Copywriters Podcast

Today we’re back with our Old Masters series, with a topic that has been begging to be on Copywriters Podcast for a long time: Reason-Why Copywriting. First, a little about our Old Master, and he really deserves the title, even though he is not particularly well known these days. It’s George Burton Hotchkiss. We’ll be drawing from a couple chapters in his book Advertising Copy, published in 1924. Almost 100 years ago. Hotchkiss worked as a reporter for the old New York Sun newspaper, and after that, became a copywriter for the ad agency which later became the famous firm known today as BBDO. Later he went on to found the Department of Advertising and Marketing at New York University, where he was chairman and where he worked for 48 years. What he says about reason-why advertising in his book is really not that different than what’s true and what works today. We’ll dive into it and pull out a few of the most important pieces. Now, reason-why copywriting. It’s alive and well today, but people don’t talk abo