Web Marketing Strategy Update

One of the biggest, perhaps most important, parts of creating good copy is finding an angle. The writing bit is generally pretty easy, but sometimes it’s the angle that is hardest to come by.

Copywriting for a living can leave you feeling, like the annoying Forest Gump, that life really has some startling resemblances to a box of chocolates – when it comes to subjects you can never be sure what you are going to get next.

Many products that we are employed to promote have also been written about extensively – done to death in some cases. While this can help from a research angle, it can leave you wondering what else there is left to say. These are some of the approaches I’ve found useful to finding that often elusive angle.
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The Prince of Print, famous — perhaps infamous — as a larger-than-life copywriting genius, passed away in his sleep on Sunday, April 8th.

I missed this at the time, but if you haven’t heard of him, you need to. Gary was one-of-a-kind and nothing short of a legend in the world of direct marketing. A man whose reputation preceded him, he inspired marketers and copywriters everywhere.

For years now he’s been freely giving away all his old paid subscription newsletters he began publishing in back 1986 at The Gary Halbert Letter, which is where I first got to know of him.

His newsletters are packed with marketing tips and ideas — tons of real gems, which he was adding to every month as he shared his thoughts on Internet marketing. I’ve been going on and off for years now. The only thing is many are pretty long, and finding the time to read them all is why my visits always remained erratic, despite the best intentions.
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I remember learning about subliminal advertising in Journalism school. Fascinating (and somewhat diabolical) to manipulate people with nude pictures in ice cubes and death masks in movies. But as I was searching around, I notice there are a lot of naysayers who deny it even exists. Oh come on, already. It’s so obvious. Remember all the uproar over the phallic symbol in “The Little Mermaid”? And do they really believe the tobacco and alcohol companies spend all those millions on market research to simply ignore a proven (albeit illegal) technique? Second for second it costs more to produce a TV ad than it costs to produce a TV show or feature film (http://www.classroomtools.com/sublimad.htm)
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