Who wins: aggressive or submissive copy voice

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Across the street from where I live, there’s an apartment with a nice terrace where they often shoot TV commercials for things like mayonnaise and general purpose loans.

Whenever they are getting ready to shoot one of these commercials, they send an advance man. He’s in charge of blocking off the parking up and down the street, so the TV crew trucks will have a place to park.

This pisses off the residents, who get nothing but frustration from these frequent shoots.

And so today, as I was coming out of my building, a heated argument erupted over this.

A guy with an SUV drove over the little orange cones and police tape and parked in one of the cordoned-off spots.

The TV crew guy in charge of the parking ran over yelling, “Stop! Get out of there! We’re a TV crew! I’ll call the police!”

“Call the police,” the owner of the SUV told him, “and go fuck yourself.”

They kept at it, repeating these same two lines over and over as I walked away and out of earshot.

Now, I’ve been writing about negotiation lately and this made me think of the okay/unokay advice from famed negotiation coach Jim Camp.

“Only one person can feel okay in a negotiation,” says Camp, “and it’s not you.”

That would have been good advice for the unfortunate TV crew guy. When I came home three hours later, he was still there, sitting dejectedly on the opposite corner of the street. As far away as possible from the still-parked SUV.

He had no hand. Yelling and threatening with calling the police was only counterproductive. It might have been better to try to be unokay and say something like:

“I know, man. I hate this job. I know you got no place to park and I’m sorry for putting these stupid cones to try to keep you out. The company makes me do this and it makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve got no right telling you not to park here. I’m just so stressed. When the TV crew comes later and sees your car parked here, they’re gonna nail me to the cross cuz they won’t be able to put the truck anywhere. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

I’m not sure the SUV driver would have bought it, but it would have been worth a shot.

But what about the SUV guy though?

Whole different story.

​​Being aggressive and inconsiderate worked for him. He got everything he wanted from this negotiation without making his adversary feel okay. Quite the opposite, in fact.

And that’s the application to copywriting.

Some copywriting gurus will advise a very aggressive and commanding tone of voice. “You’ve got my money,” they effectively say to the prospect, “now hand it over.”

Others advise being more skeptical and subtle — or even submissive. They basically offer the reader the chance to buy, rather than bullying him into buying.

So which one is better?

Well, just like in the parking situation above, it depends. Mainly on who you’re talking to, and what you’re offering them. A $27 bizopp offer, targeting frustrated retail workers, will use one level of aggressiveness. A $5400 business service targeting successful entrepreneurs will use another.

In other words, there’s no single answer. And if anybody tells you differently, it’s because they’re selling something — to only one type of market.

The riddle of the fragmented Nobel prize

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Here’s a quick riddle for ya:

Back in 2016, the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to a biologist named Yoshinori Ohsumi.

In 2015, however, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was shared between two scientists who had worked together, William Campbell and Satoshi Omura. Actually, they only got half of the prize. The other half went to a third scientist, Tu Youyou, for her work on a completely unrelated problem.

I’ll give you the riddle in just a second. But first, here’s a potentially useful bit of info:

The 2016 prize was for Ohsumi’s discovery of how “autophagy” works in the body. This topic is interesting and important. But as far as I understand, it’s also rather theoretical and abstract, and unlikely to save lives any time soon.

On the other hand, one of the scientists who shared the 2015 prize discovered a drug to treat malaria. The other two recipients discovered a drug to stop blindness-causing parasites. In other words, their work is extremely practical and immediately useful. In fact, it has already been responsible for hundreds of millions of saved lives and prevented disfigurements.

So here’s the riddle I want you to ponder:

Why did the Nobel Prize committee award the whole prize to Ohsumi in 2016… but feel they should “pad out” the recipient list in 2015, and split it among two unrelated groups?

I don’t have the definitive answer to this riddle. And it’s probably just a coincidence.

But it reminded me of a book I’d read a while back called Disciplined Minds.

This book was written by Jeff Schmidt, a PhD physicist and the former editor of a reputable physics journal.

In one chapter of the book, Schmidt asks a variation of the riddle above:

Why do theoretical physicists get more respect than experimental physicists, even though both types of physics require the same intelligence, are equally well-paid, and are equally important?

Schmidt’s rather Marxist answer is that this is just a deeply ingrained copy of the power structures in our society.

The people at the top of any hierarchy just do the thinking, the abstract work, and the ordering about.

The people lower down in the hierarchy are tasked with the manual work of carrying out those orders from up high.

And that’s why any association with manual, practical work is likely to lead to less respect, less prestige, and perhaps, less Nobel Prize.

Do you think this might be relevant for copywriters, too?

It seems like a lot of copywriters believe it. They relish being being blissfully impractical.

“I just write the magic words, don’t ask me about anything else!”

But while this might work for physicists and Nobel Prize-winning biologists, I think it’s the wrong way to go in the field of direct response.

The deeper I get into this game, the more I learn that you should get your hands dirty.

This doesn’t mean you have to offer a one-stop shop where you do the copywriting and the design and the media buying too.

But if you can give clear and smart recommendations on design and media buying, your clients will appreciate it…

Your projects will be more likely to succeed…

And you will wind up with more money, more interesting future projects, and maybe even some respect and prestige. ​​And if you get all that, then who needs a Nobel prize, or a third of one anyways?

Headlines and hooks to topple the mighty Gulliver down to the ground

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I talked to a successful copywriter today and he taught me a valuable lesson about headlines and leads.

Maybe you won’t think it’s a tremendous insight…

But I bet if you look for this idea in the next five sales letters you come across, four will be missing it.

Anyways, let me illustrate it with a movie analogy.

Specifically, a scene from the 2010 masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels, starring Jack Black as the modern-day Gulliver.

Old Gul is shipwrecked in Lilliput. He wakes up tied up on the beach by many tiny ropes, put in place by the diminutive Lilliputians.

Gulliver starts to break loose and struggles to his feet.

But the Lilliputian army, which is surrounding him, won’t have any of it.

They start throwing some tiny Lilliputian hooks into Jack Black’s underwear, and they soon send him toppling back down the to the ground, ass first into a tiny Lilliputian soldier who’s about to die gloriously for his country.

Keep this powerful image in mind.

And then start thinking about headlines.

Your headline gets your prospect down to the ground, just like Gulliver at the start of the scene.

But soon, your prospect starts to get restless and wants to get up and break free.

And so your responsibility, according to the very successful copywriter I talked to today, is to toss in enough tiny little hooks to pull the reader back into his seat, and to keep him reading.

That’s how you bring the mighty Gulliver back down to the ground, where you can have easy access to his ear, so you can complete your presentation and close the sale.

And I heard a similar idea just now from one of Hollywood’s most successful producers, Brian Grazer.

He’s the guy who produced Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind and (closest to my own heart) Arrested Development.

Brian was asked how he figures out which ideas are good and which ones are not.

“You should be able to come up with a fascinating and new bit of information you can deliver in just 5 seconds,” Brian effectively said (I’m paraphrasing). “And then, just in case they’ve heard something like it before, you should have a fascinating followup to suck them in even more.”

I think this is a great illustration of perhaps the fundamental rule of successful copywriting practice. And that is:

Keep raising the stakes. Keep putting in more effort than everybody else is putting in. And eventually, you will start to see Brobdingnagian results.

The shiny object psychopath in the mirror

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I read an article once about a neuroscientist who discovered he was a psychopath.

He was conducting a study and examining a bunch of brain scans.

Some of normal people, some of known psychopaths.

Murderers…

Rapists…

Successful Internet marketers.

And then, I think by accident, he also looked at his own brain scan, which was there on his desk as part of another study.

The verdict was clear:

The parts of his brain responsible for empathy and morality showed “significantly decreased activity.” He was a clear-cut psychopath.

“Whaddya know?” he said, and went on with his life as usual. ​​

Well, I had an experience like that a few days ago.

I was doing research on a market that involved a lot of business opportunity seekers, AKA “shiny object junkies.”

These people tend to fly from opportunity to opportunity, never completing a project, always believing that the next course or seminar they buy will finally set them on the path to “financial freedom.”

And while I was reading the various stories and testimonials of these unfortunate souls…

I had an unfortunate realization myself.

I might be a shiny object guy.

Not in everything, of course. I’ve made it work with copywriting, and I’ve been successful in several other areas in my life.

But with business stuff… the promise of the 4-hour work week… the magical idea of passive income… well, there I keep flitting between different projects, getting enthusiastic about the next new idea, and abandoning what I already have.

Maybe that doesn’t sound familiar to you. Or maybe it does. The point is I (and maybe you) can’t keep doing this.

The fix is simple.

You pick a project, build an asset (like a website), and let it accrue value on its own. But you have to build it up to a certain point rather than simply jumping to the next shiny thing.

Awareness of the problem is a good first step.

For example, the neuroscientist psychopath didn’t actually go on with his life as usual. I made that up. In reality, he decided to make a conscious change:

“I’ve more consciously been doing things that are considered ‘the right thing to do,’ and thinking more about other people’s feelings. At the same time, I’m not doing this because I’m suddenly nice, I’m doing it because of pride — because I want to show to everyone and myself that I can pull it off.”

So if you’ve got shiny object addiction, it’s ok. You can choose to move past it consciously. If for no other reason than to prove everybody wrong.

Just don’t be yourself

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“If you want success in whatever industry you are in — obviously find ways to hack it — but by being truly authentic, you do not have to gravitate to the world. The world will gravitate to you.”
— Andrew Schulz

It seems everybody’s talking authenticity.

“Just be yourself. That’s how I got successful.”

Only one problem:

You don’t hear the failures talking about the value of being authentic.

“Yeah man, I’m such a dull, needy, badly dressed guy… and judgmental and sexually timid to boot… but my dating life has NEVER been better. Since I really started to be my authentic, value-sucking self, girls are blowing up my phone each night, asking me to come over and play Mario Kart.”

It just doesn’t happen.

I think the reason why is obvious:

Authenticity only works if you are attractive. Or if you can write winning sales letters. Or whatever the criterion of success is in your field. An authentic potato is still a potato.

But contrary to what you might think, my point is not to rag on authenticity and suggest you should hate yourself or deny your inner drives and instincts.

I just think this talk about authenticity brings up a much bigger and more interesting issue.

And that’s that there are certain questions without a simple, straightforward answer.

So the question of, “How do you get successful?” has a two-part, contradictory answer.

1) Sometimes you gotta trust your gut and be yourself (authenticity).

2) Other times, you need to go against your instincts and respond to external feedback (self-improvement).

​When should you do 1 and when should you do 2? Well, that’s where it gets tricky.
​
This two-sided, yin-yang, beans-and-rice duality explains (to my mind at least) why we haven’t been able to conclusively answer some seemingly simple questions, even though smart people have been racking their brains on them for thousands of years.

In politics. In personal relations. In simple topics such as happiness and how you should live your life.

But anyways, maybe I’m getting too philosophical. I just wanted to point out that people love simple answers, and if you accept that sometimes there are no simple answers, you can actually save yourself a lot of grief and maybe even make better progress than if you continue to dig a deeper hole.

And with that, I’m signing off. ​​

If you need help with advertorials, check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

And if you need entertainment for the moment, I can recommend going on YouTube and checking out a few minutes of Andrew Schulz’s comedy. He’s very authentic and he’s very funny, if you can get past his jackass stage persona.

10 steps to becoming a magnetic listener

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About 15 years ago, I read a biography of former World Bank president James Wolfensohn. It’s the first time I’d heard the term “magnetic listener.”

“Magnetic listener?” I thought. “What could be magnetic about it? You just sit there.”

Well, in the years since, I’ve done a fair bit of listening and I’ve worked on honing my skills. I’ve picked up some tactics from various sources, and I’ve noticed a few of my own natural tricks.

So for your enlightenment as well as for my own, let me write down 10 steps to becoming a magnetic listener (in no particular order):

#1. Challenge the speaker

Don’t just passively accept everything you hear. Do this after you’ve been listening for a while. “Hold on. How does this square with what you told me just a moment ago?”

#2. Continue the speaker’s train of thought

Think features vs. benefits, and get the speaker to explain the difference in their own words. “And why was that important?” “And what did that mean to you?”

#4. Keep eye contact

There’s no better way to show you’re giving the speaker your full attention. If they don’t break off the eye contact periodically while they are speaking (and most people will) then you should break it off for just a moment every so often. Otherwise, the situation might become sexual or confrontational.

#3. Call out any break in rapport

If you’re gonna take notes (not a bad idea), call it out. And still look up periodically to maintain eye contact and reassure the speaker that you’re fully engaged.

#5. Encourage the speaker to continue

“I see.” Nod. “Ok…” Nod. Only do this once they pause and they are looking for reassurance you want them to continue.

​​Don’t try to encourage while they are speaking because even a peep out of you (“Wow!”) can interrupt people and keep them from delivering useful info.

#6. Make anodyne comments to give the speaker permission to keep talking

Do this once they properly stop speaking, and you’ve used up your “Wow” and “I see” trump cards.

“So that’s how you [do what I just asked you about]…” Or you can repeat the last thing you said like you’re mulling it over like a fine wine. Or rephrase what they said — but do it superficially, and don’t try to show off your cleverness or insight.

The underlying psychology here is that people will often stop speaking out of politeness or wariness. They need your indirect permission to keep sharing more.

#7. Ask your questions as they come up

You’ll have to make a judgment call here. Sometimes it’s ok to interrupt people as they’re speaking because a) you will get better info by directing them than by allowing them to run on a tangent and b) it shows you’re really listening to them.

At the same time, don’t clutch to your questions so tightly that you stop listening to what the speaker is saying. You might miss valuable information. Be willing to let go of a question.

#8. Get to the real reason

This is the Frank Bettger technique. You listen as they explain. “I see. Is there any OTHER reason?” “What ELSE could you do?” This and the anodyne comments above are different ways of doing Jim Camp’s 3+ (asking the speaker in at least three different ways to explain or confirm the same point).

#9. Introduce a bit of your own input

Once people get to talking, they will fight for the right to keep talking. So give them something to fight against. “Oh, that’s interesting. It’s just like this one time that I was walking down the street, minding my own business…” The key here is to do it once they are already warmed up, and to be willing to drop your story as soon as they want to start talking again.

#10. Ask the speaker to repeat stuff

Do this to make sure you got everything right. Both for the information itself, and so you can focus on what they are saying instead of worrying that you missed something.

Plus, you can even do it as a psycho tactic — when you heard everything perfectly. “Wait, can you repeat that last bit?” It makes you look interested as well as unokay, which makes them okay by contrast.

And there you go. I’ve used these techniques while interviewing, while negotiating, and while seducing (or trying to).

Speaking of which (negotiating, I mean), I’m now working on a little guide that summarizes what I’ve learned about negotiating, specifically for freelancers, and even more specifically for freelance copywriters.

I’ll be giving this negotiation guide as a free bonus with my revamped book on succeeding as a freelancer on Upwork. In case you want to get notified when I make all this available, you can sign up here:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book

Ben Settle’s monkey business

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I saw a photo today and the caption read “Anti-Poachers Protecting Gorillas.”

The photo showed a black dude taking a selfie.

Behind him was a guy dressed in a very convincing gorilla outfit, but standing in a very ungorilla-like pose.

Specifically, he was standing completely erect, with his arms straight by his sides, a big beer belly jutting out.

“How is this gonna work?” I wondered. “Will this guy pretend to be a gorilla so the poachers come and try to shoot him? And then what?”

I got curious so I researched this story in more depth.

SHOCKER!

Turns out I was completely wrong.

That’s not a man in a convincing gorilla suit.

Instead, it’s a real gorilla standing in a very human-like pose.

It seems these anti-poachers in the Congo raised a couple of orphaned gorillas. And now that the gorillas are grown up, they completely imitate (ape?) their human parents.

So they stand up straight, walk around on two feet, and even pose for selfies.

Which got me thinking about the instinct for mimicking those around us, whether human or ape.

It’s such a fundamental part of the thought machine we know as the brain.

Resistance is futile.

And if you need proof, take for example email marketing guru Ben Settle.

Over the course of the past year, Ben has on several occasions warned his readers to disregard social proof when making a buying decision online.

Noble advice. Except…

Even though Ben is like the good friar going about the shire and sermonizing about the dangers of alcohol, he’s also back at the monastery brewing up some delicious ale that he sells at the Sunday market.

Specifically, at the end of July, Ben ran an aggressive campaign to promote his Email Players newsletter (I know because I was tracking and categorizing every email he sent out that month).

And so from Thursday the 25th to Monday the 29th, he sent out 10 emails. Each day followed the same pattern.

Morning: an interesting or intriguing email leading into a link to the Email Players sales page…

Afternoon: an email that was basically just a testimonial for Email Players. 5 testimonials over 5 days. Because they are too powerful not to use.

So in case you want to promote an offer aggressively over the span of a few days, maybe try mimicking this little sequence of Ben’s. I imagine he’s using it because he’s tested it and it works.

And if you don’t need emails, but you do need some advertorials, then fear not. The anti-poaching brigade is preparing a special report on the topic, which you can sign up for here:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Kit Kat-flavored blog posts

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News from Japan:

Nestle will soon introduce creative new packaging for Kit Kat bars sold in the Land of the Falling Birth Rate.

Starting later this month, Japanese Kit Kats will come wrapped in origami paper, and will contain instructions for how to make your own paper cranes, planes, or Hello Kitties.

Nestle says this move is a step towards reducing the company’s plastic consumption.

Maybe.

But it probably serves at least some other devious function or two.

Especially when you consider the history of Nestle in Japan.

For example, back in the 1970s, Nestle was having trouble introducing coffee into this nation of tea drinkers.

So they consulted Clotaire Rapaille, at that time a psychoanalyst dealing with autistic kids, and now one of the foremost brand and marketing consultants in the world.

The trouble, Rapaille told Nestle, is that the Japanese don’t have any emotional imprinting when it comes to coffee.

The cigar-smoking executives at Nestle listened carefully.

And they soon came out with coffee-flavored candy that they started feeding to hapless Japanese kids.

The kids of course loved the candy. They formed positive associations with the flavor of coffee.

In another 10-15 years, those kids grew up, and coffee drinking in Japan became a thing. (Of course, Nestle was there, ready to cash in.)

This illustrates a fundamental rule of how the human brain works:

If you’ve got something new, the best way to get it into the brain is by tying it in with something that’s already there.

That’s how you get classics of positioning such as:

“Avis is only No. 2 in rent a cars. So we try harder.”

“7 Up: The Uncola”

But as Nestle shows, you don’t have to position yourself in relation to your competitors.

You can also tie in your product to other concepts or experiences in the mind, even if these seem to have little direct connection to the product you’re selling.

And this isn’t just relevant for big brand advertising. Like I said, it’s a fundamental rule of how the human brain works, and it applies just as well to positioning a direct marketing offer, and even to writing direct response copy.

Once you start looking out for it, you’ll see it everywhere. Maybe even in this blog post.

And you can use this same fundamental rule of psychology in advertorials, too. Too see how, grab a Kit Kat and consult the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

The dangers of gratitude rituals

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I just got an email notifying me that today is “World Gratitude Day.”

I’m not buying it.

I think “gratitude” is just another mental virus spread by the overlords who run the Internet.

“But studies! They show that the happiest people all practice some form of gratitude!”

Studies also show that the most swole guy at the gym spends a lot of time mirin himself in the mirror.

Does that mean that a spindly ectomorph should try to put on muscle by a daily “mirroring” ritual?

No.

Without the genetics, the workouts, the diet, and possibly the synthetic hormones, no amount of mirror gazing will turn a skinny guy into Franco Columbu.

What it can do is just make him feel worse about being frail and underdeveloped.

Same thing with gratitude.

You might think I’m exaggerating. I’m not.

​​I tried practicing gratitude some years ago, back when the idea spread like wildfire through all the positive psychology blogs.

A “gratitude ritual” didn’t make me any happier.

It did make me feel like a bit of a hypocrite (“Am I really grateful that I had food to eat today? That beef stew wasn’t very good”) and it also made me feel more anxious than usual (“What’s wrong with me? Why amn’t I more grateful?”).

Conclusion: I’m personally offended by gratitude.

But that doesn’t matter none.

Because “gratitude” is still a massive worldwide trend.

And that’s something all marketers should carefully track.

At least if you want to make money in riding that trend, or in recognizing when it might be coming to a close.

I think the gratitude train is slowly running out of steam.

But if that’s true, something else will come and replace it soon.

Watch out for that and it might make you some money.

In the meantime, if you want to celebrate “World Gratitude Day” by treating yourself to some insightful info on writing ecommerce advertorials, then check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Polishing unfixably bad copy

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Today I found myself sitting on the floor, my notebook next to me, a bunch of index cards sprawled out all around.

I was working on a wooden first draft of a piece of sales copy.

However many times I attacked it, it wasn’t getting any better.

It practically screamed “amateur.”

And I imagined that if I ever wind up delivering this to the client, they will virtually crumple it up and throw it in my face.

In these kinds of moments, I remind myself of something I heard in an interview with Parris Lampropoulos.

Parris is one of the most successful copywriters working over the past few decades.

Even so, he doesn’t produce winning copy straight out the gate. Says Parris (I’m paraphrasing cause I can’t find the interview where I heard this):

“When I first sit down and write the bullets, I always think I’ve lost it. They’re terrible. Everybody will find out I’m a fraud. Then I rewrite the bullets once, and I think, maybe I will be able to get away with it. Third and fourth rewrite, they’re starting to look pretty damn good.”

So if somebody who’s as successful, proven, established, revered, and experienced as P-Lamp still gets feelings of doubt and sees his first draft as unfixable shit, then maybe you and I can also do the same.

As long as we also put in the work to, like Parris, rewrite the shit until it becomes surprisingly good.

Which is what I’m doing now.

Speaking of which, I gotta go.

If you need some help writing immaculate advertorials (not straight out the gate, but with a bit of polishing), then check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/