A Copywriter’s View: Establish Preeiminence by Telling a Common Story

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As a copywriter (translate marketer), one of the things I do is to present my clients and their products or services in the best light possible.

Sometimes, I must confess, I have to look pretty hard to find anything genuinely distinguishing about them.  It’s sometimes a challenge to isolate one or two things that can provide something special — if not truly unique.

Many times, though, it’s only a matter of talking about an aspect of a product or service that’s not so unique, really.  But, instead, we focus on something common among all the competition … but they’re not talking about it.

The copywriter and advertising pioneer, Claude Hopkins, told this great story about how to build preeminence in his book “My Life In Advertising”…

He said:  Schlitz Beer was another advertising campaign which I handled for J.L.Stack. Schlitz was then in fifth place.

All brewers at that time were crying “Pure.” They put the word “Pure” in larger letters.

Their claim made about as much impression on people as water makes on a duck.

I went to brewing school to learn the science of brewing, but that helped not at all. Then I went to the brewery.

I saw plate-glass rooms where beer was dripping over pipes, and I asked the reason for them. They told me those rooms were filled with filtered air, so the beer could be cooled in purity.

I saw great filters filled with wood pulp. They explained how that filtered the beer.

They showed me how they cleaned every pump and pipe, twice daily, to avoid contaminations. How every bottle was cleaned four times by machinery.

They showed me artesian wells, where they went 4,000 feet deep for pure water, though their brewery was on Lake Michigan.

They showed me the vats where beer was aged for six months before it went out to the user.

They took me to their laboratory and showed me the original mother yeast cell. It had been developed by 1,200 experiments to bring out the utmost in flavor.

All of the yeast used in making Schlitz Beer was developed from that original cell.

I came back to the office amazed. I said: “Why don’t you tell people those things? Why do you merely try to cry louder than others that your beer is pure?  Why don’t you tell the reasons?”

“Why,” they said, “the processes we use are just the same as others use. No one can make good beer without them.”

“But,” I replied, “others have never told the story. It amazes everyone who goes through your brewery. It will startle everyone in print.”

So I pictured in print those plate-glass rooms and every other factor in purity. I told a story common to all good brewers …

but a story which had never been told. I gave purity a meaning.

Schlitz jumped from fifth place to neck and neck with first place in a very few months.

That campaign remains to this day one of his greatest accomplishments.  And it’s given many copywriters a very good model.

So, if your business has a product or service that isn’t really so different from others just like it … maybe you could simply tell a story about, precisely, how your product is made? 

For service businesses, maybe telling your story about exactly how you do what you do would capture the essence of something or explain it in a slightly different way than your prospects will have thought about before.

By being the first to use this strategy in your industry — YOU will have done it.  So, anyone who follows as a ‘me too’ will never be the first.  You will!  

And that’s preeiminence.     

You can tell your story in print, on your site, or in your email campaigns  You just need a savvy copywriter to write it.

Establish preeiminence in your market …

Then, everyone will listen and reward you, by giving you their business … because you took the time to educate your audience in a way that made sense, while your competitors ‘assumed’ they already understood — or wouldn’t care.

Till next time, 

Carolyn

http://www.kickasscopywriter.com