Worst ad headline you ever wrote?

Writing Tip: Let other people read your headlines before you use them.

Loads of his headlines were fake, but still funny!

I already miss Jay Leno’s “Headlines” bit. Hope he works it again in his new gig.

While we wait and hope, I have a wildly bad headline to share with you. Do you have one of your own? Or a favorite bad headline you’ve seen somewhere? Add a comment to this post and share bad headline fun with us.

Mine’s got a story (with a moral) to go with it–

A few years ago, I had a junior copywriter who was equal parts genius/savant and, um… Bullwinkle. Nicest guy, worked hard–always meant well. But while I critique every word of copy anyone gives me (and get my own thoroughly raked by the best colleagues I know), I couldn’t resist creating a swipe file just for this guy’s best and worst.

He often created strong, test-winning headlines for our direct marketing campaigns. Those headlines were no accident, either. No “million monkeys typing” sort of miracle. No, I taught him a very effective method to writing headlines, and he practiced this method more diligently than any other copy cub I ever trained:

For every ad, he wrote many headlines. As many as he could come up with. He used the main customer benefits from his body copy, the key points of any offer included in the ad, the proper audience “flag,” all of that.

He would often submit as many as 50-100 headline ideas for a single ad (famous ad man Claude Hopkins was known to create hundreds). Problem was, my junior just didn’t seem to have it in him to weed the good from the bad on his own. Case in point…

One flagship product of ours stood head-and-shoulders above every competitor on its quality construction. Several other well-known name brands had a reputation for breakage or excessive wear. My guy wrote some really great headlines which emphasized this fact to our audience. We used one that sold very well. But he also wrote this precious gem:

“If you think those other [widgets] are bad… you should try ours!”

Make your own--click to try!

Are you kidding me?! Read that line out loud, if you’re not catching what’s wrong. When I reviewed his long list of entries together with him, my cub and I howled with laughter at this one. Seriously, howled. Completely disturbed our entire floor, from graphics to the VP. Got the evil eye. Couldn’t quit laughing.

But I got through to him, and from then on his headlines were still plentiful… but also much stronger.

I just want to make two quick points today:

1. Testing starts with the first reader, and the first reader should not be your customer.

2. Relax. Let if flow. Be prolific. Use the best, and laugh at the worst. Then keep moving.

That’s all for today. I started to write this as a lead-in for a critique of all the entries I got in my Challenge #1 for audience-flagging headlines, but if I start that now this post will be forever too long. Let’s get into that next time. Until then…

Write what’s Right,

Ken