Let’s Do The Twist

And so on.

Listen, many of the most successful ads running today are
nearly all bullets. Often there's a headline and then maybe
two or three (or even just one) paragraph to preface
the bullets. Here's an example of such a one paragraph
preface:

"Are you
troubled by prostate problems? If so, you may be
interested in a new book just released by
XYZ Publishing. Here's a small
sample of what you will learn
when you read this book:"

Then, of
course, there are bullets, bullets and more bullets followed
by ordering instructions. Let me tell you something: Many
times a person will read an ad or a direct mail letter
containing dozens and dozens of bullets and... he'll order
just because one of them appealed to him. A
long time ago (I think it was clear back in the '70s) I was
doing some work as an outside consultant for Entrepreneur Magazine and
I was writing an ad for one of their reports or something and,
out of a tremendous amount of bullets there was one hidden in
the copy that caused calls to come in for months and maybe
even a year later. Here is that bullet:

FAKE COCAINE:
a legal substitute that fools almost everyone!

All that
bullet referred to was a small part of the literature in the report
or whatever it was in and, I'm not exactly sure who was
responding to that particular bullet who would be reading
literature from a magazine like Entrepreneur. Come
to think of it, maybe it was entrepreneurs... only
just those who were doing (or wanting to do) something illegal.

Had I to
do it over, I probably wouldn't have included such a bullet because
I sure don't think it attracted the target audience we were
hoping to sell. But, this tawdry example does illustrate the
pulling power of a single bullet even if it's buried in a
large ad.

I started
this issue with the words "Let's do the twist!" What I
meant by that is, when you

write bullets, you've got to take the facts about the product
you're trying to sell and present them in a way that "teases"
the reader into wanting the full scoop. Now listen, when I say
"twist" I don't mean distort! Your bullets
need to be 100% truthful but you need to
twist the way you write them so the reader gets a teasing
glimpse of a particular benefit for what you're selling which
makes him hungry for the rest of the story.