One idea, a vintage train ad nails the one idea principle, improving the top-down content production process
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Welcome to another newsletter, folks. Today, we’re covering:
TIP: Focus your copy on one idea.
EXAMPLE: An old ad with too many ideas
THOUGHT: The traditional top-down content approach can be turned on its head.
TIP: One idea
Here’s one that sounds intuitive, but is actually easy to forget: focus on one idea. Choose one single thing you want people to take away from your writing, and build around that.
This doesn’t mean you are limited to talking about just one thing. Rather, it’s more about figuring out an overall story. If you have one overall idea you want to get across, you can start framing each benefit in terms of that idea. If you ask yourself how much each benefit contributes to your overall idea, it quickly becomes clear which benefits are the most important - and which ones can be discarded.
Also, by framing them in terms of that idea, you get a much more cohesive story, rather than just a grab bag of statements.
This doesn't necessarily mean your copy needs to be short. Rather, it's about the things you choose to write about versus how much time you spend on them.
So to try this: ask yourself what kind of outcome you’re selling. Then, ask yourself how each of your benefits contributes to that outcome. Then, write that answer down! You'll be surprised at how quickly you realise which benefits need to be talked about the most, which ones need to be talked about the least, and which ones can disappear entirely.
(You can see a couple of examples of how to apply this principle in the archives - this one about a mailer from Hello Fresh, and this one about an ad from a medical indemnity insurance company. Or keep scrolling to see an an example of a train line ad that would benefit from focusing on just one idea.)
Example: One idea in this vintage ad
This is an ad from 1985 for a train. As you can see, they’re positioning it against the alternative of an airplane:
As you can see, they have done a version of exactly what I've mentioned in the above section - they've started with the idea "the train is better than flying," and built every benefit around that.
This is much more compelling than a random list of benefits! Now, each one has context - rather than just say "we have wide aisles," it's saying "we have wider aisles than a plane." "Proper tables instead of pop-out plastic postage stamps" is a big improvement on something bland like "we have big tables."
What I do find interesting is how they've given all these benefits the same priority. For me personally (and I suspect many others) the "central city to central city" benefit is by far the strongest of the bunch. All the other stuff is stuff I'm willing to tolerate in exchange for a faster journey.
It's a good example of how this one idea principle is a spectrum. You can always go a level deeper. The tradeoff is that doing so makes your ad more compelling to people who do care about that one idea, and less compelling for people who don't. So there's a balancing act to be done here - and I suspect that's what British Rail were doing when they landed on the "how to improve a plane" positioning for this ad.
Still, I'd love to see an ad built 100% around the centre-to-centre aspect. I think that would be really effective.
Thought: Turn the top-down content strategy upside-down
This is a common content strategy: a company creates a big piece of content, like an ebook or podcast, then slices it into a million different pieces. The eBook becomes 5 blogposts, 10 social media posts- maybe more.
It’s a great way to produce content at scale, but it has one big drawback: it’s a high-risk proposition. A big piece of content, like an ebook or white paper, takes a reasonable investment of time, money or both. If the big piece of content is about something your audience cares about, then this investment makes a lot of sense. But if it isn’t, then you’re now stuck with something nobody wants.
Problem is, you’re really not going to know one way or the other until you launch.
I think organisations would get a lot of value out of flipping this around: produce a bunch of small things, like Linkedin posts, on a very quick, low-investment basis. Use that to gauge demand and interest in various topics, then flesh out the highest-impact ones in a longer piece of content. Then cut the long piece of content back into smaller pieces.
(If you follow me on Linkedin and some of the articles in here look hauntingly familiar, that’s why.)
I know, I know: much easier for a one-person outfit like mine to do this compared to a big company. Still. Worth thinking about before you barrel into your quarterly ebook that people may or may not want to read.
That's all for today. Hope you enjoyed. As always, hit reply and tell me your thoughts.
Sam
PS: I'm in the early stages of developing a new product - ongoing copy reviews and coaching, for junior copywriters and non-writers who have been handed the copywriting as part of their job description. It would include a review or two a month, plus some calls to talk things through. Would start at around $2,000/month. Can you see value in that? Reply and let me know - or weigh in on this linkedin post on the topic.
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