Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mithaldu | Hacker News Reader

So, i've read the term long copy about 5 times now, and still have no damn clue what the hell it is. Is it too much to ask for someone to have some awareness of whether a domain-specific term they're using might be entirely unknown to the average public and spend at least one sentence explaining it? (Or, you know, this being the internet with hypertext and all that jazz invented in the 90s, link to an explanation they deem correct.)

View on HN

Long copy essentially equates to "The more facts you tell, the more you sell." It's been tested extensively, more than a hundred years, in all kinds of advertising campaigns, from direct-mail to television (see an informercial and hear their super long copy). Direct response advertising shows in A/B tests that long copy always sells more than short copy.

Effectively, this is because an advertisement's chance for success increases as the number of pertinent merchandise facts included in the advertisement increases. You reel them in with the headline and the picture, and then the body copy sells the product. Long copy assumes that you've got a half-sold prospect, with little to no time however, so you pack in your promise in there.

The caveat is that if you want your long copy to be read, you must write it well. You won't hold many readers with those mushy statements of the obvious and vague promises. (This is it...You step back and think...) The worst sin here is that the copy has no contrast, no one wants to read white text on a light background. It's just tiring on the eyes.

It's not that long copy isn't back (it always has and always will be), but that Apple really executed this terribly.

long copy ad = ad that has a significant amount of text (i.e. where you actually need to stop and read at the text, vs. ads that only have 5 words that your brain parses with the rest of the ad)

Oh, so long copy = tl;dr?

I know marketing types will agonize over each line like poets imagining dramatic public approval, but most people will only see the words "Made by Apple in California", which brings about a "well, duh" moment, at least to me.

No long copy is the wall of text in a magazine ad. The exact opposite of tl;dr. It was more prevalent in the past, and you don't see it any more.

You still see it everywhere in advertising, think of informercials for example, or high quality ads in magazines.

Cheers for explaining. :)

Long Copy ads were especially successful in the days of print magazines and mail order.

Here are classic examples: http://robertrosenthal.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c511c53ef0120...

http://www.perrymarshall.com/images/micro_tv_breakthrough.jp...

http://copyquickstart.com/call/sugarman/homework/home_comput...

Sorry that the last one has just one of two-paged spread. All I got via Google.

EDIT to add: Oh, look at this, from the JS of JS&A fame:

http://succeedinyourpajamas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/J...

Perhaps a unused term nowadays, but definitely with some (long) history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_(written)

I wasn't looking for a wikipedia link, i'm quite capable in finding those myself. ;)

This was more of a meta-mini-rant about how we have these tools available to efficiently communicate meta-information along without main message, but especially news media outright refuses to make use of it.

In context (an article in a design/advertising magazine) I think it would just be taken as a common term the audience would be assumed to know. Same way that a magazine aimed at programmers wouldn't typically define "functional programming" or "garbage collector".

This is not trying to pass meta-information, but to sell to a prospect. The last thing you want them to do is go to another site rather than clicking on your call-to-action.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com