Eugene Schwartz's complete system for writing ads that shatter traditions and sales records. The foundational framework behind billions of dollars in direct response marketing.
"Copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take the hopes, dreams, fears and desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people, and focus those already-existing desires onto a particular product."-- Eugene Schwartz, The First Law of Advertising
Every ad follows this exact sequence. Master these three steps and you control the most powerful force in business.
Evaluate every mass desire by three dimensions:
Your headline is the bridge between your prospect and your product. It touches the prospect at their exact point of awareness -- reinforcing, crystallizing, or channeling that desire.
Every product is TWO products: the physical product (never sell this) and the functional product -- what it DOES. Sell the performance, prove it with the physical.
Your headline MUST match where your prospect is on this scale. A headline that works at one stage will absolutely FAIL at another.
How many products have been there before you? This determines whether you lead with claims, mechanisms, or pure identification.
Every ad must work on all three simultaneously. These are your raw materials.
Wants, needs, cravings, thirsts. Physical, material, sensual. They already exist -- you can't create them. But you can expand them, sharpen them, and give them a goal.
The roles your prospect wants to play. The personality they want to project. These never-openly-spoken self-image projections are immensely powerful sales forces.
Opinions, attitudes, prejudices. The filter through which product claims must pass. Use their logic, not yours. Never argue with existing beliefs -- channel them.
Once you have your basic idea, use these verbalization techniques to maximize its impact. Click to explore.
Once your headline stops the reader, these seven techniques build body copy that converts.
Present vivid scenes of fulfillment. Put the product in action. Bring in the reader as participant. Show them testing claims. Stretch benefits through time. Bring in audiences. Show experts. Compare. Picture the downside. Show ease. Use metaphor. Summarize. Guarantee.
Build a saleable personality into your product. Tap into character roles (who they want to be) and achievement roles (what they want to accomplish). The product's primary image must match the prospect's desired self-image.
Make prospects believe claims BEFORE you state them. Build belief architecture into the opening. Use their logic, not yours. Contradict their false beliefs gently. Lead them through syllogistic reasoning until your conclusion is inevitable.
Remove objections by reframing. Simplification makes the task seem easier. Escalation makes the reward seem greater. Price Reduction reframes cost as trivial compared to value gained.
Verbally prove HOW your product works in three stages: Name the mechanism. Describe the mechanism. Feature the mechanism -- make it the star of the entire ad.
Destroy alternate ways for your prospect to satisfy their desire. Show why every competitor and alternative fails. Make your product the only logical remaining choice.
Borrow believability from accepted truths, trusted authorities, or common knowledge to make new, unfamiliar claims credible. Transfer existing trust to your product.
Before writing a single word, run through these six checkpoints.
Evaluate by urgency, staying power, and scope. Choose the desire with the most power across all three.
This determines your entire headline approach -- from price-only to pure identification.
This determines whether you lead with claims, mechanisms, or identification.
Feature this exclusively. Everything else is supporting proof.
Strengthen your headline expression for maximum impact.
Intensify -> Identify -> Graduate -> Redefine -> Mechanize -> Concentrate -> Camouflage
"Your headline has only one job -- to stop your prospect and compel him to read the second sentence. Your second sentence has only one job -- to force him to read the third. And the third sentence -- and every additional sentence -- has exactly the same job."-- The Headline's Real Job