TCC Podcast #435: Analyzing Old Ads for Fun and Profit with Lewis Folkard

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.   Stuff to check out: Lewis' Website The 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,