Just finished “Ogilvy on Advertising“. More great ideas in this book than in the last three or four advertising books I’ve read put together (and some of those were pretty darn good).

David Ogilvy, a masterful copwriter, has a lot to say on the subject. Here are a few excerpts from a detailed passage about body copy–

“Do not, however, address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, there are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another, second person singular…

“…you cannot bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it…

“…It pays to write short sentences and short paragraphs, and to avoid difficult words…

“…I advise you to avoid analogies. Gallup has found that they are widely misunderstood…

“Stay away from superlatives like ‘Our product is the best in the world.’ Gallup calls this Brag and Boast. It convinces nobody.”

After I read this I started checking out print ads, and it’s amazing how frequently these simple and effective principles are violated. (As a child, I was fascinated by the man in the Hathaway shirt. I’d comb the body copy looking for clues to why he wore the eye patch. I never forgot those ads, or the shirts.)

Skim the ads in your local paper and magazines–do you think the ones that follow Ogilvy’s advice are better or worse than ones that don’t?