I was recently re-reading some old David Ogilvy ads (yes – that’s what I do in my free time).
Btw. if you don’t know who David Ogilvy is… have you ever even heard of marketing?
Anyways.
In one of the ads titled “How to Create Advertising That Sells” the legendary ad man gives the reader a bunch of bite-sized bullet points on how to create advertising that … sells. (duh)
Some real gems to be found in there.
BUT…
One bullet rubbed me the wrong way… bullet number 25.
Which contains one of the most commonly accepted pieces of marketing wisdom.
Here it is in Ogilvy’s words:
“25. Headlines. On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.
It follows that, if you don’t sell your product in the headline, you have wasted 80% of your money. That is why most Ogilvy & Mather headlines include the brand name and the promise.”
Okay. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?
If so many more people read the headline compared to the body… it’d be clever to put more effort into it. Right?
Plus, you hear this parroted all over the internet – everyone appears to agree on this.
Well—
Now, before you say:
“Woah, how dare he disagree with the great ad man Ogilvy!! What an arrogant little shit! Fuck you and your stupid newsletter, I’ll continue snuggling with my life-sized David Ogilvy pillow. Come here baby David.”
…I want to make something clear:
Headlines ARE, indeed, very important.
They’re the first thing people see.
They are THE place to capture attention and “suck” the reader into the rest of your copy.
But I think headlines are massively overrated.
Why?
Well, one thing Ogilvy didn’t account for was that in 2024… there’d be a thing called “social media” and “personal branding”.
And what he also didn’t anticipate was that, because of this, there’d be factors many times more important than an attention-grabbing headline.
(I don’t blame him… he died in 1999).
But why does this change anything about headlines?
Let me explain.
I’m assuming you are (in one way or another) building your own brand on social media right now.
I’m also going to assume that you’re (eventually) trying to make money from it.
And, as you know, a brand isn’t built by posting one tweet.
It’s built through consistent and intentional posting.
The reason for that is:
People don’t usually buy after their first contact with you and your brand. Just doesn’t happen 99.9% of the time.
It takes TIME until people are warmed up to you.
But once they are…
They will read through your stuff (even blatant sales pitches) … no matter what.
Aka: If you’ve built a respected brand… your headline doesn’t fucking matter.
Your brand does the attention-grabbing part for you.
In other words:
A strong headline is great – and it deserves a lot of attention… but a strong brand is a MUCH more important factor if you’re trying to make consistent sales.
(Obviously, that’s only true for branding. Paid ads or other forms of direct response are very different – but I focus on branding… which is part of the reason you signed up for this newsletter: you don’t want to spend tons of money on ads… you want to get INBOUND leads from social media).
What I’m saying is this:
Social media has different rules than DR marketing.
Blindly following advice from past times with totally different tools or other forms of marketing is a dangerous, dangerous thing.
What I encourage you to do is to—
Question everything.
Even the greats such as Ogilvy (I still adore his stuff btw).
Critical thinking is the most underrated skill of the 21st century.
And it is what will make you the money you’re looking for.
That’s the lesson I want to leave you with today.
See ya fellas,
Tim <3
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