Should You Write a Long-Copy Ad or Keep it Short?
Okay, youre ready to write the ad of a lifetime. The one that will pull like crazy and leave them begging for your product like Somalians for food. So, do you whet their appetite with a short and sweet ad? Or write a long-copy ad thats stuffed with information?
The 80-20 rule says 80% of the people only read the headline (and maybe a caption, if you have one). But the fact is, readers will read a long-copy ad. One McGraw-Hill study looked at 3,597 ads in 26 business magazines. What they discovered was that ads with 300 or more words were more effective that shorter ads in creating product awareness, inducing action and reinforcing the decision to buy. Another ad for Merrill Lynch crammed 6, 450 words into a single New York Times page. It pulled over 10,000 responseseven without a coupon! The truth is, the reason people read ads has nothing to do with copy length.
Nobody reads long ads and other urban ad legends
People shun too many of todays adslong or shortbecause several misleading myths have stubbornly remained with us. Things like negative headlines are a downer since people want to feel...