Ravneet Bawa

Technology | Marketing | Poetry | Consumer Psychology | Currently PhD Marketing at @LSEManagement

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

The difference between relive and relieve is the one ‘e’ that all copywriters of pain medication must wear around neck and kiss before going to work every day.

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

What great writing advice!

[David Perell @david_perell]

Harry Dry is the best copywriter I know.

He's built a 130,000-person newsletter teaching people how to do it, and by the end of this interview, you'll be at least a Green Belt in copywriting.

Some of his rules for writing:

1) A great sentence is a good sentence made shorter.

2) Writing great copy begins with having something to say in the first place.

3) Copy is like food. How it looks matters.

4) Since the look of copy matters so much, don't write copy in Google Docs. Write it in Figma (so you can write and design at the same time).

5) Kaplan's Law of Words: Any word that isn't working for you is working against you.

6) You know a paragraph is ready to ship when there's nothing left to remove. It's like a Jenga tower. The entire thing should collapse if you remove something.

7) Make a promise in the title so the reader knows exactly what they're going to get if they click. Then, deliver on the promise.

8) The three laws of copywriting: (1) Make it concrete, (2) make it visual, and (3) make it falsifiable.

9) Make it concrete: Don't be abstract. For an example, say you're writing about habits. Don't talk about "productive routines." That's abstract. Write about "waking up at 6am to write" instead. It's concrete — and much more vibrant.

10) Make it visual: People see in pictures. This is why instead of memorizing card numbers directly, world memory champions memorize cards by turning them into pictures and then back to cards.

11) Make it falsifiable: When you write a sentence that's true or false, you put your head on the chopping block, which makes people sit up in their seat.

12) When has a falsifiable statement resonated? Galileo got sentenced to a decade of house arrest for saying that the earth spins around the sun. That's a falsifiable sentence. But nobody would've done anything if he'd said that the earth has a harmonious connection with a celestial object.

13) Write with the delete key. Using fewer words lets you be more impactful with the words you keep.

14) The job of a sales page is to make a bold claim at the top. Then spend the rest of the page backing up what you've said... with a ridiculous amount of proof.

15) If your competitor could've written the sentence, cut it.

16) Good copy is differentiated. Here's an example: Elon Musk shouldn't write "The Cybertruck is the world's best truck." Ford or Dodge can write that sentence. But only Elon can write: "The Cybertruck is tougher than an F-150 and faster than a Porsche."

17) Some days, the writing comes easily. Some days, it takes sweat. The reader doesn't care if you wrote for two minutes, two hours, or two days. The ink looks the same.

18) Great copy reads like your customer wrote it. Talk to them.

That's just an introduction to the copywriting philosophy of @harrydry.

I've shared the full interview below. I recommend you watch this one because we pull from so many visual references and do a lot of screen sharing. If you'd rather watch on YouTube, I've shared the link in the reply tweets.

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

I am wondering if there is a Taylor Swift song for when your parents refuse to take you to a Taylor Swift concert.

[Dan Goldstein @dggoldst]

It will know where to find all the free food on campus

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

@zoru75 This is sad. Aarey to be our backyard view when we were in Mumbai. Literally one reason we got through Covid lockdowns without losing our sanity. My phone is full of morning photos of the lush Aarey. :(

[Zoru Bhathena @zoru75]

A lot can happen over 22 months

What may look good initially, may actually turn out to be a curse!

Choose wisely next time, Mr Fadnavis

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

Indian election results v/s exit polls is why marketing research moved away from papers with 3 studies based on self reports to papers with 7 studies with incentive compatible behaviour 😅

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

@BlueStarLtd please assist with this. My parents have been following up for over one year and NONE of your service representatives or channels have been helpful. Your social media pages are full of terrible customer experiences so we are not hopeful,last resort before we replace

[Davinder Kaur @angrezimadumji]

Out of 6 Blue Star ACs at my home, 3 ACs (Multi Split:1 Outdor, 3 Indoor) are Non-functional since Aug.’23. No solution provided inspite of repeated request mails to Blue Star Ltd. 3 Senior Citizens seeking immediate intervention and resolution@Chairman, Blue Star

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

How do I mute all first tweets that end with - “A thread”? 🙄

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

@spadjay Congratulations Spadika, and fellow alum now 🙌🏻

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

Why not introduce spill proof packaging? Or preferred restaurants? Or kitchen to plate? Solving for preferences and solving for prejudices are two different things.

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

The Zomato #PureVegFleet moral crisis reminds me of the one brilliant economics essay - “I, Pencil” by Leonard Read. In this age of multi-levered economic systems, a solution for dated cultural friction can hardly be the oiling of the conveyor belt. https://t.co/3hbKilxJVG

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

Perhaps Zomato did this as a response to increasing penetration by cracking a hard-to-budge but reasonably large (even if unreasonable) customer base. What is puzzling is the narrative first solution from what I thought was a product first company.

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

@roshanrk Malayalam movies are the go to in this Punjabi household 😅

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

So true. For a country that prides itself on storytelling chops, lame attempts at pop and gimmicks is just trying cinema. Switching off till the Internet wakes me up.

[Raja Sen @RajaSen]

Every Indian original film from Netflix feels like a dare for the audience to sit through. Embarrassingly bad.

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

First time at the Society of Consumer Psychology with my research baby - where I investigate how modern digital choice environments are different from those of yore and consumer heterogeneity in decision making. Thanks to research support from @LSEManagement #SCP2024

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

All those care tags on *one* accessory from Uniqlo. A little too much care don’t you think @UNIQLO_UK - surely you can do better.

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

I realised I had more to say than an Instagram blurb about this one, so I wrote a little something.
https://t.co/PxWPwEYkHV

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

5/ Finally, many of us aspire to multi-faceted lives of teaching, learning, research, writing and consulting. Can’t think of many other careers that would afford this aspiration in as accessible a way as academia does. What was only a dream, now seems possible.

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

After many years of corporate offsites with team-building sessions, it was a first to have a “Working Together” one with PhD mates here at @LSEManagement - all of us about halfway through. PhD is arguably a lonely pursuit. Hence, a short thread with some happy reflections:

[Ravneet Bawa @maikeya]

4/ Solitary pursuits, travel and healthy living showed up on several of our vision boards