The Best Copywriting Examples of All Time

You learn to write by reading great writing. But reading isn't enough — you have to study it. Pull it apart. Ask why it works. These are the examples serious copywriters return to over and over again. Here's what makes each one worth your attention.

What makes copywriting "great"?

Before the list: a filter. Great copy isn't pretty writing. It's writing that makes someone do something — click, buy, sign up, call. Every example here did that, at scale, in measurable ways. Aesthetics are a bonus, not the point.

1. "At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock"

Written by: David Ogilvy, 1959

This headline is studied in every copywriting course for a reason. It doesn't say "Rolls-Royce is quiet." It shows you. The specific detail — 60 miles an hour, electric clock — makes it concrete and believable in a way that "extremely quiet ride" never could.

Ogilvy reportedly wrote 104 headlines before landing on this one. The lesson: your first headline is almost never your best one.

"The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife." — David Ogilvy

2. "Do you make these mistakes in English?"

Sherwin Cody, 1919

This headline ran for 40 years without modification. It worked because it does something most copy ignores: it triggers specific fear. Not fear of grammar in the abstract. Fear that you, personally, are already making embarrassing mistakes right now.

The word "these" is everything. It implies mistakes you haven't identified yet. That's a pull most writers never achieve.

3. The VW "Think Small" campaign

DDB, 1959

In 1959 America, everyone wanted a big car. Volkswagen sold a small, odd-looking one. Instead of apologizing for it or pretending it was something else, the campaign leaned into the truth: it's small, it's weird, and that's exactly why it's brilliant.

The copy's tone — dry, self-deprecating, honest — was new. It treated buyers like intelligent adults who could handle a joke at the brand's own expense. That trust built an entire generation of loyal customers.

4. "They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano — But When I Started to Play!"

John Caples, 1926

One of the most-studied headlines in direct response history. It works on three levels: it tells a story, creates immediate social tension, and promises transformation. The reader has experienced this kind of mockery. They want the reversal. Caples understood that emotional specificity beats abstract benefit claims every time.

This ad sold music lessons. It ran for decades.

5. The Apple "1984" TV spot

TBWA/Chiat/Day, 1984

This ran once during the Super Bowl and is still being analyzed. It never names the IBM PC. It never shows the Macintosh. It barely mentions Apple. What it does: it creates a mythology. It positions a computer as an act of individual defiance. That's a value proposition built entirely in narrative, with almost no product copy at all.

The lesson isn't "make cinematic ads." It's that great copy knows what it's really selling — not a machine, but a feeling about the person who buys it.

6. Bill Bernbach's Avis "We Try Harder" campaign

DDB, 1962

Avis was number two in car rentals. They made that the headline. "When you're only No. 2, you try harder. Or else." The honesty was disarming. The logic was compelling. The line ran for 50 years.

The strategic lesson: if you have an obvious weakness, own it first. It's more credible than pretending it doesn't exist, and it reframes the weakness as evidence of effort.

7. Gary Halbert's "The Letter" (the most mailed sales letter in history)

Gary Halbert mailed a letter offering to sell people their own coat of arms. It worked because it opened with something deeply personal: your family name. The offer was trivial. The feeling was ancestral pride. Millions of copies were mailed.

The lesson: your job is to find what your reader already wants to feel, then attach your offer to that feeling.

8. Claude Hopkins' Schlitz beer campaign

Every beer brand in the 1900s called their beer "pure." Hopkins toured the Schlitz brewery, documented the production process in detail — the steam cleaning, the filtered air, the water from 4,000-foot wells — and wrote about it as if it were unique. It wasn't. Every brewery did the same thing. But Schlitz was the first to say it. Sales jumped from fifth to first in six months.

The principle is now called "reason why" copy. If you can prove the obvious thing with specific details, it becomes credible and persuasive in a way generic claims never are.

What to do with this

Read these examples. Then hand-copy them — literally write them out by hand. That's how copywriters have trained for a century. Something about the physical act of writing the words slows you down enough to feel the rhythm, notice the choices, understand why each sentence is where it is.

The Copy Copy course is built entirely on this method. Ten days. Ten iconic pieces. One technique per day that you can use the same afternoon.

Want to go deeper? Read Copywriting for Beginners — Where to Start, or learn the most important framework in the game: AIDA explained with examples.