Copywriters Podcast

In late September, here in San Francisco, a man named Frankie LaPenna held three cage fights against robots in a cage match. Human vs. robot. And he won two of them.
Five days later, the California State Athletic Commission sent him a cease and desist order, to him and “all persons holding, promoting, advertising or sponsoring unsanctioned human versus humanoid robot cage fights.”
So, to stay on the right side of the law, the battle we are holding today is not a cage fight. It’s a prize fight, and takes place only in virtual space between an AI and a human copywriter.
No robots or people will be harmed by the events about to take place on our show today.
What we are going to do is give each fighter–the human copywriter, and the AI–10 tasks, and let them fight it out to see who the champion really is.
RESOURCE:
My new book, The Persuasion Story Code
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

What do you do when your offer stops working?
First step: Keep breathing.
An offer that stops working may feel like a disaster. But you need more
information so you can decide whether it is indeed the end of the world, or,
a problem you can fix.
In other episodes of this show, we’ve talked about a sales letter that lasted
40 years… and comic-strip sales letter that lasted more than 50 years…
things that seem to have had nearly eternal life.
These days, the life-cycle is much faster. Because things are changing all
around us so quickly, and ultimately, those changes affect our offers.
I’ve got a whole lot of proven techniques to tell you about, to fix an ailing
offer… as well as a couple of situations where the fix is to replace it
completely.

Resources:
Breakthrough Advertising
https://breakthroughadvertisingbook.com/

Chris Dyson’s Post
https://x.com/ChrisLDyson/status/2105928385289388519

The Persuasion Story Code
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

What are the little things we do in our copy that have an overly large impact on our sales?
It’s a good question, because it’s so easy to get caught up in headlines, stories, offers and bullet points that sometimes we don’t pay enough attention to all the little roadblocks we might be putting up for ourselves.
All of which has to do with the question: How easy is it for the prospect to actually READ our copy?
Today we’re going to review a number of simple ways to make our copy as easy to read as possible.
But then we’ll go further. We’ll look at some little-known, high-quality scientific research I uncovered that gets right to the heart of how readers respond unconsciously and are more likely to buy, because of certain easy-to-control X factors in our copy.
Stuff most people weren’t even aware of.

Article by scientists in The Psychologist magazine:
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/if-its-easy-read-its-easy-do-pretty-good-and-true

Earlier Podcast: How to Make Your Copy Easy to read:
Youtube: https://youtu.be/RmNZSlF4644
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6WQ3Gbwt25Lqrs3r1VjaSp
My book, The Persuasion Story Code:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

A couple weeks ago, we did an entire show to answer the question:
“Are there eternal truths of advertising copywriting that are as true today as they were 40, 50, even 100 years ago?”
It turns out, there are. 
In fact, we were only able to cover about half of them on that show.
Today we’ve got seven more for you, with easy to understand examples from the past as well as from this decade–sometimes, this year.
You’ll be impressed with how little has changed in terms of human nature and what we respond to.
Resource:
The Persuasion Story Code
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

A powerful mindset forces you to write scripts for TV and movies that compel viewers to watch. Keeps them glued to the screen, in fact.
There’s a nearly identical mindset like that for writing copy.
We’re going to look at both today, and how you can put the copywriting mindset to work for you right away.
This all stems from the prolific and controversial playwright, screenwriter and author David Mamet. He’s written tons of stuff but you may be most familiar with his devastating movie about sales, “Glengarry Glen Ross.”
Well, in 2006 Mamet adapted a memoir from a special ops soldier into a breathtaking TV series called The UNIT. 
He wrote a memo to his writers room on the show that was leaked and became legendary in Hollywood.
A little later on in the show I’ll share important insights from the memo–important for copywriters–and tell you how you can get a free copy for your own use and enjoyment.
I’ve also pulled out 5 rules for writing drama from one of his books, and these rules are easily adapted to writing compelling copy.

RESOURCES:
Book: 3 Uses of the Knife, on the Nature and Purpose of Drama
https://www.amazon.com/dp/037570423X

The famous Mamet memo to writers of The UNIT
https://www.slashfilm.com/508254/a-letter-from-david-mamet-to-the-writers-of-the-unit/ 

The Persuasion Story Code
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ