The Lost Art Of Long Copy Ads.
Remember great headline-less all-copy ads?
Last week, a new long copy campaign snuck into my inbox, uninvited, via South Africa, for Nescafe decaf coffee. My first reaction, before reading the copy, was ‘well alright, cool, this is different’. But then I read them. Now you can.
Well, I’ll be kind: nice try. The whole “man” thing would have been relevant in the 1970s, but also still not funny in the 1970s.
Why the fuck did you do that to the type. No I get the “concept”, it’s a visual metaphor for my over-caffeinated mind. But—I NEED TO READ THE FUCKING AD. A dentist rant. Not interesting. Not funny. From the press release:
“We collated hundreds of weird night-time thoughts, from earworms to random streams of consciousness, recreated the most entertaining ones and placed various ads in national newspapers to show how decaf coffee can help put our thoughts to bed”.
Hundreds. REALLY? And these were the best ones. Where did you collate them from? ShitIdeaLand? Ad agency: Prodigious, Africa.
OK, now let’s look back (always back) at the right way to do long-copy ads. Below are four exemplary examples. (Wanna see the ads, free subscribers? It’s $40 a year—this post is your last chance (not kidding) at that price. Click here.)