It’s pretty common to hear copywriters recommend that you study old sales pages and even sales emails, but what about old magazine ads? The kind that are printed on paper in actual periodicals? Today, where so much advertising happens online or in your social media feed, Ad writing is a bit of a lost art form. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it. In the 435th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed Lewis Folkard who breaks down old ads for his newsletter readers. And he shared what copywriters have to learn from his approach. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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Stuff to check out:
Lewis’ WebsiteThe Olive Ad Breakdown
The Silk Cut ad
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:
Rob Marsh: Copywriters seem to revere old books by Eugene Schwartz and Vic Schwab. But what about old ads? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
If you’ve been a copywriter for more than a few weeks, you’ve probably heard other more experienced copywriters mention books like Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, How to Write an Advertisement by Victor Schwab or Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples. They make up a large part of the official cannon of copywriting. In fact, David Ogilvy once said no one should be allowed to write a single word of copy until they had finished reading Caple’s book seven times. Of course there are new books that ought to be added… books by Joe Sugarman, Ann Handley and Matthew Dix.
In addition to books, there are a lot of copywriters who like to study old sales pages. They create swipe files full of them. I do this. My swipe file has more than 1,000 differnent sales pages I’ve collected over the last decade. Some copywriters even suggest you hand write sales pages as part of your learning. I don’t go that far, but I think you can learn a lot by studying the persuasion techniques that copywriters have used in their work.
But what about ads? One page with an image, headline, and a few lines of copy?
Are they worth studying? And what can we learn from them?
My guest on this episode is Lewis Folkard. Lewis has made a bit of a name for himself by picking old print ads from advertising award books, analyzing them, and writing about why they are effective or not. Lewis’ breakdowns are more than interesting reading, they’re mini-lessons on copywriting, attention-getting and persuasion. He told me why he does it and how it’s impacted his business in this interview. Stick around to hear what he had to say.
As you might expect, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. I’ve mentioned that I’ve been rebuilding the content vault and adding a ton of additional workshops to it. Workshops taught be expert copywriters like Parris Lampropoulos, Joanna Weibe, Stefan Georgi, Jack Forde, Chanti Zak, Laura Belgray and dozens of others. And it’s not just copywriters, we’ve got marketing experts teaching how to build funnels, how to market using tools like Linkedin and Pinterest, how to put yourself in the right mindset to succeed and so much more. And that’s just the workshops. There are dozens of templates, a community of like-minded writers holding each other accountable, and monthly coaching with me. It’s time you joined us inside. Learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu
And now, my interview with Lewis Folkard…
Lewis, welcome to the podcast. I would love to hear your story and how you became a copywriter.
Lewis Folkard: Okay, well, I mean, I guess a lot of copywriters say very similar things in the sense that I feel like I’ve always had an interest in people and communications. I mean, some of the earlier nonfiction books that I read were kind of about human psychology and communications. I think there was a How to Win Friends and Influence People and another one by Brian Tracy, I believe. But I was young and just always enjoyed learning about how the human mind works and how we can kind of translate that or how not to say how we can, but how that translates into behavior. But yeah, a career into marketing to copywriting and marketing started. Uh, I guess alongside uni, uh, I graduated with a degree in materials engineering and had every intention of following that path. Um, and. I don’t know, really, I don’t know how or what the, the kind of compelling idea was to, to leave and to start marketing, but it kind of happened. And of course, when it had a small business online selling vintage jewelry and yeah, I sort of helped him out as best I could. and end up discovering copywriting and haven’t really looked back since, to be fair. It’s sort of scratched itches that I didn’t realize I had. I’ve kind of always been more sort of mathsy, so to speak. Numbers, binary answers, right or wrong, you know, this either works or it doesn’t. And heading into copywriting in this kind of world was like, well, actually two opposing ideas can both be true. Uh, and it’s kind of challenged me in ways that I never really understood, but I really enjoy those kinds of challenges. There’s obviously loads of paradoxes in human behavior, especially consumer behavior. So.
Rob Marsh: A lot of copywriters come from different backgrounds. You’re the first person I’ve talked to. It doesn’t mean you’re the first copywriter that’s had a materials engineering background, but that is a big jump. Engineering to selling jewelry is your first client, but marketing, copywriting. Are there skills that you learned in materials engineering as an engineer that are directly applicable to what you do as a copywriter? That’s a good question.
Lewis Folkard: I think a lot of materials engineering is like looking at components that have broken and you then have to kind of find out why they’ve broken and how you can not help. So they don’t break in the future, basically. Um, so reverse engineering. those kind of concepts, I think have always stuck with me. That’s something that kind of pulled me into that in the first place. Um, and it’s definitely something I do now, especially with like rewriting old ads and sort of looking at how they work. Um, it’s kind of sort of leaned into that a lot more and understanding how some of the best performing pieces of copy work it’s, and help me sort of reverse engineer and apply those to my own pieces, I guess.
Rob Marsh: So you started working for your friend, selling vintage jewelry. How did you turn that now into a business? You got the first thing done, probably for not a lot of money, I’m guessing. How do you leverage a free project into now lending clients and doing the kind of work that you want to do?
Lewis Folkard: Uh, okay. So, well, I, I kind of did it on the side. So I did follow the materials engineering path for probably around six months after graduating. Uh, and I was sort of doing this on the side and helping out in the evenings as best I could. And yeah, he’s running ads on, on Facebook and Instagram. And I sort of wanted to find out, how can I help these ads perform better? As probably no surprise, first client, you’re a bit like a deer in headlights. You don’t know what’s going on and everything. And yeah, that’s where I ended up finding copywriting, in particular, Joe Sugarman’s copywriting handbook. And yeah, I sort of stuck at the job for a little while. And I guess it’s kind of the case of a lot of things. When you go on to a path that you’re kind of in control of, you’re like your own sort of freelancer. You’re in charge of what you earn, effectively. it seemed a lot more kind of fulfilling and inspiring and exciting. So I ended up leaving that job. It wasn’t because I didn’t like the job, but it was just, it was more stimulating doing my own thing. And yeah, I remember the first day that I sort of left and woke up and was like, well, what do I do today? Kind of thinking like, how is this going to work? How am I going to get money from this kind of thing? And yeah, I ended up, I actually led into, again, at the ads that I still look at now, Um, it was like, well, I need to kind of keep learning. I’m, I’m certainly no, no copywriter at the minute and just get reading books. And then I sort of found old pieces of direct mail and sort of thought, Oh, that technique looks familiar. I’ve seen that somewhere else. And that kind of spurred on the idea to, well, why don’t I sort of look at these in more detail and throw myself into the shoes of these copywriters and see why they’re saying and doing what they’re doing to effectively help me do the same thing. Um, and yeah, it’s a practice that I’ve continued to do since.
Rob Marsh: And were you cold pitching clients? Were you reaching out to friends and family? I mean, this is really the big challenge for a lot of copywriters. How do you find the clients?
Lewis Folkard: I was in some ways fortunate and in some ways unfortunate. There was a couple of local networking events that I went to. I met a few people. And a few months after that, nothing directly happened immediately after that. that, um, that event and then COVID happened and everybody started to look to move things online. And I was sort of positioning myself as like a, an ads copywriter. And when everyone was sort of like, well, I need to find someone who can help me bring my business online. And I happened to be there with a few touch points. I met a few other people, um, and a local agency. And that sort of gave me the first level of experience I needed. And it’s kind of grown from there really few agencies and yeah.
Rob Marsh: How does that work working with the agencies? Again, this is something that we talk about a lot in our programs that agencies can be great clients. Obviously, you make the connection, but what does the workflow feel like? Are you asking them for work from time to time? Are they just dropping things in your lap? What is that whole process?
Lewis Folkard: I mean, it does depend on the agency. Different agencies run it differently. The one that I worked with the closest was that, okay, we’d had projects come through and do you want to work on it? Yes or no. And then a brief came through and that was basically how it worked. So I kind of got to miss out on all the onboarding, which in some ways was nice, but I feel like that experience could have been helpful at the start because there’s lots to learn like later on, but it was also handy that I could just kind of get given a brief, do the work and get paid for it. And at the start, I just needed to get experience under my belt and learn the ropes really. And that definitely helped.
Rob Marsh: So your first project was free. As you moved into agencies, help me understand how your income has grown over time.
Lewis Folkard: I mean, I do less work for agencies now. I definitely do more independent. But that’s just, I guess, having kind of roots in one place and being able to kind of build more of a foundation to build a business from. At the start, I was kind of naive to how. I thought it’d be a lot easier than what it was, put it that way. And that was definitely a wake up call. Again, that first day was thinking, oh, right. Okay. I don’t have anything to do today. I also don’t have any money coming in. How am I going to do this? And you, I did cold pitch as well. I tried a lot of things and you certainly expose weaknesses when you’re, when you’re cold pitching, because it needs to be, it’s a very difficult thing to do. Um, and especially with no experience, I’d, I’d, I’d love to look back on some of those early emails to see what they look like now. Um, and yeah, just kind of building a base and. Agencies have been really helpful as like a, an extra, an extra step up. So when things have been tough, they’re like another, another source of income basically. So, yeah.
Rob Marsh: be helpful. So one of the ways that you got on my radar is your newsletter and the breakdowns that you do there. It might be interesting to do a breakdown of some of those earlier pitches that you were sending out. You break down old ads and basically talk about what works, what doesn’t work, and your thinking around them. I would love to hear the origin of how that came about, why you started sharing those thoughts, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about the process of actually breaking down ads to understand how they’re working or not working.
Lewis Folkard: No, of course. So yeah, it started off very, very early when I had very little copywriting experience. It was like, well, a lot of copywriters sort of preach writing or rewriting old direct mail pieces. And I did that. But I really wanted to sort of throw myself in it further, I guess, and to really understand like, well, what does this line actually do? It’s all well and good writing and having a similar style to, say, Gary Halbert or Richard Foster. But you kind of need to understand the why behind it as well as that. So yeah, with a little bit of sort of copywriting books, again, Joe Sugarman’s copywriting handbook was definitely the one that taught me a lot of these different techniques that are going on. And I started to spot them in other pieces and I’m thinking, oh, I could actually look at that. I had a leaflet come through the door and thought, oh, they’re saying that because that does that, for example. And just even basic things of like, well, we’ve had 8,000 reviews. Well, that actually performs a function that’s not there just for the sake of it. And obviously when you’re new, you don’t realize these things. And I sort of pieced it all together and it’s kind of developed from there really.
Rob Marsh: So maybe we can take a look at it. I don’t know if a specific example comes to mind, but let’s walk through that process with an ad. And do you start at the top and look at the headline, how the images work together? Let’s kind of go through the process.
Lewis Folkard: Yeah, so I think it was probably three years ago, I met a copywriter, a well-known copywriter over here, Lawrence Bloom, and he was in a lot of the annuals that I get the ads from. So that was a great touch point for me. But I have probably close to 40 old advertising annuals stored away that I literally flick through and think, oh, that one actually looks quite interesting, that one grabs my attention. And that is the first thing that I do is find one that grabs my attention and then I sort try and dissect it. Uh, and I probably got enough, enough, enough ads in those books to last me the next 10 years, I reckon. Um, but there’s no like immediate or performance based things. It’s, it’s done more from like a creative point of light. Well, sometimes the timing could be right. You might see this ad and think today it doesn’t do much for me, but in two weeks time, when you’re working on a similar brief, it could be like a stepping stone to something that helps you. And these breakdowns now serve more of a function of that. of like, well, these are inspiration. There’s nothing necessarily that these are the best performing ones. These are ones that are obviously somewhat respectable because they’re in the annuals themselves, but it’s more as like a creative stepping stone, I guess is the best way to put it.
Rob Marsh: So do you have a favorite ad that as you’ve gone through these, you’re like, wow, this, this one is just tops.
Lewis Folkard: Oh, the one I always mention is Richard Foster did one for Sainsbury’s, which is a supermarket over here. And he did it for an olive of all things. And It’s just the cadence and the rhythm of how he writes was just something so meaningless and olive. And it flowed so well like a story. And I thought, you know, if someone could do this for an olive, well, what can they do with something that’s actually genuinely quite exciting? Yeah. It’s definitely one that stands out.
Rob Marsh: And then you do the breakdowns, but obviously you’re learning from them. At some point you started sharing these as well.
Lewis Folkard: Yeah, that was a mere coincidence. I think I just thought, you know, I’ll just post it on LinkedIn as again, desperate for work at the very start. I think I looked at a smoothie bottle first was how it started and was like, well, they had about six or seven lines of copy on that. And I thought, well, each line or each sentence had like a function that at least it looked like to me. And I shared it online and it did. for relative speaking, it did quite well. It went quite far. And I thought, well, why don’t I try these with another one? And that was way before I got these annuals as well. And the annuals sort of just ignited that excitement for it and I’ve carried on looking at them.
Rob Marsh: Obviously, you’ve been sharing them, not just on LinkedIn, but you started an email list. How has that grown? And what’s the impact that that’s had on your business?
Lewis Folkard: Uh, it’s, it’s still growing for sure. Um, it’s something that I’ve, I’ve kind of done for the selfish that sounds for my own interests, um, than for generating business. It’s more than I want to help, help excite other creatives and see, you know, like the work. That’s come before us has helped shape and more of the industry that we work in. And I don’t want to kind of lose sight of that. Um, Yeah, this is like we as humans haven’t changed that much and the drivers behind these ads are still relevant today. They still tick the same kind of evolutionary desires and tap into those. And I just want to create a way of showing, you know, all these things have come before us. They’re not useless. I think many other industries like film, music, they all look back to see what’s come before them and to learn from. those that have, again, shaped and molded their industry, whereas in marketing, we’re very quick to dismiss, I think, like looking for the next silver bullet. And I think it’s important to look back to see what’s come before us.
Rob Marsh: As you’ve done that, have you compiled a list or you’ve got like, hey, these are the persuasion techniques or the headline techniques, the hooks that seem to be working. Have you kind of figured out like, okay, these are the formulas and maybe you start there or is it just really more of just kind of an artistic exercise?
Lewis Folkard: I mean, this is probably more the engineering side, the math side of it. I have a very large spreadsheet of all the books and ads that I’ve looked at, and I’ve kind of segmented them all out into different techniques. Okay, this is for headlines. Is this for boosting credibility? Is this for, you know, like smoothing transition between a headline to the first line of the copy? I’ve got that and I use that and I often refer back to that to kind of get the ball rolling. But yeah, the first ads, the first ones I look at are more just a gut instinct. And then I sort of look to dig more because there’s normally more going on than what meets the eye initially. And I guess that’s what makes a good ad a good ad, is that we don’t realize that it’s sort of a sales pitch that doesn’t feel like a sales pitch. And I yeah first first is always got feeling where this is interesting and I’m like well why is it interesting and then I sort of start probing and looking back at other ads and techniques and they’re always like stepping stones they just keep building out so yeah the documents that plan these end up getting quite long and it’s quite difficult to cut out what what doesn’t go in and what does go in again it’s the same as all copywriting is in that sense. So yeah, there’s a big extensive spreadsheet that maybe, I don’t know, I might turn into something that’s actually useful, but it’s just my eyes only and it’s quite a mess, but it works.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’m curious. I’d love to see it. But I wonder, what are the techniques that you see happening over and over and over that are just clearly like, these are the table stakes, the basics that every ad really ought to have?
Lewis Folkard: That is a good question. I mean, there’s normally some form of storytelling, and it’s kind of the old cliche that story sells. But how those stories come across they differ between the ads. And some of them again, some of the ones I look at, I guess, for the listeners, like, are not always copy heavy. Sometimes they are just an image in the headline. Sometimes they are copy, or very heavy body copy. And I guess there’s something that we can use for our longer forms of writing, because you know, the images, our brains process images a lot faster than what they do words. And a long piece of copy isn’t usually just words, there is normally some kind of imagery that goes with it or media. I like to look at visual metaphors. So I’ve tried to include those in longer form pieces of copy where I can. But obviously you like, you can’t overcomplicate it too much and sort of throw too much to the reader. So how you present that is normally a bit of a challenge. But yeah, I’d say a lot of the ads I’ve looked at have some kind of visual metaphor. They do a lot of work by pulling in symbols from other areas. One that comes to mind, I actually wrote a post for LinkedIn yesterday. that’s coming in the next few weeks. And it was just a picture of a happy baby for cow and gate baby food. I’m not sure if you guys have that over, over the pond.
Rob Marsh: At least I’m not familiar with that brand, but baby food for sure.
Lewis Folkard: Yeah. And it was just a means of having, having a picture of a happy baby on the front with like, it was the red and was very slight symbolic of the brand between a cow and the gate in the imagery. It was like a dad holding, holding a baby in the field. And Happy Baby does a lot of work without us really thinking about it. There’s so much that goes on sort of subconsciously that helps us process and evokes a lot of emotion without really having to say anything at all. And we can use those same techniques in our copy to deliver more pack for less punch, I guess.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s a really important point. I have a ton of old advertising annuals as well, from the 80s and 90s. And as I look through them, oftentimes just for inspiration or just to put myself maybe in a more creative mind, one of the things that I have realized is so much of the work back then was in this golden age of magazines, when visuals were really important, copy was sort of shrinking in ads. And the challenge for a lot of copywriters is, We’re hired to write words, not necessarily ads. Most magazines, so many magazines are defunct now, and that kind of art has shrunk. It’s still there in places. But as far as applying these kinds of ideas into blog posts or emails or so much of the content that we’re asked to create today as a copywriter, what do you see is the best way to do that?
Lewis Folkard: I remember reading a book probably a couple of years ago by Orlando Wood. And it was sort of discussed—the different ways that different sides of the brain have kind of dominated in different sort of phases of history and how that kind of looks in art. And something that we see a lot today is kind of a quote, kind of left brain society, so to speak, is that everything is very short term and kind of spoon fed that a lot of the better ads from way back when where they sort of trusted the reader to figure them out a bit more. And I feel like that applies to all copywriting is that we make it too simple and too obvious. It’s kind of a sign of the times, I guess, in some ways, but we can just put more trust into our reader to figure out what we mean. We don’t have to state every little detail, we can let their minds figure things out. And our brains generally enjoy doing that as well. And so if those positive associations come from thinking and solving a sort of a problem, so to speak, then those associations sort of stick with who they’re getting them from. And that helps come to mind sooner, which then helps advertising and copywriting in the future. So there’s like a long-term effect of letting our reader do a bit of work, basically.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I really like that. I’ve noticed you’ve mentioned that a few times. In fact, I’ve got a swipe file where I’ve collected what I call puzzle ads. It’s where you’re basically forced to complete the connection between the headline or the image. One series that I remember, you’re probably too young to remember these live, they probably are in your annuals, is Silk Cut Cigarettes, which was a brand in the UK. had an outdoor campaign where there was always some combination between a sharp object and this purple, this beautiful purple silk. And I remember seeing them all over Scotland when I was there in the 80s. And I just kind of fell in love with these ads that were just, it was intended to make your brain have to think about what was being advertised because it was not clear. And as the campaign builds, obviously every time you see this purple silk with a pair of scissors or a knife or something, you started to see the silk cut and it’s the kind of, it stuck with me. And there are other campaigns that do something similar. Absolute Vodka in the 90s ran, they’re basically puzzle ads where you kind of had to figure out what was the bottle and what was the connection to the thing.
Lewis Folkard: I think I’ve seen one, it was like an x-ray bottle, wasn’t it? Yeah, there’s all kinds, right?
Rob Marsh: So they would have one that would say like, Absolute Manhattan, and it would be a photograph looking down at New York City and Central Park. was shaped as an absolute bottle. And which, you know, it’s not, but you would look at it like, oh, a familiar image, tweaked a little bit to, you know, advertise this cool brand. So that’s a little harder to pull off in a blog post or in an email, but there are probably ways to create these kinds of puzzles and connections and help our readers think a little bit so that, you know, like you said, they’re spending a little mental energy and it makes the work more memorable and more effective.
Lewis Folkard: It’s definitely a tough balance to get right. Because if you make it look too complex, then no one’s going to even bother attempting it. But if you make it too simple, it’s kind of insulting that it’s just boring and not entertaining and engaging to look at. And if we’re putting ourselves in front of all these people in all these different ways, the least we can do is make it somewhat enjoyable to like to read. And yeah, there’s obviously loads of different ways that we can do it. And I just they always put a smile on my face, seeing something that, you know, just the two or three seconds of thought, you think, ah, it’s normally the product, but then like completes the message as well, is kind of the missing piece. But that’s, again, it’s a sign, again, of more left brain advertising is that there’s no kind of thought, it’s, you need to be able to prove it, and there’s too many reasons for something not to work, whereas more right brain, which is more like sort of dialogue based, and there wasn’t much about the product in a product ad, for example. Um, that was something that, you know, you trusted the reader to fill out the archive. The actual answer to this is the brand of advertising here, whereas now it seems too risky, but yeah.
Rob Marsh: So if you, as you’ve spent so much time looking at these ads, dissecting them, trying to figure out what works, how has that impacted the work that you do for your clients? It’s really helped me sell work, um, for one. So how, how does that work?
Lewis Folkard: For example, if I’ve written a website, it’s a lot easier for me to justify each line because I know what techniques I’m using here and why that’s being used on this page here and this position on this page. And obviously everything should earn its right, but it’s sometimes difficult to kind of justify everything. But these, having the techniques and seeing it in different formats have really helped. They’ve also helped me critique other people’s work. So in different sort of like groups that I’m in, if we’re sharing different pieces of work, it’s easy to sort of pinpoint and say, well, have you thought about doing this technique to add credibility here instead of the one you’ve used, for example. So there’s different ways like that and obviously then I feel like a lot of the creative decisions that we use, like obviously we have constraints to work with this undeniably some science behind what we do or a lot of science but there is a little bit of wiggle room for some creative work and a lot of these decisions that we make come from our unconscious and the more that we can kind of draw attention to those in different ways, whether we study, whether we write them, we then kind of give us a conscious, that ability to kind of use them in our work. And they come out sometimes naturally, or sometimes we have to kind of like actually apply them and go back and intentionally insert them sometimes. And it depends what we’re working with, but it has helped for sure.
Rob Marsh: So I’d love to shift our conversation a little bit and just hear more about how you work. What does your typical day look like when you get up and start thinking about a project or working on a project? How does that all come together? Okay.
Lewis Folkard: So for the last three, three years or so. Um, I have just been living out of a backpack, traveling the world with my girlfriend. So my days do vary quite a bit. Uh, I usually, depending on which side of the world or my clients have always stayed in, in the UK. So sometimes that involves me working in the evening. Sometimes it involves me working in the mornings, depending on where I am. Um, but yeah, I normally keep my evenings aside where I can. I tend to prefer to work in the mornings and just sort of do the, to eat the big frog first, I think is the saying goes and to do the heaviest, most kind of demanding task and then save emails and calls for afternoons as best I can.
Rob Marsh: And I mean, traveling and working is a challenge. It’s one of those things. I think a lot of people who work for themselves think, oh, I can do this so that I can travel. A lot of us don’t travel. It’s something that I’ve done with my family a bit. Talk about some more of the challenges of that because it’s not just as easy as saying, well, I’m going to work late or I’m going to work early. In my experience, my family and I, we lived in Europe for seven or eight months while I was working. The balance between everybody else wanting to go do something, me having to get work done, it was not an easy thing to strike.
Lewis Folkard: I know it’s yeah, it’s definitely posed its challenges. I’ve quite enjoyed working from different places and seeing how different places kind of inspire different trails of thought. Yeah, it’s been interesting to observe how people act in different places and scenarios. And it’s definitely granted me that opportunity. But the lack of routine has been very challenging. So sometimes it’s a matter of squeezing work into an evening if I’ve got a flight and I’m changing time zones, for example, I know I’m not gonna be able to do much the next few days. And just settling into that took a little bit of time. But it’s been exciting, but it is definitely difficult. And yeah, trying to find times where You have to sort of think on tap rather than like plan when you’re going to have your times and you don’t know when that’s going to be. If you’ve got an hour before a flight, okay, well, it’s what can I do that’s not too demanding here and saving and it forces you to sort of manage your time a lot better, I think is the best way to put it. What are your favorite places where you’ve been? Probably Thailand, I think takes the top, the top draw. And why is that? The food, the beaches, the people. It’s just, yeah, it’s lovely. Good coffee shops. And there’s always good places to work. So, I think that takes the biscuit. But I’m back home now.
Rob Marsh: And when I reached out to you, I know you were in Australia. And what are some of the other places that you’ve been?
Lewis Folkard: So we did, I guess, Mexico, Columbia, we’ve been in and around Southeast Asia from like Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia. That’s amazing. Yeah, Australia, we’ve done obviously a lot of places in Europe as well. It’s a lot closer for us.
Rob Marsh: And were you carrying your annuals with you or how are you finding the images? I’ve got a suitcase packed full of them. Yeah, exactly. That’s heavy stuff.
Lewis Folkard: That was a lot of preparation. So I took enough pictures of the annuals before I went and I’ve got an album that’s got close to a thousand pictures of different ads in there that I kind of pull from. And when I need to find another one for the next newsletter or however many in advance I’m doing, I’ll just go through and see, okay, this one’s really taken my fancy here. But yeah, I had to really think about what information I was going to need because I can’t just flick back through them books and find the bits. So there’s a lot of note-taking that goes involved into that, but I’ve got them with me now.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. So now that you’re back home, at least temporarily, are you looking at your business differently? Do you do anything differently because you’re in the home base or is it more of the same?
Lewis Folkard: I mean, I’ve only been back about a month, um, but I definitely have the. The desire to, it’s one I, I can do the same thing. I can follow a fixed routine, which is nice. And I can actually go and meet some of these clients in person, which I’ve not been able to do. So I’m hoping it’s going to have a positive impact in that sense that, you know, I can solidify the relationship a bit better than what I can via email and video call. And also just the kind of to go out and speak to local people and attend more in-person events that I’ve not been able to do. Um, so there’s. It’s happening slowly. Um, but again, I’ve only been back a few weeks to kind of make the most of that.
Rob Marsh: So where do you see your business going from, from now and, you know, in the coming years?
Lewis Folkard: I would like just to keep doing what I’m doing really, I really enjoy and ever since I started it, I’ve enjoyed it and I still enjoy it to this day. Obviously it’d be, I mean to say work fewer hours, I don’t know. I think the best thing about being a freelancer is that you can pick and choose how and when you want to work. If you want to do more, you can. If you want to do less, you can. Obviously, it comes with its risks and challenges, of course, but I’m really content with how things are and don’t want to change too much, really, as naive as that sounds.
Rob Marsh: That makes sense. So if you could go back in time, you know, to Lewis, who is maybe, you know, just coming out of uni, materials engineering, you know, working on that first client, what kind of advice would you give him in order to help him make progress or do things differently, you know, have success faster or something like that?
Lewis Folkard: It’s all kind of come in waves. I think I would tell myself that when things are good, they probably won’t stay this way. If you’ve got lots of projects coming through all at once, there’s going to be periods where these projects do not continue, even if you think they’re going to continue. So keep planting seeds for the future and don’t put that off. Just keep doing that consistently. That’s been a lesson that’s been quite difficult over the years, and especially when I’ve been other parts of the world. sort of really relying on people finding me via online somewhere or another, is just to keep going. Don’t stop with planting seeds because you need to keep nurturing them as you go along.
Rob Marsh: Obviously what you’re posting on LinkedIn, that’s planting seeds. What other ways do you plant seeds in order to connect with clients?
Lewis Folkard: I’m in a few different groups of copywriters and business owners that I now attend to as well. They were online, but I’m now able to go out and see them in person. I mean, just doing things that I quite enjoy doing, and you never know who you meet or who that person knows. There’s been a lot of relationships and clients that have come from sort of word of mouth referrals that very, very slim off chances. And now I kind of have this idea, you know, well, you never know who you’re going to meet and who you’re going to talk to is just to try and spike up conversations in day to day. If I’m out in coffee shops, you never know who that person might know. And that’s proved pretty, pretty positive.
Rob Marsh: So, yeah, that’s, I think, a really critical piece of advice that I think a lot of people need to hear over and over and over. is these relationships matter. Striking up conversations matters. Creating friendships matters. And I know a lot of people shy away from networking, the concept that you’re out there looking for work or asking for work. But when it comes right down to it, people work with the people they like and the people that they know. And the more we can get out there, the better it is for all of our businesses.
Lewis Folkard: 100%. And yeah, it’s been, again, a tough lesson to learn over the months, over the years that, you know, you really don’t know who you’re talking to. And sometimes the least expecting ones can be the ones that provide the most, whether it’s on LinkedIn, whether it’s in person, you know, you just have these conversations and there are opportunities to learn about people as well, which obviously is a very big part of what we do. And yeah, if you kind of see it as a game and a bit of fun, you can Have a good time doing it.
Rob Marsh: And I do. Any other advice that you would offer copywriters looking to grow their businesses and do some of the things that you’re doing?
Lewis Folkard: Again, plant the seeds and just be consistent that these things, I was naive thinking, you know, within six months I’ll have all these clients and all these different things to do. And it takes a lot longer than what you think you’re going to take. I don’t want to dishearten people, but the reality is that, yeah, these things do take time and anything that comes quickly normally goes quickly. So if it’s a slow builder, you’re normally in a safer position in the long run. So prepare for the future and yeah, just keep, keep planting those seeds.
Rob Marsh: Amazing. Lewis, if people want to see your creative breakdowns, be on your list or find wherever it is that you’re posting, where should they go? So my website is lewisfolkard.co.uk.
Lewis Folkard: That’s L-E-W-I-S-F-O-L-K-A-R-D.co.uk. And yeah, the newsletter was on there as well if you wish to sign up to that. If not, I’ve got all the past ones on my blog for you to look through. So they’re all there.
Rob Marsh: We’ll link to it in the show notes. We’ll also link to the olive, the breakdown that you have of the olive thing. I remember when that one came out and you’re right, it’s interesting. If a copywriter can wax poetic about a single olive, you know that they can write. So we’ll link to that so that people can find it. I really appreciate you taking some time this morning to talk to me.
Lewis Folkard: Perfect. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Rob Marsh: Thanks, Lewis.
Thanks to Lewis Folkard for sharing his story, details about his newsletter, and how he breaks down older ads.
Breakdowns are tremendously useful. Seeing how other copywriters think about copy, copy written by them or even by others, that helps us see techniques so that we can find them in other copy that we read later or even copy that we write ourselves. In fact, having an experienced copywriter look at your work and make suggestions about how to improve it is perhaps the best way to see things that you miss and ultimately it makes you a better writer. Lewis mentioned that we as humans haven’t changed all that much over the past centuries, let alone decades. So we can learn a lot by looking back at what has come before.
And Lewis didn’t mention this, but one of the reasons that I like to look back at old ads is that it puts me in a different frame of mind for thinking about headlines and hooks. There’s something about studying clever ideas that helps you flex your own clever muscle and can make your headlines more intriguing. These kinds of reviews are something that we do a lot of in The Copywriter Underground.
I even broke down one of my all-time favorite sales pages by Gary Bencevenga, showing how Gary uses more than a dozen different persuasion techniques. I think there’s 18 or 19 of them that he uses in a single sales page. I’ve also broken down web pages, sales pages, social media posts, emails for different members of The Copywriter Underground. You can see them all inside The Copywriter Underground.
If you’re not already a member, you can jump in at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
