I really like reading. My problem is I buy books faster than I can read them. The drawers on my bedside cabinet are buckling under the weight of unread hardbacks, paperbacks, novels and non-fiction. I’ll be honest it’s starting to get me down a bit. Too much to read, too little time. Your customers have the same problem…

They’re bombarded with things to read every day. So if you’re planning on adding to their pile, you’ve got to make sure it’s easy to read. And there is one very simple way of doing just that.

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Salman Rushdie in 1989

What do John Milton, Salman Rusdie and Frank Zappa have in common? They’ve all written adverts.

Yep. It might come as a surprise to the purists amongst you, but there’s a whole raft of notable novelists, poets, scriptwriters and lyricists who cut their literary teeth as copywriters. So what could advertising have offered these talented writers, aside from a steady income?

There is a theory that John Milton, author of the epic poem, Paradise Lost, was also the writer of the first ever trade advertisement to appear in the UK press. In September 1658 in Mercurius Politicus, the progovernment newsbook of which he was editor from 1650, there was an advertisement for a ‘China Drink’ with purported health properties:

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