Structure Of Copy and Content Archives - Page 3 of 6

The ring of truth

October 9, 2022 by John Bejakovic

Here’s a quiz question for the criminal mastermind in you:

How might you sneak into Buckingham Palace?

How might you make your way over the castle-like walls and fences, past the hundreds of armed guards, the thousands of staff, the sensors, the alarms, and the vicious and bloodthirsty packs of attack corgis?

How might you get make your way to the heart of the labyrinth-like structure, all the way to the queen’s bedroom, so you can breathe on her, while she’s asleep in her own bed?

Think about that for a moment, but only for a moment. Because really, it’s quite easy to do. Here’s how, in just five steps:

1. First, climb up the 14-foot wall and over the barbed wire and rotating spikes.

2. Then, shimmy up the side of the palace. If you need help shimmying, use a drain pipe or something.

3. Then, find an open window. There’s sure to be one.

4. When you get into the palace, then walk around aimlessly. Don’t worry about the staff and the guards, because they will arrange themselves in just such a way that not one of them will notice you.

5. Finally, stumble upon the queen’s bedroom. The door will be unlocked. Open it, enter, approach the bed, pull back the curtain, and start your heavy breathing.

Does that sound like it would work? Does that sound like a credible plan?

Well, credible-sounding or not, it actually happened. At around 7am on July 9 1982, a certain Michael Fagan did just what I told you.

Fagan, an unemployed and not very mentally stable English man, climbed over the walls of Buckingham Palace and into palace itself, then rambled around, unnoticed by all the guards, staff, and corgis, making it all the way to the sleeping queen’s bed.

This is a true story, a slice of real history.

And if you found it interesting or surprising, then that’s kind of my point.

In order for the above story to have any worth at all, you have to believe that it’s real, that it’s documented history. You have to believe that it really happened, and you have to believe that you can go and check the details yourself if you want to.

On the other hand, imagine if instead of being a historical incident, this unlikely “story” were part of a Disney cartoon or an Ocean’s 11-type heist film.

“So stupid,” would be the only reaction that the audience would have as they walked out of the movie theater. “The corgis would have smelled him a mile away. Couldn’t the writers have thought up something a little more life-like? A little more believable? Something with at least the ring of truth to it?”

So that’s actually my point for today.

Truth isn’t where it’s at. But having the ring of truth — now that’s a different story.

And as in cartoons and heist films, so in sales letters.

A couple days ago, I did a copy critique for a business owner of an ecommerce brand.

He had written an advertorial telling his own true story.

Only problem was, his story, dramatic and true though it was, sounded unbelievable. The tears… the sleepless nights… the worried looks from his wife…

I mean, this guy’s business is selling dog food. Literally.

So it didn’t matter much if his dramatic story was true, which it was. It didn’t ring true. And so my advice to him was to tamp down his true story, or to swap it out altogether, and find some other stories, which, true or not, at least have the ring of truth to them.

And now, you might think I will transition into an offer for consulting or copy critiques, where I point out obvious but damaging flaws in your advertising.

That won’t happen.

I had those offers, consulting and critiques, during this past summer. But I closed them down as of today.

Because I now have a regular offer to promote at the end of each of my daily emails. It’s my Most Valuable Email course. And I’ll tell you the following curious fact:

While the core MVE training is about a clever email copywriting trick, the course also comes with a Most Valuable Email swipe file. This file collects some of the most effective Most Valuable Emails I have personally written.

Each of those emails contains a valuable marketing or copywriting idea.

And MVE swipe emails #17, #18, #19, #20, and #22 contain five valuable ideas about how to write formulaic stories. Stories that sound like other stories that people have heard a million times before. Stories that, because of their familiarity, ring true to your audience.

So if you are trying to figure out how to shape your own personal history into something that your prospects won’t reject as A) boring or B) a manipulative lie, then these specific Most Valuable Emails might be worth a look.

They are available inside the complete MVE training.

In case you want to get your mastermind paws on them, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The biggest egos in the world

September 20, 2022 by John Bejakovic

One morning in 1985, actor Val Kilmer staggered to his bathroom and got ready to shave. He squinted because of how sleepy he still was. But then he spotted something in the mirror that shocked him awake.

In the middle of Kilmer’s chest a perfectly round bruise, the size of a 50-cent piece.

“I didn’t drink,” Kilmer said to himself. “I didn’t fall during the night. What could stab me like this in the chest?”

After a moment, the realization hit him.

The night prior, Kilmer had gone out partying with a bunch of Navy pilots. He was about to start shooting Top Gun, and he was trying to get into the role of Iceman.

The real Navy fighter pilots liked Kilmer a lot.

“You’re the actor that we’re most like,” they kept yelling the whole night. “You got good hair!”

And each time the fighter pilots said this, they emphasized their point by stabbing their fingers into the middle of Kilmer’s chest. That’s how he got the bruise.

Kilmer later said,

“The only egos bigger than actors are rock stars. And the only people beyond that are fighter pilots. They have the biggest egos on the planet.”

My point being, in spite of how it might look in the insular direct response world, email copywriters do not have the biggest egos in the world. Likewise, copywriting and marketing newsletters, podcasts, and books are not the most valuable things to read and study if you want valuable ideas, stories, and inspiration.

I recently made a list of 10 sources where I get ideas for my daily emails.

Most of these sources were predictable, or I had written about them already in emails prior.

But there was one source that I haven’t really talked about much.

And that’s analyses, documentaries, and original material about entertainment I love. Analyses and background info on Looney Tunes cartoons… William Goldman screenplays… Farside comics… and of course, Top Gun. For example, The Val Kilmer story above came from Danger Zone, a feature-length documentary about making of Top Gun.

So that’s my advice for you for today:

Think about your favorite movies, books, TV shows. Read about how they were made, or track down a documentary that saves you from reading.

You will get great ideas you can apply to your business, and in the most enjoyable format, since you will be digging into something you love.

And if you happen to love Top Gun:

I can’t recommend that Danger Zone documentary enough. It’s fascinating, and not just if you are a die-hard Top Gun fan. The documentary shows how complex it is to produce an hour and a half of seamless entertainment… how many specialists are involved… how much thinking lies behind seemingly simple decisions… how many layers of persuasion go into even a jockish, commercial, fantasy flick like Top Gun.

In case you are interested, you can find Danger Zone on YouTube in two parts. Here’s part 1:

Storytelling recipe for disaster that ended up succeeding against all odds

September 2, 2022 by John Bejakovic

Tom Hanks sauntered into the office, and he didn’t look pleased.

A few months earlier, Hanks had won the Best Actor Oscar for Philadelphia. With movies like Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 coming out soon, he was perhaps the biggest star in Hollywood.

Hanks sat down and picked up the script. He frowned. He shook his head a little.

“You don’t want me to sing, do you?”

I just watched a TED talk about storytelling.

The talk was not great. That’s because it was too valuable, with too many good-but-different ideas packed into just 19 minutes.

The emotional highlight of the talk, to me at least, was the Tom Hanks story above.

As it turns out, the filmmakers didn’t want Hanks to sing. Even though the movie in question was an animated film, and even though the only imaginable animated films at the time looked like The Lion King, filled with Hakuna Matata.

But no. There would be no Hakuna Matata and no Under the Sea in this new animated movie. And not only that.

There would be no love story.

There would be no “I want” moment.

There wouldn’t even be a villain.

It sounded like a recipe for disaster. It broke all the rules of how a Hollywood cartoon was supposed to go.

And yet, the movie in question ended up earning $735 million (in today’s money), making it the second biggest film of the year… it got rave reviews (a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes)… and it was nominated for the Oscar for best original screenplay (the first animated movie ever to be nominated for a great story).

That’s why, if you’re into storytelling, or more broadly, if you want to create salt peanuts content that people can’t help but consume, my advice to you is:

Watch this TED talk. In fact, watch it two or three times.

If you’re curious why I would say this talk warrants rewatching, then watch it once first. And maybe you will get a hint. In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/story

Cool-o & Sexy-o: I kill a bad joke even more dead for your benefit

August 29, 2022 by John Bejakovic

In my email yesterday, I wrote about a tricky anti-tobacco campaign, “Tobacco is whacko.” I played on that phrase and explained how you can make your appeals “cool-o” and “sexy-o”. To which a friend lovingly wrote me:

“Cool-o. Sexy-o. This is the corniest email you’ve ever sent. You old man. Watching too many Joe Biden speeches?”

Let me take a Joe-like ramble and say:

Marketers and copywriters are often told to study only the successful advertising. The controls. The winners.

But I have personally found a lot of value by looking at stuff that flopped. Particularly if it was done by somebody who should have known better.

In my view, flops shine more light on valuable techniques than situations when everything goes perfectly.

So for example:

Maybe — though I admit nothing — the jokes in my email yesterday were lame-o and corny-o.

And yet, if you look at what exactly I was doing, you will be able to identify a powerful email copywriting technique I use all the time. Often to very good effect.

Rather than killing a bad joke even more dead by explaining what exactly I have in mind, let me just get to today’s point:

Persuasion world: Men wanted for hazardous journey

August 24, 2022 by John Bejakovic

A couple years ago, I got an email from a successful copywriter who had just signed up to my list. He wrote me to say hello.

He also mentioned he found my site because he was studying Dan Ferrari’s sales letters in detail. (I had written some stuff about Dan and about being in Dan’s coaching program.)

The copywriter and I got to email-chatting a bit. I mentioned a presentation Dan once gave, where he broke down one of his most successful promotions. I offered to send successful copywriter #1, the guy who had written me, this presentation.

But he was reluctant. It seemed he had gotten what he wanted from Dan’s sales letters alone… and he didn’t want or need to hear Dan’s take on it.

And you know what? I can understand.

I liken it to going to see a movie versus reading a review of that same movie. The review might be good, might be bad… but even if it was written by the director himself, it’s certainly going to be a very different experience than seeing the actual movie itself.

The review won’t stimulate the same random pathways in the brain. It won’t trigger the same emotions. And it won’t allow for much independent thought.

This applies to you too. Right now, you may be reading books… going through courses… skimming emails like this one. Fine. They can give you the lay of the land when you’re new to a topic.

But the map, as they say in NLP, is not the territory.

Somebody else’s second-order interpretation of what persuasion is all about can only take you so far.

The good news is there’s a whole wild and dangerous world of TV shows, movies, current events, tabloids, political propaganda, real-life experiences, and yes, even books and articles, just waiting for you to start exploring and asking — why do I think this is compelling?

If you find that argument compelling, then I’ve got a contradictory bit of advice for you:

Go and read my 10 Commandments book.

Not for any persuasion lessons it might contain… but rather, as an example of content that you can dissect and analyze yourself.

After all, a lot of people have found this book interesting and even valuable. If you want to see why, and maybe even how you can do something similar yourself, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

I just remembered Cialdini’s best way to teach anybody anything

August 15, 2022 by John Bejakovic

I’ve just awakened from a hypnotic trance.

I spent the last 16 minutes watching a video of a fridge repairman from Alabama disassembling a failed fridge compressor.

As my hypnotic trance cleared, I began to marvel at this mystery.

After all, I don’t have a fridge compressor to fix. And I’m not looking for DIY advice.

In fact, I have zero interest in fridges or handymanism. I wasn’t familiar with 95% of the technical terms the fridge guy was using. I really could gain nothing practical or pleasurable from his 16-minute video.

So why did I watch it, with rapt attention, from beginning to end?

Perhaps, you say, I was just looking to waste time instead of writing this email.

I certainly do like to waste time instead of working. But why not waste time doing something I like, like reading the New Yorker, or watching some Bill Burr on YouTube?

No, it wasn’t that.

But perhaps, you say again, I just enjoy feeling smug and right.

After all, the dead fridge compressor was from 2009. And the fridge repair guy specializes in maintaining long-running, old fridges that go back to the 1940s. So maybe I was just looking for confirmation of my belief that old is good and new is worthless.

Maybe. But if that’s the case, why did I have to watch the video, and all 16 minutes of it? I mean, the video’s title gave me all I really needed to feel smug:

“Declining quality of consumer-grade products – 2009 fridge compressor autopsy…”

So no, it can’t be that.

But perhaps I just wanted to share something cool with a friend.

Even though I have no interest in handymanism, I do have a friend who is into it. I wanted to forward him this video, and maybe, you say, I just wanted to make sure it was worthwhile.

But that doesn’t hold water either. After all, this video popped up on a news aggregator I frequent, where it got 2-3x the usual number of upvotes. That’s a lot of tacit endorsement of quality. And I could tell within just the first minute or two that my friend might find this video interesting, and that I should send him the link.

So why did I myself watch the entire thing?

In trying to figure out the answer to this puzzle, I jumped back to a critical point in the video at minute 5:54.

The fridge guy has just tested whether the compressor failed because of electrical failure. No, it turns out, it wasn’t electrical.

So he decides to cut open the locked-up compressor and see what’s going on inside. As soon as he cuts the compressor open, the motor moves freely, and is no longer locked up.

The fridge guy is in wonder.

“I don’t understand at all,” he says. He decides to try to power the compressor up again. “My guess is it still won’t start.”

“Aha!” I said. “I get it now!”

Because I realized what was going on. I realized why I had been sucked into this video so hypnotically.

It was the structure of the way the fridge guy was doing his compressor autopsy.

He was using the exact same structure I read about once. A very smart and influential professor of persuasion spelled out this structure in a book, and he said it’s the best way to present any new information and teach anyone anything.

I don’t know if the fridge repair guy had been secretly reading the work of this professor of persuasion.

But I do know that if you’re trying to teach anybody anything, whether in person, in your courses, or just in your marketing, then this structure is super valuable.

It makes it so people actually want to consume your material. They will even want to consume it all the way to the end (just look at me and that 16-minute fridge video).

This structure also makes it so the info you are teaching sticks in people’s heads. That way, they are more likely to use it, profit from it, and become grateful students and customers for life.

And this structure even makes it so people experience an “Aha moment,” just like I did. When that happens, people feel compelled to share their enthusiasm with others, just like I am doing now with you right now.

You might be curious about this structure and who this professor of persuasion is.

Well, I will tell you the guy’s name is Robert Cialdini. He is famous for writing the book Influence. But the structure I’m talking about is not described in Influence.

Instead, it’s described in another of Cialdini’s books, Pre-Suasion.

Now, if you read Daniel Throssell’s emails, you might know that Daniel advises people to skip Pre-Suasion. He even calls it the worst copywriting book he has ever read.

I don’t agree.

Because in Chapter 6 of Pre-Suasion, Cialdini spells out the exact structure I’ve been telling you about. Plus he gives you an example from his own teaching.

This is some hard-core how-to. And if you ever want to get information into people’s heads, and make it stick there, for their benefit as well as your own, you might find this how-to information very valuable.

In case you want it:

https://bejakovic.com/presuasion

“Email Marketing: A Lecture by Rowan Atkinson”

August 6, 2022 by John Bejakovic

Here’s a quick checklist of elements that make for engaging, effective, and influential emails:

1. Conflict, outrage. We seem to take a constant delight in seeing or participating in a fight. The more real it is, the more engaging it is. The more status the fight participants have, the more engaging it is.

2. Surprising connections between unrelated things, or surprising distinctions in things that seemed simple and unified.

3. Metaphors, analogies, and “transubstantiation.”

4. Angst. All good copy is rooted in angst. As Dan Kennedy likes to say, “The sky is either falling or is about to fall.”

5. Imitation and parody.

6. An engaging character. As Matt Furey didn’t but should have said, “For the email marketer, nothing transcends character.” The email of personality, rather than the email of “value.” Email is not about sharing valuable information. It’s about writing about normal things in a valuable and interesting way. It’s about accuracy of human observation and precision of the observation.

7. All right, enough of this. Let me come clean:

Everything I’ve just told you actually comes from a video titled “Visual Comedy: A Lecture by Rowan Atkinson.”

Atkinson you might best know as the clumsy priest from Four Weddings and a Funeral.

I watched Atkinson’s Visual Comedy guide a few days ago, expecting to be entertained. And I was that. But I found the video surprisingly full of deep analysis of what actually makes for visual comedy. It was like a prehistoric episode of the Every Frame a Painting series, if you’ve ever seen that.

And not only was this video insightful.

I realized that much, or maybe all, of what makes for good visual comedy can be ported very easily to email marketing.

For example, point #1 above is really about slapstick. As the Visual Comedy video says, “We seem to take a constant delight in seeing people hurt and humiliated. The more real it is, the funnier it is. The more dignified the victim, the funnier it is.”

And that Matt Furey non-quote in point #6?

It actually comes from Charlie Chaplin. “For the comedian, nothing transcends character.”

If you like, I’ve linked the entire Rowan Atkinson video below. You can watch it and try to figure out which techniques of visual comedy I mapped to each of my email marketing points above.

Of course, there’s more in this video than just what I’ve written above. The list of connections between visual comedy and email marketing is long and distinguished, and doesn’t just stop at 6″.

As just one example:

Maybe the most valuable part of this video is the detailed discussion of what exactly makes for an engaging character in visual comedy. I found almost all of this applied to email marketing directly, without the need for even the smallest bit of translation. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s a lesson I should apply myself.

So to wrap up:

If you’re a goofy and thoughtless person who enjoys laughing when somebody slips on a banana peel…

Or if you’re a deep and serious thinker who is interested in uncovering the hidden structure of things most people take for granted…

Then I believe you will get value out of this video. Or maybe you’ll just get some pointed human observation. You can find it below. Before you click to watch it, you might want to sign up for my daily email newsletter, and get more insightful things like the essay you’ve just read.

“So cringe”: Content creators get rich without anyone knowing who they are

August 4, 2022 by John Bejakovic

I sat down just a few minutes ago, my hotdog + espresso soup at the ready, and I watched 8 minutes of:

* A hot girl putting a live fish down her sweatpants

* A man walking up the side of a 30-foot light pole

* A motorcyclist’s head falling off

* Pigtails being cut by office scissors and meat cleavers

* Cheating wives and husbands caught in the act and running for cover

* A leech up somebody’s nose

The backstory is all these videos were produced by Network Media, a video content mill that’s gotten 200 billion views on Facebook and Snapchat over the past two years.

200.

Billion.

Let me repeat that number so that it perhaps has a chance to sink into your brain. If each of those video views were a hotdog, that means that you and everybody else on the planet would have eaten 25 Network Media hotdogs each over the past two years.

Network Media was started by Rick Lax, who looks a little like a young Mickey Rourke.

Lax has a law degree.

But Lax’s primary passion was never law. It was always magic.

Lax wasn’t popular as a kid. To make things worse, he never could quite make it at the highest levels of the magic business.

He was apparently hurt to be excluded even from this community of misfits.

So Lax went outside the magic establishment, and started posting videos on Facebook, iterating, optimizing, and cranking out content. At first, his videos showed magic tricks. Later, they showed random stuff Lax figured out to be popular.

It got so Lax’s Facebook videos were easily getting 100 million views each.

Lax started to monetize his videos with Facebook’s “paid creator” ad share as soon as that became available. Immediately, he started making six figures a month.

What’s more, Lax realized the demand for his bizarre videos, which applied his insights from magic, was endless. So he brought on more people, often broke actors and singers, who were making minimum wage before Lax found them.

Lax turned many of his anonymous content creators into millionaires. By late 2021, Lax’s Network Media was pulling in $5 million a month across all its different videos.

I’d like to tell you more of Lax’s story, but I’ve just finished my hotdog + espresso soup and my time is up. So I’ll make you an offer instead.

Check out article below. It’s where I learned about Rick Lax and his $5M/month viral video business. The article contains lots of titillating facts, plus some useful techniques.

In fact, if you read the article below, you can find out why almost all of Lax’s video feature something surreal, such as tampons in the fridge or a dirty hairbrush as part of a cooking video.

Maybe that will even explain why I’m eating hotdogs in espresso sauce as I write this email.

So my offers is, read the article below, find out the technical term for this “tampons in the fridge” technique, sign up to my email newsletter, and then write me an email to tell me the name of this technique.

In return, I will share with you something else interesting, valuable, and related. It’s something that I might share with my entire list down the line, but that I will share with you first, and for certain, if you only take me up on my offer.

In case you want to do that, here’s the link to get started:

https://bejakovic.com/lax

How living next to train tracks can transform your copywriting skills

July 3, 2022 by John Bejakovic

A few days ago, I came across a trending science article with the headline:

“These cancer cells wake up when people sleep”

From what my zero-biology-classes-in-college brain could understand, researchers have made an important new discovery.

Cancer cells in one part of the body are most likely to spread to other parts of the body — a dangerous process called metastasis — while we sleep.

In other words, sleep — usually a good thing – suddenly becomes threatening and dangerous if you have cancer.

I guess this is big news in the science community and might lead to new ways to stop cancer from metastasizing.

But I’m not part of the science community. I’m part of the direct response copywriting community.

And so I mused that, were I in the business of selling important new health information, like Boardroom used to do, I might sell this breakthrough research with a provocative headline:

“How living next to train tracks can stop cancer”

The reason I thought this immediately was because the above science story reminded me of what I think is the greatest bullet of all time:

“How a pickpocket can cure your back pain”

That bullet was written by A-list copywriter David Deutsch in control package for Boardroom, back in the 2000s. David’s brilliant bullet has a clever underlying structure, which I modeled for my would-be headline/bullet above.

Perhaps you can parse exactly what I did with my bullet above. Or perhaps you know the story behind David’s bullet and therefore don’t need to parse what I did.

But if not, you can find the background of David’s bullet, including a breakdown of his clever technique, in Round 10A of my Copy Riddles program.

But let me put it this way:

Living next to train tracks can transform your copywriting skills.

Because enrollment for Copy Riddles closes later today, at 12 midnight PST.

If you haven’t signed up yet, and if you’re sleeping fitfully when the deadline hits, you will miss the enrollment window, and you will have to wait who-knows-how-long to enroll and find out the secret (and more importantly, the copywriting lesson) behind David’s bullet.

So trains rumbling outside your window might actually be a good thing in this case.

On the other hand, if you got no rumbling trains to count on, then you can always sign up now, while you’re still awake and while your mind is fresh and on it. Here’s the link:

https://copyriddles.com/

A shark in blowfish’s clothing

June 12, 2022 by John Bejakovic

A few days ago, as research for the next issue of my Most Valuable Postcard, I re-watched an old presentation given by Jeff Walker.

You might know Jeff as a big-time Internet Marketing guru and the inventor of the Product Launch Formula, which has been used by tons of businesses to make tons of money online.

Here’s what got me:

Jeff’s whole aura during this presentation was very gee-shucks, how-did-I-wind-up-here-on-stage.

He had a kind of Woody Allen delivery, constantly correcting himself, backtracking, stammering, stumbling, and apologizing.

His outfit confirmed the impression. Jeff wore a ballooning blue shirt, which looked a size too large for him, and which was crimped at the chest by a microphone.

Of course, you won’t make tens of millions of dollars, which Jeff had already done by the time of this old presentation, by being a naive nincompoop.

But if you look like a naive nincompoop, it can certainly help you out, particularly if you are actually shrewd and calculating at heart. It pays to put on a oversized and poorly fitting blue shirt, and turn yourself into a harmless and goofy blowfish, when you are really a shark underneath.

Anyways, at one point, Jeff said the following about product launches using his PLF:

“I don’t just teach them, I’m pretty good at them. That’s actually self-deprecating. I’m REALLY REALLY good at them.”

This reminded me of a valuable mantra I heard from Chris Voss, the FBI negotiator who wrote the book Never Split the Difference.

“The last impression is the lasting impression,” says Chris.

You can see that in the structure of how Jeff talks about himself and his skills and success.

And if you meditate on this example a bit, you can hit upon a very clever way to sneak giant, even unbelievable claims into people’s heads.

If you’ve been through my Copy Riddles program, you might know what I’m talking about. It’s there in round 6B.

And if you haven’t been through Copy Riddles, you’ll have a chance to do so, starting in a few weeks from now, and to find out about this clever technique.

But Copy Riddles isn’t open yet. And neither is my Most Valuable Postcard. So my only offer for you is to sign up for my email newsletter, and read what I have to write about copywriting and marketing topics.

Of course, I don’t just write about them. I’m pretty good at them. That’s actually self-deprecating. I’m REALLY REALLY good at them. So in case you’d like to get on my newsletter, here’s where to sign up.