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Showing vs. telling:

As I write this, my daughter Sofia is only a few weeks old. Her brother Beau is two.

When he was Sofia’s age and I was a new dad, cradling my son, I don’t think I understood what I was holding. I knew it was something precious, of course, something priceless. But I couldn’t grasp what he would mean to me as time went on. I couldn’t grasp the enormity of fatherhood, the bond it creates, the love. It was hard to conceptualize these things before I actually lived them. But now, years on, the pendulum has swung. I’m awake, and it’s completely overwhelming. And every day is getting more intense. And all the little things they do—every milestone, every first—it all feels very profound to me. And I’ve been told it works both ways. All the little things I do, all the typical things I do (or don’t do, for that matter), will eventually feel profound to my kids. This ad captures this verity, I think, which is why it resonates universally.

It’s Chivas Regal’s Father’s Day ad.

One of the revered, timeless examples of print marketing, composed by copywriter David Abbott:

The copy:

It almost always gets me.

And it’s just this stupid thing, this stupid ad he wrote to sell stupid whiskey. But it’s also not.

“This ad is about Chivas Regal,” said Abbott, “but it’s also about me and my father. I really did have a red Rudge bicycle,” he said. “It’s a risky ad and, for some people, it’s sentimental, but I know others who say that it vividly echoes their own experience.”

The “vividly echoes” bit is what makes this ad great.

People saw themselves in Abbott’s own world—and for many, including me, it was even a kaleidoscopic experience:

When I read it as a son, I think about my own dad, about how I’m not close to him, about how our relationship is fractured in many ways, even broken. We don’t hug when we meet. Sometimes, we won’t even look at each other. So, I read this ad as a son and can’t relate to it. And this is painful.

But when I read it as a father, thinking about my own kids, it’s aspirational. And I think dear God, if I get a note like this from Beau, or from my daughter, it would be the happiest moment, the most incredible thing, knowing my kids feel this way about me.

And so these thoughts I’m having—these connections I’m making between an ad about whiskey and the most important people in my life—is evidence that writing great copy often boils down to illustration: how well can you show the prospect a moment in time?

Because copywriting is all about moments, these small slices of life. And if you can impart these things in a way that generates a feeling, and then you connect that feeling to a product, this is how you compel people.

This is how you sell things.

David Abbott does so masterfully in this ad.

It’s a masterclass in “show, don’t tell” writing, short on details, which leaves holes for The Reader to fill in with their own memories, their own life. This, ultimately, is the source of its emotion and power: it “vividly echoes” the human experience.

Ⓧ We’re not being told a message.

✓ We’re being shown scene after scene.

And the result is a kind of “mental movie,” which affects us, as a good movie would.

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