Persuasion

One of the greatest direct response mysteries of all time

by

“Jesus, that looks frightening.”

There are many cosmetic dentists in the town I’m staying in. Some of these dentists advertise.

So there’s a billboard down the road, and it shows a pretty girl, with perfect teeth, smiling brightly at the driver-by.

​​And then closing in on both sides of the girl’s face… approaching her like monstrous tentacles of an unseen krakken… are various dental instruments of torture — drills, picks, mirrors, and suction tubes.

Every time I pass this billboard, I shudder. It seems to be such a full-on advertising miss.

I guess they tried to associate dentistry with beauty and happiness. They wound up doing just the opposite — making a bright and happy smile look frightening. But who knows, maybe it works?

In any case, it brings to mind one of the greatest direct response mysteries of all time, at least to my mind. Because here’s a quote from Claude Hopkins, the grandfather of direct marketing and the author of the book Scientific Advertising:

Show the bright side, the happy and attractive side, not the dark and uninviting side of things. Show beauty, not homeliness; health, not sickness. Don’t show the wrinkles you propose to remove, but the face as it will appear. Your customers know all about the wrinkles.

In advertising a dentifrice, show pretty teeth, not bad teeth. Talk of coming good conditions, not conditions which exist. In advertising clothes, picture well-dressed people, not the shabby. Picture successful men, not failures, when you advertise a business course. Picture what others wish to be, not what they may be now.

We are attracted by sunshine, beauty, happiness, health, success. Then point the way to them, not the way out of the opposite.

Can this be true? But it’s got to be, right?

After all, Claude Hopkins didn’t have opinions about advertising. He had hard results — scientific advertising — based on keyed ads. The idea back of an ad either sold, or it didn’t.

But hold on. We know today, from equally scientific advertising, that the story of a fat woman humiliated at a ritzy clothing store…

T​he image of a frightened and injured dog, loose on a busy highway…

T​he snapshot of a man walking into a shopping mall, killing three people, leaving his shotgun on the counter, and walking out…

W​e know these are all are powerful ways to make a sale. Or at least my clients and I know.

Because those were all stories I used to start emails, advertorials, and sales letters. And all of them worked many times better than bright, happy, and attractive alternatives.

So what gives?

Has human nature changed so much in the last 100 years?

Or was Claude Hopkins wrong in reading the data he was getting?

Or was this just a classic case of a marketer saying one thing about his marketing… but doing another?

I don’t know. If you do, I hope you will enlighten me about this mystery. And if you’re into direct response mysteries, you might like my scary email newsletter about marketing and copywriting.

No meddle! Only help

by

I thought the cartoon above was funny when I first saw it, years ago.

But it’s been popping up in my mind in many situations ever since.

I realized this cartoon is profound. Because these three simple panels show real fundamental truth, not just about dogs, but about people, too.

A truth about so many situations in life.

When you have one thing…

And you also want the other thing. But you can’t get the other thing without letting go of the thing you already have.

And if somebody offers you the thing you want…. at the cost of the thing you have… you react.

“No meddle! Only help”

For example, this is my explanation for what I talked about in my post yesterday, of why so many people reflexively hate advertising.

People might want the thing you’re advertising. Six-pack abs. A million-dollar paycheck. Total self-acceptance.

But they’re not willing to let go of the ball they are gripping between their teeth. The ball that holds their self-image… their feeling of control… their sense of meaning and consistency in their lives.

I’m not sure how to end this post, except to tell you to keep the cartoon above in mind, the way I’ve done for years.

And when you see people retreating from you, even though you have something they really do want…

Realize that, like dogs, human beings are conflicted. So take the attitude of the adult who can give them what they want… without making them feel they are losing something else as they get it.

And if you want regular other ideas to help you influence people, at no cost to your self-image, feeling of control, or your sense of consistency in life… then you might like my regular email newsletter.

“Raping of our night skies”: A growing problem for marketers

by

“Fuck this guy and fuck his raping of our night skies. Fire him into the fucking sun. Billionaires are a planetary cancer.”

That was a tweet written by one Alan Baxter a few weeks ago. Thousands of other people wrote equally outraged Tweets, while a few had deep Tweet-thoughts like this:

“can you just ask him to do something abt climate change @Grimezsz”

@Grimezsz is the Twitter handle of Grimes, the Canadian singer and musician.

And the “him” in the Tweet above is Grimes’s boyfriend and well-known planetary cancer, Elon Musk. How quickly things change:

For many years and until what seems like yesterday, Musk was loved and celebrated by the mass mind.

His Tesla electric cars made it sexy to take smoke-billowing gas guzzlers off streets.

His Hyperloop concept promised a cool way to travel far without the environmental costs of airplanes and airports.

And his SolarCity company brought clean energy to hundreds of thousands of homes across America.

So what changed? Why the sudden outrage towards Musk?

What did he do to make his personal brand plummet… and to make people forget all about his solar energy company… and his electric cars… and his minimal-impact human gerbil tubes?

As you can imagine, it took something big.

It took a cardinal sin.

It took for Elon Musk to get into advertising.

Because the tweets above, and thousands like them, came after Musk announced his plans to put a “billboard satellite” in space.

In reality, Musk’s space billboard will be something like a 4-inch-by-4-inch TV, floating among all the other tin cans miles away from the surface of the Earth. It will be invisible from the ground. It certainly won’t rape anybody’s night sky.

And yet, people hate the idea of a billboard satellite. And they hate Musk for working on it.

Because, as you may have noticed, many people have an allergic reaction to advertising. And the numbers of the afflicted are growing.

You can see it in the blowback to Musk’s space billboard plan.

You can see it in the bubbling anger over online tracking and targeted ads. (Which, if anything, people should welcome, because it makes advertising more relevant to their needs, habits, and interests.)

And you can see it in the reports of big-name direct marketers, who say skepticism and indifference are rising, while conversion rates are dropping year after year.

So I’d like to suggest to you that this is a big problem.

And one way or another… if you are doing any kind of marketing, advertising, or proactive selling… and unless you want get out of business and go work for the federal government… then I’d like to suggest you have to face up to this problem and find ways to deal with it.

You can back away… and make your sales softer and more indirect.

Or you can get confrontational… and turn up your sales pitches while mocking those who object to your trying to run a business.

Or you can use subtle psychology to strike some sort of middle ground. That’s my preferred approach.

But whatever your preferred approach, you have to start thinking about it. And you have to start acting on it. Because if there is one thing that the growing numbers of people who hate advertising react to… it’s new advertising, which is just like the old stuff, only done a little bit better.

So that’s all. Except:

Would you like to know more about subtle psychology and how to use it in your marketing? You can get it in regular drips if you sign up to my email newsletter here.

Dan Kennedy, Rich Schefren, and a monkey named John B.

by

Let me tell you a true story about a social primate I will call John B.:

Six months ago, John was reading the “Million Dollar Resource & Sample Book.” This is a 270-page document that Dan Kennedy prepared for his Titans of Direct Response talk.

Toward the end of this doc, John saw the mention of a seminar of Dan’s, called Opportunity Concepts. Opportunity Concepts is all about using ideas from bizopp marketers more broadly, in other kinds of businesses.

“Sounds valuable,” John muttered into his cereal, which he was eating at the time.

So John googled Opportunity Concepts and found the sales page.

“Interesting… interesting…” John said as he scrolled down the page. But suddenly, he bared his teeth and grimaced.

“Ouch!” he said, mouth full of cereal. “$2,000!…”

Now let me tell you with confidence, because I happen to know this social primate intimately, that John has been training himself to look at things in terms of their value… rather than in terms of their price.

Even so, after a few moments of grimacing and weighing access to Opportunity Concepts on the one hand… versus the pain of giving up $2,000 on the other… John found himself closing down the sales page and browsing away to happier, less stressful webpages.

Now fast-forward a few months.

John was watching a livestream put on by marketer Rich Schefren. Rich paused his scheduled programming to answer questions. And one of the questions that came in was this:

“Which products from Dan Kennedy do you think are the most valuable?”

Rich thought for a second and said, “I think Opportunity Concepts is number one.” And by the time Rich named his second favorite Dan Kennedy program, John was already gone. He was in a deep trance, credit card out, filling out the order form for Opportunity Concepts.

So that’s the true story for today. I hope you liked it. And now let me tell you why this story is meaningful to me, aside from my close relationship to the primate in question.

It’s not just that this story illustrates the power of social proof.

Or the value of an endorsement from a respected authority.

No, it’s about something broader.

Because one thing I’ve learned by working in direct marketing is how much our brain loves to avoid the hard tasks of thinking and making decisions.

That’s why we are constantly looking for shortcuts and excuses. Shortcuts to conclusions. And excuses to make a decision or to not make a decision.

If you’re new to direct marketing, you might think this only applies to those gullible people out there. The ones who buy magic pill weight loss supplements… at $47/month… based on obviously fake testimonials.

Well, I’d like to suggest it’s not just them.

Even people with greater advertising literacy make decisions in the same way. Even for much bigger purchases.

And if you’re selling something, including yourself and your services… it’s a good idea to give your prospects helpful shortcuts and excuses to make sure their decisions are the right ones.

And by the way, this same stuff applies to business owners looking to hire copywriters. You might think they will make a detailed, reasonable decision about who to hire. You might think they will evaluate all the data, and weigh all the pros and cons of each application.

Nope.

Business owners, like everybody else, are just looking for excuses to dismiss an applicant straight out the gate. And they are praying they will come across an applicant who will signal in some clear way that he is THE ONE… so they can hire him and get on to happier, less stressful tasks.

Even more by the way, are you yourself looking to get hired as a copywriter?

Then I have something that could be valuable. It’s a system for giving business owners those helpful shortcuts and excuses to make sure their decisions are the right ones — i.e. hiring you.

This system is inside my “Win Your First Copywriting Job” workshop, which kicks off this Friday.

For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/win-your-first-copywriting-job/

Most people are too busy digging an escape tunnel to notice the cell door is unlocked

by

I used to prepare to escape. Away from the office job. Away from the 40-hour workweeks.

But I didn’t experience real freedom until I started preparing less — a lot less.

For example, yesterday I crafted a new offer, with no preparation, in just about two hours from start to finish. With a little luck, it should earn me enough money to cover all my expenses for the next month, maybe longer.

What’s more, I’m going to ask you to send me $197 dollars for this offer, even though it won’t cost me more than a few minutes of my time to fulfill it. And I’ll try to make it so irresistible that you’d be a darned fool not to do it.

After all, why should you care if i make a $197 profit for a few minutes’ work if I can show you how to make a lot more — in just the next week, and in every week after that?

I’ll tell you about the offer in a second. But first, let me address the strange sense of deja vu you might be feeling right now.

Because what you’ve just read is the reworded lead to Joe Karbo’s Lazy Man’s Way to Riches ad.

It’s a famous ad. There is a lot in there. A lot I didn’t see when I first read it. And even a lot I didn’t see for many years after.

For example, here’s one thing always gets me:

In the fifth sentence, Joe admits he’s selling something. Even though he’s formatted his ad to look like a neutral newspaper article.

And then in the seventh sentence, he reveals the price of his offer — and that the price is entirely unrelated to his cost of fulfillment.

It’s a great pattern interrupt.

Because most marketers try to lull you into buying. They think if they hold off long enough, they can hypnotize you so deeply that you won’t mind when the pitch comes.

The trouble with that is, all of us are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

It’s very hard to fool modern consumers into thinking they are not reading an ad when they in fact are.

And people’s reactance to ads — leading to perfectly good sales messages getting tossed out on sight, marked as spam, or simply browsed away from — has never been higher. In fact, it’s increasing.

Which is why it can make sense to disarm your prospect’s skepticism right away — by admitting you are selling something, and maybe even revealing the price.

Which brings me to that $197 offer I mentioned up front.

It’s for my “Win Your First Copywriting Job” workshop, which kicks off this Friday.

Like I said at the start, I used to have an office job. I’d sit there each day, lusting after the kind of freedom I have now. To work when I want… where I want… and as much or as little as I want.

And still, to have as much money as I need.

Fortunately, I was tossed out of my office job and into my first copywriting gig without too much time to prepare, doubt myself, or try to line up everything perfectly.

But perhaps you’ve had the curse of too much time. Perhaps you’ve been studying maps of the terrain… digging your escape tunnel… and waiting for the perfect moment to make your break.

And waiting.

In that case, my workshop might be what you need to escape for real.

The workshop is not a “Lazy Man’s Way to Copywriting Riches.”

​​But if you’re willing to do some work… and if you have a couple basic requirements satisfied… then I can help you open the cell door and take that first step through it. All within the next week.

​​For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/win-your-first-copywriting-job/

Hypno-wizards and their willing victims

by

Imagine a small, dark cell. There’s a light bulb swinging overhead. One man is seated at a table under the light bulb. Two men are standing over the seated man, and a few more sit in the shadows along the wall, watching the proceedings.

“Who else was involved in planning the robbery?” asks one of the standing men.

“It was me…” stammers the man at the table. “Well, we had talked about it the night before…”

The other standing man leans in. “Who is this ‘we’?”

The seated man looks up into the light and blinks over and over. “It was just me. Bjørn… I…”

“Bjørn was also involved in planning the robbery?”

Suddenly, one of the men sitting in the shadows coughs. He makes a show of crossing his legs in an unusual way. The parts of his legs beneath the knee form a clear letter X.

The man under the light bulb straightens up. “Nobody else was involved. I acted alone. My goal was to support the revolution.”

In 1951, a man named Palle Hardrup robbed a bank in Copenhagen. The robbery wasn’t his first, but it was the first one that went bad, and Hardrup killed two people. Soon after, he was arrested and interrogated.

During the interrogations, it became clear Hardrup might have been acting under the direction of somebody else.

That somebody else turned out to be Bjørn Nielsen, a self-taught hypnotist.

Over the next 10 years, the story slowly unfolded across Danish courthouses, prisons, and hospitals. Eventually, it even made it to the European Court of Human Rights.

The question was who was responsible for the robbery and the murders. Hardrup, who had confessed to the the crimes… Nielsen, who dozens of witnesses claimed had hypnotized Hardrup over the course of two years, and who still seemed to have total control over his hypno-puppet, each time the symbol X appeared in some way… or Hardrup and Nielsen both.

What do you think? I’ll tell you what Dan Kennedy thinks:

Dan thinks if you want to get rich, then be the wizard… and beware other wizards.

What Dan is saying is we all crave to give up responsibility in our lives. It’s a dangerous thing to allow yourself to do… but there is lots of money to be made in providing that service to other people.

And that’s what I think those Copenhagen hypnosis murders illustrate.

Human beings are extremely programmable.

We also have individual agency.

And if you ask me, those are two magnetic poles that cannot be reduced down to one.

This is something you might want to keep in mind… if you too have decided to get rich, the way I’ve finally done recently, for the first time in my life.

And in case you want to get educated about persuasion, marketing, and copywriting to help you in your quest to get rich… you might like my daily email newsletter.

Profit from your prospect’s lack of common sense… even if… you don’t deserve it!

by

Here’s how a typical argument goes in the Bejakovic family—

My father [an economist by training and profession]:

“We are living in the best moment in history. We’ve got free education on every topic on Coursera… effective cholesterol-lowering drugs from Pfizer… and a Nespresso machine in every home! The most powerful kings of 500 years ago, or the wealthiest robber barons of 100 years ago, couldn’t dream of riches like these.”

Me [who also studied economics… but found it more heat than light, and dropped it for other pursuits]:

“Yeah, but people don’t seem so happy today. Maybe people were happier before we had Nespresso machines.”

Or maybe they were just the same. For example, here’s a quote by George Orwell, writing about Mein Kampf in 1940, 46 years before the first Nespresso machine was invented:

“Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.”

I’m not arguing for Fascism. But that other stuff, the stuff Orwell says about psychologically sound conceptions of life — that’s inarguable.

And if you’re writing sales copy, then you have to take it into account.

​​You have to tap into the dark, hidden, and often nonsensical parts of the human existence, at least intermittently. Because human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, and Nespresso machines.

History and sales results prove it.

Which is why I put together a list for myself, and for people who go through my Copy Riddles program, which I called The Dirty Dozen. I made this list by looking at successful sales copy, and stripping out the direct self-interest.

Whatever was left — well, my father wouldn’t understand that.

But you can. And you can profit from it.

You don’t even need my Dirty Dozen list. You can make a list like it yourself. It might be a long, lonely road… and you might doubt yourself along the way. But I’m sure you can do it.

Or of course, you can join the Copy Riddles army, when enlistment opens up again in a few weeks’ time (sign up here to hear from the recruiting office). We’ve got flags… loyalty parades… and thanks to some stuff I’ve been working on, we will soon have safety in numbers also.

Evergreen “wireless” fears

by

Did you ever hear of “radio face”? It was a curious affliction that swept through households in England in 1925.

​​The background:

Radio had started to spread in the early 1920s. It became more and more popular to have one at home. As a result, radio programming started to explode like corn over a fire.

By 1925, many people found themselves leaning in to the loud speaker… straining to hear each crackling word of the news or the radio drama.

Finally, a companion who was ready to entertain all day long!

Radio seemed perfect. Until, that is, some of the female listeners noticed a worrisome thing. From an article I read:

“The strain of trying to catch every word of wireless broadcast constantly puckers the lines around a woman’s forehead, and draws more lines around the sides of her mouth.”

As a result, many women in England started to live in fear of “wireless wrinkles.”

“Concentration at the Earphones Brings Wrinkles to the Brow.”

Who knows, maybe they were right?

In any case, this made me think how evergreen the fear of “wireless” has been. You could use it in 1925… and also in 2021.

For example, over the past couple of years, I’ve written a lot of copy for a team of ecommerce guys.

One of the longest-running front-end advertorials that we’ve had going is about the fear of “wireless pickpockets.” The offer is an RFID blocking card you put in your wallet, to keep these wireless pickpockets from swiping your money… and giving you wrinkles from all the frowning you would do afterwards.

A few years ago, Stefan Georgi and Justin Goff ran a webinar, offering to critique copy. I submitted the “wireless pickpockets” advertorial.

Stefan and Justin looked at the advertorial tweaking the copy wouldn’t produce much improvement… but Justin had some tested-and-proven advice about the rest of the funnel:

* Add a lot of reason why copy for the first upsell — even though it was just more of the same RFID card.

I passed that golden info on to my clients. But as far as I know, they never implemented it. So maybe it will be useful to you instead, in case you or your clients also run some kind of ecommerce offer.

Anyways, Justin and Stefan put out two more webinars over the past few weeks. If you haven’t watched them yet, I might write more about them in the coming days… and tell you about any golden info that I find inside.

Meanwhile, I want to tell you about a cool newsletter. It’s called The Pessimists Archive. It’s where I found the above story about radio face and wireless wrinkles.

The whole newsletter is really just interesting newspaper cutouts from decades past. It shows you how many things never change… how many fears and appeals stay the same… how predictable human reactions can be, even century after century.

And you know what? This can be valuable if you are the type to track trends and profit from them.

​​So in case you want to check out news from the past that’s still news, here’s the link to the Pessimists Archive:

https://pessimistsarchive.substack.com/

Free business idea: 9 Chambers of Pain

by

Here’s a free business idea for you to run with, if you so choose:

Just a little over a week ago, a new study was published by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh.

They studied over 21,000 patients who came for treatment at pain management clinics around Pittsburgh.

The scientists measured these poor people… probed them… interrogated them… and then fed all this data into a large tube-based computer.

And then they waited.

36 days later, the computer printed out a result:

There are exactly 9 types of chronic pain.

Such as group F (lower back pain radiating below the knee)… and group D (upper and lower back pain).

Each group varied in the location of pain… the severity of pain… as well as in the severity of other problems that went with the pain, like depression and anxiety.

So here’s my business idea for you:

You create a quiz. “Which unique type explains your chronic pain?”

People go through the quiz. You categorize them into one of 9 groups, based on their physical and emotional symptoms. For extra points, you can give it a Wu Tang flavor, and call it the 9 Chambers of Pain.

And then what?

Then you sell them something that helps them. It can be your own offer or an affiliate offer. For example:

Any kind of anti-inflammation supplement…

Or a course on meditation techniques…

Or a visit to a chiropractic clinic or some kind of other physical restructuring.

And here’s the incredible thing:

You can sell the same thing to all 9 groups. Of course, you say something like,

“Based on your unique scientifically-proven pain type… we recommend a free + shipping bottle of our doctor-formulated turmeric dust.”

As I’ve written before, this quiz => same offer funnel works like magic.

Because people like to feel unique… because they want a new understanding of their chronic problem… and because they aren’t very skeptical or critical when they get this new understanding.

Which is why RealDose Nutrition, the first big-name direct response company I ever worked with, built an 8-figure business in record time on the back of exactly the model I’ve just described to you.

And now, if you like, you can start doing the same. You already have the entire marketing concept. All you need is to decide which helpful product you want to sell… and to be quick, so other people don’t swipe this idea from right in front of your nose.

To end:

If you’d like more Wu Tang-flavored business idea, you best protect ya neck and sign up to my email newsletter here.

The parable of the unfree client

by

Legend says the mighty Persian king Bahram Gur once went a-hunting. But he failed to catch even a single wild donkey.

Angry and tired, Bahram Gur, along with his vizier and priest, then happened upon a lovely village.

But nobody came out of the village to greet the great king or offer him food or drink. So in his bad mood, Bahram cursed the village and said,

“May this green prosperous village be a den
of beasts — a wild and uncultivated fen”

The priest at the king’s side lived to make his lord’s wishes come true. And he knew just what to do. So he rode into the village, assembled the people there, and decided to ruin their lives.

“King Bahram is pleased with your village,” he said. “So he has decided to reward you. From now on, all of you are free and equal. Children are equal to adults. Women are equal to men. Workers are equal to headmen.”

The people rejoiced.

A year later, Bahram Gur went a-hunting again in the same country. And he happened upon the once-beautiful village.

But this time, all he saw was a scrawny cat wandering the empty, trash-littered main street. A torn bra dangled from one window. A dirty baby sat on the corner, drinking wine and smoking a cigar.

“What awful thing happened here?” asked Bahram Gur, close to tears. “Priest, make sure these people get whatever they need to repair this once-beautiful village.”

“It shall be done, my lord” said the priest.

And he rode into town, assembled the drunken, dirty, diseased locals, and gave them the gift of order and hierarchy once again.

​​Within a year, the cat fattened up, the streets turned clean, and that dirty baby became an honor student who listened to his parents.

This thousand-year-old story is in part social propaganda. After all, it’s not clear that humans really need to be ruled for peace and harmony to abide. So it makes sense to tell them stories like this to make them believe that’s the case.

But in part, this story is also an allegory about human nature.

Because there’s no denying our brain loves to minimize thinking. And while we might not need order, authority, and hierarchy… we certainly crave those things on some level.

I’ve noticed this with my clients. The more I take charge of the client relationship, the more I tell my clients how it is… the more they respect the work I do, and the more they pay me, without any questions.

But this same idea goes just beyond copywriting client work. So let me leave you with a Bahram-like couplet to sum it up:

“Strip away his freedoms, and make things black and white —
Your prospect will love you, and feel you must be right!”

For more commandments, delivered to your brain each day, just as you’re getting antsy about the lack of order in your life, click here and follow the instructions.