David Deutsch

The "secrets" of my success... 1. Starting at Ogilvy and getting a first-class introduction to "Madison Avenue" ad agency advertising (it's where I learned to balance great creativity with great salesmanship) 2. Working on direct response for super-savvy clients like Boardroom/Bottom Line, Rodale, Agora, Procter & Gamble, and so many others — and constantly seeing the results of my efforts 3. Teaming up with great writers and seeing how they work, getting their critiques, and picking their brains — including Jim Rutz, Jim Punkre, Dan Rosenthal, and John Carlton 4. Competing against great writers, which forced me to constantly up my game 5. Working on many different types of projects, from traditional radio and TV commercials and print ads to direct mail, infomercials, VSLs, online ads, and online sales pages (not to mention a few jingles) 6. Working on an incredibly wide variety of products and services — from toilet cleaner and laundry detergent to industrial o-rings to $20,000 high-end seminars 7. Getting exposure to hundreds of different markets and niches, where I learned the best practices of each 8. Having been at this for awhile

@onlydavidcoen @profgalloway Great point, David. Probably a good thing to ask periodically even when we're along: "Who's in the room with me now?"

@ddeutsch @profgalloway Big influence from psychotherapy there, whether intended or not... I'm reminded of what one therapist said, about my former therapist, when we started working together: "He's probably going to be in the room for a while."

A brilliant question to ask when meeting with a new client or potential client, from @profgalloway: “Who’s in the room who’s not in the room?” What a great way to uncover the hidden influences that can derail a deal or make working together unnecessarily difficult. So you can then neutralize or accommodate them. “Who’s in the room who’s not in the room?” I love how it seems so contradictory at first, then explodes in your brain with meaning.

@benfitterman @AndrewWriteCopy @AlinDragu Exactly! It's amazing how far out you can extend features and benefits if you keep by mentally prompting yourself: And that means... And that means... etc.

Even if you never aspire to be a master copywriter like @AndrewWriteCopy or @ddeutsch or my man @AlinDragu At a bare minimum you should be able to connect features to benefits and then dimensionalize them. example: 🥱Feature: this little button in the side of your Roku makes the remote control beep. 🙂benefit: So it you can quickly find it. 🔥🔥Dimensionalized: so you can instantly find your remote control when your 3-year-old has buried it underneath the sofa. Features are so boring by themselves. Always be dimensinalizing those features

@AndrewWriteCopy Great suggestion. Every day it becomes an increasingly rare thing to do — and therefore all the more valued and appreciated.

Send hand-written cards. They're an effective and inexpensive way of showing people you appreciate them. I received this in the post and can't tell you just how much it means to me.

@DominiBouchard Consider yourself counted. Yes, I'm constantly amazing at how quickly and inexpensively it can be done. And how poorly and efficiently most companies do it.

@ddeutsch Testing is so fast now. And traffic still cheap. Count me in

When I left the world of Madison Avenue advertising for direct response, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Instead of being measured by accolades and awards, my copy was now being measured by a dozen different acronyms, from CPL (Cost Per Lead) to LTV (Lifetime Value). Gradually, I came to embrace and value the feedback. More and more, I could see exactly what I needed to do to get more leads in the door, convert them to customers, and make them spend more money more often. At first it was slow: Print the ad or mailing. Distribute. Wait for results. That's why I liked "doubling day," which was the day a week or two past mailing or publishing when half the responses usually came in. Just double the number of orders that had arrived by that day, and you'd get pretty close to the eventual numbers. Then the Internet came along and sped things up considerably. Results in days. Sometimes even hours or minutes. Now testing has evolved to the point where tests can be created, set up, run, and revisions made based on those results without anyone having to lift a finger. No more wondering if the copy I've written is as compelling as it could be. I know it will evolve to be. I go into much greater depth about what's happening with testing these days—and how to turn it into your most powerful competitive advantage—in a post on my new Substack. You'll find a link to the article in the first comment. There are also more deep dives into all things copy, marketing, and persuasion. And there's plenty more to come, so subscribing would be a damn smart move.

@poisondart14 A wild ride indeed. And the best is yet to come!

@ddeutsch Right! Also, just to say, your career arc has been so cool like hasn't it? You experienced the hay day of manual, delayed feedback advertising and are now seeing the birth of AI-enabled advertising with real-time optimisation. The shift has been wild.

@poisondart14 Thanks, Colin! Right, rapid incremental testing takes what exists (the "control") and keeps asking: does changing this (or changing this AND changing this other thing simultaneously) impact the ultimate bottom line?

Subscribed! Maximum conceptual delta sounds fascinating, David. I like the advantages incrementality testing has over A/B testing. So where A/B testing compares two variants and finds the relative winner, incrementality testing compares exposed vs. unexposed and reveals absolute causal impact (i.e. does this thing add value at all?). Love your penultimate paragraph: "The tools are getting more autonomous. But the empathy it takes to see a potential customer as a unique, complex, feeling person still begins and ends with us. And I think it always will."

Here's the full article on how to turn testing into your biggest strategic advantage: open.substack.com/pub/ddeutsch/p…

@DominiBouchard Yes, people are catching on. They FEEL the difference. The bland soullessness. The sameness. The lack of real emotion. Hence how the term "AI slop" has crept into the language. It's like how people, over time, came to recognize stock photography for these same reasons.

@ddeutsch I think people underestimate the human brain’s ability to detect pattern. As in AI writing pattern. Personality and uniqueness is more important than ever.

Outwriting your competition is hard. Outworking them is easy. The most successful copywriters I know are relentless. They do more research, number their drafts into the double digits, and edit away at the last one until it's as good as it can be. They stay up to speed on the latest developments in AI and use it to sharpen their own thinking and writing. Not to outsource it. Never has outworking your competition paid off as much as it does right now. (Best of all, they'll never know what hit them.)

@DominiBouchard Absolutely. Will be interesting to see where it all leads — how it affects consumer perceptions, expectations, and preferences. Seems they are already beginning to rebel a bit.

@ddeutsch Level of laziness with Ai is increasing. “How to create a lead magnet in 5 sec” is too tempting for them

@AndrewWriteCopy Especially nowadays. If you’re standing still you’re falling behind.

One of the "secrets" to my success: I've never stopped trying to get better.

@oskar_rduch David Ogilvy once said, in effect, “I’m not a great copywriter. But I make the copy great because I’m a great editor.”

@ddeutsch Hard work compounds quietly. The extra drafts are where the real improvement happens

@kristofbardos93 100%!

@ddeutsch the research most copywriters skip is exactly where the best copy hides.

@sonny8s Very true. And that doesn't even include other copywriters on the team who give their input and feedback. That best teams operate as a hive mind.

@ddeutsch cheers david, great insight and how many people on team roughly involved at this elite level (copy chief, research etc) to make a banger of promo. (another open ended question i know!) thanks

@sonny8s A few weeks for a full promo. Can take longer. Or shorter. You've got to move fast when you're writing about the markets.

@ddeutsch great post as always david truly an OG. for the best of best copy teams/writers like agora etc from research to ready to test/put live how long does a promo take as you say with all research, endless drafts etc. of course 'how long is a piece of string' question but rough idea?

@BulletproofMaxP @AndrewWriteCopy Max, so if I reply to you, I'm boosting my own reach? I would NEVER do such a thing. Nor would I stretch out the reply just because longer replies are counted more heavily. No, I would certainly not do that either.

@ddeutsch @AndrewWriteCopy I believe it was revealed weeks back that X's algorithm prioritizes accounts who reply to others accounts. It adds some kind of "points" to your account which increases your reach when you post your own content. Basically just a spammy way to gain a follower base more quickly.

Claude goes down... Replies go down. Sad how some are already completely dependent on AI. (And it'll only get worse.)

@real_Ivn Thanks, Iván. Many businesses, of course, are in desperate need of changing.

I'm sick of hearing that the success of a sales letter is 40% targeting the right market, 40% the right offer, and 20% the copy. That's as absurd as saying: Staying alive is 40% breathing, and 40% eating, and 20% drinking. It may be true, but without ANY of them... you die. Whatever the percentage. And without a hungry market, AND a great offer, AND compelling writing, your sales copy is also dead on arrival. So instead of debating percentages, the only question is: "Which of the 3 needs the most attention in your funnel right now?"

@BenYabets Thanks, Ben.

@ddeutsch Love it 👏