It was - and always will be - a fundamental lesson that even the most cocksure writer needs to keep being reminded of, over and over and over again. When the tabloids strike a nerve with a killer headline, the publications fly off the shelf.īoring heads, however, mean slow death from being ignored. If nothing else, you’ll learn about the power of finding a good angle no matter how unexciting your product is. We never had to read further than the headlines on the front page, either, to get what we wanted: Truly wicked phrases and Power Words artfully arranged to amuse, intrigue, delight and enrage… and drag you kicking and screaming into the story.Īnyone who has heard me lecture knows that I urge everyone with advertising dreams to adopt the same reading rituals. When I began my career, one of my copywriting-skill-strengthening rituals included frequent jaunts to the local newsstand… where I would pick up a stack of headline-heaven magazines like Cosmo, Reader’s Digest, Playboy… and of course the Weekly World News, the National Enquirer, and any other tabloid rag that threatened to rattle my cage with weird, beautiful, titillating cover copy.Īll the top copywriters I knew were devoted to these beastly publications. I, for one, will shed a tear and lift a toast.
#BILL JAYME SWIPE FILE ARCHIVE#
Here’s some insight to how the best veteran copywriters do it, slightly edited, via the Archive Time Machine, from July ’07:ĭateline: Miami, FL - The one-time juggernaut Amercian Media, Inc, just announced that they will cease to publish the Weekly World News tabloid in August, after 28 years of faithfully delivering the most delightfully outrageous crap imagineable. It’s not a skill that comes with your standard brain equipment. And creating hooks (especially from otherwise boring raw material) is an art form that needs to be developed. The ability to find a way to hook readers (and drag them into your story) is what separates the Big Dog writers from the wannabe’s. (Today’s headline: “Saturn Ready To Explode!” Um… okay.) At the time, I was bummed that a favorite newsstand shock-rag was ending its run… however, the good news is that WWN is still alive and kicking (just like Elvis) online. Here’s a nice short one from ’07, on the non-scientific process of finding great hooks for your headlines. You know: Good times.Īnyway, I love meandering through the archives here… especially when I find a post that still packs some mojo. So you’ve got something good to chew on, while I wander off to the beach to get pounded by merciless surf and fried by an uncaring sun. In the spirit of screwing off as much as possible this fine July, I’m replenishing the blog with another oldie-but-goodie post from the archives. “ He was a one-eyed, one horn, flying purple people eater…” (Sheb Wooley)