87: What the Beastie Boys can teach us about writing great copy
It’s no secret that I love the Beastie Boys. They actually inspired the name of this podcast!
My favorite book of all time is The Boys 2018 autobiography, The Beastie Boys Book. It is in that book that my love of the Beastie Boys collided with my love of the written word.
The Beastie Boys Book is a masterclass in writing and storytelling, and it reminds me, as a direct response copywriter, of the essential elements that transform basic words into compelling and captivating copy that moves your reader.
There are three things I want to break down for you in this episode of ill communication that the Beastie Boys can teach us about great copywriting.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
The importance of voice and tips for writing in your own unique voice and personality
The importance of detail and how you can use details to make your brand more realistic and believable
The importance of story and how to use storytelling to make your business memorable
Thank you so much for allowing me to indulge my love of the Beastie Boys in this episode! In the next couple of episodes, I'll share how you can take these lessons on voice, detail, and story and infuse them into storytelling emails that sell.
Make sure to check out The Beastie Boys music, videos, and book linked below!
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[00:00:03] Welcome to ill communication, copywriting tips and sales strategies for small business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist, and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and change makers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts, and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soulmate clients. Let's get started. Now here's a little story I gots to tell about three bad brothers you know so well. It started way back in history with Ad-Rock, MCA and me. Mike D. That, my friend, is a verse from the Beastie Boys hip hop song Paul Revere. It tells a fictional and fantastical story about how Ad-Rock, Mike D, and MCA first met. But fans love the song and typically shout sing along the lyrics for good reason. It tells an incredible story. Now, I have spent countless hours listening to that track on my License to Ill cassette tape with my grade six bestie, Corey Lynn. We'd hang out at her house after school with our kind of sort of skater boy friends, playing and flipping the cassette from side A to side B on the high end stereo in her parent's classic 80s brass filled living room.
[00:01:50] And while I may have started listening to the band to appear cooler than I actually was, it kicked off a lifelong love of the Beastie Boys that persists to this day. My first two emails were Beastie Girl at netscape.com and then Beastie Girl underscore K at hotmail.com. In 2004, I used my fan club presale code to buy tickets on the floor to the two the five Boroughs concert in Seattle. My fiancé, now husband Chad, his three buddies, and I crammed into a rented sedan and drove 1041km, or 650 miles from our home in Alberta to the super eight motel we rented in Seattle. We arrived early enough to the concert that we scored spots right in front of the stage, literally spitting distance when the three boys came out in their matching green Adidas jumpsuits, I thought I had died and gone to hip hop heaven. It remains the best concert I have ever seen. And for context, I have seen Dolly Parton. The name of this podcast is a nod to the Beastie Boys fourth studio album called Ill Communication. Ill communication appears in a song called Sure Shot where you hear the line like, Ma Bell, I got the ill communication, which is the Beastie Boys saying that they are at the forefront of their medium, like the telecom giant AT&T.
[00:03:17] Ill means sick, dope or rad, and so to have ill communication means you are at the top of your communications game. So it should come as no surprise, then, that one of my favorite books of all time is The Boys 2018 autobiography, The Beastie Boys Book. It is in that book that my love of the Beastie Boys collided with my love of the written word. The Beastie Boys Book is a master class in writing and storytelling, and it reminds me, as a direct response copywriter, of the essential elements that transform basic words into compelling and captivating copy that moves your reader. In fact, there are three things I want to break down for you today that the Beastie Boys can teach us about great copywriting. They are the importance of voice, the importance of detail, and the importance of story. So let's take a look at voice. The Beastie Boys book isn't written by a single author or ghostwriter. Adam Horovitz, aka Ad-Rock and Michael Diamond, aka mike D alternate chapters and snippets throughout the book, and we send a little R.I.P. to Adam Yauch or MCA, who died in 2014. Ad-rock and Mike D each have a distinct way of writing and sharing stories of the band's evolution. Additionally, different chapters and sections are told by other artists and authors like Kate Schellenbach, Wes Anderson, and Amy Poehler.
[00:04:51] What results is an immersive lesson in voice and tone? Each author's voice is so distinct, their cadence, their word choice, and their run on sentences create a distinct picture of each personality. The Beastie Boys Book is a deliciously lively read where the writers and characters totally come alive in your mind, and it gives online marketers like us a big lesson in voice. The online world is drowning in sameness, baseness and mediocre messaging. And with the advent of ChatGPT and people not using it in the right way, we are assaulted by bland corporate speak or eye rollingly repetitive hey you gorgeous badass messages on our websites, emails and ads. You, my friend, have a unique voice and personality, so use it to stand out in your market. And if you can't break out of that sort of safe corporate speak, pretend you're talking to your aunt and record a voice memo. Transcribe it using voice to text and ta da! You have copy written in your own voice. When I'm writing for clients, I watch their videos and listen to their podcasts. I weave their cadence and common expressions into their copy to share their unique voice and personality. So sharing your voice and your copy helps readers and. Prospects connect with you and your brand builds. Know, like and trust the prerequisites for selling your offers. Now let's take a look at the importance of detail.
[00:06:27] My favorite chapter of the Beastie Boys Book took me on a trip back in time, and I'm going to read a little section of it here. Cassette tape upkeep is fucking delicate. After carrying the same tapes in your tight linty pockets for months and playing them 1001 times, the tape would inevitably get wound up and stuck in the tape heads. The tape would be all squished up into the machine, mangled. Taking it out was like pulling 60 minutes of wet fettuccine out of a dog's mouth. And then there's the pencil. You'd have to wind the cassette tape back into its housing, and the pencil was the perfect tool to fit the cassettes little plastic gears. Those juicy details, the tight linty pockets, how the tape is mangled and carefully extricated, that the pencil fits. The gears are so rich and recognizable, especially if you're a kid of the 80s and early 90s. And if you're a millennial or younger. This entire chapter paints a beautiful picture of cassette tape culture. These evocative details work well in creative writing, and they're equally important in writing compelling sales copy. So how can online marketers like us use detail? We can set the scene and stage for our customers reality with details they'll recognize, remind them of their pains and problems, using specific words and details that evoke feelings and images they deeply know.
[00:07:59] Paint glorious pictures of the future they'll have after they work with you. Using specific details makes you and your brand more realistic and believable. When you can capture a memory, an emotion, or a feeling through the details of your customers pains and desires, you're also more likely to capture the sale. And finally, let's take a look at the importance of story. One of the reasons the Beastie Boys have captured the hearts of so many fans is their ability to write and share stories in their music and videos. Paul Revere, fight for Your Right and Brass Monkey are story driven anthems from the Beastie Boys early days. Different stanzas within many of their songs present many stories within stories, and it's through their music videos that the Beastie Boys fully embrace storytelling. Videos like sabotage, Intergalactic and Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win are story driven, and they grab the viewer and keep us entertained over and over. In 2020, American filmmaker Spike Jonze directed, produced and wrote a live documentary film based on the book, and he called it the Beastie Boys Story because we all love a good story. It works in all mediums spoken word, music, video and your online marketing. So how can you use story in your copy? Well, you can share your stories through your business or your brand's origin story.
[00:09:36] Use storytelling in case studies or stories of the transformation your clients experience when they work with you. Or simply start off your emails with a little story before segueing into the call to action. Remember, people remember stories more than they remember facts. And while facts are important to making decisions, prospective clients need to see themselves as the character and indeed the hero in the story that they are telling themselves. You and your offer help your hero client resolve their problems and reach a happy ending. Donald Miller's Storybrand marketing framework is based on this hero's journey, so use stories on your about page in case studies or emails to capture your attention and communicate the transformation you create for your clients. Now, did you have any idea the Beastie Boys would be so instructive for copywriting and online marketing? Until I read their book, I wouldn't have. So if you haven't read the Beastie Boys book, you should. It's a remarkable and memorable read, even if you're not a superfan like me. I'll drop the links to the book and some of the songs and videos I mentioned in this episode, and you can watch the Beastie Boys Story, which is currently streaming on Apple TV. It's the story of three fans who inspired each other and the world. It's so good. Thank you so much for allowing me to indulge my love of the Beastie Boys today.
[00:11:08] And in fact, in the next couple of episodes, I'll share how you can take these lessons on voice, detail, and story and infuse them into storytelling emails that sell. And if you love the Beastie Boys as much as me, please connect with me because I love talking about them and I can't, I won't and I don't stop. I'll see you next week. Hey, thanks for tuning in to today's episode. But before you go, tell me if this sounds familiar. You've just written or had someone else write your website or course or mastermind sales page. Or maybe you've had the copy up and running for a while, but it's just not performing as well as you'd hoped. Wouldn't you love to have an expert sales and brand voice copywriter review your copy to flag any concerns that might be creating friction for your ideal client. Wouldn't you love to get a custom list of changes and recommended copy upgrades to immediately increase your signups and sales, without having to pay thousands of dollars or wait weeks to get your copy optimized? If that sounds like you, you might be interested in my no BS copy audit. When you book a no BS copy audit, you'll get a deep dive review of your copy, a video review, a detailed checklist report, and some copy punch ups you can use immediately, all delivered within ten business days.
[00:12:27] Jennifer and Minda recently booked a no BS audit for their conference sales page. They'd hired different people to write and design the page, but it never matched what they envisioned, and the conference sales were practically non-existent. Within a few days of booking their no BS audit, they had a detailed report of what was working, what needed to be optimized, and suggested copy. They went from barely selling any tickets to selling out 300 seats at their event. They said we are so grateful for how you went above and beyond in your work for us. You somehow crawled into our brains and were able to put into words exactly what we were thinking and imagining. We've been looking for you for a long time. You over delivered and we can't thank you enough. No BS audits are delivered within ten business days and are a fraction of what it normally costs to work with a professional copywriter. If you want to book this quick and very effective service, visit Kim Kilcommons audit to download a PDF info sheet that gives you all the deets and a link to book your audit. Within ten days, you can have some refreshed conversion focused copy and a roadmap to make other improvements and changes to get more leads, more clicks, and more sales with your copy. To book yours, visit Kim Kilcommons audit.
Resources Mentioned
Listen to a mini-playlist of some of my fave Beastie Boys tunes
Don’t Play No Game I Can’t Win
The Beastie Boys Book (affiliate link)
Additional Resources
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