Breakthrough Advertising

If I could keep one book off this entire shelf it might be this one, and it has nothing to do with investing.

Schwartz's central claim is that you cannot create desire. Desire already exists in the market, in enormous quantity, and all copy can do is channel it at your thing.

That sounds obvious until you notice that most marketing is trying to convince somebody to want something, which is the losing version of the job.

Then he gives you the actual tool, which is the five stages of awareness. Somebody who already knows your product needs a different opening sentence than somebody who knows they have a problem but has never heard of a solution, and somebody who does not yet know they have a problem needs a third thing. Most bad advertising is good copy pointed at the wrong stage.

When we repositioned the park the old customer already owned a machine and already knew the category, so the message was about trails and terrain. The new customer did not know this kind of vacation existed. Different stage, different opening line, same property, and revenue went from $1.5 million to $6 million in twelve months without anything physical changing.

Be warned that it is a difficult read and the used copies are absurd. I have a photocopy.