A-List Copywriter Commandment XI: Thou Shalt Sell Escape

“You look out your window, past your gardener, who is busily pruning the lemon, cherry, and fig trees… amidst the splendor of gardenias, hibiscus, and hollyhocks.

“The sky is clear blue. The sea is a deeper blue, sparkling with sunlight.

“A gentle breeze comes drifting in from the ocean, clean and refreshing, as your maid brings breakfast in bed.

“For a moment, you think you have died and gone to heaven.

“But this paradise is real. And affordable. In fact, it costs only half as much to live this dream lifestyle… as it would to stay in your own home!”

What you’ve just read is the opening of the International Living sales letter.

Bill Bonner — the founder of Agora, a $1B+ direct response publishing company — wrote this sales letter to launch his first newsletter over thirty years ago. The letter supposedly brought in $3 for every $1 of advertising spend. Today, it still continues to bring in new paying readers.

I bring it up to illustrate a powerful marketing truth, which I first heard from A-list copywriter Dan Kennedy. If you read my book 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters, then you’ve already heard me talk about Dan. Legend says that for a period of time, thanks to how fast and how much he wrote, Dan was the highest-paid copywriter in the world.

That claim is hard to prove and is probably debatable. What is not debatable is how much influence Dan Kennedy has had on the fields of direct response marketing. He created dozens of books and courses, appeared on stage thousands of times, and consulted hundreds of business. What’s more, if you look at people who are successful marketers and copywriters today (including many of the names in the 10 Commandments book), chances are they worked with Dan, learned from Dan, or learned from somebody who learned from Dan.

But let’s get back to this apocryphal Commandment XI. It’s about exploiting a fundamental psychological truth — or as Dan calls it, a pre-existing condition — which affects most people. Surprisingly, the more successful a person is, the more likely he is to suffer from this pre-existing condition.

The condition is simply that the grass is always greener over in your neighbor’s yard. Dan once told an anecdote about this:

“Everybody thinks the other guy has it easier. When we run mastermind groups for mixed breed of dog — everybody’s in different businesses — at the end of the first meeting everybody wants to get in the other guy’s business.”

Of course, if you’re a clever marketer, like Dan is, you will find ways to exploit this. Which leads us to the meat of this commandment, straight out of Dan’s mouth:

“Don’t sell improvement… sell escape.”

Some markets are tailor-made for this. One example is the real estate investing market, which I’ve done a lot of work in over the past year. This market is not really about better ways to get leads or financing. Instead, it is about getting out from under money worries… running away of a crappy job where you’re under some idiot’s thumb… and having the freedom to do whatever you want, today and for the rest of your life. In other words, it’s about escape.

Other markets can be adapted to sell escape, too. For example, with the sales letter above, Bill Bonner wasn’t selling baby boomers on eking out more from their meager social security. He was selling them escape, to heaven, with nothing more than what they already had. Well, with nothing more but a subscription to International Living.

You too can do the same. Selling people a lighter shade of drab is hard work. Selling them a bright and exciting new color, well, that’s the kind of approach that can help you start a billion-dollar empire.

And this concludes the apocryphal Commandment XI of A-list copywriters. But maybe you’d like more ideas about influence? More interesting stories? Maybe you’d like:

Grifters, suckers, the “World’s Youngest Hypnotist,” an openly racist “comic’s comic,” a couple of tophat-wearing magicians, a pickup artist who describes himself as “average, with a serious tilt towards ugly,” the “world’s most feared negotiator,” the last Russian Tsar, the first black mayor of a major U.S. city, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, and Ronald Reagan?

If so, you can find all that, and much, much more, in my new 10 Commandments book, full title:

“10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters”

All the folks I listed above, from con men to the last Russian Tsar to Ronald Regan, are in my new 10 Commandments book, so you see the underlying ideas in a new light in case you know them already, so you remember them in case you don’t, and so you put them to work in your business and personal lives, and profit from them.

If you’d like to grab a copy now, and keep reading about persuasion, influence, and effective communication, here’s where to go.