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What I had thought I had written those many years ago was a book on advertising; what I actually put down on these pages was an entirely different book, on a far broader theme: There is a way to develop an entirely new market for a new or an old product. That way involves a certain number of clearly defined steps. And in this book I show you every single one of those steps.
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People don't change; only the direction of their desires do. They cannot be made to want anything, nor is it necessary to create want. All that is necessary is to be able to channel.
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Those wants into the proper products that offer legitimate satisfaction for them.
This book is not about building better mousetraps. It is, however, about building larger mice, and then building a terrifying fear of them in your customers. In other words, it is about helping to shape the largest and strongest market possible, and then intensifying that market's reaction to its basic need or problem, and to the "exclusive" solution you have to offer it.
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Copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take the hopes, dreams, fears, and desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people, and focus those already existing desires onto a particular product. This is the copywriter's task: not to create this mass desire—but to channel and direct it.
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We can define this Mass Desire quite simply. It is the public spread of a private want.
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Amplification Effect takes place only when advertising exploits already-existing desire. When it tries to create this desire, it is no longer advertising but education. And, as education, it can produce at best only one dollar in sales for every dollar spent on advertising. No single advertiser can afford to educate the American public. He must rely on forces far greater than any advertising budget to build this mass desire. And then he can make those forces work for him—by directing that desire onto his particular product.
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The copywriter in his work uses three tools: his own knowledge of people's hopes, dreams, desires, and emotions; his client's product; and the advertising message, which connects the two. The copywriter performs his work in three stages. In general, they go something like this: 1. Choose the most powerful desire that can possibly be applied to your product. Every mass desire has three vital dimensions. The first is urgency, intensity, degree of demand to be satisfied.
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Every product appeals to two, three, or four of these mass desires. But only one can predominate; only one can reach out through your headline to your customer. Only one is the key that unlocks the maximum economic power at the particular time your advertisement is published. Your choice among these alternate desires is the most important step you will take in writing your ad. If it is wrong, nothing else that you do in the ad will matter. This choice is embodied in your headline.
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