“Bad artists imitate. Great artists steal.”

This well-worn quote has been attributed to many people in the past, some of which include Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, TS Eliot, Steve Jobs and even Banksy at one time or another.

No matter who was first, the quote itself is an example of great art: taking something awesome and making it your own.

Great art (and content) is often created in this way.

While some people say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - I’m not too sure; I worry that straight imitation just makes you look like a copy cat instead of being an artist.

The idea is to take inspiration from someone else’s work and make it your own, which is an art in itself.

Enter ‘the swipe’ file

For years, as a marketer I have meticulously kept different swipe files of inspiration both online and offline.

Whenever I see a good advertisement, a good piece of copy, or a great landing page I save it for a time when I’m working on a project and need inspiration.

The online tool I’ve been using for a number of years is called Swipewell and I don’t know what I would do without it.

I also created a swipe file for Transform 12 a couple of years ago, there’s plethora of marketing and prospecting ideas for agents in there and I’ve popped it below the paywall as a little mid-week bonus for my premium subscribers (as always thank you!)

Anyway I was listening to a video over the weekend and all of a sudden I had a bit of a lightbulb moment in that if one of the three main functions of ChatGPT is idea generation (the other two being assistance and summaries) then AI is indeed the new swipe file. 

You just need to know what questions to ask it (and of course who to steal from!)

Prompt of the day

There’s a famous marketing letter by the Wall Street Journal, “The Tale of Two Young Men”, by Martin Conroy.

Many great marketers consider it the greatest sales letter of all time, and legend has it that this one piece of copy sold more than $2bn worth of subscriptions from 1975-2003 (so well worth taking inspiration from it).

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