Morning!

It’s another cold weekend in Manchester for me. Wind blowing. Ground wet. Grey skies.

It’s miserable, at least I’ve got no excuses not to write this newsletter.

Today, I’m going to tell you about a £295 marketing book that isn’t available in any bookstores, the reason it’s so valuable, plus the hidden lecture I found from the author.

People say he’s one of the best copywriters of all time, just based on his book… It’s safe to say he’s clearly a very good marketer.

Let’s get into it!

3 years ago, I was having lunch with two friends in Manchester when we got chatting about some of the best marketing books we’d read. We were rhyming off the usuals - Oglivy On Advertising, Oversubscribed, Purple Cow, etc. Then one of my friends - Louis Sandford - brought up a title I’d not heard of.

“I think Breakthrough Advertising is the best marketing book I’ve ever read,” he said.

“Breakthrough Advertising? I’ve not heard of that.” I responded, “Who wrote it?”

Louis went on to explain that it was written by a man called Eugene Schwartz, who is said to be one of the most successful mail-order copywriters of all time. It’s said that he generated over $150 million in sales in mail order alone (that’s roughly $1.2–$1.3 billion in 2026 dollars) - which is absolutely wild.

Then Louis told me he had to pay £295 for the book, and it wasn’t available in any major bookstore. Admittedly, I was a tad confused, but I was very curious.

When I got home, I did some research, and I was shocked when I couldn’t find the book at all on the internet for under £200 (even today it’s listed at £295 on Amazon - see screenshot below). “What was so valuable inside that book?” I thought.

I considered buying it, but instead, I decided to go down the Eugene Schwartz rabbit hole and see if I could find any videos or articles where he outlines his key principles.

2 hours later, I stumbled upon this video….

A rare recording of a guest lecture he did on ‘How To Write Ads’.

Bingo. I was onto something.

For the next 90 minutes, I combed through the video for insights as Schwartz explained his thoughts on:

Then 15 minutes in, he said this…

Schwartz said, "There's nothing else in the world that makes success as much as this. Because the power of the ad is always in the product itself; it’s not in the copywriter. The copywriter simply finds it and expresses it."

When I first heard him say it, it reminded me of something Harry Dry often says on podcasts: “The easiest way to write great copy is to just say the most interesting fact.”

As a kid, I thought marketing was all about describing products in the fanciest way possible. I’d see car brands like Lexus telling me their cars were “Luxuriously crafted” - what does that even mean?

Or I’d see Bentley telling me that their cars would allow me to ‘Experience the art of luxury’.

But, as Eugene Schwartz said, these ads are a great example of copywriters not looking inside the product and instead attempting to sell it with adjectives.

Schwartz would be rolling in his grave seeing those Bentley ads, and I also think he’d be shocked at how many ads today use fluffy adjectives like “Luxurious” to describe their product.

So how can you follow in Schwartz's footsteps and use facts to advertise your products?

Well, one of the most successful automotive ads of all time (written by David Ogilvy) does exactly this.

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”.

What a beautiful line.

Ogilvy doesn’t try to tell you the Rolls-Royce has the “smoothest drive of any car” or that it “delivers an unparalleled luxury experience.” He tells you a simple fact that other car manufacturers can’t compete with.

(It’s said Ogivly spent months researching every aspect of the car to come up with this line.)

One of my favourite ads of the last 5 years takes the same formula and applies it to shoes. When New Balance trainers suddenly had a resurgence in popularity over the last decade, most copywriters would have found it impossible to articulate. Instead, New Balance just used a fact as its headline.

What other shoe brand can say that? Answer = none.

Then you’ve got Domino’s who had explosive growth across the U.S.A from a singular line that they ran in their ad campaigns for decades…

"Hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes - or it’s free”. A fact no other pizzeria wanted to or could compete with for a long, long time.

That is real copywriting.

Copywriting isn’t wrapping up a product in clever words, sticking a bow on it, and thinking that suddenly it becomes more desirable.

It’s going deep inside a product, understanding every crevice of it and then pulling out the most interesting yet desirable fact about the product and highlighting it to the world. That’s what Schwartz understood deeply, as did Ogilvy, and so did Harry Dry.

Based on that alone, it’s a principle we should all probably live by as well ;)

Right, that’s all I’ve got for you today. If you liked this, you should go and read the book ‘Obvious Adams’. I just started reading it last night and it talks through many scenarios just like this. It’s short and a different style from most marketing books, but I‘m loving it.

Until next Sunday,

— Niall

P.S. Take a second to rate this week’s breakdown below :)

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