The following are copywriting samples of various lengths, types, and tactics.
Ad Copy
Software Company Magazine Ad
Headline: There may be a better way to pick stocks, but you’d have to hear about his mother-in-law, his homeland, and his gall bladder operation.
Photo: Stock photo of a New York City Checker cab.
NGO Fundraising Postcard
Front Side Headline: A friend gave us a hundred bucks and we spent it all in one place.
Reverse Side Subhead: And now Selwenthiran and his family can drink clean water.
Body Copy: Thanks to just one person’s donation, the American-Batticaloa Develop Fund bought and installed the red hand-pump well you see on the flipside of this photo, thus providing this family clean drinking water. The ABDF was created to help Eastern Sri Lanka with projects that cost no more than $1,500. Your donation of literally any amount can make a real and in some cases huge difference. Visit our website to learn and do more and thank you!
PPC Ad
Headline: Ace your SAT | Sophomore Prep programs | Improve your score
Line 1: Register online. Get to know the SATs and be ready for your test.
Line 2: You can do it. It’s just a test. Sign up now and get started.
Email Subject Lines
An Eco-friendly Investment Entity
Want your investment dollar to truly be green?
Ecovest is the first and only place to find environmental startups to invest in.
Want to save the planet and your retirement?
Now you can invest and not feel dirty.
Investing has turned greener.
“If only investing was good for everyone…”
“Take Our Survey” Email
Yes, NAME, your opinion before Friday!
20 answers for a 10% coupon by Friday
Your opinion helps us help you
Online Article
TITLE: Why Chamomile capsules are better than tea for sleeping all night.
LEDE: Concentration. That’s the difference between the benefits of Chamomile tea and capsules. When you concentrate the more than 120 chemicals in the Chamomile plant that are anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antibacterial, and antiviral, you’re getting the biggest bang for your herbal buck. Chamomile tea has long been known as a sleep aid and studies show it helps reduce anxiety. It’s an effective remedy that helps you rest. But when you focus all of Chamomile’s benefits by extracting them into capsule form, you’re getting the fullest effect of this wondrous plant, and you can do this without expensive drugs and side-effects.
Blog Posts
“I can’t read that #$/*&!# billboard!” or: What Happened to Advertising Art Direction?
Have you noticed — then again, who has the time or cares to look at billboards nowadays — that contemporary art directors at ad agencies seem to have no sense whatsoever of how to lay out a billboard that a motorist or even a fracking pedestrian can read?
Billboards used to be a wonderful opportunity to express oneself large! Now they seem like the red-headed stepchildren of the Web 2.0 age; they’re barely remembered and when they are, they’re clearly copied and pasted. The result is layouts that, even though they may measure 30″ x 70″, are unreadable.
Building an emotional bond with your customers.
Building an emotional bond with your customer (and yes, it makes sense to think of them as a single person, not a demographic or a percentage of millions of people) begins with talking to them. Effectively talking TO your audience means that you have to stop and think about their needs, wants, desires, frustrations, and anything else that might make your correspondence with them worth their time, money, and attention.
Yes, you can go too far in identifying your imagined customer and dismiss a whole swathe of your potential buyers. But that risk is far smaller if you really are talking to them, than the risk of losing your whole business by assuming you know your customer so well.
How bad (automobile) marketing ruins a country’s economy and how to fix it.
Out of a breakdown comes opportunity and every challenge contains the clues for its solution. Lazy or arrogant choices made in marketing can create hugely expensive effects that can be avoided with smarter marketing. But what makes smarter marketing? Common sense.
The three articles, in order of how you should read them, are Steve Parker’s Memo to Detroit: Change now or die, Rick Newman’s 10 Cars That Sank Detroit, and Neil Young’s (Yes! That Neil Young…) How to Save a Major Automobile Company.
As you read through these articles, the recurring theme is that these major corporations have largely ignored reality. They’ve dismissed common sense and have either taken the easy way out, focused on short-term gain, or simply acted stupidly. The SUV gas-guzzler obsession was doomed to failure. Instead of truly focusing on serving their customer base, carmakers simply chased after the apparently easy dollars to be made. Let’s not forget the tax breaks the Republican administration threw at people buying SUVs, as if suggesting that vehicles that could barely get 18 mpg were worthy of subsidies and promotion.
Direct-response Letter
Headline: We’re having dinner tomorrow night and you’re going to have a new favorite eatery.
Body: When you think of your favorite restaurant or your favorite foods or cuisine, what do you think of? Is it the exotic flavors from another culture? Is it the way the food is prepared, with love and care? Is it the quality ingredients that definitely stand out and make a difference? Or is it the environment; the “ambiance” as some might say?
What if I told you I’ve got the place for you? Not only is the food made with love and care and with the best, locally sourced organic and slow-food ingredients, its setting is a laid-back, slightly hip eatery that welcomes families as well as first dates.
Book Cover Promotional Copy
War has finally become corporate —
There is a significant difference between waging a war and winning a war. Technology will make the former an automated function while the latter will remain the responsibility of humans. Automation will make it easier for corporations to direct their will throughout the universe while the price, as usual, will be paid by the pitiful foot soldier.
Angus… Faraway in a distant future, a desolate dirt planet is home to thousands of human clone soldiers fighting an endless war in fully-mechanized, armored atmosphere suits. Damage sustained to one soldier’s communication system during battle renders him invisible to his comrades. Unrecognizable without his communication chip, Angus is on his own.
Monica… Injured during battle, Monica is found by Angus buried under debris. Alienated from their fellow soldiers, they are free for the first time in their lives to question the relentless automation that has driven them. As they learn the truth behind the war and their forsaken world, their dormant humanity finally awakens.