Political Manipulation

Don’t think of an Iranian drone

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A couple nights ago, I rewatched the 1997 comedy Wag The Dog… as research for work.

Robert De Niro plays a political communications consultant. He’s brought in for clean-up after news breaks that the President of the United States has had sex with a 15-year-old girl in a closet behind the Oval Office.

The situation is bad. De Niro needs at least a day to think up a way out of this sticky situation. Fortunately, the President is on a visit to China.

“Keep him there,” De Niro tells the President’s handlers. “Say he’s sick. And say his visit has nothing to do with the B3 bomber.”

“Sir, as far as I know, there’s no such thing as a B3 bomber,” says a White House staffer.

“That’s exactly what I said,” says De Niro.

The rest of the movie is about how De Niro’s character, along with a Hollywood producer played by Dustin Hoffman, orchestrate a make-believe war against Albania (“They seem shifty”), which happens entirely on the evening news.

I thought about this while reading a news article yesterday, titled, “New Jersey drone cluster sightings prompt call for ‘state of emergency.'”

In case you haven’t heard, the state of New Jersey is under attack by swarms of unexplained drones. An FBI official explained:

“Are we concerned there are nefarious intentions that could cause either an actual security or public safety incident? There’s nothing that is known that would lead me to say that, but we just don’t know. And that’s the concerning part of it.”

Could it be Iran? China? Perhaps the Albanians?

“There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States,” said the Pentagon press secretary, “and there’s no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States.”

So you’re saying it could be the Albanians…

Look, I’m just fooling around. I’m certainly not claiming there are any parallels between the current drone situation and Wag The Dog. As far as I know, there’s no evidence that the drone situation is any kind of ploy to cover up some new atrocity being committed by people in power as we speak.

(See what I did there?)

All I really want to do is to introduce you to the powerful concept of a “frame.”

A frame is all the stuff that goes on in your head before, after, and around a specific message. A frame is how the phrase “SHUT UP!” can be interpreted in your head as an insult… a joke between friends… a cry of surprise or disbelief… a sign of mental breakdown… and probably 10 other things, all depending on the context.

There’s a guy named George Lakoff, who is a real-life version of Robert De Niro’s character in Wag The Dog.

Lakoff is a professor of linguistics at Berkeley, and he has long advised Democratic candidates on messaging and communication.

Lakoff believes that frames are such powerful and valuable communication tools that he wrote a guidebook, all about how to use them in politics, which he titled, “Don’t Think Of An Elephant.”

Because you can activate a frame even if you seemingly deny or negate that frame.

Frames are definitely an interesting topic, and it makes sense to actively play with them in high-stakes situations like political messaging.

But in everyday life, it can be exhausting and paralyzing to try to “control the frame,” as pick up artists like to say.

Fortunately, it’s not necessary to be constantly aware and constantly in control of the frame as you go about your life.

Because you can simply adopt a frame which will always serve you well.

That frame is that everything that happens works in your favor and is there for your benefit.

It works in politics, and in daily emails too, where it’s often expressed by the maxim, “Nothing bad ever happens if you write a daily email.” Everything becomes fodder for the content beast.

If you’d like to see how I and a group of other smart folks are taking our everyday frustrations, thoughts, and even stupid news items, and turning them into daily emails that both entertain and sell, you can find that inside my new service Daily Email Habit.

I’m not saying this service could transform your life, or be the equivalent of hitting the lottery. The people who subscribe to Daily Email Habit have reported good results, but nothing so far that would lead me to say this is the one thing you will ever need in your life for success, happiness, and contentment.

And that’s the concerning part of it.

For more info on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

From the archives: DON’T VOTE FOR A NEGRO

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An angry Seth Taft stood up in front of the crowd and held up a tear sheet from a newspaper.

The year was 1967. Taft was the grandson of former U.S. President William Howard Taft, and was running for mayor of Cleveland. He held up the tear sheet to show a full page ad that had recently run in local papers. In large, bold letters, the headline read:

“DON’T VOTE FOR A NEGRO”

That ad had been paid for by Taft’s opponent in the mayoral race, Carl Stokes.

The odd thing was that Stokes was black and Taft was white.

And yet, here was Taft, the front-runner and shoein for the office in predominately white Cleveland, angry and complaining about how unfair this ad was. And it was the folks behind Stokes’s campaign who had paid for an ad seemingly telling you not to vote for their guy.

The long and short of it is that Stokes won that election. In the process, he became the first black mayor of an American city.

​​It’s impossible to say whether this ad won Stokes the election. Nonetheless, the ad is a brilliant example of effective messaging, and of a general principle that holds as true in political propaganda as it does in other influence disciplines, including sales and copywriting.

What’s the general principle? And more importantly, how might you apply it in your business?

For that, take a look at link below. It’s a post I wrote a couple years ago, inspired by this ad.

​​In case you’re looking for a slight edge in your business… or in case you have a significant disadvantage relative to your competition… this post might give you some good ideas:

https://bejakovic.com/dont-listen-to-me-im-just-some-guy/

Jewish terrorists in Palestine

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On today’s date, July 22 to be exact, a bomb went off in King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in what was then British-controlled Mandatory Palestine.

The year was 1946.

In other words, if you were hoping to hear me take some sort of stance on the current Israel/Palestine conflict, and either to be propped up or outraged in your beliefs, then I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed by this email.

Maybe best stop reading now.

On the other hand, if you want to be exposed to something new and different, then maybe read on.

Still here? All right:

The King David Hotel was the administrative headquarters of the British colonizers. In the attack, 91 British, Jewish, and Arab soldiers died. 46 more were injured.

The bombing was carried out by a Zionist paramilitary organization called Irgun Zvai Leumi, which called for the use of force to establish a Jewish state.

And regarding that terrorist label:

That’s not me making the judgment.

​​Irgun were labeled terrorists by the United Nations, The US and and UK governments, the New York Times, the 1946 Zionist Congress, and the Jewish Agency.

If that’s not enough, Albert Einstein wrote a public letter in 1948 which he compared Irgun to Nazi and fascist parties.

In spite of all this, I had never heard about Irgun until yesterday, when I did a bit of research in preparation for today’s email.

Encyclopedia Britannica described Irgun as “extremely disciplined and daring.” I was curious what that meant in practice, so I looked it up.

​​In brief:

Those wishing to join Irgun had to know somebody in the organization to have any chance to get in.

The initial interview took place in a darkened room.

The novice had a light shined into his eyes, and was quizzed on his motivations, “to weed out romantics and adventurers and those who had not seriously contemplated the potential sacrifices,” as per Wikipedia.

If the novice passed the initial interview, a 4-month indoctrination followed. This was designed to further eliminate the impatient and “those of flawed purpose” who had slipped through the initial screening.

Only if the recruit passed all these preliminary steps did he start a lengthy and arduous training program in weapons use and and military tactics and bomb-making.

The thing that struck me was that Irgun never had more than 40 members at a time.

And yet, with such a small force, they carried out a number of deadly attacks (such as the King David Hotel bombing) or daring exploits (such as capturing Acre prison, a medieval fortress that not even Napoleon had managed to take with army of thousands).

But bringing all this back to the topic of this newsletter, specifically, direct marketing and what it can tell us about human psychology.

What I read of Irgun reminded me of direct marketing authority Dan Kennedy.

Dan once said that there are large commonalities between those who join mass movements, such as Irgun, and direct response customers, particularly those who follow a guru or leader or expert, on whatever topic, whether copywriting or health or investing.

By telling you this, I don’t meant to trivialize or endorse killing people or other terrorist activity. But I do mean to tell you something about human psychology.

The little that I’ve written above about Irgun’s recruiting and training process all applies, pretty much verbatim, to the effective recruiting and training of long-term direct response customers.

If you find that a little shocking… or a little vague… or you’d just like to find out more about the psychology of those who join mass movements, and how that might be relevant in the more mundane, safe, and profit-oriented world of direct marketing… then there’s a kind of manual on the topic.

Dan once gave out copies of this manual to his own small and select group of fanatical followers, who had made it into the room only after a long period of selection and indoctrination.

If you’d like to pick up a copy of the same manual today:

https://bejakovic.com/true-believer

Climate change is bullshit

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If you identify as right-leaning, at least in the American sense, then there’s a good chance you already suspect climate change is bullshit.

In that case, I’m not telling you anything new.

On the other hand, if you identify as left-leaning, at least in the American sense, then you should know that “climate change” is in fact bullshit.

The term was a kind of red herring proposed back in 2002 by a Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, in a memo to the administration of President George W. Bush. Luntz wrote:

“‘Climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming.’ As one focus group participant noted, climate change ‘sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.’ While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.”

Luntz later distanced himself from this memo and the effects it may have had. But it was too little, too late.

The Bush administration had already taken up the fight for “climate change” at the expense of “global warming.”

​​Over the course of 2023, they started seeing results.

​​Climate change gradually became the standard way to talk about the environment — not just in Bush administration press releases, but among news media, left-leaning politicians, and ultimately the general population.

It’s now 20+ years later.

​​Yesterday was Earth Day.

Mainstream media like the BBC and CNN wrote about the occasion.

So did left-leaning media like NPR and the New York Times.

They all bewailed the fact that not enough is being done. And they all used the term “climate change.”

I have no interest in trying to change your mind one way or another about the environment. I identify as neither right- nor left-leaning, but upright, like a refrigerator.

​​My point is simply to talk about the persuasion aspect of all this, and to highlight what it means for you.
​
Because you might think the lesson here is to simply come up with a sneaky new phrase like “climate change” and snap your finger to make your customers, constituents, or even competitors play the game you want them to play.

Not at all. Here’s a story from George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics and a kind of Democrat version of Frank Luntz. Lakoff wrote:

“I was once asked if I could reframe — that is, provide a winning slogan for — a global warming bill “by next Tuesday.” I laughed. Effective reframing is the changing of millions of brains to be prepared to recognize a reality. That preparation hadn’t been done.”

It’s possible to reframe the minds of thousands of your customers and even your competitors so they play your game… use your preferred language… and fume against you in a way that only serves you and reinforces what you want.

But it takes some preparation to do that.

There are lots of ways to do that preparation. I’m sure many of them are fine. But my preferred one is simple daily emails like the one you’re reading now.

If you haven’t tried writing daily emails yet, I can recommend it.

​​If you have tried writing daily emails, I can recommend keeping it up.

And if you want some guidance on how to keep it up, and what to put in your emails so you prepare all those minds to recognize a new reality, here’s my “intro to daily emailing” course:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

I thought “fake news” was stupid but this is not

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A few weeks ago, I was reading an article about Ozempic, the diabetes drug that celebs are using to lose weight quick and easy. The article appeared in the New Yorker, which is not ashamed of its left-leaning proclivities.

One of the points in the article is that the main harm from obesity is negative perception both by doctors and obese people. In other words, it’s not the fat that’s the real problem.

​​To make its point, the article used the following statistics sleight-of-hand, which put a smile on my face:

===

A recent study examined subjects’ B.M.I.s in relation to their blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and insulin resistance. Nearly a third of people with a “normal” B.M.I. had unhealthy metabolic metrics, and nearly half of those who were technically overweight were metabolically healthy. About a quarter of those who were classified as obese were healthy, too.

===

A few years ago, there was a lot of fuss over fake news. I always thought that fuss was stupid. Predictably, it has passed now.

I’m not advising anyone to write fake news or to make up stuff.

But you can and in fact you must spin. You must twist facts and figures, cherry pick quotes and stories, and direct and misdirect your readers’ attention at every step.

Not only to make your point, like in that “metabolically unhealthy” quote above.

But also to give people what they want. I mean, I read the New Yorker because I find the articles interesting and horizon-expanding. But I also read it because I enjoy agreeing with the writers’ points of view, and I enjoy even more disagreeing with their point of view.

I hope I’ve managed to get you to disagree with at least some of the points I’ve made in this email.

But if I’ve just managed to make you agree, I’ll have to settle for that today. Tomorrow, I’ll work to do better.

That’s the beauty of writing a daily email. You have a chance to constantly get better at influencing your audience, and to make your case anew, and to get people to agree or disagree with you. If you want to keep agreeing or disagreeing with me, starting tomorrow, you can sign up to my daily email newsletter here.

Forming a marketing cavalry without money or influence

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One morning in late October of 2018, professor Samuel Abrams arrived to his office to find that pictures of his family, which he normally kept on his office door, had been torn down. In their place were dozens of notes stuck to the door and lying on the floor.

QUIT
QUIT QUIQUIT QUIT QUITITQUITQUIT
QUQUIT QUITTIT QUIT
QUIT

A few of the notes offered more detail:

“Our right to exist is not ‘idealogical,’ asshole”

“QUIT go teach somewhere else you racist asshat (maybe Charlottesville?)”

A few days earlier, Abrams had published an editorial in the New York Times, titled “Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators.” The editorial reported the results of his own research.
​
Among first-year college students, Abrams said, there was a two-to-one ratio of liberals to conservatives. Among university professors, that ratio jumped to six-to-one. But all of that was dwarfed by the ratio of liberals to conservatives among university administration: 12-to-one.

This was incendiary enough to prompt an emergency student senate meeting at Abrams’s university. Abrams said the result of this meeting a declaration calling for him to be stripped of tenure and dismissed from the college.

I got on the spoor of this through an article in the Economist, which looked at the spread of wokeness from universities to the mainstream.

The Economist claimed it took a few key ingredients. The one that caught my sparrow eye was the role of university of administrators.

It turns university bureaucrats have been mushrooming in recent decades, outpacing both student and professor growth. For example, administrator numbers at the University of California, where I went to college, doubled since 2000.

Yesterday, I promised to tell you how to get other people to fight for you. One way of course is to have money and to use that to buy yourself an army. That’s what I talked about yesterday.

But if you don’t have money or power, well, you can still have an army. Or, rather, a cavalry.

Ideal recruits are to be found among newly arrived, low-grade influencers. People who have some power at the moment, but who are very insecure about their position and their future. Like university administrators.

If you can offer these people a new way to shore up and legitimize their position by championing you or your product or idea… well, they will do it, even if you don’t pay them.

“Uhhh… I really don’t get what the hell you’re talking about,” you say. “How exactly would I use this to get other people to promote me or to make money?”

Ok, let me give you a sketch that might help. It’s based on my vague memories of a story told to me by a friend who is active in the crypto space.

My friend was telling me there is some fraction of the crypto world, filled with new businesses and investors. Let’s call it Segment X. People in Segment X are invested in some new crypto approach, and they are flush with cash.

But they also have a ton of anxiety about where their sliver of the crypto market is going, and if any of them will be around in a year.

My friend had started a podcast around crypto. At the start, it didn’t have too much reach or audience.

But he occasionally turned the focus of his podcast to Segment X.

And as a result, all those people, and all their resources, latched onto his podcast and helped push it and promote it.

That’s basically what I’m telling you with all that wokeness stuff above. Find yourself a stable of nervy and twitching parvenus. And then get your saddle ready. Because, in the words of Al Ries and Jack Trout:

“The truth is the road to fame and fortune is rarely found within yourself. The only sure way to success is to find yourself a horse to ride. It may be difficult for the ego to accept, but success in life is based more on what others can do for you than on what you can do for yourself.”

For more horse-talk, you might like my daily email newsletter.

Cialdini’s limited hangout

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In chapter 3 of Influence, Robert Cialdini tells the interesting story of a transcendental meditation event he went to.

Cialdini was at the event to study the recruiting methods of the TM organization. He was sitting in the audience with a friend, a professor of statistics and symbolic logic.

The TM presentation started out talking about inner peace and better sleep. But it got progressively weirder and more outlandish. Cialdini says that, by the end, the TM gurus were promising to teach you how to fly through walls.

Eventually, Cialdini’s rational and scientific friend couldn’t take it any more. He stood up, spoke to the whole room, and “gently but surely demolished the presentation.” He showed how the presentation was illogical, contradictory, and groundless.

The TM gurus on stage fell silent. They hung their heads and admitted that Cialdini’s friend raised really good points, and they would have to look deeply into this.

So whaddya think happened? If you’ve read my recent posts about Frank Abagnale and Uri Geller, you probably know exactly what happened:

Once the TM presentation ended, people in the audience rushed to the back of the room. They handed over their money to sign up for TM bootcamps and workshops.

Did they not hear Cialdini’s friend dismantle the whole TM gimmick? Or were they just too dumb to understand what he was saying?

Nope. Neither. They heard him, and they understood perfectly what he was saying. That’s why they were so eager to jump aboard the slow-moving TM train.

“Well, I wasn’t going to put down any money tonight,” said one future TM’er when pressed later by Cialdini. “I’m really quite broke right now. I was going to wait until the next meeting. But when your buddy started talking, I knew I’d better give them my money now, or I’d go home and start thinking about what he said and never sign up.”

I read this story a few days ago. And I was thinking about how you could use this quirk of human nature for intentional marketing. And then, yesterday, I ran across the term limited hangout.

Limited hangout is apparently a term used by politicians’ aides and CIA operatives. It’s when you cover up the full extent of a scandal or secret by an early reveal of some of the damaging stuff. By letting it hang out. Not all of it, of course.

An example of this was Richard Nixon and company’s attempt to cover up how high Watergate went. They were planning to do a “modified limited hangout” and release a report with a lot of damaging information. Of course not implicating the president.

It didn’t work for Nixon. Too little, too late. But apparently limited hangout has worked in lots of other cases.

The thing is, everybody who writes about limited hangout says it is an example of misdirection… or gullibility… or short attention spans.

Perhaps. But perhaps the effectiveness of the limited hangout technique is just what Cialdini writes about.

When we believe something, then information to the contrary actually drives us towards that something. I will leave it at that, and let you use this dangerous material as you see fit.

And on that note:

I’m not sure if you have a strong desire to hear from me again on similar persuasion topics. If you do, I have to tell you that I often write about borderline immoral tactics. Plus there’s no guarantee that any of them will work for you. If that doesn’t deter you, here’s how you can make sure to hear more of my ideas.

“Manipulative tactics are the norm”

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Here’s a confession:

I’ve long dreamed of taking my copywriting and marketing skills beyond.

Beyond what?

Beyond selling dog seat belts and online real estate investing courses and herbal supplements that make aged skin look less aged.

Yes, I’ve dreamed of getting into politics and fundraising. But except for a spurt of advertorials that I wrote during the 2016 election for a now-arrested scammer, I haven’t had much opportunity to do political work.

Even so, the field continues to fascinate me. And that’s what I want to tell you about today.

A friend just sent me a link to a website created by some nerds at Princeton University. They collected over 259,000 political emails, and they made this giant corpus available and searchable online.

What’s more, they did some analysis. And they found that “Manipulative tactics are the norm in political emails.”

No shit.

It turns out fake urgency (“FEC deadline!”)… fake reasons why (“matching your contribution”)… fake subject lines (“NOT asking for money”)… and fake offers (“please donate to complete your survey response”)… are all very standard.

Maybe you find that revolting, and a sign of the times. But I am a cynical donkey, so this made me think just two things:

1) The basics of manipulation are all you really need to get decent results, and

2) There is opportunity to squeeze out more money out of people with better marketing

And that is why I am now announcing my candidacy as a marketing and fundraising consultant, available for hire by any political party.

If you are interested, please submit your inquiries by email immediately, because I’ve already been contacted by all the major campaigns, and I need to make my decision before the FEC deadline at midnight tonight.

And if you are not yet ready to hire me to help with your campaign… or if you have no campaign to help… then maybe you still share my perverse fascination with the world of politics and fundraising. In that case, you might like my daily email newsletter, which deals with the seedy side of marketing and copywriting. You can sign up for it here.

How to write for political causes you don’t believe in

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A soul-searching question popped up on Reddit a few days ago:

“Would you write copy for a political cause you don’t believe in?”

To which I replied — I already have.

And I enjoyed it.

The story is that back in 2015, when the election was ramping up, I was hired to write some fundraising copy for an organization backing Bernie Sanders.

That went well, and so I got hired for a second job, writing fundraising copy for organization backing Trump.

And then Hillary.

And even Lyin’ Ted Cruz.

Altogether, I wrote about two dozen landing pages tying into current news, prophesying how the country is going to hell if the other guy gets elected, and soliciting donations.

Now, as you can imagine, I cannot align politically with both Bernie and Donnie, both Hillary and Ted.

In fact, I don’t really align with any of them.

And maybe that’s why it wasn’t any kind of issue for me to treat this as a simple sales copywriting job. After all, I often have to promote products that I’m not the target market for. It’s not hard to do, as long as you do a lot of research about the target market, and you figure out what moves them.

However, in the future, I would NOT write for the same political organizations that hired me back in 2015 and 2016. But that’s another topic for another time.

On the other hand, if I did get a direct call from Trump Tower — or from the deep woods of Vermont — offering me a retainer to write fundraising copy for the next election…

Well, I’d consider it.

Until that call comes, I’ll keep working on more traditional sales copy. Such as sales emails, promoting nutritional supplements and online health courses.

And if you want to read some of the lessons I’ve learned by working on such capitalist endeavors, you can find them in the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/