New copywriting and design team beat Second Opinion's control and garner the newsletter its second Gold Award in as many years. (Promotion).

For the second year in a row, Soundview Publications' Second Opinion health newsletter won Gold Award in The Newsletter on Newsletters' Newsletter Promotion Awards Competition. But it was an entirely new team this year that created the 24-page self-mailer magalog that beat the previous control.

Soundview vice president Garret W. Wood provided this narrative:

"Our control package for Second Opinion was fading. We knew we needed a totally new approach to break through the clutter of alternative health offers out there."

Copywriter uncovers two problems

"So we turned to Parris Lampropoulos. He's beaten the control every single time we've hired him. Well into his research, Parris raised two major concerns:

"The first challenge was that Dr. Robert Rowen, Second Opinion's editor-in-chief, focused primarily on little-known (and hard to find) doctor-administered cures.

"Sure, he's uncovered some breakthrough stuff. But unfortunately our subscribers couldn't find the treatments in their area--let alone do them at home. That's a problem of a consumer health letter. Our readers want to know what they can do right now to help themselves.

'An even bigger problem Parris uncovered was that the marketing didn't give the reader a sense of how great an authority Dr. Rowen is.

"As Parris put it, 'We had to credentialize Dr. Rowen by: 1) telling the reader exciting new stuff that they aren't hearing from anyone else; 2) using patient case histories to prove our points; and 3) including a sidebar on how Dr. Rowen trained 200 doctors, cured 5,000 patients, and helped pass the nation's first medical freedom law.

"'When it came to choosing a headline,"' Lampropoulos continued, "'we started out with the realization that the "101 Cures" approach or the "Life-Saving Cures" approach doesn't work anymore. The readers have heard it all before. So we had to come up with a different hook.

"'Our research showed that aging is a big hot button. But "aging" is such a nebulous concept that it's hard to telegraph a benefit in the headline. That why most anti-aging headlines don't work. We also found out that stress was a big issue for our readers."

Breakthrough thinking

"'The breakthrough came when we LINKED the two concepts. This is something that had never been done before.'

"So Parris tied aging and stress," Wood said, "into an easy-to-do, at-home therapy called Exercise With Oxygen Therapy. There he found his headline, 'How to Undo Years of Damage Caused by Stress,' followed by the intriguing subhead, 'This amazing breakthrough repairs your whole body, cell by cell.' How could you not read it?"'

Wood said, "Lori Haller of Shadow Oak Studios complemented terrific copy with terrific design. Simple and easy to read, her layout guides the reader from the front cover straight through to the order form."

How'd it do?

That's the question Wood asked of himself. "In a July test, the 'Stress' mailing outperformed the control two-to-one! And its roll-out numbers have stayed strong. Once again, Parris has given us a breakthough package we needed. And as he often does, Parris also gave us some remarkable insight on how better to focus Dr. Rowen on what our readers want."

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