Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz Summary

You cannot change or create desire. You can only attempt to channel it. Write copy that makes people believe that your product will fulfill their desire.

“Mass Instinct. The desire of women to be attractive, or men to be virile, or men and women both to keep their health. In this case, the instinct never fades—the desire never changes. The copy writer’s problem here is not to pick out the trend—it is there for everyone to see. His job is to distinguish his product from the others that were there before it—to create a fresh appeal—to build a stronger believability—to shift desire from the fulfillment offered by one product to that offered by another.”

• The desire for health and attractiveness never goes away. You need to be able to differentiate your product in this market.

“The beginning, the fulfillment, and the reversal of a trend. Style. The sudden mass decision to show off a pay raise by installing a swimming pool in the back yard, instead of buying a bigger car. The horsepower appeal of the Fifties, and its sudden subordination to gas economy. Here the copy writer is dealing with the straws in the wind that may indicate a hurricane. Here he needs sensitivity, foresight, intuition. He must be able to see and catch the rising tide when it’s almost imperceptible—sense which of the several appeals that are built into his product he should stress at any particular moment, and when to shift to another—and, always, how to be there first.”

• Be able to identify a new trend, get in early, and abandon it when it is over (or when a better trend starts).

“The copywriter is faced with a society containing dozens—even hundreds—of these already-existing mass desires. His first job therefore is to detect them—inventory them—chart their force and direction. This is a study that will occupy part of every working day for the rest of his life.”

• A copywriter’s first job is to understand the desires of the masses.
• A copywriter’s second job is to make the masses believe that his product will fulfill their desires.

A copywriter needs to know 3 things very well:

1. The desires, hopes, dreams, and emotions of the masses.
2. The product they are selling.
3. The advertising message (the copy, the sales letter).

The advertising message connects the desires of the potential customer to the product.

Note: people want a simple, easy, and quick path to health, wealth, and relationships. But you also have to take their ego and self-esteem into account. They may have failed in the past (that’s why you have a unique sales proposition—it gives them plausible deniability for their past failure).

The copywriter performs his work in 3 stages:

Stage 1: Choose the most powerful desire that can be applied to your product.

• “Every mass desire has three vital dimensions. The first is urgency, intensity, degree of demand to be satisfied. For example, constant arthritic pains compared to a minor headache. The second dimension is staying power, degree of repetition, the inability to become satiated. For example, raw hunger compared to a craving for gourmet foods. And the third dimension is scope—the number of people who share this desire.”
• You must choose the mass desire that gives you the most power in all the dimensions. Use the dimensions to evaluate the desire.

Stage 2: Acknowledge that desire—reinforce it—and/or offer the means to satisfy it—in a single statement in the headline of your ad.”

• If he is aware of your product, and realizes that it can satisfy his desire, your headline starts with your product.
• If he is not aware of your product, but only of the desire itself, your headline starts with the desire.
• And, if he is not yet aware of what he really seeks, but is concerned only with a general problem, your headline starts with that problem and crystalizes it into a specific need.

Stage 3: Then you showcase what your product does and how it satisfies their desire.

How to show that your product satisfies their desire:

Note: the physical part of your product is only valuable because it enables your product to do things for people. The important part of your product is what it does.

1. Justify your price
2. Document the quality of your performance
3. Assuring your prospect that your performance will continue throughout the years.
4. Sharpening the reader’s mental picture of that performance.
5. Giving your product’s claim to performance a fresh new basis for believability. (This one is the most important.) Others have made the same claims as you. Your product, in order to pull sales away from competitors, must introduce a new mechanism, or a new quality that assures performance, or a new freedom from old limitations. You need a unique selling proposition.

Every product gives you dozens of keys. But only one will fit the lock. Your job is to find that one dominant performance, squeeze every drop of power out of it in your presentation—and then convince your reader that that performance and that satisfaction can come only from your product.

• Find the one desire that sells your product the best.

Your headline is based entirely on the answers to these three questions:

1. What is the mass desire that creates this market? (Which we have already discovered.)
2. How much do these people know today about the way your product satisfies this desire? (Their State of Awareness.)
3. How many other products have been presented to them before yours? (Their State of Sophistication.)

The answer to question 1 gives you the nationwide force that creates your market. The answer to questions 2 and 3 gives you the location of that market in relation to your product. Your strategy for exploiting or overcoming the answers to these last two questions will give you the content of your headline.

Your headline does not need to sell at all.

Your headline has only one job – to stop your prospect and compel him to read the second sentence of your ad.

In exactly the same way, your second sentence has only one job—to force him to read the third sentence of your ad. And the third sentence—and every additional sentence in your ad—has exactly the same job.

It is simply common sense that the more of your story you can force your prospect to read, the more thoroughly you can sell him. To attempt to do the same selling job in ten words, instead of a hundred, or a thousand, is to shoot craps with your client’s money.

We have already assumed that the only reader you are looking for is the prospect for your product. That means that he shares a defined desire with thousands, and perhaps even millions, of other people all over America. But how much aware is that prospect of that desire? How close is it to the surface of his consciousness? Is he aware only that a problem or need exists, or is he aware if they can be satisfied? And if he is aware that a means of satisfaction exists, does he realize that it lies in your group of products, or specifically in your product by name, or more specifically in your product at a given price?

Customer Awareness levels:

Level 1: The most aware.

The customer knows of your product—knows what it does—knows he wants it. At this point, he just hasn’t gotten around to buying it yet. Your headline—in fact, your entire ad—need state little more except the name of your product and a bargain price. For example:

“Revere Zomar Lens, Electric Eye Camera—Formerly $149.50—Now Only $119.95.”

Level 2: The customer knows of the product but doesn't want it yet.

Here, your prospect isn’t completely aware of all your product does, or isn’t convinced of how well it does it, or hasn’t yet been told how much better it does it now.

Your headline has to do these 7 tasks:

1. To reinforce your prospects' desire for your product;
2. To sharpen his image of the way your product satisfies that desire;
3. To extend his image of where and when your product satisfies that desire;
4. To introduce new proof, details, documentation of how well your product satisfies that desire;
5. To announce a new mechanism in that product to enable it to satisfy that desire even better;
6. To announce a new mechanism in your product that eliminates former limitations;
7. Or to completely change the image or the mechanism of that product, in order to remove it from the competition of other products claiming to satisfy the same desire”

In all seven cases, the approach is the same. You display the name of the product—either in the headline or in an equally large logo—and use the remainder of the headline to point out its superiority. The body of the ad is then an elaboration of that superiority—including visualization, documentation, and mechanization. When you have finished weaving in every strand of your product’s superiority, your ad is done.

Level 3: Introducing new products.

The prospect either knows, or recognizes immediately, that he wants what the product does; but he doesn’t yet know that there is a product—your product—that will do it for him.