This morning I found myself reading “Quotations of David Ogilvy,” put out in 2023 by the Ogilvy agency, on the 75th anniversary of its founding.
Here’s a quote from Ogilvy that caught my eye:
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Dr. Gallup reports that if you say something which you don’t also illustrate, the viewer immediately forgets it. I conclude that if you don’t show it there is no point in saying it. Try running your commercial with the sound turned off; if it doesn’t tell without sound, it is useless.
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I’m sharing this with you for two reasons.
One is that it’s a useful reminder, even if you never write a TV commercial. Really, it comes down to effective communication. If you don’t illustrate, the reader will forget it. If you don’t show it, there’s no point in saying it.
Reason two is that I was lucky to have somehow learned that lesson early in my copywriting career. Somebody must have shown it to me, because I also remembered it over the years.
The basic idea above — illustrate, don’t just say — is the underlying idea of pretty much everything I’ve done in the marketing space.
It’s the underlying idea of my Copy Riddles program, and its try-and-compare method of learning to write copy, instead of just a bunch of “here’s how” instruction.
It’s the underlying idea of thousands of sales emails I’ve written, both for clients and for myself, and the way I teach others to do that inside my Simple Money Emails and Most Valuable Email programs.
And it’s the underlying idea of my Daily Email Habit service.
Because on most days — not all, but most — I don’t just send a daily prompt for to help you write your own daily email. I also use that prompt in my own daily email, to show and illustrate how it can be done.
About that, I got the following feedback from Chris Howes, who runs a successful music teaching memebrship, Creative Strings Academy. Chris subscribes to Daily Email Habit, and he had this to say:
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But more importantly, I now get TWO LESSONS from you every day. And I often learn as much or more from your regular daily free emails. Together, hand in hand, they feel like someone dropped off a shopping cart from Sams Club full of gifts at my front door and said here you go…
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As David Ogilvy said, “We sell — or else.”
I don’t know what the “else” is. I don’t want to find out.
So if you’d like to buy a month’s worth of daily email puzzles, in order to write your own daily emails, and to get additional inspiration and illustration from my daily emails, here’s where to go: