Issue 24

A few words, ads, and ideas that stopped me in my metaphorical tracks last week.

Enjoy.

Don Draper faces a nearly impossible task: sell Lucky Strike cigarettes just as their link to cancer becomes undeniable.

Instead of staring at a blank page hoping inspiration will strike white hot like lightning, Don confronts the Lucky Strike executives with a simple question: “How do you make your cigarettes?”

They give a routine, borderline dismissive answer.

“We breed insect-repellent tobacco seeds, plant ’em in the North Carolina sunshine, grow it, cut it, cure it, toast it…”

“There you go. There you go,” he says, “It’s toasted.”

Everybody else’s tobacco is poisonous. Lucky Strike is toasted.

Yes, Don Draper is a fictional character. But his approach to writing is far from it. As Eugene Schwartz said, you do not write copy, you assemble it. You are working with a series of building blocks, and putting the building blocks together in a way that resonates.

In this case, Don’s ridiculously effective line isn’t luck. He did the research. He asks good questions. He listens. He records. And he scrapes a generational idea straight off his client’s tongue.

Because he knows that memorable copy doesn’t come from random bursts of genius. It’s meticulously assembled.

View the full ad archive on Are.na
Stay in touch on IG