Breakthrough Advertising: The Most Important Paragraph In Eugene Schwartz’s Classic!

I have a confession to make.

You see, I fancy myself as being as a bit of a marketing guy. A bit.

Maybe even a budding direct response entrepreneur/copywriter. Maybe. (I’m a humble guy – I leave the tooting of my horn to my clients and to our students).

Yet I had never read Eugene Schwartz’s Breakthrough Advertising.

Huh? You might be wondering what’s the big deal about that.

After all, few advertising people have read it (I’d probably correct that and say “not enough of them” have), and even fewer marketers.

It’s not on most entrepreneurs’ radar screens, that’s for sure – but it should be; Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz is one of the most mentioned “must-read” books on copywriters’ lists everywhere and the book many of its readers credit for adding an extra zero to their net worth.

Everyone in direct response marketing says that you should study this book as if your life depended on it.

So there must be something to it.

Well, the other day my direct response mentor gave me crap for not having read it yet. So I got it.

The verdict?

It’s a gem.

Schwartz blew me away with the opening paragraphs (all emphases his, by the way):

Let’s get to the heart of the matter. The power, the force, the overwhelming urge to own that makes advertising work, comes from the market itself, and not from the copy. Copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take the hopes, dreams, fears and desires that already exists in the hearts of millions of people, and focus those already existing desires onto a particular product. This is the copy writer’s task: not to create this mass desire – but to channel and direct it.

Actually, it would be impossible for any one advertiser to spend enough money to actually create this mass desire. He can only exploit it. And he dies when he tried to run against it.

Let that sucker sink in for a minute.

(This is an old book, folks. Eugene wasn’t really thinking about gender equality back then, unfortunately. These days, female copywriters kick ass, too.)

Now this may not have been the first time you’ve heard about “selling to those who already want it,” but I dare you to find the concept so powerfully explained elsewhere.

Despite being intimately familiar with the concept described in this paragraph, I found myself reading it and re-reading it.

I singled out this paragraph because this rule gets ignored too often, to our detriment.

1. Instead of spending the bulk of our time selling only to those who want our product, we spend it trying to convince people who don’t want it that they actually do.

Conclusion: Lunacy, especially after reading Schwartz’s opening to Breakthrough Advertising.

2. Instead of writing an ad to resonate with right group and get them to take action, we write it to appeal to a broad audience, “so that we get the most interest.”

Conclusion: We should prefer to have 1% of the people get interested 100% of the way, than 100% of the people interested 1% of the way (with thanks to another great ad man, Roy H. Williams, for that one).

3. Instead of following up with our lists with the intention to segment out those who possess the mass desire that we want to exploit, we just blast away with sequential messages to the entire group hoping something sticks.

Conclusion: If you are edumarketing (defined by BuzzWhack as “The use of free educational content to generate sales leads. All those Web sites offering free white papers, special reports, exclusive studies, etc., are further proof that there is no such thing as a free lunch. In return for their free “educational” material, expect to give up your name and email address if not more.” ) then you should incorporate strategies (e.g. surveys, offers, etc.) to slice and dice your prospect list and “activate” the right groups with your offer.

4. Instead of taking the time necessary to fully understand and articulate our market’s actual “hopes, dreams, fears and desires,” we make guesses about what they want.

Conclusion: Marketers don’t spend nearly as much time as necessary to really get to know their market’s emotional hot buttons. (But if you’re a Mirasee student, then you’re old hat at this – you covered it in Week 3 of the program.)

I challenge us all to go back to our copy (web site, brochures, ads, whatever you use) and scrutinize whether it’s really channeling, directing, and exploiting our market’s mass desire. It might be the most important marketing thing you do all day.

And what about the book?

After reading the first four chapters I feel the overwhelming urge to call everyone I’ve ever written an ad for and apologize. Yeah, really. (Not that they were that bad, but whoa… I’m looking at them a lot differently).

We recommend that you get your copy from www.BreakthroughAdvertisingBook.com.

Also, unless you’re actually DOING marketing, advertising and copywriting, a lot of what Schwartz writes might go over your head. It’s heavy, dense, advanced stuff. Don’t despair. Consider it a perpetual psychology and marketing education – something to read and re-read over the years.

So over to you. Have you read the book? What did you think of it? Planning on getting it? Let us know in the comments!