Heisting Hall-of-Fame Headlines:
Master this "illegal" skill and make writing your headlines quick and easy!
By Michael Masterson
Old-time copywriters like yours truly enjoy a walk down Memory Lane now and then. We do it for fun, but it can be profitable too.
I'm talking about rereading the best-known direct-marketing ads of the past. Copy written by such luminaries as Gene Schwartz, Claude Hopkins, and John E. Kennedy.
It's fun to read through these old ads. Looking at them now -- with their dated language and primitive graphics -- you might think they could never work in today's hypercompetitive market.
Yet some of them are still working. And most of them live on as the arms and legs or blood and bones of many modern ads written by copywriters who understand their value.
There are many ways to learn from these time-tested ads.