Contrast

Zag when you’re zigging

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A reader writes in reply to a recent email to say:

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John, if you weren’t so angsty you would be hilarious. I’m quite certain you will get your next 10 Commandments book done in time to meet your self-imposed deadline (the best kind of deadline, btw) and I love seeing behind the curtain as you keyboard warrior your way there.

However, the title is insufferably long! IMHO

===

I’ve had several people write in about the title of the new book, and to more or less suggest I might do better.

I can understand.

The conventional wisdom is that a nonfiction book title should be short, ideally one punchy word:

Blink

Behave

Nudge

Contagious

Sapiens

At 23 words and 206 characters, my title definitely doesn’t roll off the tongue in quite the same way:

10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters

Will it work? The fact I have readers writing in to complain about it is encouraging, but I will have to see whether this translates into interest in the book from people who are not already in my audience.

If you’re wondering why I would choose a title like that in the first place, the answer is simply that I find it amusing. But also, there’s the powerful psychological principle of contrast. If everybody is tripping over themselves to come up with a punchy one-word title, then having a 23-word title makes it more likely my book will stand out.

I’m probably not telling you anything new by saying it pays to zag when everyone else is zigging, to contrast yourself to others in your market.

But there’s another kind of contrast you can do. It’s widespread across the influence disciplines I’m profiling in my new book. As opposed to contrasting yourself to others — what you might call external contrast — this second kind of contrast is an internal contrast — to zag when you YOU are zigging.

Maybe know exactly what I mean. Or maybe you can guess.

In any case, I am devoting an entire chapter, specifically Commandment IV to illustrating and laying out this powerful idea.

And on that note:

My angst-producing goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24.

Until then, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.

If you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:

​​​​Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book​ ​​

Contrast positioning for your high-priced offers

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A couple years ago, I read a screenplay by William Goldman for a pirate movie that never got made.

It was very instructive.

The screenplay opens up with a big gruff sailor on board an 18th-century trading vessel. The big gruff sailor is a strong and normally brave man.

But right now, the sailor appears unsure of himself. That’s because he sees a deserted, aimless ship on the horizon.

Could it be pirates?

“It might have been the plague,” the sailor mutters. “Sudden plague could have taken them all.” He looks away from the deserted ship nervously, and looks to his captain.

The captain, on the other hand, says nothing.

Unlike the big gruff sailor, the captain is not scared of ghost ships, and he’s not scared of whatever evil secrets they hide, pirates included.

The captain keeps his eyes trained on the deserted, nearing hulk, ready for whatever it may bring.

And then there’s the switch.

Because on board of the deserted ship that’s getting closer and closer, a figure appears.

The figure is large. It’s black. And it seems to be… on fire?

The figure starts to growl in an inhuman voice that carries over the waves:

“Death or surrender… surrender or die… the Devil bids you choose…”

The normally calm and collected captain, who is so much braver and cooler than the big, gruff sailor, turns pale. He turns and immediately signals to have the white flag hoisted.

Because the captain knows.

That’s not just any pirate ship that’s nearing.

And that’s not just any pirate.

That’s Blackbeard.

I’m telling you this because Goldman’s storytelling strategy applies as well if you sell online. It’s good for building up the main character of a movie… or for building up value for your high-priced offers.

In a few more words:

If you want to make Blackbeard — or your offer — sound important, unique, immense, you can jump straight in, and pile on the adjectives, promises, and threats.

That’s what a lot of business owners do.

At best, it works if you grit your teeth and keep piling on the adjectives, promises, and threats, and if you don’t charge all that much.

At worst, it doesn’t work at all, even when you start dropping the price.

A much better strategy is to do what Goldman did above.

Build up one thing, such as the big gruff sailor… use that to build up a second thing, such as the cool collected captain… and then finally use all that built-up power and contrast to immediately communicate the importance, uniqueness, and immensity of your third thing, say, Blackbeard.

That’s my perceived value tip for you for today, at least if you sell stuff online.

My offer for you today is my important, unique, and immense Daily Email Habit service. It can be useful and hard-working on board your own trading vessel. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Don’t read this before bed

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A gruesome and depressing email today. Read at your own risk:

Last night, of course right before bed, I saw a real-life clip online that I really didn’t need to see.

It showed a heartbroken mother wailing. She had just called 911 after she discovered some rotting human remains in her 19-year-old son’s closet.

The rest of the clip showed the police confronting the son.

He calmly and articulately admitted that, yes, that is a human head and a pair human hands in his closet, and yes, he did murder somebody with a knife. Asked why, he replied, “I always wanted to know what it would feel like.”

Of course, rather than closing my laptop at this point and going to drink some chamomile tea to maybe bleach this from my mind, I investigated this case further.

The murderer looks to be as close to pure evil as you can imagine. Cold, remorseless, shark-like.

He was arrested and then tried. His lawyers went with an insanity defense. It didn’t fly.

He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The jury felt he was not insane, in the sense that he could clearly distinguish between right and wrong.

But if you see the guy confessing to the murder or talking about the details of it, it’s clear that something is not right in his head. He might not be insane in the legal sense, but he’s certainly not sane in the everyday sense.

If you would dig into the neural pathways, chemicals, bits and blobs of his brain, I bet you’d find they were different to what a normal person has. Maybe this guy was born deficient in some way, or something went wrong early in life, or wasn’t there when it should have been.

I feel like I’m digging myself into a hole with this email. It’s too late to stop now, so let me dig a bit deeper:

I don’t know if we have free will, or like I wrote a few weeks ago, “free won’t.”

But even though the murder case above is as clear of a black-and-white, good-vs-evil, open-and-shut case as you would ever not want to see right before bed, I personally still feel there’s probably much more to it for anybody who would take the trouble to look closer.

Does that mean that the guy is not guilty of murder?

Smart people, such as Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, argue exactly this. Sapolsky says that assigning guilt doesn’t make sense when you actually look at what’s happening in the brain.

I personally don’t know.

One thing I do know is that my “shades of gray” way of looking at the world is a handicap, probably for my own happiness and certainly when it comes to influencing others. Because the more black-and-white you see things, the easier it makes it for others to identify with you, to fall in line with your views, to berserk on your behalf, as Ben Settle likes to say.

This black-and-white stuff also works if you write sales copy. (Yes, I have to somehow try to clamber out of that hole I’ve dug for myself.)

The more extreme, contrasted, polarized you make your claims, the more likely you are to draw attention to and to create desire for them.

This is something I go into much more detail in my Copy Riddles program. Copy Riddles gives you source material from info products of years past, and sales bullets from A-list copywriters who promoted those products, to drill this black-and-white stuff into your brain, such as it is.

In case you’d like to find out more, and maybe bleach this email from your mind:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Smug, yet falsely modest

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I plopped onto my couch this morning and ripped open the latest New Yorker. I skipped the first few pages by instinct — after all, they’re just ads. “Except,” I said to myself, “that’s kind of my job?”

So I flipped back to page one.

What I saw was a two-page ad for AI company Anthropic, which makes Claude, a ChatGPT competitor.

The Claude logo took up the entire left page.

On the right page, the headline read, “Late bloomer” (including the quotes).

The body copy then went on to say that Claude might not be the first AI chatbot to market. But this was by design, the ad explained, so Claude could be so good, and so safe, and so useful as it happens to be. “We build AI you can trust,” concluded the copy

In a way, this kinda sounded like the famous Avis ad, “Avis is only No. 2,” which turned being second in a market into an advantage.

Or maybe it kinda sounded like the famous Volkswagen “Lemon” ad, which flipped quality concerns into a demonstration of higher standards.

The Anthropic ad kinda sounded like that… but it failed.

Because those headlines — “Avis is only No.2,” “Lemon” — really were objections that people were throwing at Avis and Volkswagen.

Whoever wrote this ad for Anthropic could have gone that same route by saying something like “Also-ran” in the headline.

Instead, they went the board-pleasing “Late bloomer” route, which is not any kind of insult or objection, but in fact a kind of smug self-compliment.

I can’t say whether this Anthropic ad will prove to be effective in any way, and neither can Anthropic. Because this ad is a typical “tombstone ad,” with no mechanism to track response.

All I can tell you is that this headline + body copy violate a kind of core rule of effective communication.

That rule is contrast.

If you say about a person that he is smug yet effective, then there is some tension and power in that description, because of the contrast. Plus, you get bonus points for transparency.

On the other hand, if you describe someone as “smug, yet falsely modest,” then at best you’ll confuse your audience based on what they were expecting. At worst, you’ll sound repetitive, mealy-mouthed, or self-serving, which is what I felt about this Anthropic ad.

So use contrast for power. Avoid contrast for blandness.

Also, if you haven’t done so yet, consider reading my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. It doesn’t have anything to do with this email, and so I won’t pretend otherwise. The only thing I will say in favor of this book is that it’s short yet cheap. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Talk different

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Today is the last day to sign up for my Daily Email Fastlane workshop, which means it’s TIME:

TIME ​​to feature bits of self-serving feedback I’ve gotten from readers who have already signed up.​​

I have one such bit below.

​​If you read on, you will see it serves my purposes perhaps all too well.

Still, it might just be worth reading for your own self, because it does also illustrate a deep marketing truth.

Yesterday, I got a message from Ashley Gainer, who is a copywriter, former journalist, and current host of the Copy Chatter podcast.

Ashley had signed up for Daily Email Fastlane, so I wrote her to ask what her situation is in regard to daily emails, and how I can make the workshop as useful to her as possible.

​​Here’s a part of what she replied:

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I’ve been sending a daily email to my list for 2+ years. Your “takes” on the how and why of copywriting and marketing in general are often so different from what I normally see with the chest-thumpers — I want to know more about your approach.

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Ok, so now that I’ve slipped in this bit of self-serving feedback, maybe you can read it again and see that deep and obvious marketing truth:

If you want people to buy from you, even products that are kind of vague and mysterious like Daily Email Fastlane, then make sure you talk different from other people out there.

I don’t mean just talking all ungrammatical or doubling down on your own slang.

I mean fundamentally having unique things, different things, surprising things to say.

Easier said than done, right?

​​How in helminth do you come up with different, unique, surprising things to say, particularly every day?

Good news:

​​That’s one of the commonalities I’ve found among three successful daily emailers I will be using as case studies inside Daily Email Fastlane.

Honestly, I’m dissecting what these guys do as much for myself as I’m doing it for you.

Because if I could only have five fundamentals of human psychology as applies to marketing and copywriting, one for each of the fingers of my left hand, then contrast would be one of them. In fact it would be the thumb.

That’s why during Daily Email Fastlane, I’ll go into this “talk different” topic, and give you a practical technique I’ve seen used by all three of these daily emailers to say something unique as often as they like.

Daily Email Fastlane is happening tomorrow night, live on Zoom, at 8pm CET, with a replay if you cannot attend live.

But the deadline to sign up is today, Wednesday, less than 12 hours from now, at 8:31pm CET. If you’d like join me and find out how to talk different:

https://bejakovic.com/daily-email-fastlane

Reader succeeds in provoking me with a backhanded compliment

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Yesterday, a reader succeeded in provoking me with a message that started with a backhanded compliment — how my Most Valuable Email course is ‘good’ but not ‘WOOOW.’

The hackles stood up on the back of my neck as I read this.

If you’d like to be provoked also, read through my reader’s message below, and then I’ll tell you something simple but powerful about influence:

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I’m stopping by with a purpose: to finally give you my impression of MVE.

Look… The first time I read all the content, I found it “good”.

I’m not going to deny that, although I found the idea original, I hadn’t found the hook that made me say “WOOOW”.

Two weeks went by, and I found myself going around in circles to write some emails and improve my list engagement, and I decided to re-read all the MVE content.

…

I admit I have no idea what was going on in my head the first time I saw the course.

This is one of the best courses I have EVER bought.

I probably read it without much thought – the way one reads newspapers in the morning – and didn’t see how much value it had.

And I am writing this email to you after:

1. having carefully studied MVE, and
2. Having put it into practice and seen the results.

I paid $100 for this course. However, if it had cost me $500, I would have paid for it anyway (I really still can’t get over how effective and unique it is).

Even though MVE’s sales page states well everything the training comes with…

I believe the course contains MUCH more at a deeper level, and its results are better than what you state on your sales page.

Thank you for this. I understand that it is something I paid for and that is the “price”, but beyond that, I feel that selling this product is a service you are doing that is worth 10 times what I paid.

I have had good results in my newsletter, and just now it has grown more than expected and I have built an audience that I feel comfortable with – and I owe that in large part to MVE.

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Maybe you yourself feel provoked or at least disappointed now.

Maybe you feel I’ve bait-and-switched you by promising you some genuine drama, and instead I’ve sneaked in a testimonial for one of my courses.

If so, let me work to make it up to you:

The reader who sent me the above message, Jesús Silva, “got” me with his opening.

I started off reading his email thinking, “What a jackass. Why would anybody take the trouble to write me and say something I’ve worked hard to create is ‘good’ but not WOOOW.”

By the end of Jesús’s message though, I thought this is the nicest testimonial I’ve ever gotten for MVE.

I asked myself why.

After all, I’ve had many people write me with very positive and even grateful reviews of MVE.

Why did this one impact me more?

Perhaps it’s obvious.

It’s that bit of emotional roller coastering… the swing from “‘good’ but not WOOOW”… to “one of the best courses EVER” and to thanking me for selling this course.

In other words, the second half of Jesús’s message is very flattering. But on its own, it wouldn’t have the impact that it had on me when prefaced by the hackle-raising opening.

So the point I have for you today:

There’s great power in emotional contrast.

From negative to positive… from humiliated to triumphant… from arrogant to nice… from alarmist to optimistic.

Emotional contrast is simple. But it can move people who cannot be moved otherwise… and it can can create a much stronger reaction than a one-sided appeal ever could.

But back to that “good but not WOOOW” MVE course:

I’ve raised the price of MVE dramatically since Jesús bought. Rather than the $100 I charged Jesús, I now sell MVE for $297. That’s three times as expensive. It’s a shameless price hike on the level of Martin Shkreli.

But if what Jesús says is true, MVE is still a good deal and is still underpriced, even at this new higher price.

And I can tell you I wouldn’t sell MVE at this new price if I didn’t think the education inside is worth much more, if only you only read the content thoroughly and then put it to use, growing your influence, list, and even marketing skills, faster and further than you might ever think possible.

The MVE trick takes all of one hour to learn, though you might want to go through the content twice to get it on a deeper level.

If you’d like to get started with that now, so you can start profiting today rather than weeks or months later, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Shady and petty, or smart personal positioning?

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In 1906, magician Harry Houdini started to research an ambitious book he planned to call The Encyclopedia of Magic.

But the more Houdini worked, the more maniacal and single-minded his focus became — to discredit Robert-Houdin, the great 19th-century magician that Houdini had originally modeled himself after, down to the name.

Even the title of Houdini’s book changed. ​​First it became Robert-Houdin’s Proper Place in the History of Magic… and then, The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin.

Robert-Houdin was a hack, Houdini was effectively saying. Robert-Houdin had managed to fool magicians into thinking he was something great and original, when he was not.

Yesterday, I wrote an email about how negotiation coach Jim Camp snubbed his mentor Dave Sandler.

Sandler was a sales trainer who had influenced much of Camp’s thinking — take a look at their published works — but Camp never seems to have given due credit to Sandler for his influence or ideas.

You might call that — along with Houdini’s attack on Robert-Houdin — petty, shady, or simply inevitable human ego that crops up even among great men.

You might call it that.

But I might call it smart personal positioning.

Hear me out:

It’s undeniable that being unique, new, distinct, never-before-seen is a tremendous advantage to your personal positioning.

The trouble of course is that you’re probably not unique, distinct, or never-before-seen, just like the other 117 billion humans estimated to have ever lived.

​​We’re all quite similar to each other, and we’re all really the outgrowth of our families, friends, neighbors, coworkers, teachers, mentors, living and dead.

That might be true. But like I said yesterday, it’s not really what the human brain responds to.

The human brain responds to contrast. That’s the basis of cognition.

And what bigger contrast is there than saying about yourself, “There was darkness upon the face of the deep… and then there was light.”

So there you go. If you’re looking to improve your personal positioning, work on being more distinct, unique, new.

That’s given.

What you might not have thought about is to make yourself distinct and unique at the expense of the people who helped you get there.

It might seem like one of those unsavory and pointless things done by people who have made it to the top… but I disagree. At least about the pointless part.

People who get to the top often do things that seem unnecessary or even self-defeating — if you’re not in their place.

Anyways, that’s just an idea for you to consider.

I realize today’s message might seem a little dark, but that’s what happens if you want to reach into all corners of human nature. Some are nice and cheery… others are dark and disturbing.

If you are willing to face the dark and disturbing corners of human nature, and maybe even figure out how to work with them to your advantage, then I have an entire sub-training all about that.

That sub-training is Round 19 of my Copy Riddles program. It deals with the dark psychological things that are present in the best sale copy, which go deeper than mere self-interest.

For more info on Copy Riddles, from Round 1 to Round 20:

https://bejakovic.com/cr