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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, August 29, 1980
Page 2
WORDS. People were always saying my ads were "too long"--too many words-
they assumed people would not read more than eight or ten words.
But
somehow, they just couldn't understand WHY my ads produced such remarkable
results!
I often explained how people will read a thick book of hundreds of
pages of a mystery fiction story. They keep reading hour after hour BE
CAUSE interest and SUSPENSE has been aroused to see HOW IT COMES OUT!
As I wrote in the co-worker letter, Walter Cronkite in a televised
interview explained what all newsmen know--that ordinary occurrences or
GOOD accomplishments are NOT NEWS--unless OUT of the ordinary or sensa
tional. And usually the OUT-OF-THE - ORDINARY occurrences are BAD--like a
murder, a plane hijacking, a big WAR. And so news is nearly always a
reporting of BAD news.
My job, starting from age 18 in advertising writing, was to take the
ORDINARY and make it--from the
very
headline--OUT-OF-THE-ORDINARY--to grab
instant ATTENTION, at a fleeting glance past a newspaper or magazine page,
in virtually the same instant make it seem UNUSUAL, arouse INTEREST, and
before the eye left it CREATE SUSPENSE--cause the mind to want to read
farther. Then, once that is done through headlines, hold and even in
crease suspense, make it so interesting the reader continues on.
. This is NO EASY TRICK! Don't think for a second that just anybody
can produce that kind of writing. It requires a knowledge of practical
and workable psychology--altogether different from the theoretical
psychology taught by the college professor. It requires a style of
writing utterly UNIQUE--fast-moving, smooth, with words even those of
only a fourth-grade education can understand. Writing excellence must
be achieved by the STYLE, and manner of grouping words and sentences to
gether.
It definitely cannot be the staid, tiresome, professorial
"language of scholarship," with long drawn-out sentences, big words
average readers cannot understand--writing that inflates the vanity of
the writer but needs an interpreter for the average reader.
I was trained to write for the WHOLE PUBLIC--not just the scholarly
of higher education. Yet it needed a TONE of dignity (with exceptions),
a sound of n1aLuLity, a ring of SINCERITY. It needed a certain excellence
of diction and sentence forming. Further, I learned to use the more
active, expressive, dynamic words to flavor the writing with force, power,
compelling interest and to MOVE THE READER TO ACTION.
Those early years of developing this style of ad writing is today
paying off in the FULL PAGES IN SUCH PRESTIGIOUS NEWSPAPERS AS THE NEW
YORK TIMES!
We are hearing from important people in New York, Boston and Cali
fornia that they have never read ads like these before. AND THEY ARE
REALLY READING THEM! This kind of ad writing has become a lost art.
But the living Christ inspired the development of this type of skill
SEVENTY YEARS AGO, so that He could use it today to reach the "great
and the near-great" of the United States (and perhaps soon many other
nations) in reaching this NEW MARKET with Christ's Message. This is a
NEW DOOR Christ has just opened to His Work.