Copywriting

Do you know the flip side of this famous historical anecdote?

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Everybody and his monkey knows the story of how, back in 1903, some smug realist at the New York Times wrote that heavier-than-air flight won’t be possible for another “one million to ten million years.”

And then, several weeks later, the Wright brothers took off and flew for the first time.

Like I say, you probably know that.

But what you might not know is the flip side of this story, how little anybody cared about that first flight, or the second flight, or the third, then or for years afterwards.

​​Here’s an excerpt from a book I just finished reading:

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Several years went by before the public grasped what the Wrights were doing; people were so convinced that flying was impossible that most of those who saw them flying at Dayton in 1905 decided that what they had seen must be some trick without significance — somewhat as most people today would regard a demonstration of, say, telepathy. It was not until May, 1908 — nearly four and a half years after the Wright’s first flight — that experienced reporters were sent to observe what they were doing, experienced editors gave full credence to these reporters’ excited dispatches, and the world at last woke up to the fact that human flight had been successfully accomplished.

===

That’s an interesting historical anecdote.

I had never heard it before.

It can be saved and used effectively in lots of different contexts. I would like to pass it on to you if you write and need lots of sticky messages to make your points more effectively.

I also want to clue you in to a resource that’s full of such sticky messages.

​​I already wrote about it in a recent email.

I’m talking about Morgan Housel’s Psychology of Money. I finished reading it a few days ago. It’s where I got the passage above, even though Housel didn’t write it — he’s just citing yet another book in his own book.

The Psychology of Money was published just over three years ago. And yet, it has over 30,000 5-star reviews on Amazon.

That’s not because the advice in the book is so new or so inspiring (“Save more”).

Rather, Housel’s Psychology of Money is so popular because it’s so effectively written, using lots of historical illustrations and novel metaphors and personal stories.

If you want to see how to write a book that keeps selling itself based on its content alone, then The Psychology of Money is worth a skim, read, or even some careful reverse engineering. To get your own copy:

https://bejakovic.com/housel

The most famous copywriter, real or fictional

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On Dan Heath’s new podcast, “What It’s Like To Be,” I heard Dan asking a TV meteorologist, a criminal defense lawyer, a forensic accountant, all the same question:

“Who’s the most famous meteorologist/criminal defense lawyer/forensic accountant, real or fictional?”

This got me wondering who the most famous copywriter might be, real or fictional.

I had a gut feeling. I double-checked via simple Google search, by looking at the total number of results.

As far as real copywriters go, there’s really only one possible option for a copywriter that a rando off the street might know.

​​That’s David Ogilvy.

There’s something about the pipe, the smart suits, the English disdain, the French castle.

Sure enough, Ogilvy was the only real copywriter who has more than 1M indexed Google results about him.

As for fictional copywriters, it depends on who you consider a copywriter.

Don Draper, the creative art director from the TV show Mad Men, clocks in at over 2M Google results.

But was he really a copywriter or more of an idea man? I’ll let you decide.

Meanwhile, the most famous, fictional, 100% copywriter that I’ve been able to find is Peggy Olson, also a character on Mad Men, who only gets around 220k Google results.

Should we stop there? Oh no.

It turns out several celebs out there have a copywriting background… but are not today known as copywriters.

One of these is novelist James Patterson. Before Patterson set out to write 200 books (and counting), he was a copywriter and later the CEO of J. Walter Thompson, one of the biggest and oldest ad agencies in the world.

Patterson has 6M+ Google results to attest to his fame.

And if we’re already going with celebrities who have copywriting in their history, and maybe their blood, then we get to the most famous copywriter of all time, real or fictional, live or dead, even though nobody nowhere would identify him as a copywriter.

I’m talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald worked for a time as a copywriter before becoming the author of the quintessential great American novel, The Great Gatsby, and later a topic of almost 13M Google results.

So there. Now you know. And now you might ask yourself, “What did I just read? Did I really need this in my life? How did I wind up at the bottom of this email?”

If any of those questions is flitting through your head, let me point out that interest in famous people seems to be hardwired into our brains.

Tabloid writers and sales copywriters know this fact well, and they use it over and over and over. Because it works to draw attention and get people reading, day after day.

That’s a free lesson in copywriting.

For more such lessons, including ones that you might not be able to shrug off by saying, “I guess I knew that,” you will have to buy my Copy Riddles course.

The whole big idea behind Copy Riddles is the appeal of famous people — at least famous in the small niche of direct response copywriting.

I mean, on the sales page, in place of a subheadline, what I have is a picture featuring Gary Halbert, Gary Bencivenga, Stefan Georgi, and Ben Settle, all of them celebrities in the micro world of direct response, all of them paid off on that page as being integral to the course.

If you’d like to buy Copy Riddles, or if you simply want to read some gossip about famous copywriters, then head here and get ready to be amazed and shocked:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The Day After 40 years later

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Today being November 20, 2023, it is the 40th anniversary of the airing of the most influential movie you have never heard of.

The movie is called The Day After. It aired on ABC on November 20, 1983.

A few unusual things about this movie:

1. It was direct to TV, and never shown in theaters

2. It was depressing

3. It helped prevent nuclear war

The plot in a nutshell follows several different people around Kansas City and small surrounding towns. They go about their idyllic Midwestern lives, while in the background the radio reports increasing tensions between the US and USSR over some dispute in East Germany.

People stop to listen to the news, but shrug it off and say it won’t come to anything.

That afternoon, they see ICBMs launched from underground missile silos around Kansas City. A short while later, several nuclear bombs are detonated over Kansas City itself.

What follows is “the day after”:

A few survivors huddle together among ruins and charred corpses, while their hair falls out and their skin peels off, the result of rotting from inside, courtesy of the high levels of radiation in the air.

Things go from bad to worse, and then the movie ends. ​​I told you it was depressing.

When The Day After aired on ABC, it was watched by over 100 million people. At the time, it was the most-watched TV movie in history.

Before The Day After was shown to the public, it was screened for President Ronald Reagan and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

After the movie finished, the generals sat there petrified, without saying anything.

​​After Reagan saw it, he supposedly said, “not on my watch.” In his memoirs, he drew a direct line between watching The Day After and signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with the USSR.

The incredible thing was that this piece of American Propaganda was so effective that it was shown in the Soviet Union as well.

​​The producers of the movie insisted the movie be shown in the USSR in its original form, without any changes or commentary. The Soviets agreed.

​​The Day After aired there in 1987. While it’s not known exactly how many millions watched it, it can be presumed that they all ended up depressed.

I’m telling you about this movie because it’s culturally and historically significant. But if you must have your persuasion and influence takeaway, then consider the most obvious and most powerful one.

Look at the impact on Reagan and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

​​Imagine them sitting in a darkened room, staring mutely at images of rubble where Kansas City used to stand, as the final message rolled across the screen:

“The catastrophic events you have just witnessed are, in all likelihood, less severe than the destruction that would actually occur in a full-scale nuclear war. It is our hope that the images of this film will inspire the nations of this earth, their peoples and leaders, to find the means to avert that fateful day.”

Was the stuff in this movie any kind of news to them?​​

If anybody should have known what nuclear war would really mean in terms of actual impact and human cost, you would think that top Army brass and the President of the United States would be it.

And maybe they did know, on an intellectual level. But didn’t really see it, didn’t really feel it.

It took a dramatic, visual presentation to get it into their heads, and to change their attitudes.

And maybe that’s why I had to tell you about this depressing movie from 40 years ago, instead of simply repeating, “We are wired for story” or “You gotta a paint a picture in people’s minds.”

That’s all for today.

If you’re curious, here’s the TV trailer for The Day After. It lasts all of a minute and 32 seconds. Watch it, shudder, and when you think of it in the future, think of what I told you today:

Conclusions from my “what’s fun and keeps charging your credit card” poll

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I read just now that Sam Altman of OpenAI announced that they are pausing ChatGPT-plus signups. Too many people want in and OpenAI cannot cope.

In other news, yesterday I asked what subscriptions you enjoy or even find fun. I got lots of replies. And that’s a problem.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but all the replies were very different and many clashed with each other.

I guess that’s no surprise, given that I was asking what’s enjoyable or even fun. That’s kind of like asking, “What’s some good music you heard in the past month?”

The replies I got were so all over the place that it’s got me reconsidering my point from yesterday.

Maybe in order to have a successful subscription that actually delivers value to people, you don’t need entertainment.

Maybe you simply need self-interest.

I mean, look at ChatGPT. It’s got all the fun of an MS-DOS terminal, and yet they have to turn people away from subscribing.

I’ll think more about this, and eventually I’ll let you know how it impacts my plans for my own subscription offer.

Meanwhile, here’s a non-subscription offer to appeal to your self-interest. It’s my most expensive course, also my most valuable course, and the most likely to pay for itself quickly, in fact within just 8 weeks, if you only follow the step-by-step instructions it gives you.

For more info, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

How to come up with 2-3 good email ideas each day

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Last night, I was sitting on the couch when my ex-girlfriend came over from the kitchen.

It’s an odd situation. We’re broken up. But we still live together. And we’re on good terms.

“Are you writing your email?” she asked.

I looked at her like she’s crazy. “No, I did it this morning. I’m done for today.”

She nodded. “What’s tomorrow’s email going to be about?”

“Who knows,” I said.

“So how will you write it then?”

“It will be very, very hard,” I said with mock sadness.

​​But like I explained to my ex last night, it’s never really very, very hard, because I have a large and growing list of email ideas in my BEJ journal.

If I ever don’t have something fresh to write about, I can always reach into my journal. I find this resource so valuable that I even created a course once, Insight Exposed, all about my obsessive note-taking and journaling system.

But that’s not what I want to share with you today.

Because today, I didn’t reach into my journal for this email’s topic.

Instead, I did what I often do when I don’t have a clear idea of what to write.

I opened a new text file and started a list. I titled it daily10. Under that title, I came up with 10 possible ideas for today’s email, without discarding even ones that are not really good.

It took me all of 5 minutes.

Not all the ideas were ones that I will turn into an email. But of the ten, one was promising and three were good.

A couple of these possible email ideas I liked better than telling you about my ex and my daily10 process.

​​But since the reason I came up with those ideas in the first place was that daily10 process… I thought I would put those better ideas on hold and tell you about this valuable way to quickly come up with 2-3 good ideas for your daily emails.

So now you know.

And if you ever thought you suffered from “writer’s block”… well, now you also know that it’s really just an excuse not to sit down and write down 10 possible ideas, even if all of them are bad.

But enough inspiration. On to sales:​​

In a convoluted way, my email today is an example of my Most Valuable Email trick in action.

I hope I haven’t given too much away. Maybe I have.

​​But if there is still something that you think you can learn about the Most Valuable Email trick, then you can get educated via the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

About the only times I’ve ever felt okay

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Last night, I was reading a book about money and I came upon a quirky passage about John D. Rockefeller.

At one point, Rockefeller’s unimaginable wealth was worth 1.5% of the entire U.S. GDP, equivalent to about $349 billion today.

From the book I was reading:

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John D. Rockefeller was one of the most successful businessmen of all time. He was also a recluse, spending most of his time by himself. He rarely spoke, deliberately making himself inaccessible and staying quiet when you caught his attention.

A refinery worker who occasionally had Rockefeller’s ear once remarked: “He lets everybody else talk, while he sits back and says nothing.”

When asked about his silence during meetings, Rockefeller often recited a poem:

A wise old owl lived in an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke,
The less he spoke, the more he heard,
Why aren’t we all like that wise old bird?

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Speaking of wise old birds:

Legendary copywriter Robert Collier wrote that the most powerful appeal in copy is vanity, “that unconscious vanity which makes a man want to feel important in his own eyes and makes him strut mentally.”

Legendary negotiation coach Jim Camp said that from the moment we are all born, we struggle to feel comfortable and safe, or as Camp put it, “okay.” Not behind others in the race of life. Not inferior.

I don’t know about you. I know it’s true in my case. I like to feel smart. Or at least not inferior. I’ll struggle and strive to prove it. Except it never really works.

The point of today’s email is to be like that wise old owl.

Like Jim Camp and Robert Collier and John D. say, there’s real power in shutting up and letting your adversary feel okay, smart, in letting him mentally strut.

It’s the kind of thing you want to do if you’re selling or negotiating.

I’ll only add a little bit, which has nothing to do with selling or negotiation.

​​And that’s that the only times I’ve really felt okay is when I stopped trying to do anything to feel okay.

Something for you to consider, or to entirely ignore.

As for the business end of this email:

You won’t hear vanity discussed often in copywriting courses. But you will find it analyzed in several different ways in Round 19 of my Copy Riddles program, which deals with a sexy technique for writing bullets that leave other copywriters green with envy.

If you’d like to find out more about Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Take a look at this

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Maybe you’ve heard that last month, marketer Todd Brown assembled a gathering called Copy Legends:

A bunch of top copywriters, in a mansion in Palm Beach. Sitting around a big table. Talking openly for a day, while cameras and microphones record it all.

What did these legendary copywriters have to say?
​​
Well, for example, during a discussion of headlines, Copy Legend Kyle Milligan, who used to be a copy chief at financial publisher Agora and who made a name for himself by analyzing sales letters on YouTube, said the following:

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I believe everyone way overcomplicates what needs to be done at the start of a promotion. They’re looking for this whiz-bang tactic to grab attention.

Yet, there are these tried-and-true openers which continue to work like crazy. Like, a visual pattern interrupt that just says ‘look at this’ and gets the prospect to sort of adjust and focus for a second is like one of the most timeless, time-tested methods there is.

If you don’t know what else to do for an opener, go with ‘Take a look at this.’ It’s like old faithful.

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Kyle’s comment got a lot of people nodding their legendary heads around the Copy Legends table.

I found this amusing.

Because it’s a kind of anti-proof element for the whole concept of Copy Legends. As Todd says himself in the headline for the Copy Legends sales page, that concept is:

​“NEW Copy Techniques Working Like Crazy Today”

As in, they didn’t exist yesterday, and they will probably change by tomorrow.

It makes good sense to position an offer like this.

Like Kyle said around the Copy Legends table, people want that promise. They want whiz-bang tactics. And they will pay good money for such whiz-bangery, even though the really effective methods, as Kyle said at the actual Copy Legends event, are things that keep working year after year, decade after decade.

Todd Brown will soon release upon the world his Copy Legends recordings.

I won’t be buying it. But I certainly won’t tell you not to buy if you are after “new copy techniques.”

On the other hand, perhaps you are looking for timeless, time-tested copywriting techniques.

​​Technique that worked 50 years ago, 5 years ago, 5 months ago… and that will continue to work into the future, because they are based on fundamental human psychology and the competitive research of history’s greatest copywriters.

If that’s what you’re looking for, then… take a look at this:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

What it’s like to be… faced with AI eating your job

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Question:

What’s the worst thing you can ever say to a TV weather woman?

Answer:

“That’s not what my app says…”

I’ll tell you in a second how I found out that riveting bit of information. But first:

At a recent gathering of copywriters in London, I saw several attendees hang their heads and say, “As we all know, it’s been a rough year for many copywriters.”

I kept quiet because I didn’t want to expose my ignorance and absence of rough year.

​​I don’t work with clients any more. And my year has been fine.

What exactly has been rough on copywriters who do work with clients?

Is it the economic climate? AI taking copywriting jobs? Too much competition from the glut of would-be copywriters who entered the field over the past few years?

I felt it would be tactless to ask. So I kept quiet.

But back to the weather woman. I found out that the best way to piss off such a one is to say, “That’s not what my app says.”

I found that out because I’m dipping my toes into a new podcast, called What It’s Like To Be.

The podcast features interviews with people in different professions, so you can find out what it’s like to do their job. The last episode was TV weather woman Lacey Swope, who works for News 9 in Oklahoma City, the world epicenter of extreme weather.

I had no particular interest in hearing what it’s like to be a TV weather woman. But I’m glad I listened.

Because in many ways, weather womaning turns out to be a profession very similar to copywriting.

For example:​​

The job of being a TV meteorologist requires two separate skills — the technical skill of divining the weather, and the presentation skill, you might even say sales skill, of being friendly and cute on TV.

But wait, there’s more.

Weather meteorologists have for years been under threat by apps and websites that give the masses by-the-minute weather info. And the TV weather people who are surviving and thriving in spite of it are all—

… well for that, I will point you to the podcast itself.

You can find the podcast episode at the link below.

It’s worthwhile listening if you’re working as copywriter, and wondering what the future might bring, and how you can best prepare for it.

TV weather men and weather women been there, maybe a decade earlier. You can lean surprisingly practical stuff by listening to Lacey Swope and thinking how to apply her experiences and attitudes to your career.

And if that’s not enough to get you to click through and listen, then I will tell you the reason I started listening to What It’s Like To Be in the first place.

It’s because it’s the new podcast of Dan Heath, who is one half of the Heath brothers team that wrote the book Made to Stick.

​​So if you want to hear how somebody who literally wrote the book on effective, viral, long-lasting communication organizes and structures his content, then here ya go:

https://www.whatitsliketobe.com/2246914/13858315-a-tv-meteorologist

PS. Thanks to everyone who joined me and Kieran for the the storytelling presentation earlier today. I feel it went well. But I honestly never know when I’m presenting. If you were there live, I’d love to know what you thought of it. Write in and let me know.

The ONE thing to know about storytelling

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The ONE thing to know about storytelling is that, like cooking, plumbing, and robbing a bank, storytelling is really a collection of skills and strategies rather than a single unifying rule to follow.

I know you probably don’t want to hear that. But look at this:

– How do I know when I’m using too much detail?

– ​How do you know where to stop?

– ​How to add twists to a story?

– ​Making up stories… When might you want to do this?

A few days ago, I asked readers what questions they have about storytelling. Above are a few of the replies I got.

All fair questions. All require separate answers. Any answer that could possibly answer all of them, such as tension! or surprise! or delight!, is so vague as to be useless.

But wait, there’s more.

The real thing I want to share with you in this email is not the discouraging message above.

Rather, I wanna tell you something interesting I read yesterday in a book about magic and showmanship. The author of that book says the best performers, magicians, and showmen practice something he calls conservation.

Conservation: the ability to do more and the will to refrain.

From the book: “If we try to give any routine more importance than it will bear, we destroy the illusion and may reveal the secret.” Hence, conservation. The willingness to hold back the full might of your armory of magic tricks.

Same goes for storytelling.

There are lots of tricks if you really break down what the best storytellers do.

But in order to tell an interesting and effective story, you definitely do not need all of these tricks. In fact, one or two tweaks to what you might normally do are all it takes to turn a bland story into something memorable and exciting.

And on the other hand, making use of more than just one or two tricks per story is likely to destroy the illusion and may reveal the secret.

What secret?

Well, for that (drumroll) I invite you to join me for the free presentation on storytelling that Kieran Drew and I will host on Monday, specifically at 4pm CET/10am EST/7am PST (yes, I know).

This presentation is a bonus for those who get Simple Money Emails before the presentation goes live. After that, no free bonus.

If you already have Simple Money Emails, you should have gotten an email from either Kieran or me with the Zoom link to join Monday’s presentation.

And if you don’t yet have Simple Money Emails, you can get it at the link below. ​​I could try for some callback humor right now to wrap up this email, but instead I will conserve and refrain. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

New evidence that women tell amazing stories

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The late, great Patrice O’Neal — the man was literally great, weighing in at over 300 pounds — had a standup comedy routine about how women tell terrible stories.

“I always make my girlfriend tell me the end of any story she’s getting ready to tell me first, before I invest in the whole,” Patrice said. Then he gave an example:

“‘What’s the end of the story?'”

“‘Somebody got shot!'”

The big man grimaces and weighs his options hard for a moment.

“‘… ughhh… all right. Go ahead. Try to tell the story.'”

I thought of this last night as replies poured in to my email yesterday.

That email started with the story of a friend who wants to introduce more stories into her corporate presentations. The email ended by asking my readers to write in with their questions about storytelling.

So far, less than 12 hours later, I’ve gotten more than 40 replies to that email. And here’s what got me:

Except for one of those replies, which came from the friend I referenced in yesterday’s email, who also happens to read this newsletter and also happens to be a woman, all 40+ replies came from men.

I thought this was very curious.

For the record, my almost nonexistent bro-aura means I do not repel female readers in general. And typically, whenever I ask for feedback or solicit replies in an email, I get a healthy mix of both men and women replying.

And yet, yesterday, no women replied, except for my friend, who might have replied only because the email talked about her.

Clearly, all this is evidence that Patrice O’Neal was wrong, that women in fact tell amazing stories, and that they do not need any help with telling stories better.

But what about all those luckless men?

Many of them did ask really “male” questions, basically variations of:

“I want to know the algorithm that produces stories that are guaranteed to force every reader to read even if they don’t want to read and even if they don’t know me or want to know me, and also the algorithm should never fail and it should always specify exactly which word to insert in the next slot in the word-chain, given the totality of input that preceded it.”

I’ll tell you right now, I do not have that algorithm. And if I did, I wouldn’t share.

Fortunately, other men wrote in with more reasonable questions like:

– Where do I find stories to tell, or how do I come up with them?
– How do I know if my stories will be interesting to readers?
– How do I tie a random story into the thing I’m selling?
– Which types of stories to avoid?

All reasonable questions. But I won’t talk about them in any detail in the presentation I am preparing.

The reason why I won’t talk about them is that I’ve already created an entire course that addresses all of those questions in detail, and then some.

This course is clearly not meant for women, since they apparently don’t need it. But if you’re a man, looking for a rational, systematic, solution-oriented method to write sales emails, including ones with stories, then go here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/