\u201cAbove the line\u201d (ATL) means marketing that focuses on branding and image, not response and sales.<\/p>\n
There are 3 significant differences between a direct response copywriter like me and the ATL copywriters who serve Madison Avenue ad agencies and big consumer brands:<\/p>\n
1\u2014The direct response copywriter focuses on sales.<\/p>\n
Everything we do is designed to get the cash register to ring \u2013 to bring in either an order or a sales lead.<\/p>\n
The direct response copywriter has an advantage \u2013 namely, the sales results of most of what we write can be measured down to the penny.<\/p>\n
Above the line copywriters often have no idea whether their ad moved the sales needle one iota, and so they are operating largely in the dark.<\/p>\n
2\u2014Branding people are obsessed with creativity.<\/p>\n
Most ATL copywriters I know create advertising that is fun, creative, offbeat, humorous, entertaining, and beautifully designed.<\/p>\n
The reason is that their clients, consumer brand managers, like those characteristics in their ads.<\/p>\n
The direct response copywriter, as I have said, focuses on results, not aesthetics.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t care whether the consumer likes our ad. We only care that she buys the product.<\/p>\n
And long experience shows there is little or no correlation between people liking your ad and buying your product.<\/p>\n
3\u2014Branding people are obsessed with originality.<\/p>\n
To them the goal is to be creative and original \u2013 to come up with a completely new idea or selling approach.<\/p>\n
The direct response copywriter takes a different approach: We study what has worked exceptionally well in the past and then model our new promotions after these proven winners.<\/p>\n
Most direct response copywriters keep \u201cswipe files\u201d which are collections of ads known to be proven winners.<\/p>\n
We know they are proven winners because we see them run again and again. If a promotion bombs, marketers don\u2019t tend to repeat it.<\/p>\n
If it pulls like gangbusters, they do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cAbove the line\u201d (ATL) means marketing that focuses on branding and image, not response and sales. There are 3 significant differences between a direct response copywriter like me and the ATL copywriters who serve Madison Avenue ad agencies and big consumer brands: 1\u2014The direct response copywriter focuses on sales. Everything we do is designed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1020,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/1020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}