The cunning secret of the “Superman” headline

One of the (very few) podcasts I listen to is Chuck “the legend” Dixon’s podcast. Chuck Dixon is officially the single most prolific comicbook writer who ever lived. (Someone was able to calculate that - it's not just puffery.) And currently Sylvester Stallone is making one of his books into a movie, if that tells you something. Anyway, on a recent podcast he talked about a trick for coming up with great stories for comicbooks that is just as applicable to coming up with great ideas for email or sales letter themes and content. His example was how a Superman creative team would sometimes come up with their best stories. Their secret: By first coming up with a crazy cover idea. No plot. Not storyline. No idea what it’d be about or what characters would appear in the issue. The editor or writer would simply have a crazy idea of a cover for the artist to draw, and then they’d build the story around whatever that crazy image they had in their heads was. Very cunning way to come up with stories. It’s also a cunning way to build out cool emails and ads, too. The human brain can come up with truly excellent ideas this way. And some of the most powerful headlines and ad campaigns were created this way, where the copywriter(s) started with some super dramatic and intriguing headline and theme, then built the story, offer, etc around that. I’m not really into “hacks.” But this is definitely one way to goose up creativity that can work. It’s also, for example, how I wrote my book Markauteur I launched last year. The “theme” for the book was built around a single image that popped in my mind out of the blue while on a walk for the cover, before I started writing it or had so much as a title for it, much less started writing the ad for it. And in many ways, the ad, the bullets, the offer, the way things are worded in the book and everything else about the book and the advertising (including the email campaign) were formulated around this image. That ad is also one of the sales letters I dissect in my book: “Copy Salesliloquies: Vol 1” This book includes the June 2020, February 2021, June 2021, & May 2022 Email Players issues which were all about copywriting. Plus, it also includes the transcripts of a couple intense line-by-line sales letter analyses (for my Subscription Biz & Social Lair book offers) I did for our $499/month Profit Pirates coaching clients. Lots of stuff I either couldn’t fit into my Copy Slacker book (already 800+ pages). Or stuff I learned since writing Copy Slacker. And before you even ask: No, you do NOT need Copy Slacker to learn from the info in this book. If anything, it serves as a nifty “prequel” (or sequel if you already possess it) to my Copy Slacker book you can learn from regardless of your experience, knowledge, or skill level now. It’s also on sale until tonight, 12/16 at midnight EST for $400 instead of the usual $500. Here is the link: [http∶//www.EmailPlayers.com/salesliloquies1]( Ben Settle P.S. And that puts the bow and wraps up this year's Seasons Emailings sale. Tomorrow? Something totally different.. This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2023 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA