Title: Should You Write a Long-Copy Ad or Keep it Short?

Word Count: 735 Summary: Should you write a long or short ad? The truth is, the reason people read ads ha s nothing to do with copy length. Keywords: copywriting, copywriters, writing, advertising copy, ads, brochures, mailers, we b content Article Body: Okay, you re ready to write the ad of a lifetime. The one that will pull like cra zy 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 that s stu ffed with information? The 80-20 rule says 80% of the people only read the headline (and maybe a captio n, if you have one). But the fact is, readers will read a long-copy ad. One Mc Graw-Hill study looked at 3,597 ads in 26 business magazines. What they discover ed was that ads with 300 or more words were more effective that shorter ads in c reating 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 responses even without a coupon! The truth is, the r eason people read ads has nothing to do with copy length. Nobody reads long ads and other urban ad legends

People shun too many of today s ads long or short because several misleading myths hav e stubbornly remained with us. Things like negative headlines are a downer since people want to feel good when reading your ad. Or show the product or they ll never know what you re selling. Then there s the stuffy axiom, there s no place for humor in business advertising. Or the ubiquitous saw, all your ads should look the same, blend in or be swallowed up. The list goes on and on. Presented with unabashed h ubris by the high priests of advertising. The basic fact is, ads really fail fo r three reasons. Your ads are all about you You re telling customers what you want to hear, not what they want to know. Impre ssive sounding features are fine to motivate your sales force, but your customer is only interested in one thing: What s in it for me? This offense is particularly egregious in business-to-business advertising, which is infamous for its addicti on to phrases like the XP90 does it all or now with Duo-Pentium Processor without a hi nt of what these features do. Also contaminating many of today s ads are such che st-pounding headlines as Taking the lead, The promise of tomorrow, today, or A tradit ion of quality. They sound good but say nothing. Your ads are boring You ve got to break the boredom barrier big time. Many ad gurus say blend in, be on e of the pack and survive. No wonder so many ads look alike, proudly showing bi

g pictures of their products, or worse yet, featuring a giant photo of the compa ny s CEO usually with a caption that s been scrubbed clean of originality or compellin g information. If you want people to stop and read your ad, you have to make th e ad more interesting than the editorials in the publication you re in. Give them real news, a fresh new way to look at what you re offering them. Stand out from the crowd. Start trends, don t follow them. One of the most interesting car ads I ever saw showed the car only sparingly; instead, it featured an animation of a human heart beating furiously to the soundtrack of an accelerating engine. Br eakthrough stuff. Your ads don t make human contact They re not reaching readers on an emotional level. We all want to be liked, appr eciated and loved. We want to feel secure in our lives and our jobs. So be a m ensch. Create ads that touch the soul. Use an emotional appeal in your visual, headline and copy. Don t just show a car on the road; show the guy captivating his sweetheart with the car. If your buyers were on the moon, would they care abou t your car s styling? No. They d get an ugly, crawly vehicle that got them from cr ater to crater. Selling computers to business? Show the guy getting a raise or promotion for selecting your latest model. You re selling the emotional end resul t, the human need-based bottom line, not a box, or vehicle with four wheels and an engine. So if you re struggling with the notion of whether to write a long- or short-copy ad, you can do both and still get results. The key is not length or lack of it, but information, interest and involvement in your customer s needs. These are th e ingredients to creating a successful ad.