TJ Walker discusses whether marketing copy should be long or short. A 17-page George McGovern fundraising letter raised millions, proving long copy works when it's compelling and relevant. Short attention spans are a myth; people read what matters to them.
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And I sometimes feel like I've wasted half my life debating this with people. I come in general, I come from the school of thought that says the more you tell, the more you sell. And you and I are both old enough to at least have read in the textbooks how at one point, for, you know, 35 years, the most successful direct mail marketing campaign ever was for the George McGovern campaign. It was, I believe, a 17 page fundraising letter.
Right.
And it raised more money than anything else. And people are bombarded with so much information these days of, oh, the average person has the attention of a goldfish. And you've got to communicate everything in 30 seconds, or you've got seven seconds or you've got two seconds. And I have this debate with a lot of other communications people on marketing. You know, it's gotta be shorter, shorter, shorter. And I always generally push back and say, why does it have to be shorter? If they're really not interested in this, they're not even gonna read one sentence. How do you make your own judgment calls about length when it comes to copyright?
Well, I think the thing that's being left out of the discussion kind of is long is great if it's interesting.
Yeah.
If it's boring, it's not so great. We'll read, you know, eight Harry Potter Potter novels, right? We'll listen to.
You might. I won't. But I get your point.
You know, we'll read, you know, long books, we'll read long articles. We'll read anything if it's about ourselves, right? You know, somebody used to say, I can. I can get you to read a 500. You know, I can get you to read 100 page report, right? All I have to do is say, it's all about tj. It's like, oh, okay, I'm gonna read it. It's all about me, right? Same thing if it's about me. So if copy.
Fascinating report, by the way.
To us, right? But that's the thing. To us, to our. Or to this audience of one or to this audience of people, it's, you know, we want to do things that are fascinating. We want to do things where they go, wow, this is about me. This is about the challenges that I'm facing as a communicator, right? This is about the challenges that I'm facing. What do I do? How do I use AI Long versus short. All these challenges. So the question, you know, like most things, that rhyming, the more you tell, the more you sell. Like most rhyming little ditties like that. Penny saved is a penny urine. The opposite is also true, right? Pennywise pound foolish, right? You. You can focus on the wrong things. And sometimes short is good, and sometimes long is good. But long has to be interesting. It has to be compelling. It has to keep your attention. You can't bore someone into buying. You know something?
Now, that brings up an issue that I'm just dying to ask you about with respect to boredom.
