Forget the features and benefits. Forget the bullet points and coverage terms. Tell me why  and how I would need such a thing. Written by me, produced by the video team at Chubb Insurance.

Legendary copywriter David Ogilvy: "Captions should appear under all your photographs. Readers are always drawn to them; four times as many people read captions as read body copy. Use your caption to sell." Oh, and see how Mr. Ogilvy is looking off the page, drawing attention away from the post? Don't do that. A lazy newbie move. I left it this way just for instructional purposes, of course

An update to conventional wisdom.

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Actually, a picture with a 25-word caption is worth a thousand words.

The rule: Always run a meaningful, informative caption under  every photograph in your web content, web materials, whitepapers.  Well, in everything.

Do this and you will look like a genius. Your web content and marketing content will take on a whole new clarity and vigor.

Simple reason: People read those captions.

Your readers look for captions. It’s a habit they picked up from reading magazines, newspapers, news sites, books. (You know, the material they actually want to read, voluntarily.)

But isn’t a dramatic picture enough? That official ‘beauty shot?’

No.

The National Geographic runs perhaps the most stunning and evocative photos in the business. And they always include informative captions that expand on what’s in the shot. As an editor told me, many more people read those captions than read the articles. So you do, I bet.

Besides, a picture without a caption subtly suggests ‘this is decorative fluff’.  (Like those vapid shots of people shaking hands, people in hardhats looking at plans and pointing at things.)

A photo with a caption suggests something useful, important. And it lets you get in more good stuff about your product.

Instead, study product reviews.

Go to the trade press and the blogs and magazines and see how journalists and columnists talk about products like yours. They do a better job of inspiring customers than we marketers and copywriters do. I steal tactics from them all the time. That’s because their do-or-die job is to write stuff that is interesting, useful, compelling.

And what’s compelling is not the corporate line, or the ‘key features list’ from the product team.

Customers want to hear about the experience of using the thing. Of living with it.  Of selling it to the boss. They want to hear how it fixes pain-in-the-ass problems. Or, sometimes, how it actually works.

Read David Pogue of the New York Times.  Walt Mossberg.  TechCrunch. Engadget.  Or the top publications or thinkers in the industry.

Notice what they talk about: Here’s what you see when you open the box.  Here’s how it feels in your hands.  Here’s how you put it together.  Here are some neat things you can do with it.  Here’s what it does really well.  Here’s what happens when you try this. . . or do that.  Does it fit in your rack space?  Is it a pain to configure?  How big is the thing?

Here is David Pogue on a Verizon wifi product:

Incredibly, there is such a thing. It’s the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It’s a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot. . .

. . .you’re spared the plug-and-unplug ritual of cellular modems. You can leave the MiFi in your pocket, purse or laptop bag; whenever you fire up your laptop, netbook, Wi-Fi camera or game gadget, or wake up your iPhone or iPod Touch, you’re online.

Last week, I was stuck on a runway for two hours. As I merrily worked away online, complete with YouTube videos and file downloads . . .

By contrast, we marketers and copywriters tend to talk in brochurespeak and bullet points.

We sound like a corporation talking to a target vertical about the attribute matrix derived from market research.

We should cut that out. We would get more people interested.

Most of the time, of course, it ain’t even close to ‘literature’.  Those product sheets and web pages are pretty stiff reading, mostly.  (I know.  I inflicted reams of sales blather on the world before I reformed.)

The hard-boiled view is, “So what? We’re not writing goddam literature.  We’re trying sell something.”

But when you think of it, if we’re trying to get people passionately interested our stuff, literature is precisely what we need.

And by literature, I mean writing that can carry one away, evoke emotions, engage the brain, paint a dazzling picture that just won’t go away.

That’s what it takes to sell things, whether process control systems, injection-molding release agents or ethernet networking.

Plant an idea or vision in the buyer’s head.  Let him see how it works, and imagine himself using this thing.  Get him to see a solution. And feel that it’s right. Maybe even get him to see this issue from a whole different way.

Get him thinking maybe, just maybe, he’ll get this sticky problem off his desk for good, look like a genius while he’s at it.

I don’t mean getting cute or corny, or descending into infomercial-style hype.  I mean talking human to human about neat things this product or technology can do.  Show it, get him to feel it.

And do it so vividly and persuasively that, for the moment, he’s deep into the story, seeing it his mind.

Which is what literature does.

The model for compelling product copy

How do you make a technical product sound alluring?  How do you make the thing come alive? How do you get techs to think, “Oooh, I want that”?

Try a trick that I swiped from the old Banana Republic catalog.

Ages ago, before the company went yuppie, they used to sell exotic travel clothing:  khakis, boots, and other gear that Indiana Jones might wear.

Their irresistible formula:  Start with an interesting product, then paint a picture that makes you ache to own one:

“We wore the short-sleeved version of this shirt on a six-hour Land Rover trip across the Yucatan.  Even in 98-degree sun, the wide-weave fabric kept us remarkably cool, wicking away perspiration at what felt like a gallon an hour.

“Our friends, in their conventional cotton shirts, were soaked through and miserable.  And with nine roomy pockets, our maps, cigars, film, and flask were always handy.  No need to tote haversacks.  Unlike our friends, we arrived happy and ready for anything.” *

That’s exactly how we should be talking about ceramic coatings and concrete additives and monitoring systems for steam turbines.

What is it like to use this thing? How does the surface feel to the touch after curing? What clever things can you do with the reconfigure module?

Save the bullet points, specs and schematics for later.  Help me picture this thing humming away in my data center.

——-

* I made this up. But that’s how I remember the feel of the copy.  The catalogs are long gone, but people still read them.  Old copies sell for forty bucks or more on ebay.

“Which writers have influenced you the most?”

Tom O’Neill of Exodus Capital Advisors was the first client who had ever asked me that.

He explained that it was a good way to gauge a writer’s mindset and approach.  And any writer who couldn’t point to role models and heroes was no student of the craft.

Luckily, I was able to rattle off  a few  idols on the spot.  Enough to convince Tom I was no dilletante.

Since then, I have thought more about who has shaped how I build content for clients. Just in case anyone else brings up the question again.

The big guns, as I see them:

How to be interesting

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and regular pieces in the New Yorker.  I study the way he makes a case with a deft combination of story and fact. He gets you nodding, “Yes, yes, that makes sense. That’s intriguing.” He has a knack for finding a fresh take on topics covered many times before. Which is precisely what the best content should be doing. If we’re not fascinating, we’re not selling anything. The content world needs more Malcolm Gladwells.

Want people on the edge of their seats? Use bold visuals, skip all that text. And reveal a new slide every few seconds.

Steve Jobs, late CEO of Apple. His keynotes and product introductions were grand theater. A Jobs presentation became an event, buzzed about in advance, covered live on the Web, sound-bited on the Today show, and made available as streaming video later. (Anybody see what Dell or HP launched last week? Me neither.)

His style: Be casual, personable (though meticulously prepped and rehearsed). Love what you’re talking about. Weave in suspense. Unfold the story. Pause. Reveal. Build to a big finish. Leave out the crap.

And punctuate it all, every twenty seconds or so,  with an elegantly minimal slide.

Whenever I take a lumbering, text-heavy PowerPoint and give it this treatment, the piece immediately takes wing. The effect is startling. And clients think me a genius.

For examples of other captivating presentations, see the TED Talks.  And Garr Reynolds’s Presentation Zen.

Enthusiasm works.

Tom Peters. Okay, he overuses ellipses and dashes and overdoes the ALL CAPS. His sentences often take way too long to get where they’re going. But boy, his enthusiasm and velocity trumps it all. He pulls you along with sheer backdraft. The spit is flying, but you’re listening. And it sticks with you for weeks.  Or even decades.

David Ogilvy, the late founder of Ogilvy and Mather advertising, famous for his Rolls-Royce and Hathaway shirts campaigns. He could make you ache for a product with just a few fascinating facts, and nary a touch of marketingspeak or infomercial-style hype. That’s a skill rarely seen nowadays.

"You cannot bore people into buying."

When I feel my copy getting off kilter, I reread Ogilvy on Advertising for a few minutes. That always puts things right again.

Readers Digest. The publication feels dated now, but they have a way of enticing you into their articles with irresistible headlines. And the prose is effortless to read. Like walking downhill with a tailwind. As a kid I used to read dog-eared copies of the Digest in the barbershop while waiting my turn.

Esther Benz, high school English teacher, New Providence, New Jersey.  Retired 1981.  She was BS-proof, merciless, (‘this is FLAB!’), but praised you to the skies when you got it right. She looks over my shoulder still.

Steven Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire, the Legend of Bagger Vance, the War of Art, among others. He brings you into a story and keeps you there, without a hint of artifice. Very natural.

Elmore Leonard. I confess I don’t like his crime novels much. But I love his quote: “If it sounds too much like writing, cut it out.”  And, “Leave out the parts that everyone skips.”  Which goes in spades for marketing stuff.

John Caples, an old-school copywriter (Tested Advertising Methods).  Simple ideas, simple language, zero extraneous matter. His claims and promises would never pass Legal today, but the approach still holds.

James Patterson, thriller novelist.  Say what you will about his literary merits, but he knows how to pull you into a story and keep you there. Short chapters, too, make you turn pages.You won’t remember the story a month from now, but for the moment you’re in deep.

Think of it as marketing by teaching and helping.  Selling by being interesting, by dispensing wisdom, by offering better advice and how-to than the next guy.

By turning your customers into geniuses.

It’s especially useful if you sell a lot of complex products like Cisco and AT&T do.  Or when you are trying to sell expertise or brains, like KPMG.  Or if you’re selling consumer products like Crutchfield, or credit cards, like American Express.

Instead of hawking your HR software, you are showing HR teams how to transform themselves into the most powerful recruiting organizations ever. Let your competitors yammer about their modules and integration. You are enabling superstars.

Instead of chattering about the specs of your industrial pressure washers, you are showing maintenance foremen how to get a fleet of grimy buses turned around — and back on the street — in record time. You’re raising fleet maintenance to high art.

Instead of cranking out PowerPoints on the featuresandbenefits of your product, you’re telling stories of the jaw-dropping things other customers are doing. (Or things they could be doing.)

In other words, ‘content marketing’ is what the savviest marketers have done for eons. We just have a clever name for it, now.  And the Internet makes it easier to get your stuff out there.

Is this guy right for what I’m doing?  Will he ‘get’ it?  What if I pay all this money and the work comes out lame?  What if all I get back is tripe?

I’ve been there.

On several occasions clients asked me to hire and manage writers for large content projects.

And I turned out to be lousy at picking writers.

I’ve been writing content since forever, but when it came to deciding who could deliver on a given project and who couldn’t, I was clueless.

Like everyone else, I looked at writing samples, recommendations and resumes, but the results were spotty. Some candidates wrote far better than their resumes would predict.  And some wrote way worse.

But I finally hit on one thing that worked, nine times out of ten.

A twelve-minute phone conversation.

That’s it. As low tech and unsophisticated as you can get. And I feel dumb for not thinking of it sooner. (Which is why I am a writer and not a manager. At the keyboard, I’m on my turf. Otherwise, I’m faking it.)

Talking to a writer for 10 to 15 minutes was enough.  Most times, it only took five minutes to tell if they were on my side or not, and if they had the chops for the project.

No, I can’t give you six sure-fire questions to ask. The conversations were always different. But each time I simply knew.  Yes or no.

When I think back on it, that is precisely what my clients did. They called me out of the blue or on someone’s recommendation. We talked once or twice. Or three times. Something jibed. Once in a while, I did a small piece for them, just to show where I was coming from.  (Sort of what I do now with the $595 Makeovers.)

And we started working together.  Or the client instantly crossed me off the list.  (“This guy’s supposed to be a genius? Um. Don’t think so.”)

And occasionally I declined.  (“Gee, I have no idea how to crack this one.”)

So if you’re game, try me at (908) 464-5192.

You’ll know in twelve minutes, tops.

Having your own gear marked you as a solid pro, a guy the shop foreman could hire and not worry about.  Which meant you always had steady work. And for my grandfather, who went shoeless in the Depression, steady work was the holy grail.

He showed up for the job with his dies, taps, mill files, micrometers, bits, gauges and rules stowed in a rugged oak tool chest.  The rig had cost him a half week’s wages.  It was built by Gerstner, I think.

That same chest sits on my desk right now. It is permanently smudged with machinist’s fingerprints and smells faintly of shop oil.

And in the drawers are the tools of my trade.  One stapler.  Twenty-two bulldog clips, a nine-year supply of paperclips, USB and Ethernet cables, iPhone charger, an extra mouse, linty post-it notes, 94 business cards.  My Mac OSX CDs.  Strunk and White.

There’s also a small card my grandfather left in the chest maybe 50 years ago.  A note to penciled to himself, in Russian.  I have no idea if it’s a to-do list, cheat sheet or driving directions.  I’m saving it just in case.

I keep the chest for continuity, so I can say it’s still in the family and still serving an honest trade.  (Although my grandfather never quite understood what I did for a living.  “So who reads what you write?”  “Nobody,” I said.  “It’s advertising.”)

I like having the tool chest here.  It brings a workmanlike feel to what I do.  Like a pro getting a day’s work done.  Turning out finished pieces, each with the corners square, burrs removed, surface polished, with just the right heft to it.  And all the bad ones tossed in the scrap bin.

That, my grandfather would get.

Every writer knows about this.

You’re going along, spinning sentences, chugging them out, one word in front of the other.  The piece is coming out fine and serviceable, and it’s saying what you mean.

The process is like pedaling a bike. You pump the pedals and you move forward.

But about an hour into it, maybe two hours, if you keep pedaling over the crest of the hill, something happens.

Suddenly, from somewhere you can’t pinpoint, lines and phrases begin to tumble out ready-made.  Concepts bubble up from the deep.  You didn’t think of them, exactly.  It feels more like you are hearing them and writing them down.

You have no idea where any of this comes from.  But there it is, right there on the screen.

And the eerie part is, the stuff is better than you could ever write on purpose, in cold calculation.

You didn’t really create any of it.  You just took the words down, as dictated.

I’m wary of talking like this because it sounds so foofy and new-agey.  And because I don’t truly understand it.  I also worry about jinxing the process.

But that’s what happens.  The ideas that give you goosebumps, you can’t engineer them.

The best stuff just appears.  But only if you’re pedaling hard at the time.