Write a copy that can't be Copied The 3 rules Framework Can I visualize it Can I falsify it Can nobody else write it Rule 1 - Can I Visualize it "if I can't see it, it's not there yet." the best way I found is to zoom in on the words. so, what I like to do, I get a sheet of paper and I draw a line down the left hand side. at the top, I'll write abstract. at the bottom, I'll write concrete. I'll write I'll write the word at the top. um, and I'll just rewrite it and rewrite it and ask myself what like what do I actually mean here? what am I actually saying? until I end up with a concrete object. Rule 2 - Can i Falsify It you want to write a sentence which is true or which is false. best tip - it says um you can't talk you can only point picture you describe this friend? good family, great values. good family, great values. smart. he's clever. hilarious. he's funny. funny. you're talking funny guy. I'm a woman right now.07:50if I'm a woman or a man, I would I would say I'm you know, you're just you're just saying stuff like is he is he actually funny? now, rerun. now, um, describe this friend, your your single friend, but you're only allowed to say things which are are true or which are false.08:08so, instead of say you said, um, good values, you could say, um, why why does he have good values? point to something. so, for good looking, I'd be like, looks like ryan gosling, 6'2, looks like ryan gosling. exactly. have you seen the meme? uh, I haven't seen the meme.08:25there's like this popular meme going around that all these chicks, it's like they hold these signs. it's like 6'5, works in finance, trust fund. that's exactly it. that's exactly it. reads on the tube. you know, it's not. if you say someone's intelligent, it's like, all right, whatever.08:38does he read? he reads on the tube. that's true or false. um, that's what I mean by falsifiable. can you is it able to be proved true or false? Rule 3 - Can nobody else say it volkswagen had this ad back in the back in the day. your car has five numbers on the speedometer. volvo volvo has six. one could get the impression that the people who made your car lack a little confidence. no one else can say that.10:22the only way of saying it is you got to get in the volvo, see how many see how many dials there are on the speedometer. so, it's visual. the visual aligns with the text. nobody else can say it. super simple. confidence. no one else can say that. the only way of saying it is you got to get in the volvo, see how many see how many dials there are on the speedometer. so, it's visual. the visual aligns with the text. nobody else can say it. super simple. differentiates what you're doing. that's why it works. exactly. it's true. it's falsifiable. it's true. there's a lot of people I talk to and they're like, "no, copywriting's for chumps. I'm not going to learn that. it's not really important." but you are the first person I met who changed my mind on that. why should people learn copyrightiting? why should people learn copyrighting? um, all right. in this hand, I got a snickers bar. imagine, uh, snickers, you're not you when you're hungry. bestselling chocolate bar in the world. in this hand, I got a fuse bar, only to be eaten wearing rubber sold shoes. fuse discontinued in 2006. um, both bars look the same. they taste the same, but one's the best-selling bar in the world, and one, you know, it didn't get into the mind. and why I like this example is because um, startups, businesses are like these two bars. you strip away the rapper. you strip away the copy. you strip away the branding. um they do kind of the same thing. like samsung, Apple. all right. um they both got an app store. they both take great pictures. but what what phone you got? apple. you got an apple. 17 out of out of 20 American teenagers choose Apple. why do they choose apple? cuz to quote oglev, um we don't choose the whiskey, we choose the image. um let me give you one more story about why I think you should learn copyrighting. um I uh my uncle's from reading reading England and they had a striker. I used to watch a lot of football at the Modeski stadium reading old ground and they had this striker up front called dave kitson and he wasn't very good and we'd all kind of laugh at kitson despite supporting reading ginger guy. he was very noticeable. then I went to school in um, and it's sold a lot of economists. I I think um there's a quote by neil French.19:52he says um most people think in any ad you need four elements. you need a header, a subheader, um a picture, and a logo. and what neil French says is if you can do an ad with just one of those elements, you're on to a winner.20:07so there's no there's no subheader. well, maybe management training, but there's no picture. there's no logo. the logo is the I've never read the economist. that's why it doesn't look like an advert. adverts look when they've got you know that logo in the bottom right picture logo.20:18it doesn't look like an ad. so you read it. two other things. the color is economist red which people know. and then the other thing is you like look at the the visual hierarchy. you read I've never read the economist.20:31wait, what? management trainee, age 42. oh, now we have a story. best thing also about the ad is like it's basically what's the what's if you if you strip away the saying it well part, what are they actually saying? they're just saying that the economist like is is a good newspaper. yellow canary. it was cool. like everyone's queuing outside the yellow canary and no one's at the other one. and I thought I thought why is this? well, it's cuz who are you talking to? you're talking to someone tourist just walking down the street as you do when you visit a new place, not really paying attention. kind of taking in the sights. what's your job? form follows function. so what do you want to do? you want to tell them I need a cup of coffee. you don't need to tell them that follow us on Instagram and like communicate all this stuff about you the price of this is this and whatever who you're talking to. say you're walking down. what's going on? you're on a walk and you're maybe going to the beach and when you see that sign, you're looking out of the corner of your eye and you need something to it's not even one Mississippi, two Mississippi. it's instant. but the problem is when you're sitting down to write copy, you're spending hours in the mode of thinking. so when you're writing copy, how do you know that something is going to instantly resonate when you don't have the privilege of seeing something in the way that the consumer is going to read it? I I I think that's where we go wrong. I think this is og what ogle said, but like if you take out a billboard ad, you want to pin it up on Photoshop, not as the ad you made in Photoshop where it's just that and it's not competing against anything. you want to do that and then you take that ad and you pull it into a picture where you've got seven ads around it, people walking by. does this actually grab my attention or not?? so, I like putting things in reality. like you got to another way of doing this is um if if I write a newsletter for example, I write the newsletter in just as the reader will see it. so, I don't write it on a google doc and then take it in. I write it I write it on directly onto convertkit so you see it just as I'm writing it. and I like that cuz like I don't trust when I drag it on a line might spill to three lines or it might be four lines. I don't like that. I want to see it just as the reader reads it. that's my answer. so piece one, who you're talking to. piece two. piece two, you got to have something to say. we we touched on this.. we touched on this a little bit earlier. so piece two. so you got to have something to say. that means that you need to be building things for more than the money that's going to come out on the other side. you need to be building things because of something you believe or a vision that you have or something that you think is wrong with the world. that makes it a heck of a lot easier.. Dave Gart says to me once, why did you start this business in the first place? like, why? I run marketing examples. why do you start marketing examples? why am I teaching a copyrighting course? well, I think that every marketer should learn to write. that's what every marketer should learn. copyrightiting. it's the number one skill in marketing. I I I believe something. what do you believe? I think Andy Rascin um Zura Zura was the subscription economy idea. all the investors in Zuru weren't buying into it because they like believed in the product. they just believed in the idea that everything was going to be subscription. it can show up in the most mundane of things like how I write. the reason that I started the show is because there were so many podcasts where people talk about what they wrote. they talk about, oh, I wrote a history book. let me talk about history. hey, I wrote a finance book. let me talk about finance. I was like, what? why is there no podcast that just talks about how they wrote the book? doesn't exist. and I would really like that. and beyond that, this is what my career is about. writing is important. learning to write in all the ways that we do it stinks. it's boring. it's super academic. it's very leftrained. there isn't a sense of vitality in it. and I think that's ridiculous. so for me, those are the things that I'm like, I don't want that. so I'm going to go counterposition and build the opposite. so so market was exactly that. I I didn't have a career in marketing when I started that website, but I was just fed up of trying to learn marketing and it will be two pages on theory. I wanted just give give me examples. I learn I learn personally from examples and a lot of other people do. that was my why. like i wanted it you same with you. um peace free. peace free. peace free said it well. so this is what most people think copyrighting is. most people you ask people what's copyrighting, they'll say um they'll say it well. let's say ride and rhythmically, visually, persuasively, um, and visually. so, hinge, the dating app designed to be deleted. that's, in my opinion, near like a near perfect um near perfect. yeah, it's you can't beat it. but that's something to say. so, the brief for hinge would be something like i'm sure the writer got something like we're making an app and it's for people who want long-term relationships. it's for people who fed up of dating apps. that's not that catchy. so it's the writer's job to turn that into something memorable. and here like the most obvious how do you make it memorable alliteration ddD data designed to be deleted. also again juxosition the same things crop up like who makes an app that wants to be deleted you know like no one. also what it implies oh I I'll meet somebody and I'll live happily ever after. I'll delete the app. this is the app that's designed so that I can finally fall in love which is what people are looking for. it's write copy that can't be copied. no over app can say that now. h owns that phrase. and we're talking about how a great ad can tell a story. you can look at this image and there is so much cultural scaffolding that