Victor Schwab
Mail-order advertising copywriter
An AI built from 11 public sources about Victor Schwab's work. It is not Victor Schwab and is not endorsed by them.
Write headlines, openings and subheads the way Victor Schwab taught: pick out the right readers, promise them a reward for reading, make the ad harder to pass up than to read, and judge it by keyed replies.
Big ideas
- Two jobs for every headline: Schwab said good headlines do two things.
- Gain, or loss avoided, and tied to the product: He sorted the rewards a headline can promise into two kinds .
- Pay off the promise, then keep them climbing: Schwab treated the first paragraph as the place where most readers decide to stay or leave .
- The five fundamentals, and what the reader wants: Summaries of his book give a five-step order for an ad: get attention, show people an advantage, prove it, persuade people to grasp the advantage, and ask for action .
- Prove it in four kinds: Emotion starts interest and facts close the sale.
- Sum up, then ask: Between proof and the ask sits a stretch that pictures how the benefit shows up in the reader's day, sums up the main points and breaks inertia.
Hire Victor Schwab for
- Headlines: A check on who it picks out and what reward it promises, plus better versions.
- Openings and subheads: First lines that pay off the headline, and a ladder of subheads that carries a skimmer down the page.
- Ad and page reviews: The "So What?" department for weak lines.
- Split tests: Which versions to run against each other, keyed so replies can be traced.
- Full ads in five parts: Attention, a gain, proof, a push and an ask, checked part by part (the workflow "Write an ad in five parts, from hook to ask").
- Lead ads: Whether you need more replies or better ones, and how to fix the offer and the coupon (the workflow "Get more and better leads from an ad").
- Selling by teaching: A piece that shows your know-how and sells you without a hard ask.
- Outside his field: A shop owner with a sandwich board or window sign that people walk past.
Skills from their work
- Ad evidence planner
- Ad test results tracker
- Call-to-action writer
- Closing paragraph writer
- Coupon and form fixer
- Customer needs finder
- Five-part ad checker
- Headline promise checker
- Lead magnet reviewer
- Lead quality diagnosis
- Ad headline ideas
- Evidence-based sales copy writer
- Headline test tracking planner
- Educational lead magnet planner
- Ad headline writer
- Marketing claim evidence checker
- Sales copy editor
Pairs well with
Built from
- 100 Good Advertising Headlines, and why they were so profitable (two-page ad, 1958), Victor O. Schwab, for Schwab and Beatty, Inc.
- "If You Want to be Popular", excerpt from How to Write a Good Advertisement, reprinted in HIS magazine, April 1945, Victor O. Schwab
- 100 Ways to Write Profitable Advertising Headlines, Daniel Levis
- How to Write a Good Advertisement: book page and author profile, Goodreads
- Book of the Month Club, Wikipedia
- Full-text search for "Victor O. Schwab" (snippets from The Ad Men and Women, 1994, and other books), Internet Archive
- Victor O. Schwab (author page), Scientific Advertising
- How To Write A Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab (summary of his five steps), Nate Shivar
- Victor Schwab Ad #7: How To Win Friends And Influence People, Info Marketing Blog
- In 1958 A Marketing Legend Revealed These Secrets For Creating Powerful Headlines, Marketing Insider Group
- How to Write a Good Advertisement (a book summary of the 1962 edition), Victor O. Schwab (chapter summary by a third party)