"Do You Make These Mistakes In English?"
Many consider this ad's headline by Max Sackheim to be the most effective headline in advertising history. The headline ran for decades as a control & was...View More
even swiped here by famed copywriter, Gary Bencivenga: http://swiped.co/file/do-you-make-these-mistakes-in-job-interviews-by-gary-bencivenga/
What make's the headline so irresistible is that after reading it, the curious side of us feels a need to know if we are making "these mistakes". Humans hate making mistakes because they cause embarrassment & imply inferiority. If this ad was positivity-driven & implying English speaking tips, it would be no where near as appealing.
The rest of the ad is just as savvy. Sackheim does a fantastic job of making Sherwin Cody look & sound like the ultimate guru. If you read it through, you'll even see much of the proof given to convince the reader is scientifically-based which is hard to deny.
Other key points to note are the strong emphasis on ease ("self-correcting device") & simplicity ("15 minutes a day"). It was a free book lead generation tool & they assure readers at the end that "no agent will call".
