Illustration of man looking longingly at a thought bubble containing a big fish

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Career Serendipity

All I Needed to Know About Writing Advertising Copy

It was just seven words. But it was all I needed for a lifetime of discipline - and anecdotes.

Want to write insanely good advertising copy? Here in 2023, just ask Google how it’s done. You’ll get a deluge of advice with headlines promising Top 10 Tips for Writing Amazing Ad Copy from something called Similar Web. Or, the better known Forbes outdoes them with 15 tips, but just for great copy. Search Engine Journal has 10 best practices. Wordstream weighs in with four simple hints. All free. For a few bucks, Masterclass’s gurus will enlighten you with five expert tips.

But back in 1979, you had to sit at the feet of a master. For me, that was Johnny Morris, who was then, and still is, the CEO of Bass Pro Shops in my hometown of Springfield, Missouri. (How I, a newly graduated writing and English major who had never been fishing a day in his life, was lured to Bass Pro is another story.)

It Happened Like This

A few weeks out of college, the summer of 1978, I had squeezed into a closet-sized office at Bass Pro’s first headquarters (a remodeled bowling alley on Glenstone), writing advertising copy for this fledgling business (today we’d no doubt call it a startup). This was a decade or so before the Internet was a thing and almost two decades before Amazon became a phenomenon. Back then, thick, full-color printed catalogs filled the mailboxes of anglers who eagerly parsed through their alluring picture-and-text-filled pages, penciled in paper order forms, wrote checks, licked and applied stamps, and waited weeks for the postman to fetch their gear to them.

Johnny tasked me with my first ad copy assignment for an upcoming catalog: a full-page writeup for what might have been called (exact memory fails) the Bass Buster. He gave me the office number of Jim Bagley, founder of Bagley Baits in central Florida. I called him up, paper and pen in hand, and spent a good half hour chatting and taking notes. Jim was an amiable guy, very happy to describe in detail what made his bass fishing lure so exceptional: they started with quality balsa wood, then painstakingly handcrafted the lure with detailed painting, then affixing the small metal hook and other components. Whether the sanding and varnishing and polishing came before or after, or both, I don’t recall.

Getting Down to Work

Now, I knew I didn’t need to reveal all 17 meticulous steps needed to produce a Bagley lure. I thoughtfully condensed the process, enough to make the point about the lure’s remarkable quality. How many drafts did I type on that IBM Selectric, hand edit, then retype? Exact number, lost to time. But finally I was ready to nervously walk it across the hive of desks to catch Johnny in a free moment in his office. He eagerly welcomed me and read it through.

And kinda tossed it onto his desk. “Frank,” he said in that soft, Missouri-kinda-southern drawl I probably grew up speaking myself. “I’m so disappointed in you.”

Sure, I knew I’d get feedback, even criticism, but though I surely suffered from Imposter Syndrome (well before the term was common), I didn’t anticipate being a failure so early in my career. No doubt he saw the alarm in my eyes. He continued quickly.

But Then …

“Look,” he said, in a tone that conveyed I wasn’t being fired that day. “I don’t care if they spit on it 17 times for good luck. That’s not why people buy it. People buy it because they just want to catch big fish.”

And there it was: timeless, unforgettable insight shared freely with this 22-year-old novice.

People just want to catch big fish.

In succeeding years, I have retold this story countless times, at opportunities when it was appropriate and at times when I just saw enough of an opening to leap in with a favorite anecdote. The line “I’m so disappointed in you” always snags folks’ attention, and the bit about “spitting on it 17 times for good luck” gives it that feel of authentic country wisdom.

In business settings, I’ve elaborated for the younger colleagues I eventually managed myself: Apart from the goods that people buy for themselves and their families to keep warm, get fed, and stay healthy, other purchases are driven by want, not need. The key to getting your audience to want what you have to sell, versus what the other guy has to sell, is being able to tap into the person they think they can become just by buying something: the fisherman catching the prize lunker, the most booked-up chessplayer at the tournament, the IT security manager who saves the company from hacker hell. All you need to do: imagine that person’s definition of “catching big fish.”

Sure, It’s Corny

And of course, the more mundane, ubiquitous Internet advice — “speak to the customer’s desire,” “cut unnecessary words,” “use active voice” — is sound. But it’s also not genuinely memorable and has an odor of obviousness and manipulation. And when you look closely, you can see: it all still boils down to finding the most concise way to convince readers they will catch their vision of big fish.

I worked only a few months at Bass Pro, where I was, pun so very much intended, a fish out of water, before taking the plunge at the Springfield Daily News. But it was an invaluable experience. More stories to share from those days, if time allows.

And in some ways, finally launching this blog and sharing stories like this is my own retirement-age version of casting about for the big catch.

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