Research library Required reading Copy that sells
Copy Doesn't Create Desire. It Points It.
Eugene Schwartz's argument in 1966: the want is already out there, shared by millions of people, and an ad's job is to find it and aim it at a product. It's also where the levels of customer awareness come from.
Eugene M. Schwartz · Breakthrough Advertising · 1966
What it is
A copywriter’s theory of why ads work, first published by Prentice-Hall in 1966 and reissued several times since, most recently in 2017.
Schwartz’s starting point is that advertising doesn’t create desire. The desire already exists, held by large numbers of people at once, and the ad’s work is to channel it: to find a want that’s already there and connect it to the product.
What we took from it
Two ideas. The first is mass desire, above. The second is awareness: prospects arrive knowing different amounts. Some already know the product and need only a reason to act now. Some know their problem but not that a solution exists. Some aren’t aware of either. Each calls for a different opening, from a straight offer for the most aware to an indirect, story-led approach for the least. (Masterson and Forde built Great Leads on that ladder.)
Where it shows up in our work
If the ad channels a desire that’s already there, then the desire you choose decides who answers. Aim at the want for the right car and you draw buyers who were already looking for it. Aim at the want for something for nothing, and you draw the people who most want something for nothing. That’s the Free Lamborghini in one sentence.
Schwartz gives us the vocabulary for the first decision a campaign makes, before any test runs: which desire, held by whom.
We haven’t quoted Schwartz here because we couldn’t check a passage against the book itself. The summary is ours.
Next on the shelf David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising