In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy, a naive young woman from a tiny town in Kansas is swept away by a cyclone along with her little dog Toto. Dorothy has many adventures – some of them quite scary – as she tries desperately to get back home – only to find out she had the power to do so the entire time. Along the way, she meets a tin man who wishes he had a heart, a scarecrow who wishes he had a brain, and a cowardly lion who wishes he had courage. Eventually they all make it to the land of Oz, an emerald city where a wizard who has the power to grant wishes reigns supreme. Like Dorothy, the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Lion discover they already possessed what they wanted most. The wizard’s real power was to help them recognize it and certify it.

The fact that you’re alive and reading this right now proves that you’re capable of the creative problem solving required to help you survive. That creativity is the artist in you. My job – and the job of this textbook – is to draw your artistic side out of you and to help you recognize it for yourself.

At first, you will make truly crappy art. But here’s the thing: it turns out that making art – no matter how crappy it is, is good for you. The Huffington Post cites research titled, “Reduction of Cortisol Levels and Participants’ Responses Following Art Making,” from the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association that shows that making art significantly reduces stress – no matter whether the art you create is a masterpiece or a total piece of poo.

So even if you make crappy art – if you write truly crappy headlines, taglines, hashtags, captions, or videos – it’s still good for you. In this book and in my classroom my job is to help you become more artistic and more creative. Not just because I want you to become an ace copywriter but because I believe that:

• The more creativity in the world and in you, the better.
• If you’re prepared to make crappy art, to write crappy things, you’ll get better.

By the way, professionals make crappy art – lots of it. How do you think they get to the good stuff? They have the wade through piles and piles of crap. It’s part of the process. They focus on progress, not perfection because they know that when it comes to commercial or fine art, the goal should not be perfection. It should be progress. They’re used to doing things over and over; rewriting and refining constantly until the assignment is finally produced and out in the world.

Students sometimes have a hard time with this because in most classes, you do an assignment once, turn it in and move on. In Copywriting, you keep rewriting and refining the same assignment in order to progress it. Even so, a lot of crappy art finds its way into the world. Here’s the proof.

The ads below were created by professional copywriters, who were probably well paid for their mediocrity. These crappy ads should be inspo for all wannabe copywriters. Think you can do better? Of course you can. Let’s give it a try. In the exercise below you’ll use the S.T.A.R. rewriting method to help you progress these crappy ads.

Let’s give it a try: Use the S.T.A.R. method to rewrite the headlines.

Let’s try to improve on the subheadline in the second crappy ad.

This is your starter copy: Makes your sh*t smell like lemon drops

SUBSTITUTE a word for “lemon drops”

Makes your sh*t smell like ________ ___________.

TAKE OUT the word “sh*t”

Makes your _________ smell like ________ ___________.

ADD a word or more as indicated below

Makes your _________ smell like ________ ___________ ____________.

REARRANGE the words and see what you come up with

Smell like ________ ___________ and make ___________ ____________

What new headline options did you turn up?