Communication
The 33.33 Method
Set a timer for 33 minutes 33 seconds. You may stare at the wall, you may not leave the chair. Boredom recruits you into the work.
I have no goal for the next 33.33 minutes except to work on the copy.
Direct-response copywriter, author of Breakthrough Advertising
Positioning
5 Stages of Awareness
Every prospect exists at one of five levels of awareness about their problem and your product. Your copy must meet them at their current level and move them to the next…
5 Stages of Market Sophistication
Markets evolve through five stages of sophistication as they become exposed to more competing claims. Each stage requires a fundamentally different copywriting approach.…
Mass Desire Channeling
Mass desire is the public spread of a private want. The copywriter's task is to identify the most powerful pre-existing desire shared by the target market, acknowledge…
The Seven Techniques of Breakthrough Copy
Schwartz identified seven master techniques that form the complete toolkit for breakthrough copy. Each addresses a different dimension of persuasion. The copywriter…
Three Dimensions of Headline Power
Every headline must maximize three dimensions of the mass desire it addresses: urgency and intensity (how badly the prospect wants it now), staying power and repetition…
Mindset
Communication
Set a timer for 33 minutes 33 seconds. You may stare at the wall, you may not leave the chair. Boredom recruits you into the work.
I have no goal for the next 33.33 minutes except to work on the copy.
Work in intense, focused 33-minute-and-33-second sessions. You may stare at the wall. You may write. You may not leave the chair or do anything else.
Schwartz's famous writing discipline, learned from Buddhist monks. The constraint eliminates decision fatigue and forces deep focus. After each session, take a mandatory…
Eugene Schwartz writing process / Rodale speech
Sales
Intensification: 13 Techniques for Amplifying Desire
Intensification is the process of presenting a series of fresh, new, and different fulfillments for the prospect's dominant desire. Each technique paints the product's…
Show the cost of inaction alongside the benefit of action. People are more motivated by what they might lose than by what they might gain.
Applied in the intensification phase of body copy. After painting the positive vision of ownership, paint the negative vision of not acting. This dual approach creates…
Gradualization beats leaps of faith. Build your argument one small step at a time, starting from what the prospect already accepts as true.
Every large logical jump gives the prospect an exit point. If they cannot follow one step to the next, they stop reading. Gradualization keeps the reader nodding along,…
Content & audience
The 33-Minute Writing Session Method
Write in strictly timed 33-minute-and-33-second sessions with mandatory 10-minute breaks between each. During a session, you may write or stare at the wall, but you may…
Eugene Schwartz writing process / Rodale speech
Idea validation
If you cannot identify a pre-existing mass desire for your product, you do not have an advertising problem -- you have a product problem.
Applied during product-market fit evaluation before writing copy. If no mass desire exists to channel, no amount of copywriting skill will save the campaign.
Mass desire is the fuel; copy is the engine. The engine does not create the fuel. Every successful advertisement starts with a pre-existing desire and channels it toward a product.
This principle prevents the most common advertising mistake: trying to create demand where none exists. It forces the copywriter to start with market research rather…
Eugene Schwartz
makes the constraint external. Thirty-three minutes and thirty-three seconds in the chair, nothing else permitted, and no requirement to produce anything. The prohibition on everything else is what makes the work start.
makes the constraint internal. Give yourself explicit permission to write badly, get the thinking out in a first pass with no quality bar, then edit for one specific reader in a second pass.
From The 33.33 Method