Mental Shortcuts

The parable of the unfree client

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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.

5 (+ five) easy ecommerce pieces

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See if you can spot the one green “5” in the picture below:

Wasn’t hard, was it?

But if I asked you how many 5’s there are in the above picture, that wouldn’t be as easy. In fact it might be a pain in the ass, and you might give up rather than count.

Counting doesn’t come natural to us. Our eyes and brain have to work at it.

Not so with contrast.

We’re kind of like that T-Rex in the original Jurassic Park. “Don’t move… it can’t see us if we don’t move.” In other words, create enough contrast, and your prospect immediately sees the message you want him to see.

Of course, marketers have long known about this. And they have long used it to make more sales. As Rich Schefren likes to say, different is better than better.

Anyways, that was my little intro to try to sell you on watching the video below. It’s a recording of a presentation Stefan Georgi gave a few weeks ago. And it’s all about split tests he always recommends performing in ecommerce funnels.

I’ve done a lot of work on the direct response side of ecommerce. And I knew some of Stefan’s split tests. But most were new to me.

And while it’s not guaranteed that any of these split tests will win for any specific funnel, all of them sound reasonable. Because all of them are based on fundamentals.

Stuff like contrast… or reason why… or guiding your prospect’s attention… or cutting down his confusion.

So if you’d like to see all of Stefan’s split tests, along with his breakneck explanations for what exactly to test and why, you can find it at the YouTube video below.

But be careful. Because the first two-thirds of Stefan’s presentation are all about these split tests. But then Stefan shifts gear.

​​And he gives a soft pitch for the Copy Accelerator live event that’s happening in Scottsdale at the end of this month.

I say be careful because you can get sucked into Stefan’s pitch. For example, it happened to me.

After watching Stefan’s presentation yesterday and hearing his pitch, I found myself excited abuot going to the Copy Accelerator event. Even though I’d have to fly halfway around the world to do it (what a contrast and a pain)… and even though I’d have to laboriously count out a bunch of simoleons for plane tickets, hotel rooms, and for the event admission itself.

We will see how that ends up. ​​

In the meantime, if you’re already planning on going to Stefan’s event, let me know. So far, I’ve only met 2 people in real life who read my email newsletter. I’d like to maybe bring that up to 3, and meeting you there might sway me to go.

(Whaat? You’re not signed up to my email newsletter? You can fix that here.)

And if you’re not going to Copy Accelerator (yet), or if you just want to see Stefan’s ecommerce optimizations, here’s the money-making video:

Obvious one-time product placement inside

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“Mona, I am drinking my milk right now.”

He pours out a full glass of milk with an ice cube in it. He tops it off with vodka from a Smirnoff bottle. And he drinks it down.

I saw this scene from Mad Men once, probably 15 years ago.

I thought it was great. It still sticks in my mind. But I never did buy a bottle of Smirnoff. And if I were to ever buy vodka, Smirnoff wouldn’t be my first choice.

So product placements — do they work?

Professors in business schools trip over each other to answer this question.

They take real TV shows. They splice in different kinds of product placements. They show them to students. And then they ask, “By the way… what do you happen to think of Smirnoff?”

As a result, these marketing professors come up with conclusions like:

1. If a product placement is subtle, then repeated exposure actually improves attitude towards a brand.

2. If a product placement is obvious, then repeated exposure hurts attitude towards a brand.

Interesting, right? Except you can’t really tell what it means in the real world.

After all, like my Smirnoff story from above shows, a product placement can “work” great. And yet still no sale.

But here’s a surprising bit from the same research, which might be more useful. These marketing professors also asked students, “Oh, and even more by the way… what did you think of the show?”

Same show of course, just different types of product placements spliced in. Result:

1. People liked the TV show the most if it had a SINGLE OBVIOUS product placement…

2. Next came the show with MULTIPLE SUBTLE product placements…

3. Next, the show with a SINGLE SUBTLE product placement…

4. And finally, far down in last place, MULTIPLE OBVIOUS product placements. People really didn’t like the show in this case.

Which fits my beliefs about how we all go through life.

We like buying stuff. We also like shortcuts that cut down our work of making buying decisions. But we want to feel we are in control of those decisions… even when we are not.

Whatever. I thought this might be useful to you, in case you have your own TV show, whether that’s an email newsletter, or a YouTube channel, or your own Facebook group.

It’s not clear that an occasional clear plug will be optimal for your sales. But if your biz is built on relationship first… and sales numbers only second… then the above academic result is something to consider.

And in that spirit, let me say I found out the above while doing research for my upcoming book. It’s called The Gospel of Insight Marketing. And it’s all about the most powerful way to persuade people to buy… even in markets where people are jaded, hostile, or frankly indifferent to your pitch.

The book isn’t out yet. I’m working on it now. But I won’t bring it up again, at least not obviously, until it’s ready for reading. After all, I care my relationship with you… and science says this is the way to go.

Finally:

If you’d like to find out when my Gospel book is ready for reading… sign up for my email newsletter.

The vulnerability myth

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Ron was waiting in his wheelchair, looking up the stairs.

The necklace he had just bought was wrapped up on the table in front of him.

Finally, he saw her.

She was coming down the stairs, laughing and talking to another man.

At the bottom of the stairs, she kissed the man on the lips and grabbed him by the crotch. She then noticed Ron from the corner of her eye.

Ron quietly pulled the wrapped present off the table.

The woman came over. “We get married today?” she chuckled.

“Oh yeah, yeah,” Ron said. “That would be great.” He slumped down in his wheelchair. And he wheeled himself away.

That’s a scene scene from Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July. It’s a fictional look at the real-world horrors that paralyzed Vietnam vet Ron Kovic went through, both during the war and after.

I thought of this scene today when I heard yet another recruiting pitch for the cult of vulnerability. “Wear all your hidden handicaps on your sleeve,” the cult leaders say, “and people will love you for it.”

I want to offer you another point of view. It’s a simple formula:

Charisma = Power + Liking

I read that a long time ago in a book called The Charisma Myth. It’s stuck with me ever since.

It’s why a brutal, undefeated knight makes hearts beat faster with small acts of chivalry…

But why a vulnerable “nice guy” with flowers and gifts gets a pat on the head, at best.

Good news is, there’s a way out.

For example, at the end of the Oliver Stone movie, Ron speaks to a crowd of millions. People hang on to his every word. They absorb his anti-war message. And they applaud and cheer him.

But here’s the crucial point:

This only happens after Ron and a bunch of other vets make a scandal at the Republican National Convention… after they storm the convention hall… and after they get on TV.

So my pitch to you is to work on your power and your authority first.

​​Once you’ve got em in buckets, then bare your stories of self-doubt and failure.

​​People will listen then… they will feel good about following such an effective and yet human leader… and they might even love you for it.

In other news:

I’ve got an email newsletter. Full of effective marketing and copywriting ideas, and occasional personal stories. In case you’d like to sign up, here’s where to go.

They tried to bury this information… but I believe it

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Here’s a sneaky story about the things they don’t want you to know:

Back in 2013, the European Union wanted proof that online piracy hurts sales of movies, books, and computer games. So they had a big study done.

The 300-page study was complete in 2015. It was then used for a second academic paper by two European Commission members, which came out in 2016.

The conclusion of that second paper was that piracy hurts movie sales by about 4.4%. “Our findings have important implications for copyright policy,” said that second paper.

The thing is, nobody ever saw the original 2013 study. It was never published. Not nowhere. Not until 2017.

​​That’s when Julia Reda, the Pirate Party member of the EU Parliament, got her hands on the missing study. And she published the results on her blog.

“With the exception of recently released blockbusters,” the 2013 study said, “there is no evidence to support the idea that online copyright infringement displaces sales.”

Hold on a second…

So was the EU hiding this study… so they could cherry pick results that fit their desired “important implications for copyright policy?”

It sure sounds like it. Sneaky governmentses, right?

But here’s the bigger truth in all this:

I found out about this yesterday. An article about it was published in an online tech news site. It then went viral on a news aggregator.

But this story has been public since 2017… and yet we’re talking about it now, in the middle of 2021. There’s something there.

As you probably know, if a bit of information is scarce, we tend to value it more. “Long-lost study from 2013” piques our curiosity. But maybe not all that much, and not for all that long.

However, if that bit of information was suppressed, we tend to value it much more. “Long-lost study from 2013 that the government worked hard to bury.” That’s something worth discussing even years later.

“Fine,” you might say. “But I kind of knew that already. It sounds like the lead of every health VSL ever.”

All right. But let’s see if you knew this:

Bob Cialdini’s Influence lists a bunch of evidence that censorship doesn’t just increase desire for censored info…

But censorship also increases belief in that information. Even if you don’t actually see the information.

For example, I haven’t read the original EU study about piracy. Come on, it’s 300 pages. Who’s got time?

But I believe the conclusions. Why else would the EU try to censor it? I bet a bunch of people on that news aggregator thought the same, and that’s why this story went viral.

My takeaway for you is this:

Desire and belief are really two sides of the same coin.

Whether you’re using specificity… or a new mechanism… or even secrets… if you juice up one side of the coin, the other side gets bigger too.

And I’ve got evidence to prove it. Evidence nobody has seen before. I hope to publish it one day soon… if they don’t get to me first. If you want to read that secret report when it comes out, here’s our underground communication channel.

Required viewing if you’re interested in persuasion

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In 2011, an Indian spiritual teacher named Sri Kumare set up a new practice in Phoenix, Arizona.

Kumare had a couple of women in tow — one Indian, who acted as his personal assistant, and the other white, who guided Kumare’s meditation and yoga sessions.

These women helped Kumare build up a following in Phoenix quickly. But it’s not clear he really needed their help.

After all, Kumare looked like the perfect embodiment of an Indian guru.

He was tall, gaunt, and had long black hair and a long black beard. He wore flowing robes, held onto a wooden walking stick, and walked with a strange stumbling gait.

And of course, then you heard him speak.

Kumare had a thick Indian accent when he dropped his mystical wisdom such as, “All this… the world… is an illusion,” and, “The guru is inside YOU.”

Plus he stared really intensely at people when he spoke.

One time, a five-year-old boy who had just met Kumare confessed, “I like to play! All the time!”

Kumare stared at the boy. And then he smiled and said shyly in his thick accent, “I like to play… also!”

One of the women who became Kumare’s disciple was a death penalty attorney named Toby.

She fought for the rights of people who had been sentenced to the death penalty and who had lost all their appeals. It was a very stressful and emotionally draining job.

Kumare stared intensely at Toby. “Why… do you want to help those people?” he asked, with no judgment in his voice.

Toby explained how these death row inmates have lost the support of everybody, including their families. They needed somebody to fight for them.

Kumare nodded while continuing to stare at Toby. Later, Toby explained why she started looking to Kumare as her guru:

“When somebody shows interest in what you’re interested in, it makes you want to get to know them better. It makes you want to learn as much as you can.”

This made me think of something I found in my notes from the past month. “The biggest thing you can do for others,” I wrote, “is to like and accept them.”

Now I don’t know if that’s really true. I think we are all a bundle of different needs. At different times, those different needs take turns being uppermost.

But the need to be liked and accepted is definitely up there, and it’s up there a lot of the time.

Anyways, if you know the story of Kumare, then you know how it ends.

But if you do not know the story of Kumare, then I highly recommend watching a documentary made about the man. And I recommend you do it without reading any reviews first.

Because there’s a lot in this movie, and it’s best if you come to it with an open mind.

In fact, there’s so much in this movie that it should be required viewing for anybody interested in persuasion of any kind.

One day, if I ever create the curriculum for my mythical AIDA School, this movie will be part of the first semester, along with Guthy-Renker’s Personal Power infomercial and Chip and Dan Heath’s Made To Stick.

I bet you can find Kumare the documentary on your favorite streaming service. But if you don’t want to search around for it, or if you just want to watch a couple minutes to see if it’s really worth your time, then here’s a grainy copy that somebody posted to YouTube:

A deadline to make a deliberate and far-sighted decision

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“We might describe the predicament of these [frontal lobe] patients as a ‘myopia for the future,’ a concept that has been proposed under the influence of alcohol and other drugs. Inebriation does narrow the panorama of our future, so much so that almost nothing but the present is processed with clarity.”
— Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error

Antonio Damasio is a celebrated neuroscientist at USC and the Salk Institute. He claims all our decisions are made emotionally.

One of his arguments is that people who suffer brain damage that interferes with their emotions… also stop being able to make decisions effectively.

​​Instead, they start to act in impulsive, short-sighted ways, much like somebody drunk.

That’s some high-science proof for an idea that direct response marketers and copywriters have been preaching for decades.

Here’s another thing direct response marketers figured out long ago:

A deadline, coming up in just a few hours, is a proven way to bring a person’s focus to the present.

Specifically, if you’d like to join Copy Riddles, my program for learning how to write bullets and improve your copywriting in general, then you can do so until the end of day today, Sunday, July 4, at 12 midnight PST.

After that, I’ll close the shopping cart down and keep it closed for a few months.

Of course, you’re not drunk… you’re not under the influence of drugs… and you’re not suffering from frontal lobe brain damage.

In other words, you have all your wits about you, and you can make decisions for yourself and your future effectively right now.

So if you’d like to make a deliberate and far-sighted decision for the benefit of your copywriting career, then the time is here:

https://copyriddles.com/

Constant scarcity loses to recent scarcity

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Yesterday, a copywriter who reads my email newsletter wrote me with a job offer.

The offer sounds great. I’m planning to get on a call with the copywriter and the COO of the company to talk about it, hopefully later today.

It took over two years of everyday mailing to get to this point.

For the longest time, nobody read my newsletter. But gradually, a few people found me, and then a few more.

And now, even though I still have a small list, opportunities are coming my way out of unexpected corners.

I’m telling you about this for two reasons:

First, if you’re getting started in any kind of service business, then writing daily emails is a great way to get in front of high-quality, high-paying clients, very slowly.

Maybe you can do it faster than I did, if you work hard on growing your list and if you push your services in your emails. Both things I never did much of.

Which brings me to the second reason I’m telling you about this, and the real point of today’s post.

Several copywriting influencers claim you should reach out to your email list whenever you’re looking for work. They advise saying something like:

“I just wrapped up a big project… I currently have an opening in my schedule… if you’re interested, reply and we can talk.”

I always had a bad feeling about this advice.

I’m sure it works, if you have a big enough reputation and a big enough list.

But if you have a small enough list or a small enough reputation… then the message above smells of need, at least to me.

​​I figured there must be a better way.

My suspicions were confirmed when I read Bob Cialdini’s book Pre-suasion. Cialdini cites laboratory research showing that constant scarcity is less motivating than recent scarcity. From the research:

If there are always a few cookies in a jar, you want them more than if there are a lot of cookies. But…

You don’t want them nearly as much as when there were always a lot of cookies… and now suddenly there are only a few.

“Pfff, lab persuasion!” you might say. “What does that have to do with the real world?”

I don’t know. Let’s find out.

As I mentioned at the start, I have a new job offer. That’s in addition to my ongoing clients in the ecommerce space… plus a real estate business I’ve recently joined… plus my own books and courses, which I’m building up and selling.

And like I said, new opportunities are popping up, more and more often, as my little newsletter picks up steam.

In other words, I’m really not looking for more work. But I am still open to it.

So if you would like to work with me in some form… before I get so entangled in other projects that it becomes impossible to say yes to anything new… then get on my newsletter, get in touch with me, and we can talk.

Virtue selling

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Because you are an independent thinker, I believe you will appreciate the following:

​​A few nights ago, I was walking along the riverside when a series of loud explosions went off all around me.

I didn’t flinch. Not because I’m so brave. But because I knew what was going on.

The explosions were firecrackers, fireworks, or possibly cannon fire, set off in celebration. They were followed by mass cheering that broke out from balconies, bars, and cafes all over the city.

Because it’s the Euro Cup now. And the national soccer team had just scored a goal.

I say national team, but that’s not what they are called. Not officially.

Instead, government officials, TV pundits, and newspaper editors now use the terms “we,” or more commonly, “Croatia.”

“Croatia was magnificent”

“Croatia needs to try harder”

“Croatia rises from the ashes”

My point is that soccer here is a kind of new state religion.

I’m not kidding about that.

Once upon a time in this part of the world, belonging to the official church and being a good citizen were two sides of the same personal identity coin.

Today, the church has lost much of its pull.

But soccer has gained where the church has lost.

So today, billboards, TV, and newspapers all repeat a hundred versions of the same two-sided message:

“Croatia is soccer! And soccer is Croatia!”

But let me step off my 1984 pulpit. And let me get to the money-making shot at the open goal.

This official push for soccer fandom brought to mind something I’ve heard from two successful marketers.

The marketers in question are Chris Haddad and Ben Settle. And independent of each other, they both said the same thing:

You want to make buying from you a virtue.

Sure, people want to get rich, get laid, and get swole.

But maybe not as much as you think. Maybe not enough to pull out their wallets, to overcome their fears, and to set aside the bad memories of previous purchases that went nowhere. Maybe not enough to buy.

So you link buying from you to a virtue:

Your prospect is a rebel. Or a patriot. Or a visionary.

And by virtue of buying from you… he is making the world a better place… and reaffirming that he is in fact a deserving person.

And when your prospect starts wondering if that’s really something he wants, you remind him:

He still gets rich/laid/swole as part of the bargain. A good deal, no? 1-0 for your business.

And now the pitch:

Since you are an independent-thinking person, you might want to sign up to my email newsletter. By signing up to my email newsletter, you will be exposed to novel ideas, making you an even more independent-thinking person. Plus you might make some money in the process.

My Airbnb pre-suasion ticket

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I moved into a new Airbnb a few days ago. The host met me there to let me in. Fine. But then he wouldn’t leave.

He pointed out where the bedroom is. He showed me where he keeps the ironing board. He mimed how to press the button that turns on the hot water heater.

And then he walked to the front door and said apologetically, “Well… I guess there’s nothing else…”

But there was. Three more times he started to leave… and three more times he went off on another tour of the apartment.

He highlighted the lacquered kitchen counter.

He explained the quirks of the TV to me, even though I told him I don’t watch TV.

And when he was finally leaving for real, he said:

“People tell me there’s something about this apartment. A good vibe. I don’t really get it. But a few people who stayed here made me an offer to buy it outright. They say it just makes them feel good to be here.”

I told him I’d keep my antenna out for the special vibe.

And the craziest thing happened.

I think the guy was right.

I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s the quirky mix of decor. Maybe it’s the shady maple trees in front that reach right up to the windows. Maybe it’s because I’m sleeping like a bear in the cool and dark bedroom.

Anyways, I probably would have let all this slip into oblivion. Except I’ve been reading Robert Cialdini’s Pre-suasion over the past few days.

And that book got me thinking. Because the first few chapters are all about the power of attention.

Draw somebody’s attention to a fact, says Cialdini, and that fact gains in importance. (“Good vibe, huh? Well, we’ll see.”)

Not only does a highlighted fact gain in importance, but other facts lose in importance. (It took me days to notice the apartment is very dark. Must be the maple trees.)

And there’s more:

Attention can create causality. Even where there is none. (“The kitchen counter really is nice. Could that be why I like this place?”)

Well… I guess there’s nothing else I want to tell you today.

​​(1… 2… 3…)

​​Except let me just add one last thing:

You probably already knew how important it is to manage the attention of people you want to persuade.

You probably even knew that you want to draw attention to things that help your case… and to keep attention away from things that hurt your case.

Whatever. I thought it was still worth pointing all this out to you.

Because now that the power of attention has been pointed out, maybe you will start to see its importance in a way you hadn’t seen before.

​​Maybe you will see how it’s being used on you to guide your own decision making.

​​​​And when that happens, maybe you will become more effective at persuading others… with a creative light show, which highlights just what you want, at just the right moment.

I guess there’s really nothing else. Except just one more thing:

I write an email newsletter. I’ve had a few people who subscribe to it say it’s surprisingly fun and valuable. I don’t really get it. But if you want to try it out, here’s where to sign up.