Proof

How I plan to 10x my results by cutting down on clever copywriting techniques

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I’m traveling for a few days, and while sipping my exotic travel coffee this morning, I thought:

“This damn daily email… how could I get it done a little more quickly today, while at the same time making it worthwhile for my readers to actually read?”

I waited for inspiration.

And I waited.

“Surely” I said to myself, “my subconscious, that powerful torpedo guidance system that Maxwell Maltz told me about, won’t leave me in the lurch. It will come up with something. Won’t it?”

My subconscious shrugged its shoulders. It was enjoying the morning coffee and the cool breeze too much to do any thinking.

Sure enough, I was left on my own.

So I did what I always do in situations like this.

I went back to a big ole file where I’ve collected the most valuable and interesting stories from the classic marketing books I’ve read over the years.

Such as, for example, the following short story from Claude Hopkins’s My Life In Advertising.

Hopkins is often called the “godfather of modern advertising.” And with reason. He helped build up Palmolive and Quaker Oats and Goodyear into giant brands that still survive and dominated today, a century later.

Anyways, my second favorite Claude Hopkins lesson is the following story, about the relative ineffectiveness of clever copywriting and sales techniques. Hopkins wrote:

“Mother made a silver polish. I molded it into cake form and wrapped it in pretty paper. Then I went from house to house to sell it. I found that I sold about one woman in ten by merely talking the polish at the door. But when I could get into the pantry and demonstrate the polish I sold to nearly all.”

I suspect there is some value in that story, if only you meditate on it a little. At least that’s what I’m doing. After all, Hopkins’s implied promise — 10x your results by focusing less on your clever sales pitch — is too big not to at least take a little seriously.

Like I said, that’s my second favorite Claude Hopkins lesson. My favorite Claude Hopkins lesson…

Well, it’s one I like the sound of a lot. But even though I learned it years ago, I still struggle to apply it.

If you want to read all about it, including how to maybe make it a little easier to apply, you can find it in Commandment VI of my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters. If you still haven’t got that little book yet:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

A $2,000 idea

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Yesterday, I met the owners of an apartment I am trying to rent in Barcelona. They are a married couple, very elegant and stylish, a few years older than me. We met at a cafe.

I sat down across from them and I leaned back in my chair. “So what do you have for me,” I said.

The husband smiled at me. “Would you like to drink a coffee first?”

I smirked, stared him in the eye, and said nothing.

“Oh okay,” he said, clearly browbeaten. “So you’ve had a chance to look at the apartment? You liked it?”

“The apartment is fine,” I said. “But let’s talk turkey. How much do you want for it?”

The man paused for a moment. He and his wife looked at each other in confusion.

“What do you mean?” the wife said. “The rent is right there on the listing.” And she repeated the number. It was a round figure, divisible by one hundred, ending in two zeros.

I laughed with contempt.

“A round figure?” I said, barely controlling myself. “You haven’t done one minute of work on this, have you? You just pulled that number out of your ear, without checking comparables and without putting in any effort to calculate a fair price. No! I don’t trust your round figure. And I don’t like being disrespected like this. I’m not interested in renting your apartment any more. Goodbye!”

I got up and left the cafe. The husband ran after me, begging me to reconsider, offering to make the price more specific and jagged. But it was too late.

In case this sounds like a slightly fantastical scenario… well, that’s because it is.

What actually happened yesterday was that I did meet the owners.

I smiled at them and I put on my best and most responsible face.

Using subtle sub-communication, I made it clear that if they let me rent their apartment, I would not adopt a pitbull… I would not host any drug-driven orgies… and I would not take up drumming as a new hobby.

After a few minutes of this renter mating dance, the owners were satisfied. They agreed to let me have their beautiful apartment, and I agreed to take it, at a perfectly round monthly rent, neatly ending in two zeros.

If you’re wondering why I’m telling you this, then, like my fantasy owners above, you clearly didn’t read my email yesterday.

That email was all about the power of specificity. Specifically, the power of specific numbers. Recently proven by some fancy scientific research, but suspected by smart marketers for decades and probably centuries.

Except…

There are times where your numbers don’t have to be specific.

My rent situation above was clearly one.

I accepted the nice and round price. Doing anything else would have been foolish, bordering on very foolish. The rental market in Barcelona is insane. There are only a few available apartments and thousands of hungry renters swooping down on each one.

But you might say, “Sure, you can get away with a round price sometimes. That doesn’t mean that a specific, jagged price wouldn’t work just as well or better.”

Maybe. Or maybe not.

There are situations where a round price is not only acceptable, but actually better. Where a round price sub-communicates high status, a lack of neediness, and a position of power.

Take for example the curious case of one Joe Sugarman. Joe was a multimillionaire marketer who created the BluBlocker sunglasses empire.

Joe sold each of his BluBlockers for $69.95.

But when Joe ran an ad to advertise his legendary copywriting and marketing seminar, he didn’t promise to reveal “7-figure funnel secrets,” or offer a *9.99 price.

​​Instead, Joe said, “Come study with me,” right in the headline. And then in the subhead, he told you how much it would cost, — $2,000, with three round zeroes at the end.

So take time and ponder on that. I’ll leave you today with a bit from Joe’s ad:

There are two types of successful people. Those that are successful and those that are super successful.

To be successful you must learn the rules, know them cold, and follow them. To be super successful, you must learn the rules, know them cold, and break them.

For more marketing ideas, some worth $9.99 and others worth $15,000, come and read my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

A sexual health riddle by the 499-pound gorilla of copywriting

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Today, I will share a super valuable copywriting commandment with you.

Tomorrow, I will tell you an equally valuable commandment, which is the exact opposite of what I’ll tell you today.

How is that gonna work? We will see. Let me set it up with a little riddle for you:

* Almost foolproof contraception: It’s over 99% effective but… so new… most people have never even heard about it!

So, can you guess what this “almost foolproof” method of contraception is?

If you’ve been through my Copy Riddles program, you should be able to answer easily.

​​In fact, you should be able to answer this riddle even when the neighbor’s car alarm jolts you awake at 3am… while you’re all sleepy and a little drooly… just lifting your head up for a moment and saying, “Yes of course that almost foolproof method of contraception is —” before you drop back down to the pillow and pass out again.

But maybe you haven’t been through Copy Riddles. In that case, answering this riddle might be a bit harder. So I’ll will give you a hint that might help.

A few years ago, the Harvard Business School blog published an article titled, “When Negotiating a Price, Never Bid with a Round Number.”

They cited a bunch of scientific studies, in-lab experiments, and statistical analyses.

And the conclusion was:

Better make your prices, and really all your published numbers, jagged, specific, and unround. That’s because people don’t trust or respect a round number much — they figure that little thought and work went into it, and the number is probably not accurate or not representative.

This is really an example of the incredible uselessness of science, if you ask me.

After all, this bit of scientific research came out a few years ago.

But how long have marketers and business owners known, pretty scientifically, to make their numbers not round? A long time. For example, take Gary Halbert, the 499-pound gorilla in the world of copywriting.

Gary is responsible for that sexual health bullet above. It was part of his sales letter to sell his “Killer Orgasms!” ebook.

I won’t tell you what Gary’s “almost foolproof contraception” method is. But knowing that Gary was a smart marketer, and combining it with that obvious and almost useless bit of HBS scientific news, will probably be enough to get you to Gary’s contraception method, or at least to get you close.

But maybe you really really need to know the answer.

​In that case, you can try to dig up a copy of Gary’s book. Or just wait for the next run of Copy Riddles, which will happen in June, and probably at some jagged, specific, not-round price.

Or maybe not?

Maybe the next price of Copy Riddles will end in a zero, or maybe even two zeros?

If you are curious how or why I would possibly want to make my price a nice, even, round number, after everything I’ve just told you, then read my email tomorrow. It will tell you the answer. You can sign up to get it here.

Factual vs. emotional

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As I so often do, this morning I sat down at my writing desk, took a sip of my coffee, lit my pipe, put on my eyepatch, and started re-reading, for the 114th time, David Ogilvy’s self-promotional ad, How to Create Advertising That Sells.

As you probably know, Ogilvy’s ad is a collection of 38 bits of wisdom that Ogilvy learned by creating “over $1,480,000 worth of advertising.” Number 23 on the list is this:

23. Factual vs. emotional. Factual commercials tend to be more effective than emotional commercials.

However, Ogilvy & Mather has made some emotional commercials which have been successful in the marketplace. Among these are our campaigns for Maxwell House Coffee and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate.

I don’t know about you, but it sounds to me like Mr. Ogilvy is saying, “Certainly, emotional ads have been known to work… but it takes a true expert, someone like me, to pull it off. Otherwise, best stick to facts, facts, facts, or your advertising will pass like a ship in the night.”

That goes against a lot of copywriting advice you hear today.

Today, the main advice for copywriters is to agitate, scare, excite, outrage. Pile on the power words. Don’t tell people facts. They don’t care. But stir their emotions and they will buy.

So what gives? Was Ogilvy just writing at a different time? Or do different rules apply you promote Hershey’s Milk Chocolate in Life Magazine than when you promote, say, ProstaStream supplements on Clickbank?

Well, I can tell you a little personal story.

The single piece of copy that has paid me the most money to date, per word written, was a 317-word email I wrote a couple years ago, in 2020. It was full of facts, to support the idea that using hand sanitizer won’t get your hands as clean as washing your hands with soap and water. We were selling “paper soap” — little dental-floss sized dispensers of one-time soap flakes. And thanks to that fact-filled email, we sold, literally, a ton of paper soap.

“Yeah,” I hear you say, “but that was a unique moment. There was a lot of fear around corona, and everybody was in the mindset to keep their hands clean or die. You were just tapping into that.”

You’re right. And in a way, that’s the point.

Facts alone are like pebbles by the side of the road.

They’re not very impressive. Not very threatening. Not very useful.

But take some of those facts, and put them inside your prospect’s shoe. Suddenly, you have him squirming, and twisting, and looking to get rid of that discomfort and pain. And not only that. You have him taking that discomfort and pain with him — unlike power words and emotions, which are like a cloud of smoke that disappears in a few moments.

The bigger point is that, ideally, all aspects of your copy, or anything else you write, should do double or triple duty. Facts are no different.

Sure, facts provide concreteness and believability. But choose the right facts, and you will stir emotions also. After all, who really cares that, at 60 miles an hour, the loudest thing in this Rolls Royce is the electric clock? There must be something else going on there.

And now here’s a fact:

Every day, over 1,050 people are signed up to get emails with little bits of marketing wisdom like what you just read. If you’d like to join them, click here and fill out the form.

Selling drugs to kids

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IN ONLY SIX MONTHS, that formerly desperate man bought a $385,000 house with half down, and became a millionaire in less than a year. He also bought a vacation house, put away enough to cover his kids’ college educations, easily stopped his bad habits, and attained complete personal and financial freedom… all accomplished automatically, without effort or willpower!

That’s the back envelope copy from a direct mail sales letter written by one Jeff Paul.

​​Jeff was a student and protege of Dan Kennedy, and this sales letter is actually selling Dan’s Psycho Cybernetics program.

I’m sharing this copy with you for two reasons:

First, because I want to point you to Info Marketing Blog. It’s got a few decades’ worth of brilliant direct response ads, and smart and interesting commentary. And if you need proof of that, the guy who runs Info Marketing Blog, Lawrence Bernstein, was called out as a valuable resource during Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar by Gary Bencivenga himself.

Second, there’s a masterful marketing and copywriting lesson in those two sentences of copy above. It’s right there at the end:

“… automatically, without effort or willpower!”

When I look outside at the people I know… and when I look inside, at my own feelings and frustrations… I find this is what we all really really want, deep down.

Peace. No effort. Definitely no struggle, and no demands on our willpower. No opportunity for it to go wrong. Instead, all done automatically, by some mechanism outside of us.

That’s why smart marketers like Dan Kennedy and Jeff Paul, and millions of others like them, make those promises.

And if you want to sell, in big numbers, at high prices, you should make these promises too.

Only be careful those desires you stimulate in your sales copy don’t seep into your own subconscious.

Because in my experience, life is all about effort, about exerting your willpower, about getting things done yourself instead of sitting around and wishing they could be done automatically.

How exactly do you reconcile selling something to people that you wouldn’t consume yourself? It seems a little like going down to the elementary school each day to sell drugs to kids, while being religious about never allowing that filth near your own family.

I don’t have a good way to reconcile these things for you. But facts are facts. And if you want to see some market-tested facts, here’s Jeff Paul’s complete sales letter. It’s worth reading. So much so that I’ll even talk about it tomorrow.

Sign up for my email newsletter if you want to read that when it comes out. And here’s the link to the sales letter if you want to get a head start.

https://infomarketingblog.com/wordpress/jeff-pauls-greatest-story-selling-ad/

The Pope and Anthony Fauci are using this “Millionaire’s Secret” to create products that look, feel, and sell like blockbusters

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A few weeks ago, I was listening to an interview that James Altucher did with Peter Diamandis and Tony Robbins. And right as I was about to fall asleep, Tony said:

“Peter was going to go to the Vatican… where, believe it or not, every two years they have this regenerative medicine conference that the Pope actually hosts.”

“Woof,” I said, suddenly wide awake. And I lifted my nose up in the air, like an Irish setter that scents some game in the bushes.

It turns out there really is such an event. It’s called the International Vatican Conference.

The last one, which happened last May, was attended by the Pope himself, along with Anthony Fauci, the CEOs of Moderna and Pfizer, Ray Dalio, Chelsea Clinton, Cindy Crawford, David Sinclair, Deepak Chopra, and of course, aging rock star Steven Perry, the lead guitarist of Aerosmith.

Unfortunately, this latest International Vatican Conference was virtual and not held in real life​. Otherwise, you could write a Dan Ferrari-style lead, and paint the picture of the Pope walking down the soft red carpet in the gilded Hall of the Blessing, exchanging secret handshakes with Chelsea Clinton and wink-wink-nudge-nudging Ray Dalio.

I’m telling you all this for two reasons.

Reason one is that it’s a cool story I hadn’t heard anywhere before or since. If you’re looking for a hook for a VSL, now or in the coming months, I figure you can’t beat the intrigue of the Pope and Anthony Fauci and the CEO of Moderna in an invitation-only, world-shaping event held inside the Vatican.

Reason two is that maybe you don’t have a product to promote. Or your product simply doesn’t fit this Dan Brownish Vatican conference, and you’re struggling to find something equally intriguing.

In either case I would tell you, drop whatever you’re doing right now. And seriously consider creating a new business or at least a new product, built around this Vatican conference.

Because, as master copywriter Gary Bencivenga said once, great products are “those with a clear-cut, built-in, unique superiority supported by powerful proof elements.”

Gary’s advice was that you should create a product around a strong proof element to start, rather than create a product, and then start truffling out proof to support what you got.

Which is great. Only one thing I would add:

If you can additionally make your foundational proof dramatic and intriguing — again, think Dan Brown — well, then you’re really in for the kind of gold haul that would make the Vatican sit up and take notice.

So there you go. That’s my generational-wealth-building idea for you for today.

And when you do create your Vatican-scented regenerative essential oils, or whatever, and it ends up turning you into a multimillionaire, just remember me and send me a small finder’s fee. I’ll be grateful to you. And I’ll use it to take a trip to Rome and visit the Vatican — but just the outside.

Oh, and sign up for my email newsletter. You won’t believe the secrets and intrigue that are hiding inside.

Flash roll: The following presentation has been paid for by Desert Kite Enterprises

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I’ve been on a hiatus from the usual marketing mailing lists over the past few weeks, so it took me a while to find out that Joe Sugarman died recently.

I’ve written a lot about Joe and his ideas in this newsletter.

In part, that’s because Joe’s Adweek book was the first book on copywriting I ever read. It gave me a lot of ideas to get started in this field, and to a good extent influenced my writing style.

But also, I’ve written a lot about Joe just because he was such a successful direct marketer, who was willing to publicly share the many million-dollar insights he had over his long career.

I found out Joe had died from Brian Kurtz’s email last Sunday. Brian also sent out a link to the infomercial for Joe’s BluBlockers — which became Joe’s biggest success, bringing in over $300 mil.

I actually bought a couple pair of BluBlockers a few years ago. So I was happy to finally see the full infomercial. In a nut, the entire 28 minutes is just a frame around a bunch of on-street testimonials that Joe collected for BluBlockers.

But ok.

Maybe you’re starting to wonder if this email will have any kind of marketing lesson, or if I will just reminisce about Joe Sugarman.

I do got a lesson for you.

​​Take a look at the following bit of sales patter delivered by Joe in the infomercial. It comes after some testimonials by people who say that BluBlockers allow them to see as well as they do with prescription sunglasses.

“I know BluBlockers aren’t prescription sunglasses,” the host babe asks Joe, “but why do so many people think that they are?”

Joe responds:

“BluBlockers block 100% of blue light. Not only the ultraviolet light but the blue light as well. Blue light does not focus very clearly on the retina. And the retina is the focusing screen of the eye. Now all the other colors focus fairly close to the retina. But not blue light. So if you block blue light, what you see is a lot clearer, and a lot sharper.”

If you have read Oren Klaff’s book Flip the Script, you might recognize this as a flash roll. It’s basically a rapidfire display of technical language used to wow — or hypnotize — the prospect into thinking you’re legit.

(To make it clearer: the original flash roll was a term used by undercover cops. They flashed a roll of cash to a drug dealer to show they meant business.)

For over two years, I’ve been collecting ideas related to the use of insight in marketing. That’s when you say, “Ahaaa… it makes so much sense now!” And in that way, you become open to influence.

Several people have suggested to me to include Klaff’s flash roll idea. I resisted.

After all, what is there to intuitively make sense of in Joe’s argument above? He’s just throwing some technical facts at you. They could be completely made up. You have no way to actually experience or validate those facts for yourself.

But it doesn’t matter.

The people who told me the flash roll creates a feeling of insight were right. I was wrong.

That same feeling of deep understanding — which is usually triggered when you experience or understand something for yourself — well, it can be triggered, on a slightly smaller scale, just by an adequate display of authority.

“So you’re telling me to include more authority in my sales copy?” you ask. “That doesn’t sound very insightful.”

What I’m actually telling you is that there are better ways of creating insight. But if you got nothing else, then some technical jargon, or perhaps a scientific study, can be good enough to get people to say, “Ooh… I get it now!” Even though they really don’t.

As for those more powerful ways of creating insight, I’ll write about that one day, in that book I’ve been promising for a long time.

For now, I’d like to tell you about an interesting article. It’s titled “Beware What Sounds Insightful.”

This article points out the unobvious truth that there are mechanisms of creating the feeling of insight… and that they can dress up otherwise mundane or even ridiculous ideas as something profound. It even gives you some more examples of flash rolls, by some of the most insightful writers out there on the Internet. In case you’re interested:

https://commoncog.com/blog/beware-what-sounds-insightful/

Skunk email with a great and valuable reward

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This email won’t be easy or pleasant to get through.

​​In fact it will take work and it might make you feel queasy along the way. But if you can manage it to the end, the rewards will be great.

Let me start by telling you I’m re-reading Claude Hopkins’s My Life in Advertising. And one story I missed before is this bit from Hopkins’s childhood:

One of the products which father advertised was Vinegar Bitters. I afterward learned its history.

A vinegar-maker spoiled a batch through some queer fermentation. Thus he produced a product weird in its offensiveness.

The people of those days believed that medicine must be horrible to be effective.

We had oils and ointments “for man or beast” which would make either wild. We used “snake oil” and “skunk oil,” presumably because of their names.

Unless the cure was worse than the disease, no one would respect it.

Today we assume that every offer must be fast, easy, and cheap.

But human nature changes like glass flows — so slowly that we will never see it happen.

And a part of the human brain still believes, like it did in Hopkins’s day, that the cure must be worse than the disease. At least along some dimension.

So if your offer is fast and easy, make sure it’s not cheap.

Or if your offer really is all of fast, easy, and cheap… then at least throw a skunk or a snake into it somewhere.

In other words, turn your prospect into a hero. Tell him a story:

He’s somebody who’s willing to do what’s offensive to others… somebody who can swallow what would turn most men or beasts wild. ​​No, it won’t be easy or pleasant. But if he can manage it to the end, the rewards will be great.

Last thing:

Maybe you’d like to know I have an email newsletter. It’s cheap and easy, but it’s very slow. You can sign up for it here.

How to create belief with the flimsiest proof

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Right now, in Beijing, there is a pudgy guy named Xu Xiaodong who trains mixed martial arts.

Around 2017, Xu started talking shit about kung fu. Not smart. There was immediate blowback. Kung fu masters from all around China threatened to knock him out and break his arms.

But Xu accepted their challenge. He started fighting these masters on the regular. He won each match easily. 17 of them in a row.

It all came to a head in 2018 when Xu faced wing chun master Ding Hao. The fight was broadcast live to millions.

In the first round, Xu knocked the wing chun master down six times. The fight was stopped and declared a draw. The wing chun master complained later that the studio didn’t give him enough rice to eat, and said that Xu was lucky to get away without getting knocked out.

But I’m not here to rag on kung fu. I just wanna point out a fundamental human truth:

Proof and desire are mutually reinforcing.

All around the world — and in China in particular — there are crazy levels of belief in the mystical powers of kung fu and its variants.

It’s not just what people see in movies and on TV. Real life practitioners of kung fu experience it first hand when they train with a true kung fu master. It’s only when the master has to fight an outsider, who is not invested in the kung fu belief structure, that the weaknesses of kung fu become apparent.

My point being:
​​
If you have enough desire, even the flimsiest proof will work. That’s true of people practicing kung fu… and it’s true of people reading your copy. To make a carrot look like a hot dog, simply amp up somebody’s hunger.

By the way, I discovered the crazy story of Xu Xiaodong in a fascinating video titled The Bizarre World of Fake Martial Arts.

The video shows Xu’s pummeling of the wing chun master. But it’s worth watching from beginning to end — both because it’s entertaining, and because it offers some direct illustrations of powerful persuasion techniques. If you wanna take a look, here’s the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbSCEhmjJA

Flat-Earther accidentally proves deep truth about Reddit users

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Over the past 24 hours, one of the top five post on Reddit has been:

“Flat-Earther accidentally proves the earth is round in his own experiment”

It’s a video of a guy, doing an experiment in his back yard, at night, with a lamp and a couple of styrofoam boards.

You don’t need to follow the precise thinking of this modern Galileo. The gist is this:

If the earth is flat, as the guy believes, then the lamp will be visible in one setup with the styrofoam boards.

But if the earth is curved, as the Illuminati want you to believe, then the lamp will be visible in a second, different setup.

Result:

The guy does the experiment with the desired, flat-Earth setup.

Nothing. The lamp is invisible.

The guy moves the lamp, to the control, Illuminati setup.

Suddenly, the bitch lamp becomes visible.

“Interesting,” the flat-earther says. “… interesting…”

Over the past four days, I’ve been talking about denial, and the ways we all do it all the time.

Today I got one more denial strategy for you. It’s the most useful one for marketers. It’s called rationalization.

That’s when we are faced with a fact we cannot or will not stomach, and so we explain it away.

Apparently, the flat earther in the Reddit video explained away his experiment results. Uneven terrain… twigs… branches… possibly a tear in the fabric of time and space.

Rationalizations like this are not particularly interesting. But like I said, they are most useful for marketing.

In fact, there’s a whole powerful school of marketing called reason why. It’s all about rationalization.

But this email is not about reason why marketing or making people believe what they already “know.”

Instead, I just want to point out that, when people fervently explain something away… they are probably denying a deep, uncomfortable truth.

Such as the millions of people on Reddit, upvoting that flat-earther post.

Some of those Reddit users are cackling (see my email yesterday about humor as a denial tactic).

​​But many are rationalizing. Like Reddit user ringhillsta, who wrote:

“The fact that there are people out there who actually still belives that the Earth is flat is scary and funny at the same time and i feel a bit sorry for them. Must be hard being that dumb lol.”

So what could be the deep and uncomfortable truth that ringhillsta is trying to deny?

Who knows.

Perhaps it’s that we’ve moved into an era where we have almost no direct experience with the “truths” in our lives.

Instead, we get them all second- and third-hand, through college textbooks… Neil deGrasse Tyson… and various mainstream subreddits.

And if anybody ever stands up to question that, there’s a ready-made rationalization to sweep away that person. “Dude what are you some flat earther? I feel sorry for you. Must be hard being that dumb lol.”

Anyways, this denial mini-series has been going on for borderline too long.

So I promise to wrap it up tomorrow, and bring it full circle to where we started from.

​​Or is that impossible? Maybe it’s all just a straight line… and we will fall off at the end.

Only one way to find out — read my email tomorrow. You can sign up here to get it.