Direct-response advertisers know that short copy doesn’t sell. In split- run tests, long copy invariably outsells short copy. But I must warn you that if you want your long copy to be read, you had better write it well. In particular, your first paragraph should be a grabber. You won’t hold many readers if you begin with a mushy statement of the obvious like this one in an ad for a vacation resort: ‘Going on vacation is a pleasure to which everyone looks forward.’ A Harvard professor used to begin his series of lectures with a sentence that took his students by the throat: ‘Cesare Borgia murdered his brother-in-law for the love of his sister, who was the mistress of their father – the Pope.’ How to become a good copywriter It is no bad thing to learn the craft of advertising by copying your elders and betters. Helmut Krone, one of the most innovative of art directors, has said: ‘I asked one of our writers recently what was more important, doing your own thing or making the ad as good as it can be. The answer was, “Doing my own thing”. I disagree violently with that. I’d like to propose a new idea for our age: until you’ve got a better answer, you copy. I copied Bob Gage for 5 years, I even copied the leading between his lines of type. And Bob originally copied Paul Rand, and Rand first copied a German typographer named Tschichold.’ I, too, started by copying. Working in a London agency, I used to copy the best American ads. Later, I began to do my own thing. Layouts Advertising suffers from sporadic epidemics of Artdirectoritis. Those afflicted with this disease speak in hushed voices of ‘cool grey bands of type,’ as if the copy in advertisements was a mere design element. They extol the importance of ‘movement,’ ‘balance’ and other mysterious principles of design. I tell them KISS – an acronym for Keep It Simple, Stupid. In the early days of Ogilvy & Mather I used the same, simple layout for all our advertisements in magazines. (See 86 and 87.) Later, when a competitor accused me of foisting a house-style on all our clients, I invented a second layout which allowed space for more copy. I challenge