Copywriting

Puerto Rico

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I don’t know much about Puerto Rico except two things:

1) It gets regularly flattened by hurricanes

2) “International Man” Simon Black praises it as a good place to do business

Neither of those makes me really want to visit the place.

But I’m reading David Ogilvy’s “On Advertising” right now. Ogilvy is famous in copywriting circles for his Rolls-Royce ad:

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

Along with Rolls-Royce, Ogilvy also wrote copy for many other massive corporate accounts. ​American Express. Shell. IBM. But he didn’t do advertising for products and companies only.

Ogilvy also sold countries.

His advertising agency produced big tourism campaigns for England, France, and, most famously, Puerto Rico. As Ogilvy says in his book:

“The biggest obstacle to tourism in Puerto Rico was its image. Research showed that people believed it to be the dirtiest, poorest, most squalid island in the Caribbean. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and this I demonstrated in advertisements. Tourism increased by leaps and bounds.”

Ogilvy created ads for Puerto Rico that captured attention… overcame objections… told a story… and most important, created a vision.

Do you want to see how?

Then check out the following ad for Puerto Rico from 1958, and see how Ogilvy creates vision, both through copy and through the image (taken by famous penny-pinching photographer Elliott Erwitt):

“Fugitive” headline on run for 45 years captured in 2019 ad

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I read in today’s news that a fugitive in China, on the lam for 17 years, was finally caught inside the cave where he had been hiding.

Police couldn’t track him down for years.

But they finally found him by flying drones over a wooded mountain region where he had been living a Yeti-like existence for so long that he had forgotten how to speak.

This modern use of technology to rope in poor fugitive scum made me think of a much older technology.

The WANTED poster.

Or rather, the WANTED headline.

In his 1974 book Tested Advertising Methods, famed copywriter John Caples wrote that “Wanted” is a good word to use in headlines.

“Wanted — Man with car to run a store on wheels”

Fast forward to 2019, and this WANTED idea was just spotted scurrying across a subject line for an Health Sciences Institute email, which ran twice this month.

The thing is, not all headline formats that worked back in 1974 work today.

And in spite of the HSI email, you probably shouldn’t count on WANTED being a great headline format today.

However, the underlying idea is still very sound.

And that idea is to specifically call out your audience.

So looking back over the last couple of years, here are some examples of successful headline complexes that do exactly this:

* Confirmed: If you are over 60 as of January 1, 2019, you need to protect yourself now…
* Warren Buffett’s Shocking Advice to Americans Who Hope to Retire in the Next 5-7 Years
* Attention: Men & Women Over Age 50:

By the way, did you know Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan wrote a song titled “Wanted Man” back in 1967?

Cash sang it live at San Quentin Prison to a crowd of felons.

I’ve always liked this song for its list of no-name American towns that still meant something fifty years ago, as well as for the backing vocals, courtesy of Johnny Cash’s wife and her family.

If you have 3 minutes and 24 seconds, and you want to give this song a listen, here’s the original, outlaw recording:

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.

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/

17 good reasons to hit a woman

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I just watched a comedy special by a guy named Bill Burr.

He’s apparently one of the biggest comics in the world for the past 10 years, but since I’m like a hermit, I hadn’t heard of him until a few days ago.

Anyways, during the special, Bill dances on the razor’s edge for just over an hour.

He gets so close to incredibly divisive, controversial, and dangerous topics that it took my breath away.

“Black people never got the memo that you have to register your weapons.”

“Goldgigging whores are bringing down great men.”

“I’m not saying anybody should ever hit a woman, but you can’t deny there are good reasons. I can think of 17 of them right now.”

(By the way, I’m paraphrasing all of these bits, but that was the basic gist.)

I bring this up because comedy and copywriting have so much in common. And after listening and reading about copy and marketing for years, I now find I often get better ideas by watching comics, and listening to them analyze their work, than by listening to yet another copywriting seminar.

Now, there’s decades worth of work that goes into producing and polishing a comedy special like Bill Burr put out.

But some of the fundamentals are obvious.

And that’s what I want to point out today, for your benefit as well as my own.

Point 1: Think about where you stand. Bill Burr isn’t just saying things because they are shocking and provocative. He’s saying them because he genuinely believes them, at least in my impression. The thing is, even though he’s saying napalm-level-incendiary stuff, he’s thought through his point well enough, and he’s got enough good arguments (presented in a funny way), that you at least have to hear him out. And he definitely has your attention.

Point 2: Don’t back down. Once he says something crazy and provocative, there’s no weakness in Bill Burr. He has this grin on his face all the time, and even when he says, “I can think of 17 good reasons to hit a woman,” the grin doesn’t change. And neither does his delivery. Or the words he uses. Or his arguments. And that means that people who don’t agree with him don’t get an automatic chance to shut him down.

I think both of these points, though they are high-level, can be useful for marketers and copywriters as well.

Particularly if you’re putting out long-term marketing, such as daily emails, that go out to people who know you, rather than cold prospects.

But that’s not for everybody. If you don’t like playing that game, and you’d prefer simply talking benefits, and convincing cold prospects to buy from you, there’s good money to be made there. And in case you want some battle-tested ideas on how to write such copy, specifically in the form of advertorials, then check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/