The most frequent reason for unsuccessful advertising is advertisers who are so full of their own accomplishments (the world's best seed!) that they forget to tell us why we should buy (the world's best lawn!).

Even today you can look through almost any consumer or professional publication and find headlines that possess not a single one of the necessary qualities, such as self-interest, news, or curiosity.

To impress your offer on the mind of the reader or listener, it is necessary to put it into brief, simple language...No farfetched or obscure statement will stop them. You have got to hit them where they live in the heart or in the head. You have got to catch their eyes or ears with something simple, something direct, something they want.

Every copywriter knows what it is to struggle with a copy for hours, for days - fixing it, polishing it, rearranging it. We have all been quilty of leaving the headline until the last and the spending half and hour on it - or perhaps only ten minutes.

What good is all the painstaking work on copy if the headline isn't right? If the headline doesn't stop people, the copy might as well be written in Greek.

Get the big point of your advertisement into your headline. Use your headline as a hook to reach out and catch the special group of people you are trying to interest.

The purpose of the headlines must be to convey a message to people who read headlines, then decide whether or not they will look at the copy.