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Borrowed Wisdom
This week: Learn Copywriting in 76 Minutes – Harry Dry
Most copywriters suck because they're scared.
They worry about grammar, obsess over fancy words, and write like they're trying to impress their English teacher.
Harry Dry doesn't do any of that. He runs Marketing Examples and teaches copywriting to over 100,000 people. Harry has three rules he applies to every single sentence he writes.
Rule 1: Can I visualize it?
You remember the concrete words, the ones you can see. The abstract ones disappear.
This is the difference between "better way" and "supermodel." One fades while the other one sticks.
New Balance nailed this: "Worn by supermodels in London and dads in Ohio."
You can see both people. The barbecue dad with the grill tongs and the runway model in heels.
Rule 2: Can I falsify it?
True or false claims make people sit up.
Galileo said the earth spins around the sun and got 10 years of house arrest for it. If he'd said "the earth has a harmonious connection with a celestial object," the Romans would've told him to go down to the pub and have a beer.
Harry's test: imagine you can't talk; you can only point.
Don't say your friend is "good-looking." Say he looks like Ryan Gosling. Don't say someone is "intelligent." Say they read on the train.
Rule 3: Can nobody else say it?
Volkswagen ran an ad comparing their car to others: "Your car has five numbers on the speedometer. Volvo has six."
Only Volvo could say that. You had to physically get in the car and count the numbers yourself.
The Economist had one of the most famous ads ever: "I've never read The Economist. Management trainee, aged 42." A brutal truth nobody else could write that.
Harry breaks copywriting into three pieces:
Who you're talking to
What you're saying
How you're saying it
Most people skip the first part entirely. Snapchat spent $7 million on a Super Bowl ad targeting people who already know what Facebook is and have six friends left in their life. The average Super Bowl viewer is 39 years old. What 39 year old uses Snapchat?
They forgot who they were talking to.
Harry will also write the ads in Figma, not Google Docs. He sees the ad exactly as the reader will see it, because a line that looks fine in a doc might spill to three lines when you actually put it on the page.
He rewrites each ad a minimum of 20 times. He cuts the first 10% because intros usually suck, and then he cuts another 35%.
His paragraphs max out at two lines. His sentences stay under 25 words. He uses the Hemingway App to hit 7th grade reading level and kills every adverb he can find.
Stephen King said it best: "Adverbs pave the way to hell." (Seems to be a common theme with copywriting.)
One of Harry's newsletter intros started like this:
"Hey, it's Harry. It's 3:47 a.m. I'm in the big smoke alone. Laptop, green tea, looking at the whiteboard like a dozy dog."
He didn't plan that. He looked outside, saw hail falling, and wrote what he saw. He was paying attention to what was right in front of him.
You can turn a boring stat into a story, but you need the fact first. Most writers ignore this and end up writing absolutely nothing.
AI is capable of replacing this. AI doesn't sit in the Rolls-Royce at 60 mph and hear the electric clock ticking. AI didn't work as a postman for 20 years like Bukowski did before writing Post Office. AI doesn't believe anything, so how can it tell you something worth believing?
Harry has a high standard and won't ship anything that's not a 9 out of 10 or better.
His process boils down to silence and action.
No TikTok when he wakes up. No talking during writing retreats with his friend until 5 or 6 PM when they finally break for dinner.
Just walking around the park with no earphones on and bleeding the ink dry.
To-Go Bites
Sentences under 25 words
Build the story around facts
Write copy only you can say
Ship work that's a 9 out of 10
Keep paragraphs to two lines max
Ai can’t compete with authenticity
Know who you're actually talking to
Make claims people can prove true or false
Write in the tool where people will actually see your work
Cut the first 10% of what you write, then cut another 35%
Worth The Open
My favorite content from surfing the web this week
Ten minute mobility
Simple business advice
The mega backdoor roth
One Tiktok format that generated 37.3M Views
Thanks for reading
— Cam