A Simple Copywriting Skill You Can Learn Today

The Café Leffe in Paris…

The garcon brings you the wine list and you take a look.

There are four options and all are the same price.

(This is a wine list with a difference, as you’ll see.)

Option one is ‘a bottle of Red Wine’.

You think ‘Sure, Red Wine sounds OK. But, well, it’s a bit vague’.

So, you look at option two.

It reads ‘a bottle of French Red Wine’.

Hmmm. At least now you know it’s not a Spanish Rioja. You know it’s not a California Cabernet or an Italian Nebbiolo.

But French Red Wine, it’s still not telling you much.

Option three is a little better…

It says ‘a bottle Bordeaux Red’.

Ah. We’re getting somewhere. From this you can devise the region in which the wine was made.

You know you dealing with famous region in the South of France. In fact, the natural associations that you assign to the word Bordeaux start to come in to play…

You’re thinking maybe about Provence, about John Thaw in the television adaptation of Peter Mayle’s book. You’re thinking about bike rides through the countryside and fresh baguettes.

But then you see final option…

A bottle of ’83 Margaux.

Now you’ve struck gold. Not only is this an incredibly expensive wine that you’ll happily order, you know everything you need to know…

You know the vintage, the châteaux.

Even if you don’t know anything about wine (much like me), just the sound of an ’83 Margaux sounds good. Just the age of it is impressive.

Naturellement, when then garcon returns you order a bottle.

So, what’s with the wine list?

Well, this all stems from an idea I was reminded of last week whilst in France.

There’s a skill in copywriting that follows this exact same principle…

And it’s very simple to put into practice.

You could call it specificity (if you can say it), or as Michael Masterson referred to it, ‘drilling down’.

It might be that you already do this. But if not, I’d advise applying the theory to all of your adverts and promotions in the future.

You see, one of the biggest mistakes new copywriters (or lazy copywriters) make, is to be too vague.

The key with any advert or promotion is to evoke as clear a picture as possible in the customers mind.

Maybe it’s a picture of the product itself, a picture of the service in action or perhaps a picture of how the customer could benefit from the product or service in the future.

But whatever it’s a picture of; it should be a clear one.

‘Imagine driving an expensive new car’ isn’t half as evocative as ‘imagine driving a brand new Ferrari Enzo’.

The image of a Ferrari carries many more associations and speaks directly of wealth, exclusivity and the high life, where as ‘an expensive new car’ could just make you think of an overpriced Volvo.

The key here is to get down to as much evocative detail as possible in as few words as possible.

Rather than ‘top of the range computer’, it’s a ‘Macbook Air’.

Instead of staying at a five-star London hotel, it’s staying at the Ritz.

And don’t just go for a coffee in a café, go to Costa, to Nero, even Starbucks – the key is in the detail.

Presenting pictures in copy is one step in the right direction, but if you can hone those pictures, if you can give them specific details that will resonate with the reader, you’re copy will be that much more successful.

Category: Copywriting