Direct Response Copywriter on Masterclass, Vandalism, Goodby, and Silverstein.

I was on Facebook the other day and I saw an ad for Masterclass.

In case you don’t know, Masterclass is an info-marketing company. The products usually feature someone extremely famous who talks about what they do. For example, there’s a series with Robert De Niro talking about acting. Famous chefs talk about food. Famous directors talk about, you guessed it, directing.

I spoke with the people at Masterclass a couple of years ago because they were looking for a copywriter. It turns out they know very little about direct marketing, surprisingly, and I communicated with someone who had an MBA from a top business school and she was all about “brand authority” and “brand voice” and other nonsense. What does an MBA get you when it comes to real marketing? Not much.

When I look at the Masterclass sales pages, they are shockingly terrible. They could be making SO MUCH MORE MONEY if they had a direct response copywriter and direct marketers on their team. Oh well.

Maybe they’re testing like crazy and long-form copy doesn’t work. I doubt that. There are direct marketing rookie mistakes all over the place like setting white type on a black background. Masterclass provides a textbook example of a company that’s thinking “branding” while they should be thinking “direct marketing.” Mind you, every company should be thinking "direct marketing" all the time.

I’ve written copy for many of the world’s top info-marketers. The Masterclass sales page is awful. It looks good, I suppose. But they could be making so much more cash. My clients in the info-marketing space are typically brilliant when it comes to direct marketing. Put some direct marketers in charge of Masterclass and the results would be sensational.

But I digress.

The ad I saw was for a series of videos with Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners, the San Francisco-based branding agency. The video includes Rich Silverstein and Jeff Goodby, the founders.

The agency has won a ton of awards and is perhaps most famous for the “Got Milk?” campaign.

In the promo, Jeff Goodby says, with great emphasis …

“Advertising is like vandalism. It’s loud. It’s in your face. And it’s still there the next day.”

Interesting.

I’m a big fan of advertising, specifically direct marketing. I’m not a big fan of vandalism. Someone vandalized my car last summer and it cost me $1,000. Great!

Jeff Goodby totally misses the point here. The goal of advertising is to sell products and services. Does that mean vandalism? Totally not.

I’m not thinking about vandalism when I’m writing copy. What am I thinking about?

Helping my clients be wildly successful. What the potential customer really wants. Finding which benefits of the product/service will appeal to those potential clients. The perfect execution of proven direct response copywriting techniques. Massive testing. Measuring everything to the penny. And more ...

Proof? David Ogilvy, John Caples, Gary Bencivenga, and Claude Hopkins would all agree.

In fact, here's what Gary Bencivenga writes in his Bencivenga Bullets.

"First, I believe the purpose of advertising is to sell, not win awards or applause."

If you want to argue with the copywriter the world's greatest direct marketers were lining up to hire, have at it.

And, of course, I must provide a link here to one of the greatest marketing videos ever produced: David Ogilvy, WE SELL OR ELSE. Click here now.

Advertising is not about awards. It’s not about the advertising hall of fame. It’s not about branding and cute milk moustache ads. It’s certainly not about vandalism. It’s about generating revenue, ethically, for my clients and helping them reach their business and personal goals.