If you go on Google right now, and search for “fresh pressed olive oil,” you’ll soon find a quirky web page as the top result:
It’s the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club, which mails you olive oils from around the world, right after they’ve been pressed, year round.
Here’s the interesting thing about this site for copywriters and marketers:
One of the people behind this business is Gary Bencivenga, often referred to as the “greatest living copywriter.”
Back in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and up to his retirement in 2005, Gary made his clients lots of money (hundreds of millions of dollars?) by writing long-form sales copy. His promotions sometimes spanned 50 or 60 pages.
And in fact, Gary even wrote a long-form sales letter for the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club. It used to be there, right on the homepage.
But if you check the homepage of the FPOOC right now… that long-form sales letter is not what you will see any more.
Instead, what you will see is a quick and clear headline for the offer…
Some bullet points that have been pulled out from the original sales letter…
A bit about the founder of the club…
And a couple of buttons to buy.
All in about 2 pages of copy, max.
So what’s going on?
I don’t know. But my guess is that they tested this shorter home page, and it’s working better than what they had before. Here’s the lesson I draw from this:
If you start to learn about sales copywriting, you’ll quickly be told that “copy is never too long, only too boring.”
You might hear this backed up with the experience of top-level marketers and copywriters — including Gary B. — who will tell you that long copy, if done right, always outperforms short copy.
And it may be true… if you only have one shot to make the sale (ie. direct mail) or if you are selling to cold traffic.
But that’s not how many online marketing situations work today. The FPOOC and its website are a perfect example of that.
And that’s why I say long-form sales copy is finally dead.
And in case you think this is just cherry-picking and exaggeration… then I agree with you.
But I also think it’s no worse than saying “copy is never too long” — when it clearly can be. Even if it’s written by the great Gary Bencivenga himself.
All right, that’s enough copywriting iconoclasm for today.
But in case you want more copywriting lessons — and not all of them controversial — you might like to sign up to my daily email newsletter.