Resource
Read Joe Sugarman's Adweek copywriting book and Ogilvy on Advertising
For a founder doing direct mail 'by vibes', Sam assigns two classics of direct-response copywriting: Joe Sugarman's Adweek copywriting book (published as The Adweek Copywriting Handbook) and David Ogilvy's Ogilvy on Advertising.
“Okay, listen, Joe Sugarman is the author. It's called The Adweek Guide to Copywriting. Read that and then read On Advertising by David Ogilvy. Read those this week and your mind will change. Okay.”
Tactic
Do advertising archaeology: old tactics went out of fashion but still work
Ad creatives chase novelty to impress each other, so working formats get dropped: long-copy print, direct mail, jingles and comic-strip ads. Rory tells entrepreneurs to mine old advertising and suggests manga-style ads could reach young audiences today.
“This is why I suggest to anybody here listening to this who's an entrepreneur, go and look at some advertising archaeology. And the reason is that advertising people, just as engineers want to impress other engineers, advertising creatives want to impress other advertising creatives, which means They want to do something that's brand new, never been done before. Da da da da da. Actually, loads of things get discarded by the advertising industry which never stop working. Long copy press advertising never stopped working. Direct mail never stopped working. Jingles never stopped working, although you have to call it sonic branding now.”
Steal thisStudy 1920s-1960s ads and revive a format your category abandoned only because it went out of fashion.