| The most powerful headline I ever read and | | | | I read that negative headline for the first time, I |
| acted upon was a negative headline. It changed | | | | was slouching at the back of mathematics class, |
| my life.Yet most books on direct mail copywriting | | | | catching up on the comic-strip misadventures of |
| will tell you to cast your headlines, overlines and | | | | Andy Cap and Hagar the Horrible. The year was |
| Johnson Boxes always in the positive. But | | | | 1976. I had just turned 16. My Oxford and |
| sometimes being negative is positively good for | | | | Cambridge 'O' Level exams -- and certain defeat |
| business. Or, to say it another way, negative | | | | -- waited less than a week away. I read the |
| headlines in your direct mail advertising are not | | | | advertisement again. I studied the photograph. I |
| always bad.The headline that changed my life | | | | mailed off the coupon that night.The information |
| appeared in a small display ad in the Daily Mirror, a | | | | package arrived within the week. Nine months |
| British daily newspaper. Here's what it said:"No | | | | later I was PO35440S Junior Marine Sharpe, |
| Pleasure Cruises in the Royal Marines."That's a | | | | bayonetting dummies with gusto and throwing up |
| negative headline, no question. The copywriter | | | | my lunch during nine-mile speed marches. Eighteen |
| wasted no time turning a negative into a positive. | | | | months later I was dodging bullets and bombs in |
| In fact, he turned a positive into a | | | | Northern Ireland. Five years later I was |
| negative.Beneath the headline was a photo of | | | | photographing penguins in Antarctica. Ten years |
| several heavily armed Royal Marines crouching in a | | | | later -- and thirteen countries, four promotions, |
| rigid raider assault boat, manfully pounding over | | | | numerous fights and a Falklands War later -- I |
| the waves towards an assuredly nasty landing on | | | | was a civilian again.That headline would not have |
| some distant enemy beach.Beneath the photo | | | | worked for me if the copywriter had cast it in a |
| was this simple body copy: | | | | positive way. By promising what I would not get, |
| "Some of the toughest training in the world. | | | | and by telling me what I should not look forward |
| That's what makes Royal Marines Commandos | | | | to, he won me over.So here's my advice. Don't |
| ready for anything. If you think you've got the | | | | turn all your negatives into positives. Instead, turn |
| determination and you're over 16, here's your | | | | your positives into negatives for a change. Don't |
| chance. Find out more by sending off the coupon." | | | | be timid.© 2006 Sharpe Copy Inc. |
| "No Pleasure Cruises in the Royal Marines." When | | | | |