In the early 1960s, a group of French intellectuals formed a club with a singular, seemingly strange mission: to preserve American comic strips.
To the average American, these strips were disposable: cheap, ink-stained newsprint meant to be read once and tossed into the bin. But for avant-garde filmmakers like Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais, these strips were something else entirely. They admired the atmosphere and rhythm. They obsessed over Dick Tracy, fascinated by how a few ink lines could perfectly capture the tension and language of the 1930s criminal underworld. They saw art where the world saw trash.
This distinction, between the disposable and the enduring, is the hidden divide in copywriting.
Most sales copy is treated like junk mail or spam. It is a flood of poorly-targeted noise designed to be ignored. But beneath the surface of the “awful” lies a profound level of craftsmanship.
I encountered this firsthand in the late 90s. I found a 16-page sales letter that felt different. I didn’t know what copywriting was, but I found myself reading it repeatedly. It didn’t just list features; it built a world. It used stories, testimonials, and a specific sequence of claims that expanded my sense of what was possible.
I eventually discovered the mechanics: the ad was a “swipe” of the structures used by Gary Halbert, the legendary master of direct response. To the uninitiated, it was just a long sales pitch. To me, it was a revelation.
When copy is written with this level of intent, it ceases to be “junk.” It becomes a narrative engine. It stops being something people throw away and starts being something they can’t stop reading.
RW
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