Maybe you’ve heard that last month, marketer Todd Brown assembled a gathering called Copy Legends:
A bunch of top copywriters, in a mansion in Palm Beach. Sitting around a big table. Talking openly for a day, while cameras and microphones record it all.
What did these legendary copywriters have to say?
Well, for example, during a discussion of headlines, Copy Legend Kyle Milligan, who used to be a copy chief at financial publisher Agora and who made a name for himself by analyzing sales letters on YouTube, said the following:
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I believe everyone way overcomplicates what needs to be done at the start of a promotion. They’re looking for this whiz-bang tactic to grab attention.
Yet, there are these tried-and-true openers which continue to work like crazy. Like, a visual pattern interrupt that just says ‘look at this’ and gets the prospect to sort of adjust and focus for a second is like one of the most timeless, time-tested methods there is.
If you don’t know what else to do for an opener, go with ‘Take a look at this.’ It’s like old faithful.
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Kyle’s comment got a lot of people nodding their legendary heads around the Copy Legends table.
I found this amusing.
Because it’s a kind of anti-proof element for the whole concept of Copy Legends. As Todd says himself in the headline for the Copy Legends sales page, that concept is:
“NEW Copy Techniques Working Like Crazy Today”
As in, they didn’t exist yesterday, and they will probably change by tomorrow.
It makes good sense to position an offer like this.
Like Kyle said around the Copy Legends table, people want that promise. They want whiz-bang tactics. And they will pay good money for such whiz-bangery, even though the really effective methods, as Kyle said at the actual Copy Legends event, are things that keep working year after year, decade after decade.
Todd Brown will soon release upon the world his Copy Legends recordings.
I won’t be buying it. But I certainly won’t tell you not to buy if you are after “new copy techniques.”
On the other hand, perhaps you are looking for timeless, time-tested copywriting techniques.
Technique that worked 50 years ago, 5 years ago, 5 months ago… and that will continue to work into the future, because they are based on fundamental human psychology and the competitive research of history’s greatest copywriters.
If that’s what you’re looking for, then… take a look at this: