Comments from those who know

Great topic. It’s all very good and well for David Ogilvy to claim he hated creativity–he was a stunningly good (and ground-breaking, and yes, remarkable) copywriter. I *still* want to buy things based on 40-year-old ads of his.

You can safely “shun creativity” once you’ve learned not to be awful–a lesson that I wish 99% of long form squeeze page writers would learn. And Ogilvy is quite right that cleverness or originality for its own sake, divorced from craft, has no place if you’re taking a paycheck for your writing. Then again, neither does mediocre hackwork that can only sell to people with a sub-85 IQ. (Mind you, it’s a hell of a market.)

I love the Hugh M. drawing, the perfect touch. I hope to god he puts this one in his blog card series.