Copywriting Grab Bag

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Back when I was just a snot-nosed little brat, I remember seeing a Tex Avery cartoon titled “Symphony In Slang.”

This short little cartoon was almost entirely in slang (thus the title).

When I started studying copywriting and learned the value of using slang in my ads, I looked everywhere for it.

I checked video stores, combed the Cartoon Network website and scoured the Internet.

Nada.

There were a few sites in the search engines that had it.

But when I clicked on the links I’d find it was yanked offline for copyright violations or because the url had changed.

Tonight I finally found it.

And yep… it was sitting there on good ol’ Youtube.

You can watch it (while it’s still up) on YouTube just by typing in the title name in their search engine.

I suspect it won’t be up long though.

So in case you’re reading this and it’s gone… I went through it (for your benefit and mine) and extracted all the relevant slang terms.

Depending on what you sell, some of this stuff may be kind of hard to work into your story copy.

But a lot of it can still be used or adapted for a variety of different products and services.

For example, you could treat some of them like “formula headlines” — where you substitute one or more words with words that fit with the story you’re telling in your copy.

At the very least they should spark some useful ideas you can use.

Anyway, I was pretty excited when I found this cartoon.

I hope you get as much value out of it as I have.

born with a silver spoon in your mouth

grew up overnight

up at the crack of dawn

back to my hole in the wall

beside myself with anger

make some dough

beautiful girl stepped into the picture

I got goose pimples

clothes fit her like a glove

paintin’ the town red

let her hair down

she ate like a horse

my money was runnin’ out on me

left me in a pickle

I gave him the slip

he drew a gun on me

the law was on my heels

the judge tried to pump me

put my foot in my mouth

sent me up the river

felt myself going to pot

raised a big stink

going though a lot of red tape

threw myself at her feet

got on her high horse

couldn’t touch her with a ten foot pole

guess the cat had her tongue

after that I went to pieces

we chewed the rag a while

I heard from the grapevine

that burned me up

knew he was just feeding her a line

the guy spent his money like water

outside it was raining cats and dogs

I was feeling mighty blue… and everything looked black

a tear ran down my cheek

hot footed it over to Mary’s apartment

I died laughin’

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