Here’s a no-brainer copywriting technique that works like gangbusters:

If you want someone to read and pay attention to your copy, put that copy in LARGE BOLDFACE TYPE.

When a law required NYC fast food restaurants to post the calorie content of meals on signs in larger type, the number of customers aware of the calories in burgers and other fast food went from 16% to 54%.

But big bold graphics apparently do not increase persuasion: despite the increased awareness, the calorie consumption of customers at these fast food joints slightly increased.

To improve persuasion in copy, you need to change the words, not just the size of the words.

If you want to save money when hiring ad agencies, use a small agency (50 or fewer employees) instead of a big agency (over 500 employees).

According to an article in Avertising Age (10/5/09, p. 26), chief creative directors at big agencies bill at $964 an hour — almost 4X more than the $271 an hour chief creative directors at small agencies bill on average.

Somehow, I don’t think that the creative director at the big agency is 4X more creative than her counterpart at the small ad agency.

And I seriously doubt the big agency’s campaigns generate 4X the sales of the small agency’s work…..

Here are my 10 favorite fiction books. I say ?fiction books? instead of novels so I can include book-length plays.

1??Death of a Salesman? by Arthur Miller.

2??A Prayer for Owen Meany? by John Irving.

3??A Brief History of the Dead? by Kevin Brockheimer.

4??The Time Traveler?s Wife? by Audrey Niffenegger.

5??Creatures of Light and Darkness? by Roger Zelazny.

6??The Stars My Destination? by Alfred Bester.

7??Inherit the Wind? by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee.

8??To Kill a Mockingbird? by Harper Lee

9??The Great Gatsby? by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

10??The Lovely Bones? by Alice Sebold.

Are any of these on your favorite books list?

Are there any of them you DON’T think are worthy?

What others are on your list that I don?t have?