In the chapter titled “How to Produce Advertising that Sells” from his great book Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy exhorts us to do our homework.
First, he says, we must study the product we’re going to advertise—which is how we’ll come up with a big idea for selling it. A big idea springs from the product itself, rather than the copywriter’s inherent cleverness. A classic example is the Mr. Ogilvy’s legendary headline: “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.” Without doing his homework, without the hours of reading and research that contribute to true product knowledge, Mr. Ogilvy wouldn’t have been able to come up with it.
And without homework, good results are mostly good luck.
Next, you must research consumers. If you can’t afford to hire someone, then do it yourself. As Mr. Ogilvy says, “informal conversations with half-a-dozen housewives can sometimes help a copywriter more than formal surveys…”
The point here is that getting smart about what you’re doing may be “extremely tedious” but is the step you should absolutely not skip.
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