Came a question:
“Ben, I hope you are doing well. Is copywriting agency something you would make if you are beginner?”
My answer:
A couple years ago I was interviewed by a digital agency owner talking about email and using it with agencies, and how agency owners can use email, benefit from email, profit from email, get clients from email, and all that jazz.
And during the call I kept hearing a lot of ignorance.
By that I mean not in skill or marketing, but ignorance of their own industry (agencies).
And eventually I asked:
“Haven’t you guys studied Ogilvy, Burnett, Foote/Cone/Belding, Thompson, Norman, Barton, or any of the old school agency guys who literally build the modern marketing world as we know it?”
“…”
Yeesh.
If anything qualifies as what Email Players subscriber and the man universally known as the World’s Greatest Living Copywriter Gary Bencivenga describes as “Marketing Malpractice” that does.
It reminds me of this professor I had in college.
401-level class in radio/tv major.
Last day of the semester, and all of us graduating, and someone asked what the difference between AM and FM was! The professor — who was no mere professor, he owned several radio and TV stations, I always respected him — asked:
“How can you people accept a diploma from this university and not know the difference between am and fm?”
A good question.
And I would ask today’s digital agency guys the same thing:
How do they expect to make any real money, grow any kind of immortal brand, make any kind of real impact in their industry without studying the old school ad men (and Mad Men) whose names are STILL on the buildings of the companies they founded nearly 100 years ago?
It’s all rather amazing to me.
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Ben Settle