A while back, I got to ranting & raving to Stefania about Tolkien’s races (hobbits, dwarves, elves, orcs, etc) and their respective copywriting styles, after re-watching the Hobbit movies.
My opinion:
1. Guys like Dan Kennedy & Gene Schwartz have a “dwarf” copywriting style:
Not much subtlety (pure sales pitch).
And completely, un-apologetically in-your-face headlines (with the whole offer right in the headline sometimes) & offers, bulling their way through price resistance and skepticism with brute force, with almost Berserker-like intensity.
2. Guys like the late copywriters Jim Rutz & Gary Halbert have an “elf” copywriting style:
Almost the exact opposite as dwarves.
Very little brute force.
Lots of nimbleness.
Not so much using brute force as re-directing force of skepticism & price resistance back at the customer, using it to such an extent that I’ve heard both of them (in interviews) say they’ve run ads where they forgot to even include a call to action. The reader was just so caught up in the story, sucked in, not even realizing they are being sold, some would hunt the client down to buy anyway.
3. Then there are “hybrids” of elves & dwarves (dwelves?) who do both brilliantly.
Like, for example, guys like John Carlton.
And especially Email Players subscriber Gary Bencivenga.
4. There are also Hobbit-style ads.
I think of ads that look “otherworldly” and that may be complete nonsense — but come off as innocent, fun, and even if you know they are a bit exaggerated (or outright fantasy) you don’t care.
i.e., the Sea-Monkeys ads of yore in old comicbooks.
Or the Charles Atlas “How An Insult Made a Man Out of Mac” ad.
5. Then there are orc-style ads.
Those are the ads that may pull like crazy but are hot, steaming piles of bull shyt, filled with lots of hype, lies, & deceit, preying on the public’s sense of trust or low information. The whole coordinated jab push by big government & big pharma & big media fan fiction (dancing ShtickTok nurses at supposedly overrun ICUs or, my favorite, “I’m on my death bed, if only I’d gotten the jab!” big pharma exec fan fiction) being probably the most successful orc copywriting.
Frankly, Fauxci even kinda looks like an orc…
Not to mention the legions of ads selling fake cures for diseases.
Or prosperity preacher advertising.
Or surgeons pushing elective surgeries that cause pain & agony.
Or even garden variety classified ads from the old timey days selling x-ray glasses, books on how to grow taller, mortgage scams, fly-by-night investment schemes, and the list goes on and on and on.
Anyway, as far as legit copywriters:
Some are dwarves.
Others are elves.
And some are a bit of both, with hardly any hobbits anymore.
For a framework for using email that can be used any of the copywriting races, go here:
Ben Settle
