John

I’m great at generating traffic and orchestrating it, but when it comes to copy that’s were your stuff comes in handy.

Ever since I read your Copywriter’s Toolkit sales letter about a year ago, you’ve been my favourite copywriter John.

Keep it up man,

Dan Molano

This actually comes at an apropos time for my sales letter…and now I’m rethinking my “If you have 3 minutes a day,…” headline to include a warm up first.

Julia

Geoff, that’s an excellent analogy. Weaving the facts into a story that turns them—good or bad–to your side and casts your argument in a favorable light is not all that different than what were doing here on the surface. I’d imagine “admission of flaw” works well in a trial when you’re the one to frame it in the words you’d like to present (robbing them of the effectiveness of that “bad fact”, as you say).

Kyle, you’re right. I knew I learned that somewhere initially. It WAS Breakthough Advertising. Time to read it again!

In fact, I bet Gene explained it much better than I could. It’s definitely NOT light bedtime reading, but I HIGHLY recommend that book. Every time I re-read it I learn something new!

John

Eugene Schwartz explains this kind of proof in Breakthrough Advertising by breaking down the TV repair guide ad.

He explains it brilliantly.

The most powerful headline is useless if people don’t believe you right away. And it doesn’t matter if you justify it in your copy because people won’t rad the copy if they don’t believe the headline.

Cheers
Kyle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof

If you could run a scientific test on the persuasiveness of copy, I am confident that you would be able to graph the effectiveness (conversions) against the quantum of proof in the copy. In other words, you would lose or gain people as you removed or added proof. Of course, at some point you would probably hit a plateau where further or better proof would make no difference in improved response, probably reflecting that you had converted all the genuine buyers exposed to that copy.

In the 1990s, a smart guy named Herbert Stern wrote a 5-volume treatise for lawyers called “Trying Cases to Win.” One of the most important concepts in it was figuring out, at the very outset of a case, how to weave ALL of the facts — good and bad — into an overall story that would lead the jury to find for your side. In other words, rather than trying to paper over problems in your case, you needed to embrace them and incorporate them in your overall story. You must assume that the opponent will learn of the bad fact and put them in the worst possible light for the jury. Your job is to rob that tactic of effectiveness by acknowledging the bad fact and putting it to work for you. I have always taken that advice to heart.

GLB

1) Insightful
2) Brilliant

And one extra for free:

3) Thanks!

Hank