More proof that copywriters are frustrated novelists


"...he murdered them too."  So begins the copy in this 1983 ad for an article on the insanity defense, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that the copywriter had perhaps flipped his lid, too.  A  28-word headline?  That's more words than the entire copy in most ads nowadays.  Twenty-eight words, and yet there's neither an extraneous or wasted word among them.  You've got human interest, sensationalism, drama, irony, dread and when you finally get to that last word -- "Then..."  -- well, who's not going to keep on reading?

Reader's Digest ran a series of ads like these that relied on little more than intriguing copy to draw readers in.  Now that's what I call being true to the product.

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