Insight Marketing

The Day After 40 years later

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

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

A few unusual things about this movie:

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

2. It was depressing

3. It helped prevent nuclear war

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

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

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

What follows is “the day after”:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s all for today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe you simply need self-interest.

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

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

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

For more info, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

I’ll be in London next week, maybe you’d like to join me

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I’ll tell you about London in just a sec, but first, here’s an important question:

What’s your mental image of how the year looks like?

Is it a line, a calendar, a circle?

And if it’s a circle (the way it is for me), then where do the months go? Is summer on top or winter? Do the months flow clockwise or counterclockwise?

Two weeks ago I did a podcast episode with Rob Marsh and Kira Hug of The Copywriter Club.

Podcast episode over, Kira said as a throwaway, “I know it’s a long shot, but since you’re in Barcelona, we have an event in London at the end of this month. And in case you’d like to present something…”

I got excited and immediately said yes.

I gave them a couple of possible presentation ideas, and we agreed my presentation would be on the topic of insight, specifically about one repeatable, powerful way to create feeling of insight in readers.

I thought about that yesterday because I came across an article titled, “This is what the year really looks like.” It reported on a survey that basically asked the questions I asked you up top.

Some 75k people participated in the survey voluntarily… hundreds of thousands read and shared the resulting article online… and the article keeps going viral, on its own, every few years, even though it was originally published in 2018.

Why? How?

My claim is that it’s because the questions and the article manages to stir up the feeling of insight. So that’s what I will be talking about in London next week.

Now a disclaimer:

I am a terrible self-promoter, and am at best a very shoddy businessman, at least as far as this newsletter is concerned.

I did that podcast episode. I agreed with Rob and Kira to go to their event in London and present. But I didn’t ask to promote the event to my list — because… who knows why.

And then, only two days ago, Rob wrote me to say they have a few seats left over, and I could promote it to my list if I like.

The fact is, I do NOT like the idea of promoting this London event to my list. Because it’s now too close to the date, and that exposes me as being a bit incompetent.

But that’s not really a great reason to keep you out of this event in case you would like to attend, and are actually close enough geographically to be able to get to London by next Wednesday.

In case you’re interested, you can find the full details below, including the dates, times, prices, and my handsome mugshot photo:

https://bejakovic.com/tcclondon

Here’s something interesting you haven’t thought about before

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This morning I was chewing on a carrot — I’m trying to eat more vegetables — and to distract myself, I put on a standup comedy routine by Larry David, the writer behind Seinfeld and later the star of Curb Your Enthusiasm. David opened his set by saying:

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You seem like a very nice audience. I’m wondering, in case I break into some Spanish or French, may I use the familiar “tu” form with you people? Instead of “usted”? Because I think “usted” is gonna be a little too formal for this crowd. I feel already that I’ve established the kind of rapport that I can jump into the “tu” form with you.

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Larry David’s brand of humor is awkwardness. He always hits a snag on social interactions that others handle smoothly. He has to verbalize and negotiate things that others do subconsciously or nonverbally. That’s why his opening above illustrates the following point so well:

Comedians assume familiarity in their sets.

Why familiarity? Because being familiar is a precondition to being funny.

Comedian Bill Burr opens his “Why Do I Do This” special — my favorite — by saying, “It’s nice to be here. I didn’t do shit today. I didn’t. I’m a loser man. I just sat around watching TV and all that type of stuff. Let me tell you something…” Only then does he launch into his actual set.

You might wonder why I’m killing the joke in this way.

It’s because the same applies to you, at least if you want to influence other people, to sell your products, your services, or your ideas.

Comedians assume familiarity. So do pick up artists. Hypnotists do something similar that suits them, and that’s to assume trance.

The result is that their audiences, targets, and subjects, follow.

So that’s my suggestion for you too:

Figure out what goal you are trying to lead people to. Then figure out what the preconditions are for that.

And then, just act as-if. Assume that the preconditions are true.

Do it with enough conviction — not like Larry David, but like Bill Burr — and people will fall into step with you. This is as true of sales and copywriting as it is of comedy, magic, and seduction.

Speaking of seduction:

If you think you might learn a thing or two from me about influence, then consider my Copy Riddles course.

​​I break down the seemingly simplest type of copy — sales bullets — along dimensions you might not have ever thought about.

​​The result is you go from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence quickly… and then with a bit of practice to unconscious competence, where you simply own these copywriting skills, cold.
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​In case you’re interested:

​https://bejakovic.com/cr/

7 ways to grow your Twitter following from somone who has never done it

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Along with this daily marketing newsletter, I also have a weekly health newsletter, which I started in January.

Then around April, I started a Twitter account, under a pseudonym, to go along with the health newsletter.

I’ve been posting daily on Twitter for maybe 4 months now. It’s been absolutely worthless in terms of any organic traffic to my health newsletter, or even any engagement on Twitter itself.

I could blame the Twitter algorithm, or simply tell myself to be patient. But it’s not either of those. Instead, the fault lies with the content I put on Twitter — earnest, factual, “should” info, as in, “you should care about this… but you really don’t.”

I have no interest in investing any time to grow my Twitter following, or in changing my approach. What I’m currently doing on Twitter is useful to me as a kind of notepad. Plus I have other ways to grow my newsletter.

But yesterday, I did make a list of 7 types of content I believe would do much better on Twitter, and could get me a growing, engaged audience, perhaps quickly.

I’m sharing this list below because, frankly, it’s also a good lineup of content to put into your daily emails. So here goes, along with a quick “daily email” illustration of what I mean by each category:

1. Inspiration. “There has never been and will never be a better day than today to start an email newsletter.”

2. Tiny tips and tweaks that feel meaningful. “Listicles should either have 7 or 10 items.”

3. Sensational news, or news framed in a sensationalist way. “Breaking! Rob Marsh of The Copywriter Club wrote me directly last night to ask if I want to go on their podcast.”

4. Human stories. “Being slightly inhuman, I’m drawing a blank here.”

5. Personal opinions, particularly if they are dumb. “If you send fewer emails, people will value each of them more.”

6. Predictions, particularly if they are overconfident. “We will see a billion dollar newsletter company in the next year. 100%.”

7. Hobnobbing — referencing, resharing, commenting, agreeing or disagreeing with positions of people who have bigger follower counts than you. “Yesterday and today, Justin Goff sent out two emails about doers vs. spectators. I’m telling you about that because…”

… as I once wrote, I was lucky to read a specific issue of the Gary Halbert Letter, very early in my marketing education. That issue was titled, “The difference between winners and losers.”

In that issue, Gary said with much more vigor what Justin said in his two emails yesterday and today, which is that spectators can never really know what it is to be a player.

Like I said, that influenced me greatly, very early on, in very positive ways. It’s probably the reason why I managed to survive and even succeed as a copywriter and marketer.

It’s also why I profited so much from another Gary Halbert Letter issue, the second-most valuable Gary Halbert issue in my personal experience, which laid out a recipe to develop a specific money-making skill.

In case you’re curious about that money-making skill, or which Gary Halbert Letter issue I have in mind, or in case you yourself want to survive and succeed as a copywriter or marketer, then read the full story here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

How the mosquito built Rome

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In my email yesterday, I wrote about my home town’s curious plan to stop the coming mosquito hordes by importing a hundred thousand sterile mosquito males. To which I got a mosquito-themed reply from an Insights & More member named Jordan (not sure he wants me to share his last name):

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The talk about mosquitoes and books reminds me of the… mosquito book.

The Mosquito – Timothy Winegard

It’s actually very very interesting and showcases:

How the mosquito Built Rome
How the mosquito bested one of the greatest conquerors
How the mosquito ended slavery

(hows that for bullet point build out)

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I found this intriguing so I looked it up and yes — it turns out there’s a credible case to be made for the mosquito having built Rome.

​​In its early days, Rome was surrounded by hundreds of square miles of wetland, called the Pontine Marshes. Perfect for mosquitos. Perfect for malaria. Perfect for dying. Says Winegard:

“Armies coming to attack Rome — beginning with Hannibal and the Carthaginians, and then the Visigoths, Attila and his Huns, and the Vandals — couldn’t essentially either take or hold Rome because of this malarial shield.”

Based on a quick search, it seems Winegard’s Mosquito book gives you:

1. Lots of surprising or even contrary ideas like the one above

2. A credible, well-researched reinterpretation of history

3. A new context for familiar things

… all of which means it might make a perfect choice for the Insights & More Book Club in the future.

Speaking of, the same Jordan who wrote me about the Mosquito book earlier wrote me about the last Insights & More book, the one we just finished. He said:

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The book was mind blowing (even thought I havent finished it yet)

Can’t wait for my first call experience and the next book

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It’s unfortunately too late to join for the next round of the Insights & More Book Club, because the doors have closed. But if you’d like to have the chance to join in the future, get on my email list. It’s the only place where I actually advertise and open up my book club.

Open this email to take a little trip

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This morning, I had coffee at the little harbor in the old fishing village of Volosko, on the Croatian seaside, where my dad has an apartment.

The harbor in Volosko is very small, enough for a dozen small boats. It’s surrounded by colorful buildings with wooden shutters and blooming flowers on the window sills.

Today being Sunday, it was quiet, nobody much around, just the docked boats slapping against the sea. Somewhere a mast stay was clanging against the mast.

In the middle of the small harbor, there is a breakwater, which has been converted into a terrace for a nearby cafe. I was there this morning, with my dad and his wife, sitting in the shade, sipping an espresso and watching people walking their dogs.

I’ve been staying in Volosko for the past four days. I’ve largely had an unenjoyable time. I’m not joking.

I asked myself, how?

I realized it’s because I spent the four days at my computer, at home, mostly working. My dad and his wife have been doing the same — on their screens, maybe working, maybe just wasting time.

It’s been said, if you write sales emails, make them entertaining. Take people for a ride. Because people’s everyday lives are rather dull and limited. That’s not me being condescending. I myself am as guilty of living a dull and limited life as anybody, or maybe more so, since I sit in front of the computer so much.

So when you write sales emails, show people a scene. Take them for a ride, or a little trip. ​It will be good for your readers, and good for you too — because it will force you to look up from your own screen on occasion and see the rather rich world that surrounds you.

The last time I was in Volosko was a year ago. I traveled there for business — so I could write and send my Most Valuable Postcard #2.

If you want to see more of Volosko, and of Opatija, the bigger beachhead resort town that Volosko has merged into, you can find a bunch of photos of that inside my MVP2 below.

And besides the pictures, MVP2 also has a point — the essence of copywriting and marketing, as I see it, woven into a bunch of stories. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp2/

Value is not how-to

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Yesterday’s email, about a strange scientific experiment on kittens, provoked some response.

​​One reader said I should have included a trigger warning. (“Deeply disturbing content. Cruel. CRUEL.”)

Another reader said we “look at Nazi scientists and cringe as we click our tongues” but we allow our own scientists all sorts of license.

A third reader wrote to say he loved the line, “The scientists are wearing white lab coats. The kitten is not.” He thought the line was priceless.

I highlight these responses because they focus on exactly the two things that got me about the strange kitten experiment.

​​The research was bizarre and cruel. At the same time, the image of two laboratory scientists in white lab coats, working hard to startle a kitten into blinking, was ridiculous and made me smile.

There was a point to my email yesterday. If you read the email, do you remember the point?

If you don’t remember, no problem. The point was not the value of the email.

In general, value in an email is not the how-to. Value in an email is the emotional spike it creates.

I could tell you how to create emotional spikes in your emails, but really, what would be the value in that?

Instead, I’ll just tell you that you can create emotional spikes even without talking about cruelty to kittens, without creating outrage, and without trying to be funny. In fact I’ve created a course all about the how-to of “intellectual” emotional spikes. You can find it here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

A book that changed how I think about life, death, and pretty much everything around me

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At the start of this year, a friend turned me on to the BLUEPRINT.

To me, anything with the word BLUEPRINT in it sounds like an outdated 2011 info product. But no, that’s not what that is.

The BLUEPRINT is a project by Bryan Johnson.

Once upon a time, Johnson was a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He founded Braintree, a mobile payment startup which later acquired Venmo. In 2013, Johnson sold Braintree/Venmo to PayPal for $800 million.

And then, two years ago, reclining on his piles of gold coins and sacks filled with $100 bills, Johnson decided on a whim to become immortal.

So he assembled a team of longevity scientists who devised an optimal daily protocol for him — the BLUEPRINT — including diet, 101 pills every day, training, sleep, blood testing, gadgets and widgets and non-stop optimization.

The cost? $2 million so far. The result?

Johnson says he has slowed down his pace of aging to that of an average 10-year-old. He has managed to reverse 5 years off his biological age (he is 45) and many of his organs now test as functioning at the level of 20-year-old. He says he feels better than he ever has, he’s more positive, has zero anxiety, sleeps perfectly every night, overflows with energy, and the quality of his ideas is better.

Of course, not everybody is sold. Johnson gets a lot of hate and mockery online.

It doesn’t help that Johnson vaguely resembles the T-1000 android from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, just with longer hair.

But I guess the real reason for the hate is that people see Johnson as a rich kook, a kind of modern-day Howard Hughes, on an eccentric, selfish, and self-absorbed chase.

And so I thought also. But I heard Johnson speak a while back. It turned out he’s very normal, very reasonable, and very altruistic-sounding.

His goal, he says, is to prove that it’s possible, so others believe and do it too. And while figuring out the BLUEPRINT cost Johnson $2m, it won’t take others nearly as much to implement it themselves, or to implement the 20% that gets the 80% of the value.

Whatever. I’m not here to sell Bryan Johnson to you. I just want to share something that struck me from that interview. Johnson said:

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We are accustomed to our technology improving systematically. With ourselves, we do not improve systematically. We improve a little bit, but we commit a self-destructive behavior here, we have a rise, we have a fall, we decay.

We accept that we humans decay and are eventually going to die and we become martyrs for our technology to move forward. We basically are trying to give birth to immortality through our work because we are demising. We are going to demise. And that technology is then used against us to make us addicted to all the things in the world to make us even worse.

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One thing that struck me from the above is the idea that we are trading one kind of longevity — our personal bodies — for another kind of longevity — our work.

It reminded me of a book I’d read a long time ago. This book changed how I look at the world and how I think about life, death, and pretty much everything around me.

As you might know if you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, I make a habit of re-reading books that I found worthwhile.

And even though I read this book 10+ years ago, and even though I already had it change my mind once, I decided to make it the next book for the Insights & More Book Club.

For one thing, this book is a great illustration of insight techniques in action. For another, the core ideas in this book are genuinely novel and mind-changing. What more can I ask for in a book club focused on insightful writing and ideas?

If you’re interested in finding out what this book is, in reading it, and in participating in the Insights & More Book Club, then you’ll have to be on my email list first.

I only open the doors to the Insights & More Book Club every two months at the start of a new book. The doors are open now. But they will close again tomorrow, Sunday night, at 12 midnight PST. If you’re interested in getting in before then, sign up to my email list today, and watch out for my email tomorrow.

My diagnosis is that you’re trying to normalize rather than pathologize

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I first wrote about Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in this newsletter in August 2021. Clance and Imes are the two psychologists who, back in 1978, wrote a paper in which they defined something called imposter phenomenon.

The interesting thing is they called it imposter phenomenon, not imposter syndrome. From a recent article in The New Yorker:

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Every time Imes hears the phrase “impostor syndrome,” she told me, it lodges in her gut. It’s technically incorrect, and conceptually misleading. As Clance explained, the phenomenon is “an experience rather than a pathology,” and their aim was always to normalize this experience rather than to pathologize it.

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It might seem like a trivial difference, phenomenon rather than syndrome. It’s not trivial. Like Clance says in that quote, their goal was just to point out, normalize, say, “it’s okay that you feel like a faker, because others do too.”

But that’s not what the public wanted.

The public wanted a concrete disease, a disorder, or at least a syndrome — something unique and special they can point to and explain why they feel uncertain or uncomfortable or why their life is not how they imagine it. The pathological imposter syndrome does that, the wishy-washy, normal, everyday imposter phenomenon does not.

So the public took Clance and Imes’s idea, and they made it their own. Imposter syndrome.

But my real point for you is not the word choice of phenomenon vs syndrome. Sure, it is important, but it’s also the only part that Clance and Imes didn’t get right in their original paper, at least from a persuasion perspective.

My point for you is that difference between concrete vs. wishy washy, unique vs. everyday, pathological vs. normal, all of which Clance and Imes, whether they wanted to or not, definitely did get right in their paper.

People are looking for answers. They want to know to why their life is the way it is, and now the way they want it to be.

If, like Clance and Imes, you give people a satisfying answer to that eternal question, it can literally make you a star in your field, and can have your ideas spread on their own, like fire among dry brush that hasn’t seen water for years.

Maybe this entire email speaks little or not at all to you.

In that case, my diagnosis is that you’re being too nice, and you’re trying to normalize your prospects’ experiences, to give them small incremental improvements and understandings, rather than a total change in perspective in how they view their world.

My prognosis in that case is that you will struggle to be heard, and struggle to make sales. It could even be fatal to your business.

If you want a fix for that unfortunate and dangerous condition, then there’s a pill you can take. I even named it for you above.

But enough of playing doctor.

Back in my own house, the fact remains that I’m still in the process of spring cleaning. I’m throwing out old furniture and old courses, dusting off wardrobes and sales letters, and planning out how to redecorate my living room and my newsletter.

While that’s going on, I will just point you to my only book that’s currently available for sale, and also the only offer I have that doesn’t cost $100 or more. If you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments