How to find your product's leading idea.
You want to be known for ONE thing — here's how to figure it out.
Welcome to Voicemail — a newsletter about copywriting for B2B product marketers who want to bring their messaging to life.
In 2025 I’m reading some of the best advertising books ever written, analyzing the shit out of them, and reporting all the insights back to you. If that sounds like your jam, keep reading (it’s free!) or sign up to get these letters delivered right to your inbox.
Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, originally published in 1966
Long considered THE most influential book on copywriting ever published, Breakthrough Advertising is a collection of lessons from one of the greatest copywriters of the 20th century. It’s been called, “the most important book ever written for anyone who markets any product or service in any medium,” by Brian Kurtz (a living copywriting legend).
Reading dates: January-February 2025. Let me know if you’re interested in joining an informal book club. Maybe I’ll set up a Discord if there’s enough interest.
How to find your leading idea.
Hi, friends. Happy Friday. How’s it going?
On my side things have gotten busy. After a quiet Q4, I’ve found myself in the middle of two massive multi-product rebrands, plus other work.
It’s all exciting stuff. (I’m combining product marketing and copywriting — what’s not to love?) But I’ll definitely be busy until April.
This week I want to continue my dissection of Breakthrough Advertising. Last week I wrote to you about Schwartz’ main tenet of copywriting: that marketers don’t generate desire — we “can only take the hopes, dreams, fears and desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people, and focus those already-existing desires onto a particular product.”
I talked about how to find those desires (which basically boiled down to trend spotting). But this week I want to show how to map those desires to your product. This is where things start to get fun.
If you have a copy of the book, this section starts on page 9 and ends on page 10. (Yes, we’re only on page 9.) Flip it open and let’s crack through this.
Your product is actually two products.
Most people think of a product as a thing. In reality, it’s actually two:
The “physical” product: What it does. I put “physical” in quotation marks because many products today (like most of the ones I sell) are software. But it’s the features (automation) or technology (steel, glass, wool, etc.) that make your product real.
The functional product: This is what your product lets people do. Schwartz describes it as, “the series of benefits that the product performs for your consumer.”
Most companies try to sell physical products… but this is a mistake. Nobody buys physical products. We buy what the product lets us do — the functional product — which is justified by the physical product.
Take a race bike, for example. You wouldn’t buy a bike simply because it’s made out of carbon fiber. You buy it because carbon fiber frames are lightweight, durable, and stable, all of which makes it easy to pick up the pace when you need to pass someone during your next triathlon.
It’s the classic Feature —> Benefit —> Value framework. I won’t belabor this too much (I wrote a carousel about this 18 months ago that I’m incredibly proud of, if you want to learn more). But the point is that your features only matter when the customer cares about the benefit they create.
Feeling turned around yet?
One of the biggest things I have to do for my clients is help them remove clutter. They come to me with gigantic lists of product features and the value that each of those features creates. After all, your team is proud of these features. You built them for a reason. They’re useful.
But in marketing, the bigger story is more important than the individual features. And to tell a compelling story about your product, you have to be strategic in how you present the features.
How to find the story.
If you’re staring a messaging “guide” in the face and feeling overwhelmed by what any of it actually means, here’s how to untangle it, according to Schwartz:
List out the different performances the product contains — aka all of the things your product enables your user to do.
Look at the mass desires that are shaping your audience’s internal narratives
Choose the one desire and one performance that work together to unlock the biggest economic value.
To quote Schwartz, “Every product gives you dozens of [messaging] keys. But only one will fit the lock. Your job is to find that one dominant performance—squeeze every drop of power out of it in your presentation—and then convince your reader that that performance and satisfaction can come only from your product.”
^This is how you find the core concept of your messaging campaign.
To make it simpler, here’s a math equation:
ONE mass desire + ONE big value of your product = your messaging concept
An example: cars
To illustrate his point, Schwartz uses a car as an example. He writes, “the automobile offers its prospective owner several different and distinct sets of performances:”
Transportation (duh). Cars move you from Point A to Point B.
Dependability: Certain features might make a car more durable than other options
Economy: Maybe it’s an affordable car that won’t break down, and which has great gas mileage.
Power: Maybe you need a big ass truck to haul deer carcasses out of the backwoods.
Recognition: Maybe it’s a luxury car with a big engine that will impress other people at the country club.
Value: Maybe it retains its value and won’t depreciate over time. It could become an asset, not a liability.
Novelty: Maybe there’s something new and exciting about it.
All of that is true, right? And the same car could have features that support any of those messages… but as a marketer, you’ve got to choose ONE if you want to be noticed.
Jaguar’s rebrand, I think, is going after status as their main message. They’re calling these new cars works of art, and pulling their heritage into the modern era.
Compare that with the Cybertruck, which is messaging pretty heavily on durability:
Personally, I haven’t really seen this message of durability really land with the greater public. Cybertrucks seem more like novelty items to me. But you can see that Tesla picked a clear desire (a durable truck that can withstand anything you throw at it). Then they mapped their features to meet that desire (“An ultra-hard stainless-steel exoskeleton helps to reduce dents, damage and long-term corrosion. Repairs are simple and quick.”)
B2B Example: Close
To bring it back to B2B, check out this home page from Close. The copy on it is great, but I want you to focus on the concept they’ve landed on:
Audience’s mass desire: Not get bogged down in a slow, clunky CRM that requires a PhD to figure out and a FTE to maintain.
Product’s main performance: Speed. Works 50% faster than other CRMs. Lets you make phone calls, send emails, manage follow-ups, and track your pipeline, all without ever leaving Close. Automates the admin work.
Concept: Close is the easy-to-use CRM built for the way small businesses actually sell.
They can take this concept and really run with it. Their core messaging, positioning, and strategy is obvious. Only target the people who want to keep things lightweight.
You want to be known for ONE thing.
Every product marketer knows that it’s better to be known for ONE thing rather than a million little things. The problem is that it’s really hard to choose that one thing when you’re in the weeds every day (and when you’re emotionally connected to the business).
I know from experience. I’ve struggled to message my own business for ALL OF THESE REASONS. I find myself constantly saying, “I’m a copywriter, but I’m also so much more because I also do positioning and messaging and brand and this and this and this…”
It’s hard to read the label from inside the bottle. And I don’t have a board of directors to contend with.
Outside perspective can help (not to plug my own services, but I’m booking projects into Q2). But so can just taking a step back and slowing down. Sometimes all you need is some s p a c e .
Up next: How to talk to your audience across the customer journey.
Picking out your concept is hard work… but then you have to actually execute. Next week I’m going to write about one of the foundational copywriting principles invented by Schwartz called the Five Stages of Awareness.
This is arguably one of the most famous copywriting frameworks that shows you how to talk to your audience at each stage. Personally, I think it’s a better way to think about funnels than funnels themselves, but who am I to judge.
I’ve written about this before… but I’ve never had the original text to actually teach me how to do it. Now that I’ve actually read it from the horse’s mouth, I realize that I misunderstood a LOT about this framework.
Stuff I’m digging from other people this week.
Steph Truong — one of the most talented designers I know, and a very dear friend — has opened her books for illustration projects this year. I met Steph at my first job, have flown halfway across the world to run a half marathon with her, and am forever impressed by her creative mind.
Miles Angell wrote about Charli XCX’s brief for Brat, and the real reason most creative teams can never reach her level of awesome execution.
Kevin Espiritu runs a gardening empire, not a B2B… but damn he’s got a talent for product and marketing distribution. Here’s their latest move, which is something more brands could learn from.
Stuff I’ve been writing this week.
If you like any of these, I’d massively appreciate a thumb’s up and/or a comment. It’s the easiest way to help more people see what I’m doing. 🙏
Thank you for being here. ✨
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I hope this new content format — analyzing the shit out of the greats and talking about marketing first principles — resonates. As a subscriber you’ll get deeper dives than I can put on LinkedIn, plus you’ll get the insights first (all of the lessons from today’s letter are going out on LinkedIn in a few weeks!).
If you have any feedback, ideas, questions, or suggestions, hit reply and let me know. I want this to be the best damn marketing newsletter you read every week, and 2025 is the year of leveling it up.
Appreciate you. Have a great weekend.
Good insight 😌 Can i translate part of this article into Spanish with links to you and a description of your newsletter?