Excerpt from Ogilvy & Mather’s “Hi, I’ve got lung cancer” Ad for Life Before Death

We won’t focus on the pain in this one — the topic is painful enough, especially for the target audience. Pretty clear how that works.

The structure is what’s interesting here. This copy doesn’t reveal everything right away, it keeps you in suspense. And somehow — it takes tension and turns into a calm curiosity.

Let’s dissect.

“Hi, I’ve got lung cancer. How are you?”. That’s quite the record scratch. The hook has done its job. Tension established.

“Conversational tips for the terminally ill.” → ‘Well, surely this can’t be serious…’ Adding context, but it creates more questions than it answers — we’re stirring the pot.

Then the first full paragraph. It still doesn’t resolve the tension. In fact, we’re leaning in even harder to add detail. “I didn’t stutter — and here’s more where that came from.”

It’s only in the second paragraph that we address the tension. The central idea comes first: “Talking openly about your illness is powerful therapy.” There’s your justification for everything that’s happened so far — ‘A-ha, that’s what they were getting at’. Then we label your freshly subverted expectations: “Let’s put it another way… talking about [death], on the other hand, can bring life back to your relationships with your loved ones.”

At this point, if you’re like most, your tension has dissipated. ‘I see — the reason “Hi, I’ve got lung cancer” makes sense now is because they claim talking openly about death is therapeutic.’

But if you’re like most, curiosity remains: ‘OK, therapeutic for the individual with the lung cancer, I understand. But how exactly does talking about death bring life back into relationships? Does this claim make sense?’

Guess what? You’re already two paragraphs into the thing.

May as well read the rest… 😉