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By: Dave Alston, Mon Oct 8th, 2007
In the good old west - the goodies won and the baddies... died, often at the hands of ballsy upholders of goodness and virtue like John Wayne in True Grit.
Ah, if only all of life were that simple today.
Now it seems that evil is good and evil... has become good.
Even here in UK to be 'good' in the eyes of many teenage gang peers, means you need to have committed some degree of badness to pass into the ranks of the admired - like shooting someone (London & Manchester have become crazy lately), or at the very least stealing or attacking someone with physical violence.
Why is everything back to front? It seems everywhere we look now this is how things are...
It's good to run off with someone elses wife.
It's good to rip your bosses off.
It's good to cheat on your tax return.
It's good to cheat in your exams.
It's good to sneak off home early on Fridays.
And a lot more besides...
There is also an insidious new form of cheating now seeping into advertising copywriting all over the net. It's important business owners are aware of how it operates.
This article was prompted after discussing with a friend how one of their clients had hired a copywriter for a natural health product and after a nearly three month wait (the full copy still wasn't ready) the headline they were finally presented with read as follows...
"They laughed when I said I was going to try XYZ but when..."
You can guess the rest. I don't know about you but I think I would have been pretty upset with that kind of performance.
Okay so the copywriter simply swiped a headline from a classic letter from way back when (in an era when it worked like gangbusters) but I'm not so concerned with that type of copying - although the client would have been when they saw how poorly their sales letter pulled.
No, the type of copying I'm talking about here is unbelievably blatant...
To transform this 'badness' into good and make it more palatable it's now sometimes called 'Modeling' and it works like this. You get your sweaty palms on a copy of a current hot sales letter control (control being simply the current 'champ' which outpulls and makes more money than all the rest) and you 'Model' how it's been written...
You model the headline.
You model the deck.
You model the body.
You model the offer.
You model the close.
You model the bonus.
Basically you kind of stick it under tracing paper and come up with ... a carbon copy. Actually, true modeling as used by aspiring copywriters doesn't mean that. It's really supposed to be a way of getting inside the minds of great copywriters using something akin to the process of osmosis. The form, structure and processes used to write good copy then begin to seep into your being in almost a subliminal way. In a certain manner copywriters have been using this 'good form of modeling' for years by copying out great salesletters by hand for example, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But here's the thing...
Instead of using 'modeling' as an apprentice would to learn at the hand of a master these folks instead copy great swathes of salesletters that have produced stellar results in the past - to rehash them for use in different markets.
Letters which have made millions for those who used them are being stolen by writers who hope that by passing them off as their own work to unsuspecting business owners in different industry sectors their 'magic' will rub off on them too. The hope is that the new market will not have seen their 'modeled' sales letters before and therefore will not suspect the work as having been brutally plagiarized.
These copywriters want as little as possible changed from the original letter - they are terrified that to do so may cause the sales power of the control letter to weaken. The least form of cosmetic 'disguise' change is applied to ensure that the original lurks just under the surface - with all it's pulling power still intact.
Here are a couple of thoughts on what I've just told you...
If the original business owner paid good money (in some cases $25,000 plus) to an A list copywriter for a high quality sales letter should someone else get it for free, adapt it a little and get paid big bucks to pass it onto an unsuspecting client as if it were their own work?
Is it right that industry is being infiltrated with a new type of writer who simply swipes and copies their way to the top of the tree - and spoils the reputation of copywriting as a whole?
How would you feel if you as a writer had agonised over copy for weeks which was then stolen and 'adapted' for another niche and you received nothing? Additionally imagine these 'modeling' writers then lapping up the recognition and fees which should have been due to you as rightful original author?
Here is what legendary copywriter Gene Schwartz has to say about this exact process in his groundbreaking work "Breakthrough Advertising". Discussing what he terms "The Three Levels of Creativity" he says...
"The first, the shallowest and the most widespread and ineffective, is the Word-Substitute Technique. Here the copywriter consults a list of proven and successful headlines. He then pulls out the original product name and substitutes his own... Many copy writers grow old, or tired or afraid. They stop searching for the unique solution in every problem. From this moment on, they begin to copy instead of create... But it won't work. Copying can be done by any cub. All this process does is bring talent down to the level of file-cabinet mediocrity. The true copy writer must argue with success - he must push on past it every time he faces a new product."
A hearty amen Gene I reckon!
If you question whether or not this practice really happens I have strong proof. Here in my office I have a DVD of a very well known International copywriter boasting at a recent seminar that he regularly 'swipes' and models copy from hot controls to produce letters that he then charges new clients $10,000+ for. This is copywriting that the client assumes is 100% orginal... but it's not.
John Carlton's letters have been ripped like this (one of the boasts at the seminar) - imagine the money John Carlton's clients paid to have letters written by him? If you know anything about John Carlton and his 'go deep' philosophy then you know that he sweats his guts out to produce copy head and shoulders above B list copywriters, which is why clients pay him so much.
Is it right that his letters are stolen, 'adapted' and then in a sense 'sold on'?
Believe me it is a shocker of a seminar. Visit me and you can view it for yourself - or email me and I will tell you where to get it in private.
Perhaps you think it's okay to rip copy like this as long as the modeled copy works and the client is happy with results. That being so, why didn't the client just grab a copy of a control himself and save $10000.00 or more by simply adapting it themselves?
Surely that would be cheating or even stealing wouldn't it?
Or has badness suddenly mutated into being good again?
Bluntly speaking writing fresh original copy is agony. It takes quite literally blood, sweat and tears. Agony, but when it's done there is nothing like it.
It's why John Carlton rocks.
It's why Clayton Makepeace and Gary Bencivenga and all the greats are great, because they are UNIQUE and time after time they come up with ORIGINAL copy. They sweat and grind it out until that EUREEKA moment hits and they don't give up until it does.
So to finish up, ask yourself what do you want in your copywriter?
Do you want someone who cheats (even if they have big name) or... someone who sweats blood to give you the grittiest, freshest and most up to date copy on the block that pulls like crazy - and which no one else has because it's 100% original?
It's a high noon shootout between true grit versus the short cut copy merchants the net seems to be drowning in these days.
Who do you want to win?
Dave Alston is a copywriter, direct response designer and owner of The Alston Consultancy. Visit him at http://www.alstonconsultancy.com