Positioning

F for Frank Abagnale

by

My headline today is a play on F For Fake. That was a documentary Orson Wells made about frauds, forgers, and fakers, himself included. And it ties into some real news about Frank Abagnale.

You’ve probably heard that name. Frank Abagnale is the real-life guy whose story was told by Steven Spielberg in Catch Me If You Can.

Between the ages of 16 and 20, Frank impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, and a college professor. He traveled all around the world… broke the hearts of lovely stewardesses… and lived rich by passing fake checks.

Even if you don’t approve of Frank’s crimes, I bet you enjoyed the movie based on Frank’s life. And maybe you even had a bit of sympathy for his daring and boyish charm, at least as portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Except… maybe… it never happened?

I don’t mean the movie stretched the truth.

I mean, maybe Frank’s story of fraud and forgery was all a fake, from day one?

According to some guy writing for WHYY, an NPR subsidiary, it’s all a big lie. Frank Abagnale never did any of those exciting and romantic things we know him for. Well, he did pass a few bad checks, and he did stalk a stewardess for a while. But that’s about where the romance ends.

And it gets crazier because:

Apparently this was well-known back in the 70s. That’s when a few newspapers published articles to debunk Frank’s grandiose claims.

But it didn’t hurt none. Frank’s legend grew through self-promotion, and grew, and grew, until he took over Hollywood.

This is similar to the story I wrote about a few weeks ago, about psychic Uri Geller, and James Randi, the guy who debunked him. But my message for you today is less controversial than what I wrote back then.

My message today is simply a business truth:

You don’t succeed because you create and deliver a superior product or service. The world will not beat a path to your door.

Instead, you succeed because you create and deliver superior marketing.

This is true whether you’re a computer engineer, a consultant, a copywriter… or as Frank Abagnale’s story shows, even a con man. As Frank’s dad puts it in a famous scene from Catch Me If You Can:

Frank’s dad: You know why the Yankees always win, Frank?

Frank: Cause they have Mickey Mantle?

Frank’s dad: Nah. It’s cause the other teams can’t stop staring at those damn pinstripes.

And if you need ideas for superior marketing:

You might like the ideas I share in my email newsletter. Click here to give it a try.

The thinking man’s horoscope

by

Detailed and Reliable — LOW
Nurturing – LOW
Tough — LOW

Today I went through a part of Ray Dalio’s personality test. It takes 40 minutes to complete. I gave up after just 10. But based on those 10 minutes, Dalio’s test still spit out an uninspiring estimate of who I am (results above).

You’ve probably heard of Dalio. He’s a billionaire investor. A few years ago, he wrote an influential book about his way of thinking, called Principles. Well, now he has released a free online personality test, called Principles You.

Dalio got enthusiastic about personality tests a while back. He started by giving a bunch of his employees the Myers-Briggs.

“It gives you clarity of how people think!” Dalio said.

And to prove his point, he had those same employees fill out a survey after they got the test results. “How accurately does this describe the way you think?” 85% gave it a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1-5.

Impressive, except:

If you’ve been reading my blog over the past few weeks, you’ll know I recently wrote about cold reading. That’s when you tell people something about themselves without knowing anything about them.

In the very first cold reading experiment, all the way back in 1949, 39 students were all given the same personality profile. It came straight out of a horoscope.

And after reading their profile, 34 out of 39 students gave the profile either a 4 or a 5 on a scale of 1-5. That’s 87%. A finding that has been replicated since, and not just by Dalio.

But what the hell do I know?

I’m just some guy. And Ray Dalio is a billionaire.

​​Maybe his Principles You test really is more useful and accurate than a horoscope.

Either way, all I really want to suggest is that, up and down the success and skepticism ladders, people love categorizing others… and they LOOOVE being categorized themselves.

I think those two loves come from very different drives. I won’t get into that here. But I will leave you with this:

Entire businesses have been built by putting people into buckets. (Michael Gerber’s E-Myth comes to mind.) And if you need a unique mechanism… or you need a unique position in the market… then perhaps you can get started by creating a new diagnostic test. My suggestion for a name? Buckets You.

On a related note:

If you are honest, ambitious, and reliable, then you might get a lot of value out of subscribing to my email newsletter. Click here to try it out.

Profitable second-best positioning

by

BUD: I love you, Miss Kubelik.
FRAN: [cutting a deck of cards] Seven… queen.
BUD: Did you hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you.
FRAN: [handing over the cards] Shut up and deal.

That’s the ending of my favorite movie of all time, called The Apartment.

It stars Jack Lemmon as sweet and harmless accountant Bud Baxter… Shirley MacLaine as cute and clever elevator girl Fran Kubelik… and Fred MacMurray as handsome and cruel business executive Jeff Sheldrake.

The setup in a nutshell:

Fran is in love with Sheldrake… Sheldrake uses Bud’s apartment as a place to sleep with Fran on the side away from his wife… and Bud falls in love with Fran.

By the end end of the movie, after Sheldrake breaks Fran’s heart one too many times and Fran tries to commit suicide in Bud’s apartment, things are set right. ​​Sheldrake is left out in the cold and Fran winds up with Bud. Bud might not be powerful and sexy… but at least he’s sweet and he absolutely adores her.

The point being, sometimes you’re not the best, or the first. And that can be ok. You can still get the girl. Or the customer.

And along these lines, I want to propose to you the idea of second-best positioning.

A famous example of this is Avis rent-a-car.

Back in the early 1960s, Avis was the homely mule trotting behind the spry stallion that was Hertz. And rather than trying to pretend otherwise, Avis decided to own their second-best position. The result was the following ad campaign:

“Avis is only No. 2 in rent a cars. So why go with us? We try harder.”

Within a year of launching this campaign, Avis went from a loss of $3.2 million to a profit of $1.2 million. Within 5 years of this campaign running… the difference in market share between Hertz and Avis shrank from 32% to just 13%. It even looked like Avis might overtake Hertz — and need a new ad campaign.

“All right,” you might say, “good for Avis. But why wouldn’t I find a uniquely best position for myself… and instead accept the role of a homely second-best mule?”

Fair point. My only answer is that second-best can get you free promotion. And lots of high-quality leads. And almost certainly more sales than you can handle. At least if you’re selling some kind of service, and can follow the clever program outlined below.

It’s something I found in Glenn Allsop’s article, which I shared in a post a few days ago.

Did you read Glenn’s article? All the way to the end? That’s where the clever second-best biz idea was. From what I understand, it works like this:

1. You are in business offering some kind of service. Say, copywriting.

2. You decide you want to help a charitable cause. Say, the unbeaching of that tanker that’s stuck in the Suez Canal.

3. So you contact 25 of the top level people in your field, who have premier positioning. A-list copywiters, etc. They all agree to provide a free copy critique, which will be sold for top dollar to help the charitable cause.

4. You then create a page to promote this event. “The greatest copy critique event of all time! Featuring A-list copywriters! In support of the beached Suez canal tanker!”

5. With some hand-waving, this offer goes viral. Not impossible — considering the premier positioning of the 25 A-list copywriters at the heart of it.

6. The 25 premier slots sell out in minutes after the event goes live.

7. You then update your page to say, “Missed out this time, or want another critique option? Check out our $40 sales copy critique and get feedback in the next 72 hours.”

And there you go. All the opportunity a sweet, second-best copywriter can handle. At that point, you’ve just got to shut up and deal.

Do you want a copy critique? It’s something I offer from time to time. But the offer only ever goes out to subscribers of my email newsletter. If you’re interested, you can join it here.

Casino Royale positioning

by

Last night, I finished rewatching Casino Royale, the first Bond film starring Daniel Craig. As you might know, this movie came out surrounded with controversy.

There was a lot of opposition to casting Craig in the Bond role. Fans complained that Craig — short, blonde, and blessed with “large, fleshy ears” — was a complete mismatch to the required Bond look and feel.

And yet, Craig has grown on Bond audiences. Casino Royale was a big part of that. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie gets a 94% approval rating, and the summary says:

“Casino Royale disposes of the silliness and gadgetry that plagued recent James Bond outings, and Daniel Craig delivers what fans and critics have been waiting for: a caustic, haunted, intense reinvention of 007.”

So I’d like to propose to you the idea of Casino Royale positioning.

Strip away the silliness and the gadgetry of the current offers in your market. Instead, offer a short, blonde, large-eared alternative that nobody in his proper mind should want.

Here’s a famous example:

Back in the late 1950s, the American car market was dominated by beasts. Each year, American car models became larger, with more chrome and more tailfin. When that game went to its extreme, the unlikely winner turned out to be Volkswagen, with its promise of a small, ugly, practical car.

Example two:

This one comes from closer to home, namely, the financial newsletter market. In that market, the typical promise goes something like,

“How to double or even you triple your investment — as soon as next month!”

In other words, the typical promise is to get rich quick. And then get richer, quicker! And then even richer, as of yesterday!

So into this market came Gary Bencivenga, often called the world’s greatest living copywriter. And rather than coming up with creative new ways to promise millions of dollars in the next 14 minutes, Gary did a Casino Royale. The promise in his headline?

“Get rich slowly”

And yet, this short, flat-faced, large-eared promise turned out to be one of the bigger successes in Gary’s very successful career.

So if your market is outdoing itself in silly promises and gimmicky mechanisms, Casino Royale might be the thing to try.

Strip everything away… look into your customer’s eyes with an icy cold stare… and say, like Craig does when asked whether he wants his martini shaken or stirred…

“Do I look like I give a damn?”

I’m planning on putting out a book in the next few months with more positioning ideas. If you’d like advance notice when that book comes out, along with more free positioning ideas before then, you might like to sign up to my secret service MI6 email newsletter.

Dan Kennedy’s grungy ghostwriting gig

by

In 1933, Don Dwyer published an interesting self-promotional book. The title of the book was, “Target Success: How You Can Become a Successful Entrepreneur, Regardless of Your Background.”

There are two curious things about this book:

1) It was ghost-written by Dan Kennedy.

2) It was really a sales tool for Dwyer.

A bit of background:

Don Dwyer owned Rainbow International Carpet Dyeing & Cleaning Company. This was a franchise carpet cleaning opportunity. For something on the order of $10k, you could buy into the franchise and get set up with your own carpet cleaning biz in your own town.

So Dwyer’s Target Success book was there to give him credibility and positioning… and to pitch the business opportunity of buying into Rainbow Carpet Cleaning.

And here’s the clever bit:

Dwyer could have published a self-promotional book like, How To Be Successful In Carpet Cleaning. But as Dan Kennedy said, Dwyer was too smart for that.

Because such a book would not elevate Dwyer’s status. Quite the opposite. It might diminish his status.

So instead, Dwyer had Dan write a generic success book. Lessons from a self-made millionaire… how to set goals… what really makes successful people tick. And once you’re well into that story, well, then you find out about this carpet cleaning opportunity. It might not have sounded great right in the headline… but it sounds pretty good 150 pages into the book.

That opportunity might have sounded almost as good as the following simple rule:

When writing copy, it’s always better to get more specific. Always.

Except when it’s not. Sometimes, when you get specific, you turn off potential customers and clients… you narrow your market too much… you can’t get attention because you’re talking about something too fringe, cringe, or grunge.

In that case, it makes sense to go up a level or two or three, and make your appeal more ethereal. This is true whether you’re positioning an offer… or writing a sales letter… or just a sales bullet.

Maybe you didn’t find that useful at all.

Maybe you did. In that case, you should know I write an email newsletter on similar topics… quick and grungy. In case you’d like to join the newsletter, here’s where to go.

How to get hired without trouble or questions asked

by

“Do you have some samples you could send me?”

A few years back, copywriter Dan Ferrari wrote a sales letter for supplement company Green Valley. The sales letter was so successful it sold out the entire stock of Genesis, the supplement Dan was promoting.

But before Dan got hired to do this job, he had to send a few samples to Lee Euler, the owner of Green Valley.

I thought this was interesting. Because Dan was already a very successful copywriter. He had a long list of controls for several financial publishers. I guess Lee, who is an A-list copywriter himself, wanted one final, personal check of Dan’s skills.

Yesterday, I talked about Ogilvy’s famous ad for Rolls Royce.

Well, in the world of direct response copywriting, Dan has Rolls Royce positioning. There are few copywriters out there with his skills and his level of results. That’s why Dan was referred to Lee, who is always looking to hire top new copywriters.

Now here’s how this is relevant to you, in case you’re ever sending over samples to a potential client:

Dan had never written a supplement promo before Green Valley. So he sent Lee some of his earlier financial sales letters. Lee probably looked over these sales letters with his copywriting eagle eye, and he saw what he needed to see. “Looks good. Let’s get to work.”

But that’s Lee Euler, a copywriter with decades of experience, and the guy who wrote The Plague of the Black Debt… and that’s Dan Ferrari, who already had a string of controls at big DR publishers.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

A lot of newbie copywriters obsess over creating a portfolio. “What should I put in there? Which niche to write for? What formats do I need to include?”

My personal opinion is this is waste of time and mental energy. Because when you are new, or just not at Rolls Royce level yet, then your samples should be exactly what the client is hiring for right now. And if you ain’t got that, then write it, then and there.

For example, a couple years back I wanted to get a job writing VSLs in the real estate investing space. I knew a company that was hiring, and for this exact type of copy. So I wrote two new leads for their existing VSLs, and I sent that in. I got hired without trouble, with practically no questions asked.

Thing is, I had already written VSLs at this point, and some were successful. But they weren’t for real estate. I had even written a lot in the real estate space, just not VSLs, and not about investing.

Would those square-peg-in-round-hole samples have gotten me the job? I don’t think so.

​​Maybe this will drive the point home:

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the new Rimac comes from the electric engine”

Never heard of Rimac? They are an up-and-coming electric sportscar maker from Croatia.

Maybe one day Rimac will be as recognizable as Lamborghini or Rolls Royce. But today, a headline like that would make most people just say, “So what?”

Because until you become a known brand that people lust after, you have to spell everything out for your potential client or customer. ​​You have to speak to his exact problems… and make the exact promises he wants to hear… in terms that require minimal, or better yet, no thinking from him.

This applies to selling products, and it applies to selling yourself. Don’t expect you will have an understanding and eager Lee Euler evaluating your copy samples.

Instead, g​ive new potential clients no scope to think you are not the person to hire for this job. Even if they know little to nothing about copywriting. Do this, and you will get hired, without trouble, with practically no questions asked.

Finally:

I write an email newsletter about copywriting and, occasionally, about the business of copywriting. In case you’d like to try it out and see if it fits you, you can sign up here.

Crank positioning

by

Yesterday, Ben Settle sent out an email with his interview with Ken McCarthy. And in the first part of the interview, Ken says the following:

So my positioning was, I wanted to be the honest broker of information on internet marketing.

And I also wanted to be the guy that you could trust on innovation issues. That if he said something was worth looking at, it was worth looking at. Not worth mortgaging the farm for, but worth taking a look, worth carving a little time out of your week and making sure that you were conversant with it.

And then I also wanted to be seen as a guy that stuck to the fundamentals, and valued the fundamentals, and drilled the fundamentals. Because the fundamentals really are, at the end of the day, what’s going to get you through everything.

I think there’s a fine line, running from Dan Kennedy, through Ken McCarthy, to Ben Settle, following this type of “honest broker” positioning. Dan and Ken and Ben all follow the three points in the quote above.

But there’s another positioning ingredient shared by all these guys. The best way I can describe is they are all cranks, in the various meanings of that word. For example:

“Being offended… hopefully you will be, at some point. I sort of pride myself on it.” That’s from the start of a Dan Kennedy seminar.

Or Ken’s current quest to prove corona is history’s biggest misinformation campaign.

Or Ben’s strategy of repulsion marketing. Ben mocks, shames, and drives away the many potential customers he does not want to serve.

All three of these guys also make a point of being low-tech, both in their marketing and in their private lives. You can only contact Dan Kennedy by fax. Ken started a recent email with, “Let me be clear: I loathe Facebook.” And Ben prides himself on ugly website design and on plain-text sales emails.

It is all just a coincidence?

I don’t think so. Rather, I suspect there’s a certain personality type that gets drawn to “honest broker” positioning… or perhaps the crank persona gives more credibility to people who adopt this position, and that’s why we hear of the cranks.

In any case, this might be something to keep in mind, if you too are looking to position yourself in your market.

On the one hand, this is probably not a position you can hold unless it matches your own personality on some level.

But if you already feel you are the honest broker of information in your market… or, on the other hand, if you have the personality of a crank, and you want to profit from it… then you might consider adopting the other half of this system.

​​With both parts in place, you can be the crusty but credible grouch, spitting and cursing (and making sales) in a marketplace full of crooks and idiots.

But if crank positioning doesn’t suit you, don’t worry. There are lots of other ways to position yourself. This is something I discuss on occasion in my newsletter. In case you’re interested, here’s where you can join.

Genuine weird payoff bullets

by

Sometimes, the book or course you’re trying to peddle has some advice that is so bizarre, so unusual, that all you have to do in your copy is report exactly what it says.

This gave rise to today’s lesson in my bullet’s course:

Lesson 11: “If your mechanism is so strange and unbelievable that the reader has to find out more, then reveal it in your bullet.”

I had three examples of such weird mechanisms in today’s lesson, taken from a David Deutsch promotion. In each case, ​​there was little that David had to do to take the source material and turn it into a bullet.

So is there any copywriting lesson to be had here? Well, I think it’s more of a marketing lesson. Because when there’s no genuine weird mechanism in your product, then you create your own product… all around a weird mechanism.

In the lesson, I also gave an example of a clever offer, which has been running successfully for years, which did exactly this. The name of this offer — in fact the entire positioning — is basically a revealed bizarre mechanism bullet.

And here’s a quick copywriting lesson after all:

If you do reveal a bizarre mechanism in your bullet (or in the name of your offer), make sure it’s easy, something the reader already has or can easily and cheaply get.

​And of course, don’t reveal the whole recipe, or the reason why it works. Because you’ve got to hold something back. The point, after all, is to get the reader to buy the damned product.

Which is why I’ve held back the actual bullets I used as examples in today’s bullet course lesson… as well as that offer that’s basically a bullet in disguise. That’s something that only went out to people who joined the course. If you’d like to join them (it’s still free):

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

Idea sex positioning

by

“Star Wars on Earth”

That was the initial four-word summary of Top Gun, in the mind of its producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

I’ve read much of Hollywood works this way.

Take an existing successful idea… combine it with something else… and boom, you got yourself the next Avatar (“Dances with Wolves in space”).

James Altucher calls this idea sex.

It’s not just a way to make the next Hollywood blockbuster. It’s also a great way to come up with new business ideas. For example:

I once found the “S&P 500 of the vacation rental industry.” The company is called AirDNA, and just from that short description, it’s pretty clear what it does. From what I could find, AirDNA revenue was $8 million a year.

Instacart was “Uber for groceries.” So much so that last year, when Uber launched its grocery delivery service Cornershop, Instacart sued. No wonder Instacart is feeling territorial. The 2020 valuation for Instacart was over $13 billion.

But what if you’ve already got a business are you’re not looking to launch a new idea?

You might still be able to use idea sex to give your business better positioning.

Just look for an analogy. Ask yourself what your business is similar to, or could be similar to.

“The Best Buy of the adult industry.”

“The Louis Vuitton of festivals.”

“The Nike of e-sports.”

You might have to change what you do a bit… or drop some things you thought were core to your business.

But do it right, and you will have powerful positioning. And that means you will make more money, with less work.

Ok, so much for positioning. Now on to the pitch:

I write a daily email newsletter. It is like the Far Side, but about marketing and copywriting. If you’d like to try it out, click here to sign up.

Snowflake positioning

by

Over the past year, over a half dozen “Bencivenga baseball” A-list copywriters have put out courses and coaching programs.

And in case you’re wondering, a “Bencivenga baseball” A-lister is somebody who attended Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar… and got to sign the souvenir baseball that marketer Brian Kurtz passed around.

(Not everyone there got to sign the baseball. Some people at the seminar only looked at the baseball in longing as it made its way around the room. In order to sign the baseball, you already had to be well-established back in 2005… back before copywriting became a thing in the mass mind.)

Well, now copywriting is a thing, and these A-list copywriters are rightly taking advantage.

So they are putting out “how to” copywriting courses, and creating coaching offers where there were none before.

The thing is, all of these guys and girls have been successful copywriters for the past several decades…

They all wrote for many of the same companies…

And it’s very likely that much of what they will share in their courses and coaching will be similar.

Maybe you see where I’m going. Imagine you’re a newbie entering this field. Imagine you’re looking for somebody to follow. There’s not a tremendous lot to separate these A-listers from one another.

So is this a classic fail of market positioning? And should these A-listers know better?

Maybe. And maybe not.

I’m sure they will all manage to fill up their coaching spots, and sell good amounts of their courses.

Because, while the best positioning is to be first… and while it’s hard to be first for everyone… it’s easy to be first to somebody out there.

New people are constantly entering every market.

Some of them will find you first, before they find anyone else in the space.

You don’t need anything else but to be you… a unique snowflake.

It might not be inspired… and it might not be in your control.

But as long as you’re competent… and as long as you’re putting out some kind of marketing… then by chance, for a few people, you can become their Crest, their Fed Ex, their Dan Kennedy.

Speaking of which:

Are you new to copywriting? Maybe you will like my daily email newsletter. It talks about copywriting and marketing, and also about how to succeed as a copywriter. You can sign up here.