Persuasion

How to be seen as a more credible source of solutions and advice

by

Today, YouTube served me with up a recent interview that PBS did with Garry Kasparov.

Kasparov was World Chess Champion for 20 years and then an opposition leader in Russia.

“Unfortunately,” the interviewer said in his opening move to Kasparov, “you turned out to be right. Back in 2015, you wrote a book called ‘Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped.'”

The interviewer took a breath after reading out that title. He went on:

“Now that we see what he’s doing, what should our response be?”

Given Kasparov’s book, this might seem like a reasonable question to ask.

And that’s just the point I want to make to you today. There’s something important hiding inside that question.

In the words of Mark Ford and John Forde from Great Leads… the fact that you understand what’s wrong can help make you seem like a more credible source for solutions, too.

The fact is, just because Kasparov wrote a book critical of Putin gives him no special insight on how to stop the raging war in Ukraine. The two are about as related as knowing that “heavy turbulence makes for unpleasant flights” and knowing how to land a jumbo jet.

And yet, it doesn’t matter. The human instinct to jump from one to the other. Because when we’ve got trouble, it’s natural to look outside ourselves for the solution. And at those times, we are willing to accept a lot of things as qualifications and authority.

The takeaway for you is clear:

Don’t build a better mousetrap.

Instead, write a book. Educate your prospect about the dangerous breeding habits and expansionary intent of the eastern harvest mouse. “The eastern harvest mouse is coming,” your book should say. “And it must be stopped.”

Ok, let’s get to the business end of this post:

If you want more advice on building credibility with your audience, you might get value from my email newsletter. That’s where I regularly write about reasons that credibility fails. You can sign up for it here.

Reddit vs. Hacker News: How to get better customers, clients, readers, and business partners

by

Paul Graham is a computer programmer, writer, and early-stage tech investor.

His startup fund, Y Combinator, helped start a bunch of famous companies, like Airbnb, Dropbox, DoorDash, Instacart, Zapier, and Reddit.

The total valuation of all Y Combinator companies is now over $400 billion. Y Combinator owns 7% of that, or roughly $30 billion.

Really, the only reason I know this is because I’ve been a regular reader of Hacker News for the past 14+ years.

Hacker News is a news board. Graham started it in 2006 as a way of sharing interesting ideas and getting connected to tech talent. Today, Hacker News gets over five million readers each month.

I’ve been thinking about creating something similar, just with a different focus. So I was curious to read Graham’s 2009 article, What I Learned From Hacker News, about the early experience of creating and running HN.

This bit stood out to me:

But what happened to Reddit won’t inevitably happen to HN. There are several local maxima. There can be places that are free for alls and places that are more thoughtful, just as there are in the real world; and people will behave differently depending on which they’re in, just as they do in the real world.

I’ve observed this in the wild. I’ve seen people cross-posting on Reddit and Hacker News who actually took the trouble to write two versions, a flame for Reddit and a more subdued version for HN.

Maybe this only stood out to me because something I’ve thought and written about before.

Your content, marketing, and offers select a certain type of audience. That much is obvious.

What is less obvious is that your content and marketing and offers also change people. Because none of us is only one type of person all the time.

So if you want an audience that’s smarter, that’s more respectful, that’s more thoughtful and less scatterbrained, then make it clear that’s what you expect. And lead by example.

This can be transformative in your everyday dealings with clients, customers, readers, and prospects. And who knows. It might even become the foundation on which you build a future online community.

If you found this interesting, you might like my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

The limits of persuasion and propaganda

by

“We tend today to exaggerate the effectiveness of persuasion as a means of inculcating opinion and shaping behavior.”

Today I was planning to write a standard email about marketing and persuasion. But I checked the news this morning, and I saw that Russia invaded Ukraine by land, air, and sea.

It’s the biggest attack in Europe by one state against another since World War II.

I’m close to people who have families living in Ukraine, and for them this has real consequences.

So a warning: Today’s email is a persuasion downer.

Because I mostly write about persuasion tricks and manipulation strategies.

There have been plenty of those in the past few weeks from the EU and US both, in anticipation of the Russian invasion. But as a US diplomat put it:

“One of the shortcomings is the deterrence package that we’ve developed is kind of asymmetrical in that it’s mostly economic and we’re facing a military threat.”

Another way to put it is the quote I have up top, which is from Eric Hoffer’s True Believer.

​​Hoffer thinks that the fabulous power often ascribed to words has “no greater foundation in fact than the falls of Jericho ascribed to the blast of Joshua’s trumpets.”

So if not words, then what?
​​
Well, here’s a last Hoffer quote to wrap this emergency email up. It might be worth keeping in mind as we enter a new age of political black swans:

“The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. So acknowledged a master of propaganda as Dr. Goebbels admits in an unguarded moment that ‘A sharp sword must always stand behind propaganda if it is to be really effective.'”

A watermelon-headed politician walks into a flat-earther’s house…

by

I’d like to tell you a story but first I have to give you a bit of background. Our story has two characters:

First, there’s Pericles, a famous statesman in ancient Athens.

Pericles led the Athenians at the start of their war against the Spartans. He was also well-known for having a watermelon-sized head. That’s why statues most often show him wearing a helmet.

Second, we have Anaxagoras, a philosopher who came from Asia and settled in Athens.

Anaxagoras brought with him the spirit of scientific inquiry, which wasn’t common in Athens before. He also happened to be a flat-earther.

Now, on to the story:

When Pericles the Athenian was a young man, he studied philosophy with Anaxagoras.

Later, Pericles became a powerful man. When he needed to make important political decisions, he still consulted his wise old teacher.

But as Pericles sailed the seas, leading the Greeks in battle, Anaxagoras grew older and poorer. There aren’t many drachmas to be made in explaining rainbows or what the moon is made of.

In time, Anaxagoras became so poor he could no longer afford even a bit of cheese and wine. So one day, he did the only philosophical thing:

He covered his head with a robe, and determined to starve himself to death.

When Pericles heard about this, he rushed to Anaxagoras’s house.

He started begging his old teacher to live. He lamented his own hopeless future if he should lose so valuable an advisor.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

Then Anaxagoras yanked the robe off his head, looked at Pericles, and said, “Pericles, those who want to use a lamp supply it with oil.”

So that’s the story.

I don’t know about you, but when I first read it, it made me laugh.

And because I like to kill a good joke, I asked myself why I found this story funny.

Was it the idea of an old man starving himself to death?

Not really funny.

Was it the lamp analogy at the end?

Not so funny either.

I realized it was the robe.

​​Anaxagoras put it on his head and then pulled it off. It made him seem like a petulant child. It was such a contrast to the image of a sage and self-possessed philosopher.

So there you go:

Seemingly irrelevant details give all the color to a story. They can create suspense. Enjoyment. Or, of course, humor.

But perhaps I didn’t kill enough jokes for you today.

If so, then subscribe to my email newsletter, so I can kill another joke for you tomorrow.

And then, then take a listen to the 2 minute and 45 second clip below. It’s a recording of a young Woody Allen, delivering a standup routine in the 1960s.

Then listen to it again. And notice all the detail — seemingly irrelevant, but really, just what makes the skit funny. it might be something you can use in your own writing.

​​Here’s the video:

Skunk email with a great and valuable reward

by

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.

Marketers are from Mars, prospects are from—?

by

John Gray catches a lot of flak for his 1992 best-seller, Men are from Mars, Women are from Wenus.

But I’ve personally gotten a lot of use out of this short idea from Gray’s book:

“The most frequently expressed complaint women have about men is that men don’t listen. Either a man completely ignores her when she speaks to him, or he listens for a few beats, assesses what is bothering her, and then proudly puts on his Mr. Fix-It cap and offers her a solution to make her feel better. He is confused when she doesn’t appreciate this gesture of love. No matter how many times she tells him that he’s not listening, he doesn’t get it and keeps doing the same thing. She wants empathy, but he thinks she wants solutions.”

The thing is, it’s not just men who prematurely jump to solutions. And it’s not just women who will ignore offered solutions, even when they are perfectly good.

We are all like this, much of the time.

When we are frustrated, most of us hate having suggestions tossed at us. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? It would never work in my case! Why don’t you just listen for a second?”

I know I’ve reacted like this, at least internally, while keeping up a stoic front. And I’ve seen plenty of other guys — some of them manly, practical-minded men – nervously shrugging off good solutions to their ongoing problems.

The question to me is why? Why do women and men both choose not solve problems for which there are good solutions?

I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about this.

My conclusion is this isn’t a trivial human quirk, or like Gray says, just a hysterical cry for a bit of empathy.

Instead, my feeling is it goes back to fundamental human needs, like those I talked about yesterday.

Specifically, the need for uniqueness… and the need for meaning.

​​It might not seem very rational from the outside, but it makes perfect sense from the inside:

People will hold on to their problems just so they can keep feeling unique. “I might not have much… but I’ve got trouble like nobody’s ever seen.”

Or they will cling to pain and failure, even when there’s an easy way out. Because if there really is an easy way out, then what was the purpose of all that suffering they’ve experienced in the past?

In other words:

You might be selling your prospect a shiny new chrome pipe. And your prospect might desperately need it — the old pipe is rusted out and the basement is filling up with water. But what you don’t realize is that installing that new pipe might undermine the very foundations of your prospect’s house.

So that’s the problem that you face.

It’s tricky.

And it’s definitely unique.

But don’t worry. I won’t irritate you with any pigheaded suggestions for how you can solve this problem. At least I won’t do it here.

I’ll save that for an upcoming paid product. Maybe I will call it Marketers Are From Mars, Prospects Are From— but where exactly? I still have to work that part out. In case you want to get notified when this mansplaining guide comes out, sign up for my email newsletter.

Hating and loving in love and copy

by

A few years ago, I was walking along the street when I saw a queer sight:

An elderly couple was walking towards me, together but not together.

The woman was walking on the sidewalk.

​​Walking parallel to her, but about 10 feet away and in the actual road where the cars go, was her husband.

“That’s a strange way to walk with somebody,” I thought.

As they passed, I heard the woman speaking to the man, without facing him:

“That’s good. The further you are, the better. I don’t want to see you or hear you.”

Like I said, these people were elderly. I guess in their 60s or 70s. They’ve probably been married for a few decades, or maybe a half century.

How fitting, I thought. It really sums up the human condition.

The woman can’t stand her stupid husband. And yet they are together. If anything happened to him, she would probably be lost.

I had a suspicion about this kind of thing for a while.

It didn’t become clear in my head until I heard a Tony Robbins talk on the matter.

All human beings have a few fundamental needs, says Tony. And all our problems surface because half of our needs directly contradict the other half.

Turns out we are all rather complex bundles of different desires.

And though we say we want one thing, the exact opposite urge is also lurking somewhere, not far below the surface.

So when you write your copy, keep this in mind.

Promise people excitement and novelty… as well as certainty and control.

Offer to make them unique and outstanding… as well as beloved and part of a community.

People want magic. They will go through their whole lives wanting to believe it’s true. All you have to do is to tell them it is in fact so.

The BYAF compliance method

by

“Can I move? I’m better when I move.”

There’s a sexy scene in the 1969 classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid:

Butch and Sundance are American outlaws who have run away to Bolivia. They’re trying to get work at a Bolivian silver mine.

The boss at the mine wants to see if either Butch or Sundance can shoot a gun. What a joke. Sundance is the fastest and deadliest gun in the West.

So the boss throws a rock 30 feet away. “Hit that,” he says.

Sundance straightens his arm… takes aim… fires and misses.
​
The boss spits on the ground. He turns around and starts to walk away.

“Can I move?” Sundance asks.

“Move?” the boss says. “What the hell you mean move?”

In a split second, Sundance squats down, pulls out his gun, shoots the rock and then shoots it again while it’s midair, splitting it in two.

In other words:​​

It’s not common sense… but sometimes you get better results if you give people some space to move.

A while back, I read an academic paper about something called the BYAF compliance method.

​​BYAF = but you are free.

​​You make a request, and you tell people they are free to say no. It’s supposed to double the number of yeses you get.

It also goes against all copywriting dogma.

​​Copywriters will tell you that you should close off all doors… conclusively answer all objections… and PUSH PUSH PUSH for the sale.

So who’s right?

The BYAF crowd has 42 scientific studies on its side.

​​The “slam all the doors shut” copywriters have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of sales behind them.

You might think the conclusion is clear. But I think it really depends on who you’re dealing with.

For example, Jim Camp was a negotiation expert who worked with Fortune 500 execs while they negotiated multi-billion-dollar deals.

One of the big tenets of his negotiation system was allowing people to say no.

​​It didn’t mean ending the negotiation… in fact, no was just the beginning.

Because Camp said that in the kinds of negotiations he was involved in, “slamming all the doors shut” so your prospect feels caged in and only has the option you want him to take… well, that was a recipe for an abrupt end to the negotiation, without ever being welcome back for round two.

Does this apply in copywriting?

I definitely think so.

Sure, there are markets where people need you to be a German Shepherd, barking at them so they make their way into the fold in an orderly fashion.

​​But there are other markets, equally as profitable or more so, where it’s better to allow people to move before you ask them to shoot.

And now, if you’d like to sign up for my newsletter:

Click here and fill out the form that appears. But of course, you’re are free to do whatever you choose.

Super Bowl 2022 wager update

by

I was finishing up my workday today when an email landed in my inbox and made my heart freeze. The subject line read:

“The Best, Funniest, and Cringiest Crypto Ads from the Super Bowl”

“Oh God,” I gasped, “the Super Bowl… I completely forgot!”

Super Bowl 2022 is kind of a big deal in my life. Because last week, I made a wager in this very newsletter.

The bet was for readers to write in and pick this year’s Super Bowl winner.

The prize was a 50% discount on my upcoming Copy Zone offer.

The outcome was being proven wrong twice:

1. Having a stake on the outcome of the game didn’t make me watch the Super Bowl (or even remember that it’s on)

2. People on my list, and therefore me as well, overwhelmingly expected the Bengals to win

It turns out the Rams won, though it was close and tense until the end. (I watched the highlights just now.)

Anyways, if you bet on the Rams, I will send you a separate email with a 50% discount code. You can use this code, if you want to, during the Copy Zone launch later this month.

If you didn’t bet on the Rams, I would like to send you home with a consolation prize. Something in the form of a direct response idea you can profit from.

But unfortunately, since I’m writing this email late in the day… much later than I normally do… I don’t have my usual direct response idea primped and ready.

Fortunately, “the best crypto ad” from this Super Bowl, at least according to that email I got, is actually a direct response ad.

Shocking, right?

Apparently, the response to this ad was so high that the website hosting the landing page crashed.

Even so, according to some back of the envelope math, it’s unlikely the ad recouped the $13M cost of the 1-minute Super Bowl slot.

So can you learn anything from this ad? Perhaps how not to do DR advertising. In case you’re curious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zLsUhOCqyU

My guilty-pleasure morning ritual gets an ugly update

by

I sat down a few moments ago for my guilty-pleasure morning ritual. The coffee was ready, I flipped open my laptop and—

“Oh what the hell is this,” I said out loud.

The game was still the same. But the background of the site had changed from dark gray to white.

I checked the URL. It was no longer some weird .co.uk domain. It was now nytimes.com.

Perhaps you’ve seen the same.

After all, millions of people around the world have all been playing this game each day, and millions more have been joining them week by week.

The game is a word-guessing game, called Wordle, created by a guy named Josh Wardle.

Wardle created Wordle some time ago as a game that just he and his girlfriend could play together. His friends and family got in on it too. Then Wardle released Wordle publicly on his website last October.

That first month, a total of 90 people played it.

Two months later, in December, the number of people playing Wordle each day had grown to 300,000.

By January, it was millions each day.

On February 1st, the New York Times bought Wordle from Wardle, for a “low 7 figures” sum. And today, here we are, with the stupid, white, failing NYT background.

Oh well. In the end, the corporations absorb everything. But let’s talk influence:

I can see many things that went into making Wordle a success. I want to point out just one. It might be relevant to you if you are interested in the creative or marketing side of reality.

Like, I said, Wordle is my guilty-pleasure morning ritual.

That’s because there’s only one Wordle puzzle each day.

Once you play — whether you win or lose — that’s it. You gotta wait until tomorrow, when the next one comes out.

This has a few key consequences:

One of course is scarcity. It makes each Wordle puzzle feel more valuable and interesting. It keeps you coming back day after day.

Two is that you can’t glut yourself.

With most games – and with things other than games too — I often keep playing to the point where I start to feel disgusted.

But there’s no risk of that with Wordle. It’s like a Spartan marriage. The two sides meet only rarely, and are full of desire for each other.

But maybe the most important thing is that each Wordle puzzle feels unique and real.

Wordle grew so quickly because players shared their results on Twitter. (Through a clever design, Wardle allowed people to share their results without giving away the puzzle.)

That worked because there is only one puzzle a day. Everybody in the world who played Wordle on a given day had that same puzzle.

In other words, it made sense to brag about your results, because other Wordle players actually shared your experience. It even created a sense of connection to other people playing Wordle.

But maybe you haven’t played Wordle yet, and you’re getting lost in what I’m talking about. Or maybe you’re wondering what this might mean for you, or how can you use this.

I’ll give you just one idea bouncing around in my head:

For a long time, I’ve been writing these daily emails, and then posting them to my website as an archive. This has helped me in the past because these blog archives were the main way people found me and my newsletter.

But that’s slowly changing. And so today I remembered an idea I had a while ago:

To scrap the archive, and simply post the latest daily email on my site. Each day, the email on the front page would be updated, and the previous email would disappear. Plus there would be a newsletter optin form for people who don’t want to miss out.

I’m not sure if this is smart. I’m not sure whether I will do it. But maybe.

Because Wardle’s Wordle success shows that in a world where everybody’s working hard to get you as addicted and engaged as possible… less can be more.

Anyways, if you have any advice for me on the technical side of how I could easily implement my latest-email-front-page idea on my WordPress site, please write in and let me know.

And if you haven’t played Wordle yet, you can find it on the white-background page at the link below. (I got today’s puzzle in two tries only — my best score yet.)

https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html