TITLE : SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL COPYWRITING, THE

Like Lady Bracknell, I have never really approved of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Thus, teach- ing people how to write better copy is not an occupation I have consciously adopted. Rather, it has adopted me. Allow me to explain. My office postbag regularly contains letters from a lot of nxious people wanting to know how to get into the advertising business. More correctly, they want to know how to get into copywriting. I answer the lot. I also receive phone calls. Dozens of them. The calls I am alking about usually originate from people who are, in one way or another, already in advertising. They may be employed in an industrial company's publicity department; they may be eager-beaver visualizers and designers; or they may be up-and-coming sales-promotion/marketing execu- tives. Whatever the case, they come on with myriad requests. They casually ask for formulas which will improve their headline-writing skills; for definitions of technical erms to do with radio and television commercial scripting; for considered opinions on mailing-shots they have cobbled together; and for off-the-cuff pointers on how to distil fifty words of pertinent copy from a written briefing-sheet that contains five hundred. Just recently, I spent an hour on the phone with a careers officer of a local college. She needed the basic why's and wherefore's of copywriting to pass on to her students. It so happens that the older I become, the more I tend to relate to women. Sadly, though, the older I become, increasingly fewer women seem prepared to relate to me. So when this siren-voiced charmer requested the facts, how could I possibly refuse? As I say, it took an hour to transmit the bare essentials . Teaching, as you can therefore see, has been studiously thrust upon me. Now it follows that all this time spent replying tocorrespondence and chatting on phones isn't spent doing what I should be doing. Writing copy. And I learned long ago that what you don't write you don't get paid for. Assuming the role of guru is fine when your audience is liberally sprinkled with wealthy pop-stars prepared to invest large sums for the doubtful privilege of sitting at one's feet. Unhappily, the vast majority of people who contact me are neither wealthy nor pop-stars. I would even go so far as to say that the great bulk of them are completely broke and very likely couldn't hold a note in a bucket. Nevertheless, it is not lost on me that someone way back took the trouble to put me on the right road - a Herculean labour for which I am eternally grateful, since writing copy beats working any day of the week. Sadly, Henry Stephen Baker is no longer with us. Though I am prepared to bet that he is currently installed in the great copy shop in the sky, perhaps demonstrating to the board exactly how certain stone tablets can readily be condensed to five with no appreciable loss of emphasis or urgency. That being the case, I suppose it falls to me to do the right and proper thing and pass on what I know about advertising in general and copywriting in particular to those who want to know it. There lies the purpose of this book. It's for those thinking of joining the profession and who wish to grasp the fundamentals. And it's for those already ensconced, but who are prepared to admit that, like the rest of us, they don't now it all and might just pick up a wrinkle or two.