How to compete with & beat copywriting legends
Published: Sat, 03/09/19
One of my all-time favorite copywriters — and, frankly, one of the 3 best copywriting minds who ever walked this planet — was the late, great Jim Rutz, who was so good he charged a fat $100k fee. And, Kim not only competed and won against that great master of copywriting, but did so twice.
Here’s how she did it...
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elBENBO: When you competed against Jim Rutz, what was your exact approach, knowing the talent you were up against?
Kim Krause Schwalm: The company, KCI Communications, was one of the biggest financial publishers at the time (they've since changed their name to Investing Daily). Their flagship newsletter, probably the biggest in the industry at the time, was called Personal Finance.
I took on copywriting assignments for renewals, emails, and other promotions targeted to current subscribers. And I shined. One "price rise" renewal campaign for which I developed the strategy and wrote the copy became their best-performing one ever.
After seeing what I could do with these smaller assignments, they finally gave me my big break.
They hired me to write a front-end magalog to bring in new subscribers for Personal Finance.
I'd never written a financial magalog before. And guess who held the current control that I had to go up against?
None other than the late, legendary Jim Rutz. He of "Read This or Die" fame and many other highly-successful promotions that made him well worth his $100k copywriting fee.
His control promotion was brilliant. It featured an official-looking White House seal on the front (which later got him a "Cease and desist" letter from the White House...I'm still jealous to this day.)
So what did I do? I thought I'd take a "fresh" approach...and put a Godzilla-like dinosaur on my promo's front cover. Something about the "Change Monster that Ate the Economy" as the headline, as if anyone knows what the hell a "Change Monster" is.
The inside copy was pretty good. But that cover? It pains me just to think about it now.
However, my client approved this monstrosity anyway, and decided to fork over the dough to print and test it.
So what happened?
Ka-boom. BOMB!!!
Now, I could have hung my head in shame, packed it all up, and decided to move to an island in the Caribbean and make jewelry from shells I found on the beach (I still have that fantasy now and then, I admit...)
But my client was still talking to me. We talked about our risky test that went awry. And six months later, he hired me to write an all-new promo for Personal Finance, with an all-new copywriting fee with royalty potential.
Chastened by my earlier failure, this time I decided to go with a much more conservative, proven approach--a "faux issue" that looked similar to the actual newsletter. The copy was all marketing copy, but it had an editorial look that made it look valuable, instead of like "junk" mail.
So how it'd do?
It won!
It beat Jim Rutz's control (which he had had to change to a different cover, due to his receipt of the "Cease and desist" letter for the previous White House seal version).
I was very modest about even mentioning this to anyone else at the time. But word got out.
Brian Kurtz, who was Executive VP with Boardroom at the time, attended a Financial Roundtable meeting not long after I got this hot new control. When meeting with the other marketers and publishers there, he asked my client who wrote their latest control.
When he found out it was me--and that I had beat Jim Rutz--he couldn't call me fast enough.
He hired me to write a promotion for Tax Hotline, which went on to beat Parris Lampropoulus' 7-year control. (This also made me the first female copywriter to get a Boardroom control. Hear that glass ceiling shattering?)
I never would have gotten that chance at Boardroom at this early stage in my career if it wasn't for beating Jim Rutz and getting on the map as a copywriter.
There's a footnote to this story, which makes it even better. My Personal Finance control mailed strongly for another year or two. Each time it mailed, I came up with new headlines and leads to test to keep it alive, since even then timeliness was critical for financial promos like it is now.
Then the editor/"guru" of the newsletter, Stephen Leeb, decided to part ways with the publisher. They decided they needed to re-launch their flagship newsletter with a new editorial team. And for this re-launch, they re-hired Jim Rutz and paid him another $100k to write a whole new promo.
They mailed this initial promo without testing anything else against it. My previous control had been retired.
Make that prematurely retired. That's because the new re-launch promo wasn't performing as well as the publisher liked. So they hired me to completely rework my previous control (something they should have done in the first place, and that I only charged a fraction of Jim Rutz's fee to do).
I took my previous control and freshened up the copy and introduced the new editorial team. Guess what happened?
I beat Jim Rutz again!
After these big wins, I didn’t have to worry about breaking into some of the other direct response publishers and supplement companies that had ignored my previous advances. They came to me…ringing me up and booking up my schedule out months, if not a full year, in advance.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve gone on to produce dozens of successful long-form direct mail magalogs, sales pages, and video sales letters for major (and smaller) companies ever since.
elBENBO: What do you and other A-list copywriters talk about with each other behind closed doors when it comes to copywriting?
Kim Krause Schwalm: We mostly gossip about clients…primarily ones that turn out to be nightmares (or, in one top copywriter’s words, “total shit shows”) to work with. So if you’re a client, you better treat us right and know that we’re talking behind your back.
Word does get around!
If you’re a great client, on the other hand, we sing your praises to each other…and get jealous or fight over gigs (kidding!) A lot of my top copywriter friends and I go way back, and have helped lift each other up over the years. What goes around, comes around in terms of generosity.
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That wraps up part 3 of my 4-part interview with A-list copywriter Kim Krause Schwalm.
I have also made a deal with her this weekend for anyone wanting to get well over $2,000 worth of her products, swipe file ads, and other material at a gigantic discount. Plus, if you take advantage of it before tomorrow (Sunday — 3/10) night at midnight (EST) deadline.
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Ben Settle
P.S. If your shipping address is different than your billing address (Kim's shopping cart only asks for billing, since it's a digital product), let Kim know after you buy so she can get me the correct info to get the bonus books to you.
Simply reply to her "thank you" email what your shipping is.