Copywriting

The value of being wrong

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I had a guy write in today and tell me to get my reporting straight.

This was in connection to a daily email I’d sent to the dog ecommerce list I manage. The email was about Lady Gaga’s stolen bulldogs.

Perhaps you know the story. There was a heist. Some guys pulled up on the street, shot Lady Gaga’s dogwalker, and then sped away with the two dogs.

In my email, I wrote the kidnappers arrived in a van, because, well, that’s how kidnappers do, at least in the movies I’ve seen.

But it was not a van. It was a car. And one upset reader rightly wrote in to correct me.

I’ve talked about this before, but often the best way to get a response out of somebody is to say something wrong.

Blood rushes to your prospect’s head, and he has to write in to tell you how wrong you are. Because you’re careless… you’re offensive… maybe even because you’re stupid.

Why would you ever want your prospect thinking that?

Simple. Because hate, irritation, and scorn, are much closer to love, identification, and sales than you might think. They are certainly much closer to each other than they are to indifference.

Sometimes you get lucky, like I did, and stir up a reaction by accident. But you can do it on purpose too. As long as you don’t mind being told you’re wrong, by people who feel strongly enough about the matter to take time out of their day to write and correct you.

Well. I doubt I stirred up any controversy with this email. And so you probably didn’t get any closer to loving me or identifying me. Still, perhaps you’d like to join my email newsletter. If so, here’s where to go.

The best copywriting tactic ever

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Why does a giraffe have the longest neck?

The canned answer is because it’s useful. It allows the giraffe to browse books on the top bookshelf.

The real answer is that giraffes love extremes. That’s according to V. S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist and psychologist at UCSD.

Ramachandran says giraffes, and all other animals, have to know who’s a sexual target and who’s not. Otherwise, they might waste their prime dating years humping couches or human legs or other animals species. (Clearly, something went wrong with dogs.)

So how does a giraffe find love?

The simplest and easiest way it can. It looks for shortcuts.

“Long neck? Gotta be another giraffe! Time to get the cologne.”

But here’s where it gets tricky and interesting:

If a long neck is a mental shortcut for a giraffe to pick out another giraffe… then a longer neck is an even shorter cut.

The conclusion is giraffes’ necks get longer and longer. The longer your neck, the more likely you are to get some giraffe action and pass on your long neck genes. In the end, the longest neck wins.

As I said, giraffes love extremes. Almost as much as humans love extremes.

Because the human brain is like a giraffe’s. We also like shortcuts. And we want to follow these shortcuts to the end. Which leads me to the best copywriting tactic ever:

Go to extremes, whenever you can get away with it.

The most successful direct response copy is filled with the most dramatic stories… the scariest warnings… and with superlatives like fastest, easiest, and best.

The world is complicated. Too many choices. Too much information. That’s why we seek out extremes, to make our lives easier. And that’s something you can use to make your copy not better, but best.

Speaking of which, here’s the safest offer you will ever hear:

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UpCopy: Open for business

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I was leafing through the newspaper and I read that LinkedIn is launching a freelance marketplace. This could be interesting to you, whether or not you’re offering services for sale.

But let me give you a bit of background first:

LinkedIn got started by buying assets of UpCounsel. This was once a marketplace that connected freelance lawyers to clients.

So the first planned step for LinkedIn is to start its own marketplace by offering legal services. It could happen as soon as September.

Step two will be to repeat the same model across “100 different industries.” That’s according to Matt Faustman, who founded UpCounsel and is now heading the LinkedIn marketplace effort.

Of course, there’s already UpWork and Fiverr for finding freelancers. But if you ask me, LinkedIn could grab a position for itself. Perhaps higher up than UpWork, which is itself higher up than Fiverr.

I bring up this up for two reasons:

1. Maybe you’re a copywriter (or other service provider) looking for clients. If you haven’t done so yet, it might be high time to get on LinkedIn. Start posting articles or videos of yourself. Tap into this marketplace thing before others do.

If you need more motivation:

A LinkedIn spokeswoman said there’s been a surge in people hiring LinkedIn users who list they are “open for business.” Maybe that’s mere puffery. But maybe there’s something to it.

Still, LinkedIn client hunting might not be your thing. In that case…

2. I’ve got a business idea for whoever wants it.

The world of copywriters is notoriously disconnected from the world of business owners. For a long time, I only knew one half of this equation. But as I wrote a while ago, I’ve now seen the other side too. There really are many business owners who want to hire a good copywriter — and even pay him well. But they don’t know where to look or what to look for.

So my business idea for you is to create UpCopy, a freelance marketplace specifically for copywriters.

You’ll probably need to be well connected in the industry or at least good at networking. And even so, there’s a chance that may top copywriters will never want to be listed on your marketplace. It would be contrary to the kind of positioning they want to cultivate.

But who needs to know that?

If you can get a bunch of good-enough copywriters to sign up, getting business owners might be easy. And even if not, the end goal here is not to really create a thriving marketplace.

The goal is​​ just to build something that 5 months down the line, LinkedIn will be happy to pay for. Like they did with UpCounsel. I don’t know how much that was… but my guess is it’s more than anybody can make in several lifetimes of writing copy.

For more free ideas:

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Exploiting the disorder spectrum for marketing mischief

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About ten years ago, Dean Burnett went on TV and invented a new psychological disorder.

The background of the story is this:

Some English TV channel was making a documentary about personality quirks. So they invited Burnett to say something, since he is a neuroscientist with a diploma to prove it. At the end of the segment, they asked if Burnett had any personality quirks of his own.

Burnett was stumped. He had nothing to report really. But he didn’t want to disappoint under the glaring lights of a TV studio.

So he told a personal story about baking a potato, and he turned it into a condition.

Burnett was once baking a potato in the oven. He sat in the kitchen, reading a book, occasionally checking the potato. It looked so lonely, Burnett thought, all alone in the large oven. So he popped open the oven door and threw in another potato to keep the first fella company.

Back in the TV studio, Burnett concluded:

“I only found out later I’ve got what’s known as lonely potato syndrome.”

It was meant as a joke, or something like it. But it took on a life of its own. A crew member in the studio took Burnett aside later. “I might be suffering from lonely potato, too.” The show producer confided the same. Burnett says that now, years later, he still hears of people who feel afflicted by this condition.

In case I’m not making it clear, these people are serious. And they are concerned, or at least intrigued.

And here’s where I want to tell you my idea of a disorder spectrum:

On the one extreme of this spectrum, you’ve got genuine insights.

Some smart and caring person spots that a bunch of symptoms tend to go together. This gives hope for a common cause to it all, and maybe a common treatment. So this smart and caring person gives it a name — attention deficit disorder, shiny object syndrome — and puts it out into the world for people to be aware of.

But then there’s the other side of the spectrum. It’s something I heard marketer Will Ward speculate on a few days ago. It’s where you name a new disorder or syndrome, with no insight, research, or value to back it up.

When Will brought up this idea, I didn’t think it had legs. Not without some kind of real substance. But the Dave Burnett story changed my mind. It seems a new name, along with a bit of authority, is all you need to create a disorder out of thin air.

So where do you take this?

That’s for you to decide. Maybe you can just create a harmless identity for your followers. But it certainly seems like this could open the door to marketing mischief. At least in the hands of the right person, suffering from “uncertain identity” disorder.

Don’t know about uncertain identity disorder? It’s something I discuss in more detail in my email newsletter. But you’ll have to sign up to find out more. Here’s where to do that.

A little direct response gem, or a dirty trick?

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Once upon a time, deep in the direct response mines, I found a little gem in two sales letters from Gary Bencivenga.

It reminded me of my childhood tennis coach, who claimed he would wear the same t-shirt four days in a row. One day, the standard way… next day, inside-out… third day, front-to-back… fourth day, you get the idea.

Well, Gary’s two sales letters did something similar.

The first sales letter ran with the headline, “Do you make these mistakes in job interviews?” The offer was a book, Interviews That Win Jobs, for $49.95.

But typical to good DR marketing, Gary’s sales letter also offered several bonuses. Bonus one, How to Answer the 64 Toughest Interview Questions (“selling nationally for $49.95!”)… bonus two, Red Hot Cover Letters… bonus three, Get a Job NOW!… bonus four, Negotiate Your Best Compensation Package.

Then there was a second ad of Gary’s I found.

The headline read, “Job hunting? How well can YOU answer these 64 toughest interview questions?” The offer was a book, 64 Toughest Interview Questions, for $49.95.

But typical to good DR marketing, Gary’s sales letter also offered several bonuses. Bonus one, Interviews That Win Jobs (“selling nationally for $49.95!”)… bonus two, Red Hot Cover Letters… bonus three, Get a Job NOW!… bonus four, Negotiate Your Best Compensation Package.

I don’t know. Maybe Gary wore the other two bonuses inside-out and front-to-back also. I just haven’t found those ads yet.

My point being, if you hit upon a hot market, you can use and reuse your main offer and your bonuses to blitz your market. This way, you can often get more of a response than you would with just one ad and one offer.

And if you don’t use Gary’s trick all at once, you can do what Dan Kennedy calls a reverse:

When your offer starts to flag, take the free bonuses and make that the paid system you’re selling… and take the old system you were selling and break it up into free bonuses.

But maybe you don’t think this is a little gem. Maybe you think it’s a low-down dirty trick… selling people what you used to give away for free… and giving away what you used to charge for.

But what to do? Such is human nature. You have to play these kinds of games if you want people to value what you’ve got. As a clever Spaniard once wrote:

“And as all men know, what costs but little, that we rate but low.”

Here’s something I suspect you will rate but low:

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Drama in your copy? Not like this

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Imagine a fanciful scene, say:

A rough-looking man is walking down the street. He passes a rough-looking woman, who doesn’t mind that people can see her talking to herself (no headphones).

The woman bumps into the man but keeps walking without even a nod of apology.

“Watch where ya going, yea?” the man says.

“Tongue ma fart-box,” she replies with a smile and a little curtsy.

In one leap, the man catches up to the woman and grabs her by the sleeve. “Ya gonna shaw me a bit of respect.” He start to twist the woman’s arm.

But instead of whining or trying to pull away, the woman slams into the man, chest to chest, and gives him a kiss. Straight on the mouth, tongue and all.

The guy is stunned. For a second, he goes with the kiss, out of pure shock.

But then he starts to squirm… and then to scream, mouth closed, with the woman still attached to his face.

Finally, he manages to push her away.

There’s blood on her lips.

The man looks panicked and confused, like he’s just tasted something unfamiliar but awful. He looks down and opens his mouth. A red and bloody pulp of flesh rolls out of his mouth and falls to the ground.

The man staggers back in horror. “Ya bip my pongue off!” he yells.

And in that moment, a seagull swoops down from the solid gray sky, and lands right between the man and the woman. In a flash, the hungry bird picks up the fleshy red pulp off the ground and flies off, while the man looks after it, and after the displaced tip of his tongue, never to be seen again.

So.

​​The question I have to answer now is, why? Why tell you such a pointless and gruesome story?

After all, if I were practicing for a screenwriting workshop, you might rightly tell me to try again. “It’s a little forced,” you might say. “I guess you’re trying to go for some kind of Oldboy violence and bizareness… but it just seems made up and fake. Maybe tone it down. Get some inspiration from real life.”

And there’s my point. Because the above story, bizarre and unlikely though it might seem, is from real life.

It happened on August 1, 2019, in that ancient hub of learning and culture, Edinburgh. I invented the dialogue with the help of Scottish insults dictionary. But the rest of the story is all true, as far as the Daily Mail and the Scotsman would tell me. The aggressive kiss on the street… the tongue that wouldn’t stay put… the opportunistic seagull. All true.

But if this scene happened in a movie, who would believe it?

And like I say, that’s my point. Some things can be true. But there’s a difference between being true and seeming true.

And if you have to choose between those in your sales copy, always go with the seeming true. In your promises… in your case studies… in your warnings.

Yes, you want drama. But you want the kind of drama that movies and TV shows have taught us to expect. Not the crazy shit that happens in real life.

Another gruesome thought:

I write an email newsletters. The emails arrive to your inbox each day, like hungry seagulls. That probably doesn’t sound appealing. But if for some unlikely reason, you like bizarre and occasionally violent content, here’s how to get on the newsletter.

How to get hired without trouble or questions asked

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“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:

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Rolls Royce copywriting portfolio

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You probably know the famous Ogilvy Rolls Royce ad:

At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock

Wouldn’t it be nice to write ads like this all the time?

Wouldn’t you like to simply highlight the classy superiority of the product that you’re selling, instead of teasing people with the amazing secret of the one-legged accountant… or prophesying “The End of America”… or promising a passive monthly income of $5,378… $7,442… yes, even $11,246 — no cash, credit, or skills required?

Well, if that’s what you’re dreaming of, then all I can tell you is, be David Ogilvy. Because even though Ogilvy was a big fan of direct response, this electric clock thing is an ad for a brand.

Back in 1958 when this ad came out, American consumers already knew Rolls Royce well. In fact, they already knew that Rolls Royce was the fanciest car brand around. The electric clock thing was just a dramatic illustration of that.

That’s not to say you couldn’t do something similar in a direct response ad. You just need to have a brand that your audience already knows and likes. Those do exist, at least for very small and tight pockets of people.

But if you ain’t got a brand like this, then you’ll be better off calling out a problem or making a big promise. No cash, credit, or skills required.

But you probably already know this. The only reason I bring it up is in case you’re fresh to direct response copywriting. In that case, maybe you’re wondering why Ogilvy’s ad — celebrated even by Gary Halbert — looks so different than your typical direct response piece.

Actually, there’s a second reason I bring it up.

It’s because it’s relevant to that other newbie question, about creating a copywriting portfolio. Because everything I’ve just told you is basically the best advice I can give to anyone looking to create a portfolio.

Perhaps the portfolio point I’m trying to make is obvious. Perhaps it’s not. In any case, I’ll spell it out in my email tomorrow.

Copywriting: a business or a job?

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I was out of clean underwear, and things were looking bleak.

I was staying in an Airbnb apartment. I put my clothes to wash earlier in the morning.

But halfway through the cycle, the washing machine got stuck. It blinked stupidly. Even though I talked to it and comforted it, it wouldn’t spin or finish the cycle. My clothes, including all my underwear except what I had on, were stuck inside.

I wrote to the owner. “Oh, that’s too bad,” she answered. “My husband will come after work to take a look at it. If he can’t fix it, we’ll call the repairman.” It was 10am.

A few hours passed. I walked by the washing machine and spotted that the floor was wet. The washing machine was leaking somewhere. Water had pooled behind the machine, and was running along the wall all across the room. It even reached the next room, with the hardwood floor.

I wrote to the owner again. “Oh my God!” she said. “I’ll call the washing machine repairman right away!”

The point being, incentives matter. And on that topic:

Today I got paid the second 50% of the biggest copywriting project I have done to date. And so I did a debrief for myself, to see how the project went, and what I could learn from it.

My conclusion was this: I did a good job. I put in a lot of work, I gave the client much better ideas than they had initially, and I delivered solid copy.

And yet:

Will the client actually get value out of my copy? Will they simply send some cold traffic to it, and have the copy make money out the gate? And if not, will they know what to fix and tweak and test?

If I’m being honest with myself, I know there would be a bunch of things I’d have done differently if there were was some revenue share at stake on this project.

I would have taken more control of the project to put this copy into action sooner… I would have pushed back harder against client ideas that I thought were suspicious… I would have insisted on being involved in the project even now, after I’d delivered the copy.

Royalties are a good system. I’ve told my clients this for a while. And if you’re a copywriter, maybe you can do the same, using the same argument I’ve just given you.

And if you need an argument to bite the bullet and actually make this suggestion to your clients, and to even insist on it, then remember Dan Kennedy. “Copywriting is a business,” says Dan. “You have to get paid on the back end, otherwise you just have a job.”

That’s all the motivation I have for you for today. Now for the sales pitch:

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Stop reading this blog unless you want to march in my army

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How do you overcome somebody’s confirmation bias?

That’s something I found out today in a provocative article titled the “Curation/Search Radicalization Spiral.”

The article tells the story of a 13-year-old Jewish kid from Washington D.C. who became a true-believing moderator of an alt-right subreddit.

The story itself is less interesting than it sounds. What is interesting is how Mike Caulfield, the author of the article, explains how this kind of “grooming” happens.

How could a Jewish kid from a liberal family be persuaded to join a far-right community, made up of people who are often hostile to Jews?

And more broadly, how is it possible to overcome somebody’s confirmation bias… and implant ideas that were once inconceivable?

I won’t repeat Caulfield’s entire argument here. But the gist is the idea of gradual curation. Here’s how it works:

1. A person (the mark, for short) goes to a subreddit or a Facebook group or somebody’s blog.

2. There he gets exposed to a curated claim. This is a claim that is carefully selected, provocative, but not threatening to his world view.

For example, the 13-year-old above was accused of sexual harassment by a classmate. So maybe he came across a claim on Reddit that said, “Study in Cambridge Law Journal reports up to 90% of rape allegations are false.”

3. At this point, the mark is intrigued but also a bit cautious. So he goes on to verify the claim for himself by doing a quick Google search. There it is, “Rumney, Philip N.S. (2006). ‘False Allegations of Rape’. Cambridge Law Journal. 65 (1): 128–158.”

4. Mind is blown. Now the mark is ready to repeat the process one level down… with another curated but more provocative claim, which gets him closer to the alternate reality.

None of this is news to marketers. Curating facts is what good direct response copy is all about, and Gene Schwartz wrote about “gradualization” back in 1966.

There are even copy tricks to simulate verifying something yourself. But maybe it’s a bit tasteless to give you a step-by-step here, since we started by talking about the radicalization of a 13-year-old.

So instead, let me tell you what I personally get out of this. It might be relevant to you also:

The upshot for me is to avoid curated content as much as possible. That means turning off social media… news sites… and I hate to say it, newsletters like mine.

Because everybody has an agenda. And if you give somebody a freeway into your mind that’s open 24 hours a day, every day, it gets harder to resist that agenda.

You start being groomed… and the next thing you know, you might be marching in somebody else’s army, fighting somebody else’s war, fully convinced it was your idea all along.