The core theme is that effective copywriting and marketing stem from having a clear, unique message ("something to say") and expressing it concretely and compellingly, rather than relying on generic, abstract language.
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Harry Dry um is probably the most
maverick human I know. Um over a very
very short amount of time with his
website marketing examples, he went from
zero to 150,000 email subscribers in
like three years. Truly phenomenal. And
like he did it largely by himself. I've
seen people describe Harry as the best
copywriter in the entire world. and uh
today he is with us. So with all that
being said uh please give Harry Dry a
huge round of applause. [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music]
You really [Music]
homepages, storytelling,
positioning, offers, ads,
hooks, social media,
sales. Wait, it's all copyrightiting. [Music]
[Music]
been. I did not think I'd start as a
spaceman. Uh
neither did I think I would
uh start with a book I read when I was
Label. Then Toad began to bang his head
against the wall.
Why are you banging your head against
the wall? asked frog. I hope that if I
bang my head against the wall hard
enough, it will help me to think of a
story, said Toad. Now, I've never uh had
a conversation with with Toad. But if I
did, I'd say Toad, keep banging your
your head. If you think um writing's
hard, it's because you're trying to do
it well. Uh I recently moved house in
London. I've been trying to find a place
to rent, which means traversing um lots
and lots of tube lines. And in
preparation for this talk, I thought on
the side of the tube, I would take some
some pictures to show you the problem, I
think, with with advertising or or
copyrighting or marketing. Um so, at 8
a.m. um a few weeks ago, I got off the
tube at Barbin and I was greeted by a
jointist telling me to live life to the
max. I got off at uh Farington and I saw
destination nuclear be a force for good. Sainsburries
Sainsburries
um think that the best way of uh
demonstrating the relationship the
relationship they have with farmers is
flat imaginary cardboard carrots.
At this point I was in West Henszington
I believe or maybe it was South South
Hamstead and I saw Zlatan Ibrahimovic
where your money works. For those of you
who don't know Zlatan Ibrahimovic and
XTB that's like Wayne Rooney giving you stock
tips. I got off onto the Lisbuff line
now. I think maybe maybe Liverpool
Street is the place for me to start my
new my new life. And I see freedom pay
well pay unleash the power of pay. I
didn't know we had a a problem paying
point. At this point, I I visited a
couple of places. They weren't for me,
and I was very, very hungry. So, I found
myself a chocolate bar, dairy, milk, and
more because nothing screams conviction
quite like and
more. Selling so well, it's reduced to
clear. Liverpool Street was not the the
place for me. there's too much hustle
and there's too much bustle. So, I took
the uh the the the Weaver line to Stoke
Newton. Now, anybody who who has the
Weaver line would know that you have
Wi-Fi on that line. I did not know this.
Um so, I get out my phone and I open up
Twitter and Durham University is
promising uh programs which will equip
you with the essential skills to excel.
And I'd like to ask Durham, what do you
mean by essential skills? it genuinely,
not sarcastically. And what do you mean
by Excel?
Um, data do promised me a 360 view of my
business. You get that. You get the
picture. Okay, this is um the problem.
So, I arrive in Stoke Newington where
I'm going to stay for the night and see
if I like the neighborhood. And it turns
out I do. I now live in in Stoke
Newington. And I upload these uh
pictures of the day to convert them to
JPEGs from my phone. And I see SEMrush
promising to beat your competitors in
less time. Okay. Okay. There's one ad I
like that day. I saw 57 and I I quite
like this one from the ordinary.
Designed to clarify that not tested on
animals is already industry standard,
not not a product benefit. Um what's the
problem? Like I feel like it's very easy
to stand up on a stage and and like
pontificate and and criticize. It's much
harder to do. Um but I still think we
should try and understand like what's
going wrong. And George Orwell writing
in 1946 summarizes the problem much
better than I
can. As I have tried to show, modern
writing at its worst does not consist in
picking out words for the sake of their
meaning and inventing images in order to
make the meaning clearer. It consists in
gumming together long strips of words
which have already been set in order by
somebody else. The attraction of writing
easy. So, so what's going wrong? Okay,
what's going wrong? That's what I think
is going wrong. Now, I'm going to give
you three little ideas so you can you
can spot it in your own work because I
do this and I'm sure a few of you do.
The first one is is how do you stop
dumbing together words set in order by
somebody else? Well, it's a very obvious
answer. You can search them on Google
with curly quotes. Now, if you put
something in curly quotes in Google, it
it's a direct match. So, you can see how
many people have wrote the same thing
before. So, if we remember um Freedom
Pay, take unleash the power of pay. I
click their website, I see take your
payments to the next
level. There's genuinely hundreds of
companies who are describing their their
payment provider as take your payments
to the next level. The words have been
killed. They've lost all their meaning.
I'll give you one more. Read read it
aloud what you write in a phony American
accent. That's not original.
Unfortunately, it's in the copy book and
I forgot who who first said it. Um let's
Semrush. Hi, I'm Troy Mccclure. You
might remember me from such adverts as
beat your competitors in less
time. If we try that with the ordinary,
it doesn't quite work as well. Hi, I'm
Troy Mccclure. You might remember me
from such adverts as designed to clarify
that not tested on animals is already
industry standard, not a product
benefit. It doesn't work because um this
ad is quite sincere. It's a It's a fact.
It's honest. You can't parody. You can't
cliche honesty. Finally, could a
competitor uh sign this advert off? Jim
Dury once wrote um never write an ad a
competitor can sign. So, Durham
University, Essential Skills to Excel.
Plymouth University could write exactly
the same ad. Our marketing program will
equip you with the essential skills to
excel. University of
Plymouth. Keel University. Nobody's
perfect. number one in England for
overall student satisfaction. 2014 Keel
2015 Keel 2016 Keel 2017 2018 Keel
Plymouth can't do that ad. Neither can
Durham. I think in one word the problem
I'm getting at here is
abstraction. Thinking is is hard. Before
there were computers, there were
ideas. So we we we hide away. We pull
back away from concrete reality and we
we talk use words which you have on your
little pads here which I I gave you a
little abstract word bingo. You talk
about um cutting edge. You talk about
take. You talk about whatever whatever
whatever it looks like this. This is
what this is what most websites look
like. It's pre-fabricated words tacked
together like sections of a
pre-fabricated hen
house. Now I don't think AI is
particularly good at solving this
problem but it's not bad at spotting it.
So, a little prompt I found useful is um
copy and paste your homepage, your
advert, your your company statement,
whatever into chatbt and and ask read
the following copy. Can you
highlight every word or sentence which
contains abstract verbs, abstract nouns,
abstract adjectives, abstract adverbs,
and cliches? And you'll, if you're not,
you know, at the top of your game, you
will get back a long list of things to
change. On the way home tonight, have a
go with abstract word bingo with your
own your own homepages. You spot one
word, that's a shot of pickle juice. You
get five in a row, that's the whole bottle.
bottle.
Um, I think there's two problems here.
Why, why do we abstract? Why do we hide?
Why do we carry away? I think firstly,
most companies have little to say. And
secondly, they're not too good at saying
it. So, what do they do? They imitate.
It's easy to imitate. We feel very safe
when we're just when we imitate. So, in
the last 10 minutes of this talk, I'm
going to give you a little solution. Not
a big solution, a little solution. I'm
going to try and help you work out how
do you have something to say and
secondly we're going to try and work out
how to say it well. All right, part two
having something to say. Robbley, switch
to Robbley email marketing for
everybody. Now, would anyone in the
audience, it's a very difficult
question, would anyone in the audience
have an idea of of how to improve
Who's it for? Louie says, "Who's it
for?" And he's right. The problem with
Robbley is you could give that to the
best writer in the
world, copywriter in the world,
whatever. And they couldn't do anything
with it because they have nothing to
say. They got nothing to say in the
first place. It's email marketing for
everybody. There's 365 email marketing
companies. Mailchimp is is the biggest.
They're also email marketing for
everybody. So why would anybody ever
choose Robly?
This is when we when we think about
copywriting, it's it's a mistake, a big
mistake to think it's just writing words
or write words which sell. I was once in
a meeting and they said they said,
"Harry, come up with a
line." You need to have something to say
in the first place. Below the iceberg,
we have what are you competing against?
Why are you? Who's it for? When's it
for? What is it? What are you not? Wh
why did you start the product in the
first place? What's your point of view?
Why do you exist? When you have these
elements in place, summarized by perhaps
story and positioning, it's really easy
to write words which sell. Okay, that
was an awful lot to cover. So, we're
going to talk about two of them. What
are you up against? And why
you? I like to lay this out um very
simply with left and right. What am I up
against? What What am I competing
against on the left side and why you on
the right hand side? You get this right.
Um it's pretty easy to write words which
sells. So, here's a bacon company,
Baker's Delight. We're for real. What is
bake the baking company competing
against? Factory-made bread. Why you?
Well, it's baked in bakeries. Bread in
bakeries takes better. So, you have real
bread isn't made in factories. It's
baked in bakeries. And I have an example
for you to to work out yourself. Um, I
was born near Southampton in Portsmouth. And
And
in you're bottom of the league.
league.
Um in in Southampton there is there is
eight swimming schools for children all
very closely pro proximitated in in
that's not a word but within a within a
5 uh kilometer radius 500 meter radius I
should say. Now they will say the same
thing swimming lessons Southampton
welcome to Southampton based quality
lessons affordable prices learn to swim
at West Swim School. They will say we do
swim lessons. So I want you to think
you're now in charge of setting up a
swim school in Southampton for children.
How would you position it? How would you
think about it? I'm going to give you
one minute with the person next to you,
but I will give you one little clue of
how I might approach this. I would start
with the left hand side. Most swim
schools. Uh there's busy classes.
There's they don't really teach much.
There's supervised play which happens
there. People splash around and there's
no clear goal. It's just like have a
swim for an hour and enjoy. So, how
might how might you think about position
in a swim school? One minute now with your
your
partner. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, ladies
and gentlemen. Okay. Would anyone like
One more suggestion from this side of
the room. Enjoy the sun. Pardon? Parents
enjoy the sun. I like it. I like it.
These are positions. Okay. I how how I
would approach this is we have busy
classes. So what about if our swim
school is just three kids to one class?
Supervised play. What's the opposite of
supervised play? Well, we actually teach
your kids to swim. We don't just splash
around. There's no clear goal. Okay,
what about if the swim school is
positioned as ditching armbands within
six weeks? Okay, you end up with Nitro
Swim School. Others do lessons. We teach
swimming. It's the same idea. When you
have something to say, you can get out
of the way. You don't have to be clever.
You don't have to be be technical. You
should all be a little bit less
technical. Um I'm going to skip through
this one. Uh part three, saying it
saying it well. Okay, this is the the
conclusion of the the talk. I I was
thinking you know there's so much to
talk about here and I was going to give
you three things which I have helped me
most in my career and none of them are
from me. Um we're going to start off with
with
uh a book by Claude Hopkins uh in 1926
page 22 actually. Um the chapter is
called just salesmanship and he writes
there is one simple and right way to
answer many advertising questions. Ask
yourself, would this help a salesman
sell the goods? Would it help me sell if
I met the buyer in
person? Whenever I write something, I I
think about these words. So, let me let
me give you an
example. You are a saleserson. Whenever
you're writing something, you want to
imagine yourself with the product in
your hand walking to a front door.
You're about to knock on the door. What
are you going to say to the person when
when they open the door? Okay, so we're
selling Wi-Fi. We're selling Starlink.
You knock on the door, you're not going
to say, "Hey, I got this new Wi-Fi. It's
effortless setup and it's got instant
connectivity for your household." You're
a salesperson. What would a salesperson
do? They'd get out the the the Starlink
in their hands and they would stick it
on the ground and and they'd say,
"Pointed at the sky, plug it in.
Directions work in either order." That's
how simple it is. That's your Wi-Fi.
Okay, you might get a sale. MacBook
Air. You're trying to sell the MacBook
Air. If you're not a salesperson, you
might say, "Oh, it's 40 millimeters
thin." What would a salesperson do? What
would they write? And you have you have
Steve Jobs
who puts the MacBook Air into a yellow
manila envelope to show how thin it is.
That's the act of a saleserson. I have I
have one or two more actually. Uh this
one is found in the copy book by Richard
Forester and and he says, "Yeah, you
want to turn a matter of fact into a
matter of opinion into a matter of
fact." Okay,
so here we have seven lines. Built for
the love of the drive style. It's hard
to define, but easy to recognize. There are
are
3,389 men at our Wolfsburg factory with
one job. Make your entrance in the
allnew M2 coupe. There's more leg room
up front than you'd get in a limousine.
Uncompromising power and dynamics are in
your hands. A symphony of high
performance, aesthetics, and attitude.
Two of them are matter of fact, five a
matter of opinion.
Wolfsburg factory and there's more leg
room in in in up front than in a
limousine. When England got knocked out
of the Euros um newspapers wrote their
headlines. This was actually not when
they got knocked out. This is when they
were vying for Southgate's head when we
drew nil nil to
Slovenia and um the sun sack Southgate.
The team aren't clicking. This is all
matter of opinion. You want to write
matter of fact. So the times I I got the
newspaper at the time and I thought it
was brilliant. When will the stars align?
align?
682 passes against Slovenia. One pass
between Kain and Bellingham. That's how
you turn matter of opinion. The team
aren't clicking into a matter of fact,
and that's what you want to do in your
in your writing. Here's Yum. Woof. Uh,
tasty ingredients. Leading chef packed
with chicken. This is all matter of
opinion. We want to turn this into a
matter of fact. Instead of a leading
chef, it could be a New York City chef.
Instead of packed with chicken, you
could say the number one ingredient is
fresh chicken. Matter of fact, tasty
ingredients. How could you turn that
into from a matter of opinion into a
matter of fact? Any guesses?
Pardon? Fresh. Fresh. Yeah. Or you or
you could remember that you're a
saleserson and you'd pick up the dog
food and you'd eat it. All ingredients
you would eat. That's that's fact. I
will eat the chicken. I will eat the dog food.
food.
Um last lastly I have two minutes and
I'm going to tell you that this is from
Eugene Schwarz breakthrough advertising
all writing is just a search for
juxosition. Now this sounds weird and
technical but honestly I've made a
career from from this line. Um you can
japose words big small 22,000 and 2,000.
That's how I I wrote this advert.
Marketers you will spend 22,000 hours of
your career writing. Spend two learning
how to do it well. 22 and the two. Okay.
But you can also juxtapose
ideas. These are words everything
nothing. Okay. Simple ideas is a little
bit more technical. Um I wrote an ad for
for RAMP uh the finance company in
America uh last year and I was given
this idea that 99% of companies were
satisfied with ramp in 2024. There's no
justosition here. Why do I care about
justosition? It's because we only know
the hot water because of the cold water.
We only know it's sunny today because
it's been freezing for 2
weeks. So I think how can I how can I
create a little story from this? How can
I pull out juxtaposition? And the answer
isn't too complicated. Here we go. Till
death do his part. This is the idea. But
the first line is what I want you to
look at. Eight. That is how many
businesses tried Ramp's corporate card
in 2024 and decided it was not for them.
That's the cold tap right there. Now 8
looks like an awfully small number when
you compare it to
12,059. That's how many businesses tried
our beloved corporate card in 2024 and
decided it was the perfect fit. That's
how you take a number like
99.9 and you you I don't know what you
do but you make it a bit more
interesting. Um I'm writing an essay
tomorrow which I've finished. I'm going
to publish it tomorrow. And my idea was
that big ideas come from
conviction. Big ideas come from
conviction. There's no hot tap. There's
no cold tap. So I wrote big ideas have
much less to do with creativity than you
think and much more to do with
conviction. You have the two. You have
point A, point B, the cold and the hot.
There's no big ending. I just say thank
you very much for so many people here.
It's really a privilege to talk. And um
Ran's on next and he's great. Over and out.
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