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Back when I first started working at Hacker Group, I learned about what we call “the safe assumption.”

The safe assumption is that the people who are viewing your marketing message don’t know you and don’t care about your product. The safe assumption is that they only care about what’s in it for them.

If you ignore the safe assumption, you can do some...

Turns out, every day as a creative professional, I’m in a Keynesian Beauty Contest.  

I think we all agree that an artist is someone who seeks the beauty of truth, someone who, by exploring and expanding his or her own perceptions of the world, enriches the lives of those who experience his or her art. That’s what we creative professionals do all day long. 

Only...

Direct marketers like me are often accused of not being very creative. We like the tried and true.

We stick to the formula. In our defense, let me say that we creative types are in love with formulas because they work – and we’re paid to be effective.

But there’s a dark side. Formulas can also become cages that keep us from the breakthrough results we (and our...

That’s my favorite line from the movie Beaches. I honestly don’t remember much else about it.

This line encapsulates why good marketing is so hard to create. We know so much about the product. And the process we use to make the product. And the brand personality we want the product to embody. And on and on and on.

It all goes in the creative brief – along with...

Writing – at least in creative fields – has almost always been an individual effort. The writer works alone.

In the world of advertising, like no other creative undertaking I can think of, collaboration...

You are reading this because it’s about me and my achievements. Nothing could be more fascinating. I’ll be giving you the details about all the awards I’ve won and my new work that just launched.

And when you’ve read all of this, I know you’ll be delighted to learn that you can bask in my reflected glory when you hire my agency.

This...

I sometimes wonder if marketers have parents or grandparents. So many of us have no trouble talking down to seniors. Or making fun of them behind their backs.

Here’s a snarky little story in the Los Angeles Times, reporting on the Consumer Electronics Show:

The Madison Avenue Journal has been doing an in-depth, multi-article interview of Keith Reinhard who deeply admired Bill Bernbach. The Journal has nicely presented Bernbach’s 20 insights on advertising....

It used to be a joke among creative types that when you show a client three different concepts, they’ll pick the headline from the first ad, the photo from the second and the copy from the third.

Then we’d shake our heads and laugh, go into a deep funk or rage, depending on our personality.

The last laugh is on us.

The New York Times has reported...

Brand advertisers often find themselves in a complicated relationship with their customers and prospective customers. They are in hot pursuit of customers’ affections. They believe, "If only the world loved my brand as much as they love their iPhone, their Moleskine notebook, their Prius and shopping at Whole Foods, I could live happily ever after."

Too often, a marketer’s love...

I regularly get busted for being too pushy.  In my marketing copy, not in real life.  In real life I’m a teddy bear.  Just look at my photo.  It’s obvious.

But, on behalf of clients, I’m a tiger.  When it comes to asking for a response, I go for the jugular immediately.  Sometimes clients think it’s a little too much -- but I beg to differ.

Too...

The only way I know how to write compellingly about a client’s product is to fall in love with it, at least a little bit. Usually, this is easy. The old saying, "salesmen love to be sold," is true of advertising copywriters, too.

It’s a little like seeing another man enjoy the company of your wife at a cocktail party. That alone can make you appreciate her a little bit more....

I've worked in advertising and I've worked in direct marketing, and direct is better.

Seriously.  In direct marketing, we keep score.  That makes it all more fun.  When we keep score, we can often figure out what we did right and what we did wrong.  Then we can tweak what we do the next time and improve our score.

The only way to keep score in...

If you're someone who has to judge creative work before it hits the streets in its final form, I have a couple of hints for you.

1. The idea you hate most may work hardest. We have a saying around here that no one is soothed into buying a product.  Now that's one of those generalizations that can be easily disproven. Trying to agitate someone into taking a spa vacation...

Whenever anything goes wrong with the results of a marketing test, you can count on me (as the copywriter) to say, It must have been the list.  Or, if it wasn't a mailing or email, Must have been poor audience targeting.

It's a joke to deflect blame from my bulletproof creative work.  Like all jokes, it's based on truth. 

You can bring the gospel to the infidels, but...

I've gotten pretty far in the direct marketing biz by understanding the "what's in it for me" principle. My job is to get inside the head of someone else in order to figure out what they want. And then I climb back out again and show that person how my client gives them just what they're looking for. (As a friend of mine says, "Be careful. It's dark in there.")

The WIIFM...

But then I have to remember, not everything will have an impact on response. Sometimes it's better to let it go. Especially if it's expensive to fix.

Better...

If you're a marketer, I'll bet your favorite word is FREE. Or maybe YOU. Or sometimes GUARANTEE.

My favorite marketing word is a little tricky . . . and some clients don't let me use it.

It's I. (Or should I say "c'est moi," in honor of my...

And then, KAPOW! You learn that someone else at the table — someone you respect — actually liked the boring Derek Jeter commercial for who-knows-what energy drink.

It...

If you, like me, aren't familiar with gamer terms, w00t — spelled with zeroes, rhymes with root — is what players of Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role-playing game say when they're happy. It originally meant "Wow, loot!" Now it means "yay!"...

Being open is all hunky-dory in those cases where you can tear yourself away from your own point of view long enough to appreciate another perspective. But sometimes you're absolutely certain you're right and the other person is wrong. And sometimes the other person feels just as...

Now there's a lawyer who should be reviewing direct marketing copy.

I'm not trying to fool anybody when I say something is free. It's free! But someone in...