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NEIL FRENCH: HOW TO WRITE ENGAGING COPY
5 lessons on how to write great copy from advertisings "Bad boy"...
Niall Ratcliffe
August 18, 2024
Morning!
My blueberry pancakes are slowly digesting in my stomach, the 30-degree sun is blaring through my apartment window, and the AC is softly caressing my neck.
This is what I would call, “prime writing conditions”.
And today I have a banger for you!
You’re about to learn 5 amazing lessons on copywriting from a man you’ve probably never heard of before.
But once you read his work, I’m pretty confident you’ll remember him.
Should take under 5 mins to read!
P.S. You can listen to the audio version of this breakdown HERE.
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION
BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY
“Print advertising is dead”.
I hear this all the time nowadays, but the irony is, this opinion isn’t anything new. People have been saying it for decades.
But in 1993, one British copywriter had enough and decided to do something about it.
At the time, people were arguing that if you wanted to have an impact when advertising you needed to run TV or “internet ads” - as they were called back then.
This one British copywriter, who happened to be a master at long-form written ads, heavily disagreed.
But his opinion alone wasn’t going to get him far - he needed to prove it.
So he created a fake beer brand called ‘XO Beer’ and began running print ads promoting the brand in some newspapers.
These weren’t just any ads though, these ads broke every single beer advertising rule.
No sexy women
No pouring shots
No expensive cars
No mouth-watering images
No defrosted glass with froth
And the campaign was a huge hit.
So much so, that 1000s of people were flocking to the shops & bars to try and purchase XO Beer - a brand that simply didn’t exist.
Seems a little crazy, and that kinda sums up this copywriter.
His name was Neil French and he was known as Advertising’s “Bad Boy”.
He’s a copywriter renowned for writing long-form copy that keeps people engaged.
Today, we’re all told to keep things short, sweet, and succinct.
Neil French, on the other hand, he just writes what works - and usually, that’s long copy.
So, I spent the last 4 hours researching through all of his past work, interviews, and copywriting lessons.
Here are 5 lessons on writing engaging marketing copy from one of the best to ever do it - Neil French:
Lesson 1: Write In Lists
Today, if you scroll through most social media platforms you’ll be bombarded with lists.
On Twitter: You’ll get a list thrown into a thread format.
On Instagram: You’ll get shown the 5-step DIY hack for fixing a shelf.
On LinkedIn: You’ll be given 10 key sales lessons.
Lists everywhere.
But this isn’t by mistake, it’s because humans naturally find lists easier to follow.
It feels more digestible.
The task of reading them seems less overwhelming.
Plus, you can skim through lists quickly.
So this is exactly how French would get people to read through his longer ads.
He did it with Dove:
He did it with Beck’s Beer:
And he did it with 100s of other ads too.
If you want someone to read your work, one of the easiest ways you can make that happen is by writing it in a list.
Lesson 2: Be The Consumer
You probably won’t be able to read the ad below, I’ve got 20/20 vision and I can barely read it here on my laptop.
But I implore you to click on the image or the link below it - both will take you to a larger version shared on Twitter.
Read it. Then come back here.
The ad is one that Neil French wrote for Air Asia.
It’s a beautiful piece of copy, one that tells this fantastic story about rich people and the extortionate prices they pay for first class.
There are so many lessons to learn from this piece:
The importance of an enemy - in this case “the rich” are the enemy.
The importance of story - this whole ad is 1 big story.
But most importantly, French writes as if he is a consumer.
He says, “The rich, as someone pointed out, are different from you and me. They have more money.”
Notice how he ropes himself in with the readers there. He essentially says, “I’m one of you, I know how you feel.”
It’s something easy to overlook as you go through the piece, but for me, this is the main reason this piece resonates so much.
It’s so easy in marketing to separate yourself from the consumer and say things like, “Middle-aged men need XYZ”. But what you need to frame that as is, “Us middle-aged men are [insert relatable problem].”
Be the consumer, that’s how you get consumers to listen.
Lesson 3: Say What Others Won’t
French got his name as Advertising’s “Bad Boy” for a number of reasons.
Mainly because his past careers included:
Being a bouncer
Running a nightclub
Professionally bullfighting
No seriously, he was a bullfighter.
But another reason he got that name is because of the way he wrote copy.
He didn’t pull punches, stick to tradition, or say what he was told to say.
He wrote copy that had an impact and this Beck’s Beer ad headline is a prime example:
After reading this headline, how can you not read on?
One of my favourite marketers - Dave Trott - pushes the idea that all advertisers should start by focusing on impact.
French’s copy certainly has that.
Lesson 4: Make Them Emotional
The image below does not look like an ad. It doesn’t even read like an ad.
If you brought this to a creative director at any top ad agency they’d probably tell you to f*ck off.
Yet this was one of the most successful ads Neil French wrote for Chivas Regal.
At the time, Johnny Walker was a market leader and Chivas was considered a cheap alternative.
The obvious decision was to increase their price, but what really drove Chivas to become the no.1 in the market was the confident tone they used in their advertising.
The confident tone which was actually Neil French.
But the reason this type of copy works is because it touches on a key human feeling of “Missing out”.
The copy is degrading with phrases like “Young man”. It’s almost aggressive in parts too.
Yet if you read it and had no idea what Chivas was, you’d leave this ad feeling like an idiot.
And that sells Chivas.
We all think that a good ad gives off positive emotions to consumers - but why can’t it drive negative emotions too?
If it sells, it sells. Something to think about.
Lesson 5: Be A Black Belt At One Move
I’ve been training JiuJitsu for about 4 years now and this one quote completely changed my game, “It’s better to be a black belt at one move than a blue belt at all moves.”
Now I think about it, it’s quite similar to that Bruce Lee quote:
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
The whole concept is based on the idea that it’s much better to be great at one thing than okay at everything.
And according to French, the same applies to marketing.
He says:
“In any ad, most people will tell you...
There's a minimum of four elements: headline, picture, copy, logo.
If you can do an ad using only one of these elements, you've got a winner.”
For him, the element he leaned on was often copy, but I love the fact he opened that scope.
In marketing, it’s easy to try to make every part of an ad great.
French would say forget about the rest, just make one part perfect.
🌱 THE GREENHOUSE
Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:
TL;DR
1/ Write in lists
2/ Be the consumer
3/ Say what other won’t
4/ Make them emotional
5/ Be a black belt at one move
Some weeks I worry that I won’t be able to find a good enough marketer to break down for these newsletters…
Then I come across people like Neil French.
Yet another British copywriter and so many lessons to take away.
Hope you learned something from this.
If you did, why not forward this to a friend? I appreciate it!
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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