan to understand that this was gonna be rough and tumble football.” The XFL’s promos depicted the league’s uniquely “vicious” style of play, creating enough intrigue and curiosity to attract one of the biggest primetime audiences of all time---and it all started with a hypothetical.
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Horrible, horrible copy:
January 19, 2025 [Commercial]
↴ Eddie Shleyner VeryGoodCopy, founder Work with me →
July, 1992---
Me and my grandma, my babushka, were walking, holding hands. I was
small, oblivious. I didn’t know I was about to see a miracle. It was
hot, and home was far away. My mouth was dry. “I want water,” I said. “I
need water!” Babushka didn’t have water. “You want water?” she said.
“Yes.” “Well, I only have a Thermos with tea.” She knew I loved tea. “Do
you want tea instead?” “Uh-huh.” “Then make me a cup with your hand,”
she said. “I need some-where to pour it.” Babushka tucked down my thumb
and curled my fingers around it. “Now hold still,” she said. She knelt
down and picked up the Thermos. “Hold very still.” She poured the tea
into my tiny fist. I waited, timing it, then frantically motioned for
her to stop just before the invisible liquid spilled over my hand.
Babushka stopped pouring. I drank. It felt so good. “It’s not too hot?”
she said. “No, it’s iced,” I said. “Oh, it’s iced tea?” I nodded. “Okay
then, drink up,” she said. “I love you.”
April, 2007---
“I love you,” I said. My mouth was dry. My grandma couldn’t talk. The
tubes. She just blinked and squeezed my fingers. I leaned into her. “I
love you very much.” She blinked again. The sliding door whooshed open,
and my family walked in. “We love you, Mama,” said my dad. My mom was
crying without sound. I could feel her tears. The sliding door whooshed
again. The oncologist walked in and looked down, her lips pursed, her
hands folded over a clipboard. “We’ll be right back, Ma,” said my dad.
“Right back.” Outside the ICU, the doctor told us her condition worsened
overnight. “I’m so sorry,” she said. Silence. Nobody spoke. I turned
around and looked through the glass.
May, 2007---
After Babushka died, things were quiet for a few weeks. Quiet, quiet.
Then I walked by an ad. It was downtown, glued to a poll. The copy was
in all caps: Oh, so you quietly cured cancer? I ripped it down and
crumpled it up and threw it in a trash can with the other garbage. Seth
Godin said, “Crafting a story that tricks people into making short-term
decisions they regret in the long run is the worst kind of marketing
sin.” Ads make promises. Promises bring people hope. Don’t mess with a
person’s hope.
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Emotional truth:
January 20, 2025 [Newsletter]
Did someone forward this to you? Join some 75,000 valued email subscribers. Learn more→ Enjoy unique, meticulously crafted “micro” lessons about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner Sponsor a future issue→ Get The Book and own the best “micro” lessons from the first 10 years of VeryGoodCopy. (If you already have a copy, please read this .) Emotional truth: ↴ Work with me→ In 2020: Bob Woodward---the prolific investigative journalist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner---was a guest on Dax Shepard’s cerebral podcast, Armchair Expert. Woodward, the author of 21 books on American politics, was there to promote his latest Donald Trump bestseller: Rage. “What’s interesting about this situation,” said Bob, quoting former US Secretary of Defense James Mattis, “is the people who believe in Trump don’t believe what he says, but they still believe in him.” Dax didn’t hesitate. “I think people underestimate the importance, value, and reality of an emotional truth,” he said. “So there is an objective, factual layer that we’re incorporating into living. But then we’re also very emotional human beings and we wanna discount that---and I think it’s an error to do so,” he said. “So if something emotionally feels true, I’m not one to try to argue that point with anyone.” Bob agreed. “Yes,” he said. “You not only have to get the facts of somebody’s life, you have to get their emotional truth.” If you’re a copywriter, you know this. You know that in matters of persuasion, feelings trump all. “If you quantified everyone’s life at the end of their life,” said Dax, “and you had a table with how many decisions were made based on facts and how many were based on emotions, I have to imagine it’s weighted in the emotional decision making.” “Of course,” said Bob. “That’s just what we do.” —>yeh? yeh? Enjoy the best writing from the first 10 years of VGC: own all 207 original, fully-updated “micro” lessons inside VeryGoodCopy: The Book . (If you already have a copy---and don’t mind publicity---please read this .) Thanks for reading. I’m honored you’re here and would love to hear from you. If you’d like to write me a note, simply reply to this email. Otherwise I’ll see you in the next issue!
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Read this to write better:
January 24, 2025 [Newsletter]
Did someone forward this to you? Join some 80,000 valued email subscribers. Learn more→ Enjoy unique, meticulously crafted “micro” lessons about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner Sponsor a future issue→ Get The Book and own the best “micro” lessons from the first 10 years of VeryGoodCopy. (If you already have a copy, please read this .) Read this to write better: ↴ Work with me→ My phone buzzed. I looked at it. A text from Kelsey: Armchair Expert is Dax Shepard’s podcast. Actor Josh Brolin was on to promote his memoir, From Under the Truck. I turned on the episode: “The greatest exercise of this book was clarifying,” Josh said. “There’s a great story about Raymond Carver,” he said, “who wrote Cathedral, that he won the Pulitzer for---” “He’s my all-time favorite,” Dax interjected. “He’s just the best---” said Josh, “just the best---and the most clear. You know, you think of Hemingway’s short stories and it’s the same thing, very clear, but still one hundred percent them.” Dax nodded. “And so,” Josh went on, “Carver’s editor said, ‘Look, you have sentences that are roughly sixteen-word sentences, let’s try to bring it down to twelve.’ And [Carver] was like, ‘Why the fxck are you trying to change my sentences? Like, that’s what I want to write.’ And [his editor] was like, ‘Yeah, but if we could just economize it and get it down to twelve---’ And then in that volley, [Carver] finally said, ‘Get out of here! I don’t want you as my editor anymore!’ And the new editor came in and he said, ‘Well, look, roughly these sentences are twelve-word sentences, let’s see if we can get it down to nine?’” Dax laughed. “And they were right,” Josh said about the editors. “Ya,” Dax agreed, “yeh.” “Because when you start slashing,” Josh said, “and when you start taking out all the vividness and the colorizing and all that kind of stuff, and you go, What am I trying to convey here? You do it in the clearest way possible.” Dax Shepard (left), Monica Padman, and Josh Brolin discuss clear writing on the Armchair Expert podcast. So after writing, ask yourself: Can I use fewer words to say the same thing? Because if you decrease your word count without changing the message, you’ve almost certainly made the writing better. “Vigorous writing is concise,” said Elements of Style author William Strunk. “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words…for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” A few suggestions for vigorous writing: Use positive phrasing. Negative phrases have two negatives, which cancel each other out to make a positive. Positive phrases are usually less wordy and almost always more direct and clear. Use active voice. This is ubiquitous advice for a reason: active voice is almost always more clear, less wordy, and easier to understand than passive voice. The difference? If the action is performed upon the subject, the sentence is passive. If the subject performs the action, the sentence is active. Avoid using the noun versions of verbs and adjectives. This happens when you add “-ment” or “-tion” or “-ity” or “-ing” or “-ness” to the end of a verb or adjective: agreement; rejection; capability; thinking; happiness. This is called nominalizing, and it will bloat your writing. Better to just use verbs or adjectives. And when in doubt, take it out. “You can make sentences too long,” said marketer Seth Godin. “But it’s hard to make them too short.” So question every word: Is it necessary? Is it important? Does it give something to the sentence? It must. lease comment 💬 or repost 🔁 to share Please comment 💬 or repost 🔁 to share Enjoy the best writing from the first 10 years of VGC: own all 207 original, fully-updated “micro” lessons inside VeryGoodCopy: The Book . (If you already own a copy---and don’t mind publicity---please read this .) Thanks for reading. I’m honored you’re here and would love to hear from you. If you’d like to write me a note, simply reply to this email. Otherwise I’ll see you in the next issue!
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Mindless, refreshing work:
January 26, 2025 [Newsletter]
Did someone forward this to you? Join some 75,000 valued email subscribers or sponsor a future issue. Every Sunday, the Lesson Vault sends you a popular micro-lesson from the first 10 years of VeryGoodCopy. Not interested? You can
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How to sell your art (in the AI Age):
January 28, 2025 [Newsletter]
Did someone forward this to you? Join some 80,000 valued email subscribers. Learn more→ Enjoy unique, meticulously crafted “micro” lessons about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner Sponsor a future issue→ Make everything you record better with mmhmm , the video app that adds endless creativity to Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, and more. Make your meetings, presentations, demos, trainings, or any other live or recorded video stand out. Learn more here and get started immediately. It’s fun, addictive, and free. Enjoy! How to sell your art (in the AI Age): ↴ Work with me→ Your “art” is anything you create: Painting, writing, music, dance, shadow sculptures. Whatever it is, this marketing approach can help you make a living from your work. For example: Tyler Turnbull makes excellent money selling his art. He records himself painting characters from beloved shows---The Office; SpongeBob SquarePants; Futurama; Rick and Morty; Bob’s Burgers---into damaged or forgotten artwork he finds at thrift stores. Then he sells the prints to his legions of followers: Tyler Turnbull posing with his most popular work. “I highly recommend [pursuing a career in art],” he says. “And in terms of how to do this…you have to drive a demand…and you drive a demand by authentically involving yourself in the art,” explains Turnbull. “Like, I would just post my stuff, along with myself…” Turnbull paints in his videos, but he also talks, narrating behind the camera, explaining---often with profound openness and vulnerability---how the characters he’s appropriating have entertained and enlightened him, often during dark or complex periods of his life. Turnbull showing us his process while narrating a personal experience. “If you’re making faceless art,” says Turnbull, “there’s a mountain of it out there, so it’s probably not going to do well. You have to put yourself out there with it. That’s the risk,” he says. “The risk is putting yourself out there. Most people are just scared of exposing themselves.” Turnbull’s patrons aren’t buying his art… They’re buying him, his lived experiences, his stories and anecdotes, his personality. His art is good, but he is the attraction. To sell your art---especially now, in the AI Age---you must sell yourself. Please share VGC ↓ omment 💬 or repost 🔁 to share Comment 💬 or repost 🔁 to share Enjoy the best writing from the first 10 years of VGC: own all 207 original, fully-updated “micro” lessons inside VeryGoodCopy: The Book ↓ If you already own a copy (and don’t mind publicity) please read this . Thanks for reading. I’m honored you’re here and would love to hear from you. If you’d like to write me a note, simply reply to this email. Otherwise I’ll see you in the next issue!
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Copyworking:
February 2, 2025 [Newsletter]
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Watch this to write better:
February 4, 2025 [Newsletter]
Did someone forward this to you? Join some 80,000 valued email subscribers. Learn more→ Enjoy unique, meticulously crafted “micro” lessons about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner Sponsor a future issue→ Make everything you record better with mmhmm , the video app that adds endless creativity to Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, and more. Make your meetings, presentations, demos, trainings, or any other live or recorded video stand out. Learn more here and get started immediately. It’s easy, addictive, and free. Have fun! Watch this to write better: ↴ Work with me→ I’m watching something: A series of interviews with centenarians. The youngest is 100 years old. The oldest, nearly 107. They’re all holding the same stack of index cards. Each card has a question on it. Anne, a 101-year-old woman with white hair and a round face, flips a card and reads it aloud: “What’s it like watching all your friends die?” Everyone looks away from the camera before answering: “Life becomes lonelier,” says a man. He doesn’t look up. “I have had some very, very great friends,” says a woman. “All the old ones are gone now and it’s heartbreaking to see them go.” “You see all your old mates go off,” says Lindsay Boyd, 100. “Sorry,” he says. His voice is cracking. “It was the death of my wife.” He shakes his head. “Oh,” he’s whispering now, “I still love my wife.” “Just this week, a very good friend---” says Anne, “a lovely friend went to sleep and she didn’t wake up. And her daughter was so wonderful. She put her arms around me, she said, ‘Anne I knew you would be here, darling.’ I said, well, I said, ‘Esther was like one of my own family.’” She purses her lips. “Then, when I got to my own room,” she says, “I cried.” Anne, 100 years and seven months young. You Can’t Ask That is a documentary series. Each episode features a specific group of marginalized or stigmatized people---refugees; wheelchair users; Deaf people; Blind people; veterans; former cult members; ex-reality tv stars; priests; centenarians---who are asked direct, often confronting questions that were anonymously submitted by the public. It’s profoundly moving. In fact, watching misunderstood people respond honestly to deeply personal (and sometimes painful) questions is a masterclass in emotional vulnerability: you watch their gut reaction, their surprise or discomfort, their micro-expressions---the way their eyes fall; the way the card goes limp between their fingers. But then, you see how they compose themselves, how they respond with dignity and resilience, even humor. They unveil themselves. They make you see them, as though forcing you to relate, forcing you to understand their perspective, their worldview, their lived experience. You watch and you feel empathy, perhaps the most important skill a copywriter can possess. And yes, empathy is a skill. Of course it is. Because it improves every time you understand and share the emotions of another person, something You Can’t Ask That compels you to do again and again. Thanks for reading! Please share this micro-lesson ↓ omment 💬 or repost 🔁 to share ( ) Comment 💬 or repost 🔁 to share Get the best writing from the first 10 years of VGC: own all 207 original, fully-updated “micro” lessons inside VeryGoodCopy: The Book ↓ If you already own a copy (and don’t mind publicity) please read this . Thanks for reading. I’m honored you’re here and would love to hear from you. If you’d like to write me a note, simply reply to this email. Otherwise I’ll see you in the next issue!
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Saying something first:
February 9, 2025 [Newsletter]
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Editing to perfection:
February 12, 2025 [Commercial]
Did someone forward this to you? Join some 80,000 valued email subscribers. Learn more→ Enjoy unique, meticulously crafted “micro” lessons about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner ponsor an issue Sponsor an issue Make everything you record better with mmhmm , the video app that adds endless creativity to Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, and more. Make your meetings, presentations, demos, trainings, or any other live or recorded video stand out. Learn more here and get started immediately. It’s easy, addictive, and free. Have fun! Editing to perfection: ↴ Work with me→ April 24, 2005: Tony Bittner woke up at his home in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. That morning he went online and pulled up The New Yorker cartoon caption contest page, which featured this drawing by Frank Cotham: Tony leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. Eventually he typed this caption into the submission box: That same day: Somewhere else in the world, someone else went through a similar process. They pulled up the same contest page, saw the same drawing---studied it, thought about it---and ultimately arrived in the same place, submitting basically the same caption: Two tiny words (“up and”) separated this submission from Tony’s entry, a coincidence made somewhat less remarkable given that more than five thousand people submitted captions for the same drawing that day. With that many participants, idea overlap is expected. What’s unexpected, however, is that out of those thousands of entries, Tony’s line came in 3rd place while the latter---with its two additional words---came in 1,221st place: How could this be? How could two monosyllabic words spell the difference between the winner’s podium and utter obscurity? Lawrence Wood, an eight-time winner of The New Yorker cartoon caption contest, explains: “Thinking of a good joke isn’t enough when other people will likely have the same thought,” he writes in his book, Your Caption Has Been Selected. “You must carefully craft the joke and deliver it as well as possible by, among other things, getting rid of every inessential word.” French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said something similar: “Perfection is achieved,” he said, “not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Copywriters follow this rule, too. We edit ruthlessly, clinically, until every word earns its keep. For as this example clearly illustrates, whether you’re writing jokes or headlines or anything else that must land with impact, every word matters. Nice! You made it to the end 🏁 Lately, I’ve been studying The New Yorker cartoon caption contest---analyzing winning entries to understand what makes them great---and I’ve found so many parallels between strong captions and good copy. If you have a question (or wanna see more micro-lessons about what I’ve learned) just leave me a comment→ ( ) Get the best writing from the first 10 years of VGC: own all 207 original, fully-updated “micro” lessons inside VeryGoodCopy: The Book ↓ If you already own a copy (and don’t mind publicity) please read this . Thanks for reading. I’m honored you’re here and would love to hear from you. If you’d like to write me a note, simply reply to this email. Otherwise I’ll see you in the next issue!
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Not doing your job:
February 16, 2025 [Newsletter]
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The magic of writing anti-description:
February 18, 2025 [Commercial]
Did someone forward this to you? Join some 80,000 valued email subscribers. Learn more→ Enjoy unique, meticulously crafted “micro” lessons about copywriting and creativity by Eddie Shleyner ponsor an issue Sponsor an issue Make everything you record better with mmhmm , the video app that adds endless creativity to Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, and more. Make your meetings, presentations, demos, trainings, or any other live or recorded video stand out. Learn more here and get started immediately. It’s easy, addictive, and free. Have fun! The magic of writing anti-description: ↴ Work with me→ Sparse writing, ironically, can be vivid. For example, take this passage by American short story writer Amy Hempel: “The waiting room had plastic chairs, all the same dull gray. The magazines on the table were from last year. A potted plant in the corner leaned toward the window, dry leaves curling. A door at the far end led to somewhere else. The clock on the wall was wrong, but no one fixed it. The woman in the third chair tapped her fingers against her knee, once, twice, then stopped.” Hempel’s not describing the waiting room as much as she is anti-describing it, sharing only a single detail about a handful of things---the chairs, the magazines, a plant, a door, a clock---and yet the writing is still evocative, lucid, like we’ve been in this very room before. The sparseness forces you, The Reader, to color in the space based on your own experiences in waiting rooms. And these personal memories, as it were, are invariably more graphic than anything you could read. This phenomenon expresses itself another way, too: The Kuleshov Effect was discovered by film researcher, Lev Kuleshov, who did an experiment. He put an actor in front of a camera and asked him to deliver an “expressionless” look. The actor, someone named Ivan Mosjoukine, did this: Ivan Mosjoukine’s “expressionless” look. Then, Kuleshov showed audiences a series of shots, followed by Mosjoukine’s inscrutable face. He showed them a bowl of soup: He showed them a small girl in a coffin: He showed them a woman on a fainting couch: In his book, The Power of Film: Professor Howard Suber breaks down the significance of Kuleshov’s experiment. “Audiences raved at the range of this great actor,” explains Suber. “How he expressed how famished he was in front of that bowl of soup. And how heartbroken he was at his child---nothing, by the way, had identified any relationship between the child and the actor; the audience read that story into it,” notes Suber. “And the woman on the couch…desire.” “What Kuleshov proved is you don’t want theatrical acting in which the actor projects to the back of the house,” explains Suber. “The actor does not need to project. The audience is projecting onto the actor the emotions they think the actor is feeling, even though the actor isn’t expressing any emotion.” Mosjoukine’s “expressionless look” in film is akin to “anti-description” in writing: By giving The Reader less, you’re actually giving them more to imagine, visualize, and experience. And it’s particularly effective when writing about common places, typical places. For example: Raymond Carver describes a motel: “The motel sat off the highway, just past the last stoplight in town. The neon sign flickered, humming in the dark. The parking lot held one car, a dusty sedan with out-of-state plates. The office door was propped open, but no one stood behind the desk. Inside, a man sat on the bed, shoes still on, watching the TV with the sound off. Outside, a truck rumbled past, then everything was still again.” Ernest Hemingway describes a café: “The café was small, just a few tables pushed against the walls. White paint, starting to yellow. A fan turned slowly overhead. The man sat near the window, his coffee cooling in front of him. Outside, the street was empty. He could hear someone sweeping, the bristles dragging against concrete. He didn’t turn to look.” Samuel Beckett describes a room: “A bare room. A single wooden chair. A small table. The walls blank, colorless. A window, closed. Outside, the street was empty. No cars. No voices. Just the sky, heavy and gray. The chair sat in the middle of the floor, waiting. No one came.” Lydia Davis describes a library: “The library was nearly silent, except for the occasional turning of a page. Shelves stretched along the walls, books in neat rows, some worn, some untouched. The fluorescent lights flickered just slightly. A single clock ticked in the distance. A woman at a desk turned a page, read a sentence, then stopped. She did not know why.” Denis Johnson describes a gas station: “The gas station sat alone in the desert. A single pump, the paint peeling. The wind had pushed dust up against the base of the building, filling the cracks in the concrete. A man stood behind the counter, staring at nothing in particular. The horizon was nothing but heat waves and sky. No cars, no people. Just the pump, the man, and the waiting.” Donald Barthelme describes a city street: “A city street, wet from rain. The lights from the shop windows reflected on the pavement, colors stretched thin by the water. A newspaper lay in the gutter, folded but unread. A man walked past, his collar turned up against the wind. He glanced at the newspaper but kept moving. Somewhere behind him, music played from a car window, half-heard, already gone.” Margaret Atwood describes a house: “The house stood back from the road, gray wood and sagging porch steps. The shutters hung loose, one barely holding on. The curtains in the windows never moved, even when the wind picked up. Snow covered the yard, untouched. No footprints led to the front door. No lights came on when the sky went dark.” George Saunders describes a mall: “The mall was quiet, the kind of quiet that only happens after closing. The floors had just been mopped, still wet in places. The security guard stood by the entrance, not watching anything in particular. The escalators still moved, humming softly, though no one rode them. A single music track played over the speakers---something upbeat, something meant for shoppers who were no longer there.” Haruki Murakami describes a bar: “The bar was nearly empty, just a few stools taken. A jazz record played from an old speaker, the sound scratchy but warm. The bartender wiped down a glass, slow, methodical. The man at the far end of the bar stirred his drink without drinking it. Outside, rain hit the pavement, soft and steady. No one spoke. The bartender turned the record over and set the needle down again.” Alice Munro describes a farm: “The farm sat at the end of the dirt road, past the last row of trees. The barn door hung open, swaying slightly in the wind. A single light glowed in the house, yellow and dim, barely cutting through the dark. The fields stretched out behind it, bare, waiting for spring. Somewhere, far off, a dog barked. Then nothing.” These locations don’t necessarily need exposition. Because The Reader’s already been there physically. So you, the writer, need only give her the space---the opportunity---to go back mentally. Magic. Nice! You made it to the end 🏁 If you have a question or comment, just leave it here and I’ll get back to you→ ( ) Get the best writing from the first 10 years of VGC: own all 207 original, fully-updated “micro” lessons inside VeryGoodCopy: The Book ↓ If you already own a copy (and don’t mind publicity) please read this . Thanks for reading. I’m honored you’re here and would love to hear from you. If you’d like to write me a note, simply reply to this email. Otherwise I’ll see you in the next issue!
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The “secret” to emotional writing:
June 1, 2025 [Commercial]
↴ Eddie Shleyner VeryGoodCopy, founder Work with me→ Paul Harvey, the
iconic radio broadcaster, was an animal lover.
So much so, he wrote The 10 Commandments for a Responsible Pet Owner, a
surprisingly poignant constitution written from the perspective of a
pet. Now, imagine your dog or cat---or any pet, really---saying these
things to you: * “My life is likely to last 10-15 years. Any separation
from you is likely to be painful.” * “Give me time to understand what
you want of me.” * “Place your trust in me. It is crucial for my
well-being.” * “Don’t be angry with me for long, and don’t lock me up
as punishment. You have your work, your friends, your entertainment. But
I have only you.” * “Talk to me. Even if I don’t understand your words,
I do understand your voice when speaking to me.” * “Be aware that
however you treat me, I will never forget it.” * “Before you hit me,
before you strike me, remember that I have teeth that could easily crush
the bones in your hand, and yet I choose not to bite you.” * “Before
you scold me for being lazy or uncooperative, ask yourself if something
might be bothering me. Perhaps I’m not getting the right food, I have
been in the sun too long, or my heart might be getting old or weak.” *
“Please take care of me when I grow old. You, too, will grow old.” *
“On the difficult journey, on the ultimate difficult journey, go with
me, please. Never say you can’t bear to watch. Don’t make me face this
alone. Everything is easier for me if you are there. Because I love you
so.” I showed Harvey’s 10 Commandments to Kelsey. She read it and choked
up and called for Sydney, our pup. Then she hugged her. “These are all
so true,” she said. Want The Reader to feel something? Sadness? Anger?
Joy? Anything? Then write something The Reader perceives to be
absolutely accurate.
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How to make the abstract feel real, intimate:
September 4, 2025 [Newsletter]
Just before the doors closed…
A young doctor, still wearing his scrubs, stepped onto the plane and sat
down next to David Harris. In the late 1980s, Harris was a coordinator
for the American Jewish Committee, which helped thousands of Jewish
refugees escape the former Soviet Union for the United States. Now he’s
in front of a camera, telling the story of his airplane encounter for
Stateless, a documentary about the mass emigration: “I see the doctor’s
name stitched here on his scrubs,” Harris taps his chest, “and it’s a
Russian name. It’s a Russian-Jewish name. And we began talking. And he
was probably about thirty. And I didn’t explain to him who I was. I
simply just asked some questions about things,” said Harris. “You went
through Vienna, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said the doctor. “I was seven years
old.” “Do you remember your first banana?” asked Harris. The doctor’s
disposition changed. His whole face changed. The Shleyners were also
part of this emigration. My family left Kiev in 1989. I was a year old,
not even. I don’t remember anything, much less a piece of fruit. But my
mom remembers it clearly, poignantly. In fact almost everyone---every
child, mother, father, babushka and dedushka---remembers this utterly
strange and by all accounts exhilarating thing: tasting, for the very
first time, a banana. “It’s not like we just didn’t eat bananas,” said
my mom, “it’s that they actually did not exist. We knew they were out
there…somewhere…“she fluttered her fingers, “but we couldn’t get
them.” So I can imagine the awe she felt standing before bunches, whole
bunches of bananas piled high in the markets of Vienna. And how this
abundance made her giddy, yes, but also so profoundly sad. So sick with
injustice, with iniquity, with disdain and contempt for her
country---her “Rodina” as it were---the so-called great Motherland, the
utopian fortress that took and took and took for so little in return.
“I’ll never forget tasting that first banana,” said the doctor. The
producer asked David Harris why this experience was so significant? Why
he picked this story to tell? “It’s a very human memory,” said Harris.
“It’s not just of mass movements, but of individual people.” Put another
way: It makes the abstract feel real, intimate. The exodus of tens of
thousands of Jews from the USSR is too enormous to process viscerally.
Generations of religious deprivation and cultural genocide is too
enormous to process. Starting over with absolutely nothing material is
too much for most people to truly understand. But when you zoom in on
just one immigrant’s experience, distilling it by way of something
typical, something small and simple, a universal sensation---the taste
of a banana, for instance---it brings the scale of history down to the
scale of empathy. When you want people to feel the enormity of something
profound: Focus on the smallest details that made it real for those who
lived it. Those details will carry that enormous weight. They will.
Links
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The editing phase:
September 16, 2025 [Newsletter]
“Go to Eddie,” says Dave. “Dave” is marketer and Exit Five founder
Dave Gerhardt. I’m sitting in the audience at his annual event Drive.
On stage is the event’s special guest speaker, prolific writer Ryan
Holiday. He’s waiting for me to take the microphone and ask my question
after his talk. “Hey Ryan.” “Hey.” “Thanks so much for coming
out.” “Yeh.” “So after you’re done writing your first draft,” I
say, “I imagine you go through an editing process---” “Sure.” “And
I wonder, how do you know when the editing is done?” I say. “How do
you know when to stop?"
"Yes---” says Ryan. “The editing phase is probably the most important
in many ways,” he says. “The book that I have coming out in October, I
had to cut twenty thousand words out of it…and that was the hardest
and most visible of the edits, but I just finished the audio book, and
much to the chagrin of my publisher, I was even editing as I was
recording, because now I’m having to read it out loud in a studio by
myself.” He looks down and rubs his forehead. “So I think editing is
this ongoing thing. It’s not that it never stops, but I do think in a
world where, you know, I can edit an e-book tomorrow, if there’s
something I want to change, I’m going to keep changing it."
"Yes---” I say. Because I know the feeling: sometimes (often,
actually) I’ll reread something I published years or months or even
just a few weeks ago and it will feel foreign to me, strange, different
from the last time I read it. It feels like the writing has somehow
changed. But it hasn’t changed. Of course it hasn’t… I’ve changed.
As the saying goes: “We never step in the same river twice.” As
writers (and indeed creative people in general) we must keep this truism
in mind, I think. We can always update our work because our lives---how
we see and move through the world---are ever changing. And this flux
gives us the perspective to extend the editing phase forever, if we
like, yes… But if we do that, we’ll never make anything new. And
there is such great value in continually (and consistently) making
something new.
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Audiences hate this:
September 23, 2025 [Newsletter]
It’s a party. Ademola comes up to me and Harry and Max. He’s holding a
deck of cards. “Can I show you something?” “F’yeh.” “Think of a
card.” I think of one. “Got it?” “Ya.” “Wanna change your mind?”
“Ya I do actually.” “Ok change it in your head,” he says, “just
think of a different card.” I do. “Got it?” “Ya.” Ademola goes
through the deck and pulls out two cards. He looks at me. “What’s the
first card you thought of?” “Ace of Spades.” Ademola flips over the
Ace of Spades, the sheer shock of which forces me and Harry and Max to
start yelling. “What’s the second card you thought of?” “Seven of
Hearts.” The magician reveals the Seven of Hearts. From my brain to
Ademola’s hand in one second. We yell louder. Absolutely fried. I stand
up and shake him.
That night: I look up how to do that trick because I need to know what
happened to me. In the tutorial video I found on YouTube, the bearded
magician says, “this trick is so good it will feel like the audience
has been absolutely smacked out of reality.” Then he literally slaps
himself across the cheek and his face snaps to the side and when he
straightens out again his beard…it’s gone! Smooth face, smooth
transition. Takes me a second, but when it registers, I nod.
Sleight-of-hand video in a sleight of hand video. Meta. Well edited. I
like it.
But then the magician calls it out… “Oh no,” he says, “I slapped
the beard right off of me.” He grabs his face and rubs his chin. “I
can’t believe I actually shaved for that,” he says. Now it’s misdone,
I think: I don’t need you to spoon-feed me the thing. Matter of fact,
most audiences hate this… It’s condescension. We want to participate,
to fill in the gaps---big or small, no matter---we wanna click the thing
in ourselves. We want to feel it latch. And we want you, the creator, to
trust us to do this. Anything less collapses the space where our
emotions would normally rush in.
Links
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Why you do what you do for work:
September 25, 2025 [Newsletter]
My mom looks at me and says the affectionate form of my name:
“Edichka?” she’s speaking in Russian. “What’s wrong?” Beau’s on
his first soccer team. He’s four now. We’re on the sideline, me and my
mom, watching his game. He’s not chasing the ball or even running.
He’s just standing there with his palm in the air. It’s casting a
shadow over his face. “Look at Beau.” I’m speaking in Russian too.
“He’s blocking the sun with his hand.”
I’m sentimental about many things. Especially now, these days, it feels
like I’m seeing, for the first time, things that have always been
there: The boy standing in a field, grass and people and sun everywhere,
his hand up, shade across his face---I see this. I’ve seen it a
thousand times in my life. I’ve seen a thousand people do it, but not
like this. Not this way. It moves me now.
But it’s not just with my kids. It’s everywhere: When my wife asks me
for a glass of water after dinner; when I buckle my belt in the morning
and miss a loop; when I drive past a hat---some random, dirty, discarded
thing on the side of the road---and later, when I pass the same spot,
it’s gone. These completely typical things are moving me, too. More and
more they are. Simply witnessing them. Simply seeing how unremarkable
they are. My God.
I explain this to mom. “How strange,” she says. She’s still looking
at me. “I’ve never seen the world like that.” It’s quiet for a
moment. Beau is running after the ball again. A car alarm is going off
in the distance. “But then,” mom looks back at the field, “I’ve
never lived your life, baby.” It’s quiet again. “Maybe it’s why you
do what you do for work.” The whistle blows.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
A note from Eddie:
September 30, 2025 [Announcement]
Dear Reader,
Inside the first volume of VeryGoodCopy: The Book is my best writing
from 2014-2024, over ten years of work. When I got my first author’s
copy, I was astonished to see it all in one place.
If you plan on reading it… I hope you’ll enjoy the journey, all 207
“micro-lessons” about thinking and writing like a copywriter. Know I
tried to create something insightful here, and something entertaining
too. So this compendium is filled with stories of adventure, tragedy,
joy, and the private human moments we all too often take for granted. As
one Reader put it, “It’s not like the other copywriting books.”
And if you’re already a fan… I want to thank you for reading all
this time. I deeply appreciate all the love and loyalty you’ve shown
VeryGoodCopy. There would be no newsletter---and certainly no
book---without your generous and thoughtful support. The regular
newsletter returns next week.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
One way to create remarkable work:
October 7, 2025 [Newsletter]
Palo Alto, 2005:
Mark Zuckerberg hires graffiti artist David Choe to spray paint murals
throughout Facebook’s original headquarters. During the project, Choe
asks Zuckerberg to doodle something---“anything…” he says---on the
wall. Zuckerberg creates a stick figure: “I’m gonna leave that in
there,” says Choe. Mark laughs. The figure is so primitive. “No, I’ll
incorporate it in there,” Choe reassures him. “Here,” he says, “let
me see…” He begins: “Whoa---” says Zuckerberg. “See---” says
Choe. “It came together.”
Remarkable, isn’t it? How it came together, but also what it became…
If you want to create something interesting: Drastically pigeonhole
yourself from the very start. Profound restriction (whether you’re
painting or writing or anything else) is a forcing function for profound
creativity, for making something noteworthy.
Another example: Ernest Vincent Wright’s 1939 masterpiece, Gadsby.
It’s a lipogram, a fifty-thousand word novel without the letter “E”.
(To put this into perspective, “E” appears in this 171-word
micro-lesson 111 times.) It’s among the strangest---and most
remarkable---books ever written.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/micro-agency]{.underline}
VeryGoodCopy (Chief):
October 23, 2025 [Announcement]
Kevin Rogers: A titan of industry. Before I ever started writing
VeryGoodCopy---before I even published anything online---I was following
Kevin’s work. Today I’m proud to know him personally, and grateful to
be a guest on his podcast: Copy Chief Radio.
A few excerpts from our conversation:
“Your job as a copywriter is to be thoughtful, to take a step back. If
you give yourself the space and time to notice, you will see profound
moments everywhere.” ---ES
”Artists who make no compromises get to live a life of their choosing.
It may look strange from the outside, but they’ve embraced it, and
that’s the kind of courage we all need.” ---KR
”If you can remove any words and still say the same thing, you’ve made
the writing better.” ---ES
”And this thing here is what gives me endless hope for the copywriting
craft…” ---KR
”Your writing style is important, but it’s really about being able to
recognize what’s around you…the important moments around you.
Writing isn’t about how you write as much as what you see.” ---ES
”You have to live a certain way to be a good writer. Who do you have to
be, and how do you have to live, and how do you have to experience the
world to get the good words?” ---KR
If any of these quotes resonate with you or interest you… Maybe
you’ll like our conversation. We covered a lot of ground---on
copywriting; on writing; on being a writer; on art and attention and
presence; on finding meaning; on craft and obsession; on letting go.
Links
[https://jobs.exitfive.com/job/1862635-content-marketing-manager]{.underline}
[https://copychief.com/322-eddie-shleyner/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/micro-agency]{.underline}
Unprecedented:
November 7, 2025 [Promotion]
You’re getting this email because my training, Transformational Landing Pages, is currently an unprecedented 75% off. I rarely run promotions like this, but if you absolutely do not want to get emailed when VeryGoodCopy products go on sale, please click here to
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/vgc-bf25]{.underline}
Stop writing:
November 10, 2025 [Newsletter]
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin explains how he started writing The Social
Network:
“I spent a lot of time pacing around, climbing the walls, trying to
figure out how to start,” he said. “And once I knew what I wanted to
do and I kind of had a beat on the scene, I then wrote it in roughly the
amount of time it took to type it. You know you don’t know what you’re
doing if the lines are coming out like honey dripping from a jar---a
line here, then you gotta wait half an hour for the next line,” he
said. “Stop. Put it down. You don’t know what you’re doing yet.”
This approach is refreshing, I think, because it rejects the typical
“tortured writer” narrative: Don’t stop! Stay in the chair! Work
through the block!
This isn’t necessarily the wrong way, but it’s not how Sorkin writes.
Sorkin writes when it’s easy. And the more research he does, the easier
it gets. Of course, research is key to all writing, but especially
copywriting, because knowledge breeds opportunities to make connections,
the core act behind creativity. So, if you’re struggling to make those
connections, it’s possible you’re just not ready. It’s possible you
simply need to stop, step away, and give yourself more time to read the
brief, ask questions, and think.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/micro-agency]{.underline}
Remarkably sparse yet vivid writing:
November 11, 2025 [Newsletter]
In April, 2016: Podcaster Tim Ferriss interviewed Paulo Coelho, author
of The Alchemist. “What’s the most common mistake first-time novelists
make?” said Ferriss. Coelho’s answer is excellent advice for all
writers, including copywriters.
”Trust your reader,” he said. “He or she has a lot of imagination.
Don’t try to describe things. Give a hint, and they will fulfill this
hint with their own imagination.”
He’s referencing a writing style called “minimalism.” Minimalist
authors generally favor brevity, avoid adverbs, and lean on cursory
descriptions of people, places, and things. These guidelines, when
followed together, give The Reader tremendous agency over the story:
what the scene might physically look like as well as what the situation
might mean. The literary scholar Robert Clark says minimalism lets The
Reader take an “active role” in creating the narrative, in visualizing
it as well as interpreting it.
An excerpt from Hemingway’s famous short story, Hills Like White
Elephants, comes to mind. It’s remarkably sparse yet vivid writing:
The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the
felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at the man and
the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white
in the sun and the country was brown and dry.
Notice how Hemingway eschews details in this excerpt. He only produces
the elements that set the scene---the woman, the man, the girl, two
glasses of beer, two felt pads, white, brown, dry---and then, as Coelho
suggests, he trusts The Reader to imagine, to fill in the blanks and
color it all in. He does the minimum---and The Reader, happily, does the
rest.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
Ending:
November 12, 2025 [Newsletter]
The lecture hall wasn’t big, but it wasn’t small either. I was sitting
in an aisle seat. “Cathedral,” said the professor. He wrote the word
on the blackboard. “By Raymond Carver.” He placed the chalk on the
ledge and turned around. “Who read it?” he said. “Raise your hand.”
I raised my hand. Most of my classmates raised their hands, too. “Ms.
Dossett,” the professor said, pointing at someone. “You read the
story?” “Yes.” “Tell us about it.” Ms. Dossett cleared her throat.
“It’s narrated by a man whose wife is friends with a blind person.”
She took a beat. “The blind man’s name is Robert, I think?” The prof
nodded. “So, Robert,” she said, “comes to visit his friend, the wife,
after not seeing her for a long time.” “And what about the husband,
our narrator,” said the professor. “How does he feel about Robert?”
“He mocks him,” said Ms. Dossett. “He finds blindness strange.”
“He’s ignorant,” said the prof. “Yes,” she said, “and callus.”
The professor nodded. “And how does the story end?” he asked.
“Abruptly.” The class laughed. The professor did, too. We laughed
because it was true. The ending was so sudden that it felt as though
Carver stood up mid-thought and never sat back down.
Of course, this is typical Carver. He often ends his stories without a
neat and tidy conclusion. In literature, this is called a
“zero-ending.” Carver often ends at the moment his characters are
faced with a realization, at the onset of growth, on the precipice of
change, or transformation, even. By doing so, The Reader doesn’t merely
witness the character’s epiphany---she undergoes it. And it stays with
her after the story is over. She carries it.
It’s a remarkable thing to experience: In the story, Robert and the
husband are sitting in the living room. They’re drinking after dinner.
The wife is asleep on the couch. The TV is on, a PBS documentary about
famous cathedrals. The husband gets curious. He asks Robert if he has
any idea what a cathedral looks like. “If someone says ‘cathedral’ to
you,” he asks, “do you have any notion of what they’re talking
about?” In the story, Robert replies, “Hey, listen to me,” he says.
“Will you do me a favor? I got an idea. Why don’t you find us some
heavy paper? And a pen. We’ll do something together. We’ll draw [a
cathedral] together.”
In the story, the husband draws a cathedral on a brown paper bag,
pressing hard with his pen while Robert cradles his fingers, moving with
him, drawing literally hand-in-hand. Then Robert tells the husband to
close his eyes while he draws. He does this. He closes his eyes. And he
doesn’t open them for some time. He keeps them closed. He sits there,
in darkness. “How is it?” Robert asks him. The drawing is complete
now, but the husband keeps his eyes closed. He’s in blackness,
blindness. His answer is the last sentence of the story: “It’s really
something,” he says.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://krystlechurch.com/juno-live-verygoodcopy]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/micro-agency]{.underline}
Work with me?
November 19, 2025 [Commercial]
Work with me? More info here. Thanks for considering!
Links
It’s perfect:
November 21, 2025 [Newsletter]
It’s 1997. I’m a small boy in bed. I’m awake. It’s early on a
Saturday morning. My parents are still asleep. The house is quiet. I get
up and get dressed, sweatpants and a t-shirt. I’m going to the couch.
It’s GoldenEye time.
Based on the film, GoldenEye 007 is a first-person shooter developed by
Rare, a UK-headquartered video game company. David Doak, Karl Hilton,
and Steve Ellis were on the team that created the game, which, despite
many delays, went on to defy all expectation---and define a generation
of gaming. It became the blueprint for first-person shooters and today,
nearly three decades after its release, is considered one of the
greatest video games of all time.
But before the accolades and adulation came pouring in, Doak, Hilton,
and Ellis had major doubts about their creation. These quotes are from
GoldenEra, a documentary about the game’s production:
“When we were making it,” said Doak, “we were just trying to get it
finished. That was an overarching memory, particularly of the last
year…can we just please get it finished? Because it’s just taking
forever."
"You see all that is wrong with it,” said Hilton. “You know, we knew
the frame was awful in places, and there was loads of art that I did
that we didn’t manage to get in. There were game ideas that we didn’t
get in. It was late and we knew the film had long since gone, so whether
anyone was going to be remotely interested in it when it came out, I had
no idea at all."
"You get to the end of the game and you are blind to what’s good about
it and all you can see is all the things that were on your wishlist that
you haven’t had the time to do,” said Ellis. “So you kind of only see
it’s flaws.”
Fascinating, isn’t it? We have no idea what we’ve made until we let it
go.
I hear a noise. I look. My dad’s up. He’s standing behind me, looking
at the television. “What’s this?” he says. “It’s a James Bond
game,” I say. My dad watches me play for a moment. “Is it good?” he
says. I nod. “It’s perfect.”
Links
The severe cost of ambition:
November 24, 2025 [Newsletter]
In the show, Mad Men, Don Draper receives a call from Conrad Hilton’s
office. The hotel magnate is requesting a meeting with the creative
director. Draper arrives and immediately extends his hand. “I’m Donald
Draper,” he says. The men shake. “We’ve met before,” says Hilton.
Draper’s incredulous. “We have, haven’t we?” “Yellow Rock Country
Club.” “We had a drink,” says Draper. “Of course.” “You fixed it
for me,” says Hilton. “Let me return the favor.” “I can’t believe
you’re Conrad Hilton.” “Connie.” “Don.” The men shake hands again.
“How did you find me?” “Well, I called around. Told people I had a
long chat with a handsome fella from Sterling Cooper and your name never
came up.” Hilton takes a beat. “Apparently you don’t have long chats
with people.” Draper smiles. “Well, here I am,” he says. “What can I
do for you?” Hilton points at a piece of paper on the coffee table by
his knees. It’s an ad for his hotels. “What do you think?” Draper
looks down, purses his lips, and reaches for his cigarettes. “I think
you wouldn’t be in the presidential suite right now if you worked for
free,” he says. “Don, this is friendly.” “Connie, this is my
profession. What do you want me to do?” “I want you to give me one for
free.” Draper looks down again and lights his cigarette. The ad depicts
a cartoon mouse wearing ragged overalls, standing in a hotel room,
gazing through the window at the cityscape. The headline: Country Folk
Love the View From the New York Hilton at Rockefeller Center. Draper
exhales cigarette smoke. “I don’t think anybody wants to think about a
mouse in a hotel.” Hilton smirks and motions at the couch. The men sit.
“Well, that was my idea,” he says. “You got something better?” “I
might.” “So,” Hilton leans in, “what do you want?” “I’m not gonna
lie,” says the creative director, “I’d love a chance at your
business.” “Okay. But the next time somebody like me asks you a
question, you need to think bigger.” Draper ashes his cigarette.
“Well, Connie,” he says, “there are snakes that go months without
eating, and then they finally catch something, but they’re so hungry
that they suffocate while they’re eating.” He ashes again. “One
opportunity at a time.”
Ambition is both a driver and a burden. When Hilton---a symbol of
aspiration and success---tells Draper to “think bigger,” he’s
challenging him to imagine opportunities beyond the immediate and
practical. But Draper bucks at this, indicating the severe cost of
ambition, the dangers of overreaching and stretching yourself thin.
Indeed, biting off more than you can chew can end it all. But it’s not
that we shouldn’t have pie-in-the-sky goals---especially as creative
people---we should think big. We just mustn’t lose ourselves in the
pursuit of lofty ambitions. That is, success demands balance. It demands
an equilibrium between daring and discipline. We must walk this line to
stay in control of our time, our relationships, our health, both
physical and mental. As creative people, to do our best work, it helps
to focus on one (manageable) opportunity at a time.
Links
Fears and insecurities and regrets:
November 25, 2025 [Newsletter]
The waiter asked for our drink order:
“I’ll have a martini, please,” said Kels. “Dirty or dry?”
“Dirty.” The waiter nodded. “Gin or vodka?” “Do you have Kettle
One?” The waiter nodded. “Blue cheese olives?” “Yes, please.” The
waiter looked at me. “Two of those,” I said. “Thank you.” The waiter
nodded. “I’ll put those right in.” She turned around and walked
away.
I looked at my date. “Didn’t know you liked a martini,” I said. “I
love a martini.” “I do,” she said. “Especially in a place like
this.” “You like it here?” I said. “It’s not too much?” “No,”
Kels smiled. “It’s not too much,” she said. “Is this where you take
all the girls?” This made me laugh. “It’s my first time,” I said.
“I swear.” I raised my arms and showed her my palms. “I walked by it
for the first time last week with my parents.” I sipped some water.
“They were visiting.” “That’s nice,” she said. “It’s nice you
have a nice relationship with your folks.” “Yeh, I do now…” I said.
“It’s been a process.” “What do you mean?”
I told her what happened: I told her how my parents told me a very big
lie when I was small, something profound about our family. And how I
lived for a long time believing this lie and seeing my family through
this lens, this distorted thing. And how my life changed when I found
out the truth as an adult. I told her how disorienting this was for me.
And how different things might’ve been had I known all along. And how
sad it made me that my grandma wasn’t alive to talk to me about it. And
how painful and strange it felt when my dad refused to even acknowledge
my hurt, much less apologize. And how for years I harbored this
resentment. “I hated that we were estranged,” I told her. “It was
agony, really---” I said, “because I loved my dad, but I didn’t think
he loved me.”
Suddenly, the waiter was there again. She put our drinks down and asked
if we were ready to order. “I think we just need a few more minutes,”
Kels said. “Sorry,” I said. “Maybe not the best story to share on our
third date…”
Stan Lee might disagree. Lee created Marvel Comics. When he started his
business, DC Comics was already well established, publishing stories
about characters that were born superhuman, like Gods. But despite its
competitor’s massive head start, Marvel went on to dominate the market
because Lee did something different:
“[Marvel] composed a catalog of human frailties---” wrote AP
journalist Ted Anthony shortly after Lee’s death in 2018. “[The
characters are] schmoes who inadvertently, or negligently, wandered
into the traffic of destiny. Some moneyed, some working-class, all
neurotic, they had powers thrust upon them by misfortune or questionable
choices. Their abilities were just as often bane as boon. And sometimes
it was hard to tell the heroes and the villains apart. Sort of like real
life.”
Marvel’s characters, unlike those in the DC Universe, were inherently
flawed, like people---relatable, understandable, real people, fraught
with fears and insecurities and regrets. Lee recognized how endearing
this was and leaned into it---and as a result, his business flourished.
This principle transcends comic books and superheroes. It applies to all
storytelling and all storytellers: the more flawless you appear, the
less approachable you seem. Your “human frailties” as Anthony calls
it, are among the most powerful things you can communicate---in writing,
on stage, on a date, or anywhere else. It’s the shortest path to
empathy, connection, and trust: “Don’t be sorry,” Kels said. She
touched my hand. “I feel so close to you right now.”
Links
What’s it like watching all your friends die?
November 26, 2025 [Newsletter]
I’m watching something:
A series of interviews with centenarians. The youngest is 100 years old.
The oldest, nearly 107. They’re all holding the same stack of index
cards. Each card has a question on it.
Anne, a 100-year-old woman with white hair and a round face, flips a
card and reads it aloud: “What’s it like watching all your friends
die?”
Everyone looks away from the camera before answering: “Life becomes
lonelier,” says a man. He doesn’t look up. “I have had some very,
very great friends,” says a woman. “All the old ones are gone now and
it’s heartbreaking to see them go.” “You see all your old mates go
off,” says Lindsay Boyd, 100. “Sorry,” he says. His voice is
cracking. “It was the death of my wife.” He shakes his head. “Oh,”
he’s whispering now, “I still love my wife."
"Just this week, a very good friend---” says Anne, “a lovely friend
went to sleep and she didn’t wake up. And her daughter was so
wonderful. She put her arms around me, she said, ‘Anne I knew you would
be here, darling.’ I said, well, I said, ‘Esther was like one of my
own family.’” She purses her lips. “Then, when I got to my own
room,” she says, “I cried.”
You Can’t Ask That is a documentary series. Each episode features a
specific group of marginalized or stigmatized people---refugees;
wheelchair users; Deaf people; Blind people; veterans; former cult
members; ex-reality tv stars; priests; centenarians---who are asked
direct, often confronting questions that were anonymously submitted by
the public.
It’s profoundly moving. In fact, watching misunderstood people respond
honestly to deeply personal (and sometimes painful) questions is a
masterclass in emotional vulnerability: you watch their gut reaction,
their surprise or discomfort, their micro-expressions---the way their
eyes fall; the way the card goes limp between their fingers. But then,
you see how they compose themselves, how they respond with dignity and
resilience, even humor. They unveil themselves. They make you see them,
as though forcing you to relate, forcing you to understand their
perspective, their worldview, their lived experience.
You watch and you feel empathy, perhaps the most important skill a
copywriter can possess. And yes, empathy is a skill. Of course it is.
Because it improves every time you understand and share the emotions of
another person, something You Can’t Ask That compels you to do again
and again.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
Writing phenomenon:
November 27, 2025 [Newsletter]
Sparse writing, ironically, can be vivid.
For example, take this passage by American short story writer Amy
Hempel: “The waiting room had plastic chairs, all the same dull gray.
The magazines on the table were from last year. A potted plant in the
corner leaned toward the window, dry leaves curling. A door at the far
end led to somewhere else. The clock on the wall was wrong, but no one
fixed it. The woman in the third chair tapped her fingers against her
knee, once, twice, then stopped.”
Hempel’s not describing the waiting room as much as she is
anti-describing it, sharing only a single detail about a handful of
things---the chairs, the magazines, a plant, a door, a clock---and yet
the writing is still evocative, lucid, like we’ve been in this very
room before. The sparseness forces you, The Reader, to color in the
space based on your own experiences in waiting rooms. And these personal
memories, as it were, are invariably more graphic than anything you
could read.
This writing phenomenon expresses itself another way, too:
The Kuleshov Effect was discovered by film researcher, Lev Kuleshov, who
did an experiment. He put an actor in front of a camera and asked him to
deliver an “expressionless” look. Then Kuleshov showed audiences a
series of shots, followed by Mosjoukine’s inscrutable face. He showed
them a bowl of soup. He showed them a small girl in a coffin. He showed
them a woman on a fainting couch.
In his book, The Power of Film: Professor Howard Suber breaks down the
significance of Kuleshov’s experiment. “Audiences raved at the range
of this great actor,” explains Suber. “How he expressed how famished
he was in front of that bowl of soup. And how heartbroken he was at his
child---nothing had identified any relationship between the child and
the actor; the audience read that story into it,” notes Suber. “And
the woman on the couch…desire."
"What Kuleshov proved is you don’t want theatrical acting in which the
actor projects to the back of the house,” explains Suber. “The actor
does not need to project. The audience is projecting onto the actor the
emotions they think the actor is feeling, even though the actor isn’t
expressing any emotion.”
Mosjoukine’s “expressionless look” in film is akin to
“anti-description” in writing: By giving The Reader less, you’re
actually giving them more to imagine, visualize, and experience.
These locations don’t necessarily need exposition. Because The
Reader’s already been there physically. So you, the writer, need only
give her the space---the opportunity---to go back mentally. This is the
phenomenon of anti-description.
Links
Copywriting innovations
November 28, 2025 [Announcement]
For several years:
I was the Copy Chief at G2.com, where I supervised hundreds of
conversion campaigns and personally wrote, wire-framed, and strategized
countless landing pages. In June, 2021: G2 raised $157M at a $1.1B
valuation. A few months prior to this, I received this distinction:
I’ve since turned my copywriting “innovations” into a training:
Transformational Landing Pages is a clear, concise, remarkably
prescriptive curriculum intentionally designed to help you start fast,
build as you learn, and finish with a new landing page you can begin
testing immediately. It’s ideal for copywriters, marketers,
salespeople, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who wants to compel more
landing pages visitors to take a specific, measurable action.
These 57 things represent a small sample of what you’ll learn
throughout the training:\
- Believe it or not, my salient goal when creating this course had nothing to do with landing pages, but because it was created with this purpose, you’re much more likely to retain (and actually apply) the conversion-boosting techniques and principles I teach inside.\
- Even good copywriters commit this typical landing page mistake, making it incredibly difficult to achieve a high conversion rate.\
- For decades, marketers have been utterly derailed by this research mistake. But there’s a lesser known and more effective way to deeply understand your audience.\
- How to write honest, authentic, remarkably personal landing page copy, especially in The AI Age. (This principle forever changed my research process.)\
- The most important section of your landing page has these 6 essential elements, each with its own specific purpose to fulfill.\
- This concept helped Joe Sugarman create some of the most successful print ads of all time. (Now you can use it to create undeniably addictive landing pages.)\
- Psychology tells us that motivating anyone to do just about anything (including converting on your landing page) boils down to these 3 incentives.\
- 4 ways to reliably “manufacture” urgency on your landing page, creating offers that compel visitors to act much faster.\
- This is hands down the single-most important copywriting skill: part art, part science, it will forever be used by direct marketers to create the intense curiosity and intrigue necessary to compel action.\
- Nothing propelled my copywriting career further and faster than this deceptively simple exercise. (Do it five days a week for a month, and your writing will drastically improve.)\
- Give me 5 minutes and I’ll give you the testing strategy that helped Eugene Schwartz sell over $100M per year in books. (Yes, it’s absolutely transferable to landing pages.)
Links
Copywriters must follow this rule, too:
December 1, 2025 [Newsletter]
April 24, 2005:
Tony Bittner woke up at his home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That
morning he went online and pulled up The New Yorker cartoon caption
contest page, which featured this drawing by Frank Cotham:
Tony leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. Eventually he
typed this caption into the submission box:
That same day… Somewhere else in the world, someone else went through
a similar process: they pulled up the same contest page, saw the same
drawing---studied it, thought about it---and ultimately arrived in the
same place, submitting basically the same caption:
Two tiny words (“up and”) separated this submission from Tony’s
entry, a coincidence made somewhat less remarkable given that more than
five thousand people submitted captions for the same drawing that day.
With that many participants, idea overlap is inevitable. What’s
unexpected, however, is that out of those thousands of entries, Tony’s
line came in 3rd place while the latter---with its two additional
words---came in 1,221st place:
How could this be? How could two monosyllabic words spell the difference
between the winner’s podium and utter obscurity?
Lawrence Wood, an eight-time winner of The New Yorker cartoon caption
contest, explains: “Thinking of a good joke isn’t enough when other
people will likely have the same thought,” he writes in his book, Your
Caption Has Been Selected. “You must carefully craft the joke and
deliver it as well as possible by, among other things, getting rid of
every inessential word.”
French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said something similar:
“Perfection is achieved,” he said, “not when there is nothing more to
add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Copywriters must follow this rule, too. We must edit ruthlessly,
clinically, until every word earns its keep… For as this example
clearly illustrates, whether you’re writing jokes or headlines or
anything else that must land with impact, every word matters.
Links
Do not despair…
December 1, 2025 [Promotion]
If you missed the Transformational Landing Pages Black Friday offer, a massive 75% off this unique system, proven to compel more visitors to buy, download, and subscribe… …don’t despair! That’s what Cyber Monday is for. LAST CHANCE Offer Ends Tomorrow, December 2. If you have questions about Transformational Landing Pages, simply reply to this email and I’ll personally get back to you.
Links
Check out this email someone sent me (and my response):
December 2, 2025 [Newsletter]
Someone named “Kevin” sent me an email…
He writes: We are a small canoe, kayak, paddle board shop. We rent and
sell these products and we provide services such as guided tours,
lessons, shuttle service, etc. We don’t sell online. We run a limited
amount of search ads, linking to our website, where we offer our current
inventory lists as a lead generation. I need help convincing the team.
What are some ways we’ll benefit from your Transformational Landing
Pages course?
My response… Admittedly written in haste:
Hey Kevin, thanks so much for asking. I appreciate you! This is really a
persuasion course masquerading as a landing page course. It’s ideal for
folks selling content, but I’m constantly hearing from people who tell
me the lessons transcend information products and landing pages and can
be applied to all sorts of digital assets and ads. So even though guided
tours and lessons are experiences, they’re also based on the guide’s
knowledge and wisdom. So, if you create dedicated landing pages for 1)
guided tours and 2) lessons, Transformational Landing Pages will show
you exactly how to tease this knowledge and wisdom, presenting each of
these products in a tantalizing way and compelling visitors at a higher
rate. Last thing I’ll say is if you take the training and it doesn’t
improve your conversion rate, simply ask for a refund. I promise I’ll
understand. :)
And some additional (color-coded) color…
All I probably would have said if I had more time:
Creating a landing page is a process. Research, content, assembly.
Inside Transformational Landing Pages, I show you how to do these
things: how to think about your market and offer; how to write your
headlines and body copy and fascinations; how to organize and structure
your page. I will share my landing page process with you, the techniques
and principles I use to build effective pages, efficiently. But many of
these techniques and principles also transcend landing pages and
info-advertising. They can be used in emails, presentations, on social
media---anywhere you want to command attention and compel action.
Bottomline: if you have information that’s valuable, practical, or
interesting to a specific group of people, you can use the system inside
Transformational Landing Pages to compel that group of people to take
action on a landing page (among other places). In other words, if you
have knowledge people want or need---whether you’re a consultant
selling advice, a SaaS selling demo calls, or a canoe shop selling
tours---the TLP system is proven to generate profound results.
Just a teachable moment: in direct marketing, you must
always---always---provide a next step.
Links
How I’m using AI (example):
December 2, 2025 [Newsletter]
AI really saved me here:
“The Apotheosis of the Hero” c. 1635
Here’s exactly what happened:
I uploaded the nearly 200 testimonials about Transformational Landing
Pages into ChatGPT. Then I gave it a prompt: “Isolate any big recurring
themes you see across these reviews,” I wrote. The robot did this. It
scanned the nearly 10,000-word testimonial wall and, in a matter of
seconds, extracted eight things that students consistently mentioned in
their feedback about the training.
”Here they are,” said the AI, “in no particular order:”\
- Clarity & concision\
- Actionable & practical\
- Structure & system\
- Confidence & identity shift\
- Speed & completion\
- Breadth of impact (beyond landing pages)\
- Tangible outcomes\
- Eddie as a teacher & person
”Now,” I instructed, “for each recurring theme, pull five passages that support it from the testimonials.” It did this, too. It collated 40 relevant sentences out of 200 paragraphs.
AI really saved me here… I mean, how long would this have taken me? And more importantly, what would’ve been the opportunity cost of this time? What interesting, challenging, rewarding creative work would have taken a backseat to this?
Links
Last chance:
December 3, 2025 [Promotion]
First of all, thank you for being here… VeryGoodCopy isn’t a daily newsletter, but I’ve been sending emails almost every day to promote my biggest offer of the year, an unprecedented 75% off one of the most celebrated and effective landing page trainings. This deal ends as soon as this countdown timer goes to zero (when it’s over, the price will shoot back up to $999). If you’re on the fence, rest assured, Transformational Landing Pages guarantees results or your money back, so you truly have nothing to lose…only untold conversions to gain. If you have any questions at all, simply reply to this email to ask me directly. Otherwise thank you again for being here---for your consideration or, if you bought, your business---and I’ll see you on Thursday, when VeryGoodCopy returns with a brand new series of micro-lessons I’ve been working on.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/vgc-cm25#Reviews]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/vgc-cm25#Cases]{.underline}
How did you write it?
December 4, 2025 [Newsletter]
“Bless The Telephone” is a song by Labi Siffre.
He sings it with such tenderness:
It’s nice to hear your voice again
I’ve waited all day long
Even wrote a song for you
It’s strange, the way you make me feel
With just a word or two
I’d like to do the same for you
It’s nice to hear you say “hello”
And “how are things with you? I love you”
But very soon it’s time to go
An office job to do
While I’m here writing songs for you
Strange
How a phone call can change your day
Take you away
Away
From the feeling of being alone
Bless the telephone
”How did you write it?” said the interviewer.
”Bless The Telephone”?
”Mhm, yes."
"Well, I was in my hotel room after a gig…and the phone rang,” said
Labi, “and we talked for about half an hour…and then I sat on the
bed…and I wrote the song.”
I was so happy to come across this origin story. It’s an example of a
creative person using “the moment” as it were---the energy within
it---to make something good and honest, something timeless: “And to
find, after all this time,” said Labi, “that the song still helps,
I’m pleased about that…‘cause love is a wonderful thing.”
I think Labi was successful, in part, because he did not hesitate. He
didn’t let the moment cool. The tenderness he felt after that call was
available to him right then and there---and he captured it. A day later
it would have become a memory of tenderness rather than tenderness
itself. This distinction matters: he wrote from inside the feeling, not
about it.
Labi didn’t hesitate before writing. Perhaps, neither should you.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/work-w-eddie]{.underline}
This copy is an objection-handling masterclass:
December 18, 2025 [Newsletter]
In the 1970s…
Thousands of people around the US received a large, nondescript manilla
envelope. Inside, two more envelopes---standard business size---both
sealed. The copy on one envelope:
New Encyclopedia: Get Volume 1 FREE
Inside, a letter from the editor of the encyclopedia extolling the
benefits of owning the entire set. The offer at the end is simple and
attractive: “Simply reply and request the first volume and you’ll get
it sent to you for free, with no obligation to buy.” The copy on the
other envelope:
Please do not open UNLESS you have already decided not to send in for
your free Volume 1…
Inside, a letter from the publisher of the encyclopedia:
Dear Friend,
As the publisher of this Encyclopedia, I am puzzled! Frankly, I do not
understand why everyone does not send in for a free Volume 1---since it
is absolutely free (we even pay the postage) and since there is never
any obligation to buy any volumes, now or ever. Once you see how good
the first volume is, I hope you will want the rest. It’s a sample. Of
course, if you don’t want further volumes, just tell us to stop. You
never return Volume 1---you never pay for it---no one will call you or
come to your home to try and change your mind. We don’t send books to
people who don’t want them. It would be just as silly as if your grocer
sent you five pounds of apples you didn’t want. You would only send
them back and not pay him for them. It’s the same for us in the book
business. Sending unwanted books simply doesn’t make sense. Perhaps you
do not believe that you never have to pay a single penny for Volume 1.
Many people must feel that there is a hidden charge of some kind.
Perhaps you say to yourself: “Why should I send for free Volume 1 if I
don’t intend to get the rest of the Encyclopedia? What is the good of
owning a single volume of an Encyclopedia?” The answer to that question
is simple. There is so much interesting material in the free Volume 1
that it will make an exciting addition to your home library whether or
not you ever take another volume. Perhaps you say to yourself: “I know
all about buying books by mail.” If so, just bear in mind that this is
not a Book Club. There are no monthly cards to return. Once you CANCEL,
your subscription is cancelled. You never receive another book. There
may be other reasons for not sending in for your free Volume 1---but for
the life of me I can’t think what they might be. So, if you have
decided not to send in for free Volume 1, perhaps you would take just a
minute to send me a card to tell me why? I would appreciate it a great
deal. Cordially, [SIGNATURE]
This copy is an objection-handling masterclass.
Over and over, the copywriter preemptively assuages the Reader’s
presumed concerns, potential reasons why they would not buy:
Copywriters must always anticipate what the Reader is thinking.
We don’t have the luxury of fielding objections on the fly, in real
time, the way a one-to-one salesperson can. So we must work to predict
any and all objections (around risk, effort, money, credibility, and
timing, among other things) and then neutralize them, assuaging the
concern so clearly, concisely, and completely that it feels, suddenly,
irrelevant. When we do this---when we write copy that makes the
Reader’s every objection feel like a nonissue---we sell more.
Links
[https://www.vpdae.com/redirect/vh4g4p1v1b0r59ye9ltcj93jj2b]{.underline}
Ambiguous writing:
January 7, 2026 [Newsletter]
“Path of the Sun” | Karl Schrag
Lisa is a kindergarten teacher.
Jimmy is one of her students. He’s five years old. One day Lisa
overhears Jimmy say something. He’s in class, pacing back and forth,
speaking out loud to no one in particular: “Anna,” he says. “Anna.
Anna. Anna’s beautiful. Beautiful enough for me. The sun hits her
yellow house,” he says. “It’s almost like a sign from God.” Lisa
looks at him. Her mouth is open. Her eyes are open. “What was that?”
she says. “Was that a poem?” Jimmy looks at the floor. He doesn’t say
anything. “I think we should write it down,” says Lisa. She does this,
she writes it down, then kneels next to the boy. “Jimmy,” she says,
“I really liked your poem.” Jimmy looks away and speaks softly.
“Okay,” he says. That night…
Lisa reads the poem to her husband:
Anna is beautiful
beautiful enough for me
the sun hits her yellow house
it’s almost like a sign from God
”Wow,” says her husband, “it sounds so advanced. How old is he?”
“Five and a half. It’s extraordinary.” Lisa looks at the poem and
shakes her head. “It conjures a feeling.” The next day…
Lisa reads it to her poetry workshop, passing it off as her own
writing:
Anna is beautiful
beautiful enough for me
the sun hits her yellow house
it’s almost like a sign from God
The facilitator listens, and smiles, and looks around. “What do you
guys think?” The class chatters. Someone speaks up: “I love that
line… ‘Beautiful enough for me.’ It suggests so many things, like,
you don’t deserve much, or you don’t prioritize beauty.” Then,
someone else offers a different interpretation: “But the word
‘beautiful’ is repeated, so I feel like you do in fact value it in
some deep way, and that you really find Anna beautiful.” “Yeah,” says
the facilitator, “I think it was really good. Really good, because with
so few elements you make something very---” he searches for a moment,
“very complex. It’s as if it was said by someone that has seen a lot
of beauty, but now, you know, makes do with very little.” The
Kindergarten Teacher is, in part, a film about meaning. It constantly
asks the audience: “What do these words mean to you?” This reminds me
how emotional---and deeply personal---ambiguous writing can be.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/micro-agency]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/transformational-landing-pages]{.underline}
Your problem (and opportunity):
January 9, 2026 [Newsletter]
There’s one book I’ve read more than any other… But I almost never read it front to back. Instead I bounce around based on what I’m going through. I seek out passages that meet me where I am. I read it when I feel inept, overwhelmed by my responsibilities. I read it when I feel invisible or important, brave or cowardly, shame or pride.
Remarkable because Marcus Aurelius wrote this book, Meditations, for himself. The Roman emperor never intended for it to be read by anyone, much less published worldwide. It was his personal journal, written for his own edification as a leader, but also as a husband, father, and friend.
Ironic because in writing something so personal, Marcus Aurelius created something absolutely universal. A Roman emperor’s private reflections --- about his needs and wants, his temperament, his ego, his relationships --- can be applicable to anyone. Psychologist Carl Rogers famously explains: “What is most personal is most universal.”
Copywriter David Deutsch brings this back to our craft: “Copywriters who can write real, compelling copy brimming with a strong point-of-view and personality will be more needed and in demand. Problem (and opportunity) is that most copywriters write with precious little of either.” Will you?
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/micro-agency]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/transformational-landing-pages]{.underline}
The miracle:
January 20, 2026 [Newsletter]
I watched a 60 Minutes segment I’ll never forget… The late Ed Bradley interviewed a family --- a religiously devout mother, a painfully quiet father who was so shy he couldn’t even look into the camera, and their ten-year-old daughter in a wheelchair because she was born with spina bifida. Every year the family pilgrimaged to Lourdes to pray for a miracle.
Bradley asked the girl: “What do you pray for?” You know what she said? “I pray my father won’t be so shy. It makes him feel so lonely.”
This answer seemed to stun the interviewer. Finally, Bradley looked at the mother: “Every year you spend so much time to come to this place in hopes of a miracle, but you have no miracle to show for it. Why do you keep coming back?” “Oh, Mr. Bradley,” said the mother, looking at her kid. “You don’t understand. We got our miracle.”
I’ll never forget how this amazing child held space for someone else’s pain before her own --- and how this affected Ed Bradley’s entire perception of Lourdes: It’s a place that, more than anything else, reveals a person’s character.
Copywriting icon John Carlton once told a room of business owners: “You’re probably not gonna find your product’s story in the company line.” The most compelling narratives are not necessarily clear and obvious. The deepest, most profound, most resonant insights are inconspicuous, hidden away. As copywriters, our work is to uncover these unobtrusive truths, to notice them, recognize them, and bring them to light.
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/micro-agency]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/transformational-landing-pages]{.underline}
How I write (and you can too):
January 23, 2026 [Newsletter]
So I almost always want to know three things before I start writing a “micro-lesson” for VeryGoodCopy: What’s the story? What’s the lesson? And what is the word count?
-
The story: I typically find the story first. It could be a personal anecdote, something from my life, some happening with my wife or kids or parents or friends. But it could also be something I saw on tv, or read in a book, or witnessed at a gas station or the grocery store. I mine all the things that happen in and around my life --- be they significant or mundane, painful, embarrassing, or joyous --- for creative material. “Everything is copy,” said Nora Ephron. If it made me emotional, that’s a sign it will make someone else emotional. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader,” said Robert Frost.
-
The lesson: If the story reminds me of something I do for work --- some concept, principle, or technique I use to write or think better --- I have the lesson, the takeaway, the thing people can apply to their work (or life).
-
The word count: I rarely write without a predetermined word count, which I leave to chance. I simply ask the Machine to pick a random number. Whatever arbitrary number it spits out, that’s how many words I’ll aim to write. When I land on the exact number, the writing almost always feels more intentional. Then, it’s like a puzzle: How can I put this story and this lesson together in precisely this many words?
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/micro-agency]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/transformational-landing-pages]{.underline}
Next time you’re editing copy:
January 27, 2026 [Newsletter]
When it first aired, American Gladiators, the now-classic show, was not working at all. The reception was bad, and the salient complaint was that it didn’t feel like a real competition, like sport. One critic wrote: “Contestants from around the country face the Gladiators in little kids’ games…” The events felt childish, convoluted by arbitrary rules that took attention away from real athleticism. So the showrunner Samual Goldwyn hired Emmy-winning producer Eytan Keller to fix it.
Eytan: “I don’t think you’re gonna like what I’m going to say.” “Tell me please.” “I think you have a fantastic concept, but the execution is terrible.” “Give me one example.” “The Joust.” Originally, The Joust was performed across a long, thin plank with trap doors on either end. It looked busy, felt gimmicky. “I would put the gladiators up on pedestals, maybe eight feet off the ground, with a diameter at the top of no more than four feet wide. And that single change transformed The Joust from something ho-hum into something iconic.”
This is a story about subtraction. Eytan removed superfluous things --- the plank, the trap doors --- that served as distraction and drew focus away from the event’s nuances, the athleticism required to win. He made it simpler, which made all the difference: “Simple sells,” said copywriter David Deutsch, “and very simple sells very well.”
Next time you’re editing copy: Resist the urge to add. Instead, ask yourself: “What is getting in the way of what’s already working?”
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/micro-agency]{.underline}
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/transformational-landing-pages]{.underline}
Yours, if you want it:
February 9, 2026 [Resources]
As a valued VeryGoodCopy subscriber… You get immediate and unlimited access to these 6 “micro” courses and series (only available to folks who’ve joined the newsletter): Over the years, these intentionally simple resources, unembellished by design, have remained relevant, compelling, and valuable, helping nearly 100,000 students of copywriting and direct marketing think and write more persuasively: Conversion Class: Learn every persuasion technique used on the VGC homepage… Complete in ~21 minutes Master Fascinations: Discover the art and psychology behind the most effective and versatile sentences in all of copywriting… Complete in ~5 hours Wisdom of the Crowd: Absorb wisdom from 271 pro marketers and copywriters, each sharing their most practical copywriting advice… Complete in ~2 hours Bencivenga Bullets: Get 174 rare persuasion bullets written by Gary Bencivenga, considered the world’s greatest living copywriter… Complete in ~2 hours How to Write Well: Get David Ogilvy’s famous “10 Tips on Writing” memo, plus bonus context and next steps from Eddie Shleyner… Complete in ~25 minutes 10 Commandments: Get 10 original essays written exclusively for VGC by David Ogilvy’s right-hand copywriter, the great Drayton Bird… Complete in ~30 minutes
Links
[https://www.verygoodcopy.com/]{.underline}
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/]{.underline}
[https://eddie-shleyner.squarespace.com/conversion-class-micro-course-1]{.underline}
[https://eddie-shleyner.squarespace.com/free-microcourse]{.underline}
[https://eddie-shleyner.squarespace.com/copywriting-wisdom-of-the-crowd]{.underline}
[https://eddie-shleyner.squarespace.com/bencivenga-bullets]{.underline}
[https://eddie-shleyner.squarespace.com/david-ogilvy]{.underline}
[https://eddie-shleyner.squarespace.com/drayton-birds-10-copywriting-commandments]{.underline}
[https://eddie-shleyner.squarespace.com/6-micro-courses-subscriber-only]{.underline}