Psychology Behind Advertising

“Unsubscribe please”

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Last night, following my “Buy my 10 Commandments book” email, a reader replied:

“Unsubscribe please”

I’ll admit it. This irritated me. I figured my reader was just too dumb to know how you unsubscribe from an email newsletter.

But then I had a hopeful thought.

Maybe my reader just wanted to show her displeasure at my grossly self-promotional, zero-value email?

When I checked ActiveCampaign, it turned out I was right. My reader had found the unsubscribe link and unsubscribed on her own. But as she was walking out the door, she just had to let me know about it.

This isn’t the only parting shot an unsubscribing reader has taken at me.

Last January, during a launch I was running, a troll wrote me and suggested I read up on copywriting fundamentals before promoting any more offers of my own.

To which, I wrote a newsletter email about his helpful suggestion.

The troll replied to that newsletter email in an offended tone.

So I wrote a second newsletter email about his offended tone.

At which point, the troll unsubscribed. In the “reason why” field you get when you unsubscribe, he wrote:

“You’re simply too dumb to be helped.I tried twice & you can’t tell the difference between a troll & someone with advice. Good luck. You’ll need it.”

I’m telling you all this because enemies are good for business. They’re so good that if you don’t have them, you have to make them up. Here’s America’s greatest living copywriter, Gary Bencivenga, on the matter:

“And if you can create an enemy in your copy, that’s what happens. You set up a three-point discussion and you come around from your side of the desk to be on the reader’s side of the desk and then it’s you and the reader against the enemy that you’re railing against.”

The trouble is, my emails are usually so placid and polite that I’ve been suffocating any potential enemies in the womb.

In that whole span from the guy back in January to the woman last night, I’ve gotten zero even mildly criminal replies to any of my emails.

I don’t know if it’s too late. I hope not.

There’s a theory that Gotham City is so full of wacky costumed villains simply because Batman is there. The villains watch the evening news, and see other criminals scrapping with Batman. They want a challenge also, and so they congregate on Gotham.

I’ll see whether writing about the “unsub plz” lady or the “you’re too dumb to be helped” troll will bring out any latent Scarecrows or Penguins on my list.

If they do come out, I’ll be sure to write an email and let you know about it.

In the meantime, let me promote something. That’s like lighting up the Bat-Signal in the night sky for making blood boil among wacky villains.

My offer for you today is my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters.

This little book features a commandment by Gary Bencivenga. Gary’s commandment is not about enemies. It’s both more fundamental and more powerful than that.

If you’d like to read it, here’s where to go…

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

… and I’ll be back tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. ​​

Buy my 10 Commandments book

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This past November, copywriter Dan Ferrari sent out an email with 38 lessons to mark his 38th birthday. Lesson number 9 read:

9. People love commandments. A little copy “trick” I don’t see used often enough is to create a commandment and then repeat it over and over again, like the chorus to a song. Here’s an example… “remember: commandments always equal higher conversions.” If this were a sales letter, that would be the chorus line.

I haven’t promoted my 10 Commandments book for a while. So let me do it now.

Buy my 10 Commandments book.

​​Why? Because it’s great. Here’s a testimonial — or more specifically, a four-star review, which is as negative of a review as I’ve gotten so far:

“Short and very pertinent. Loaded with the names of hugely successful giants of the copywriting world and the titles of their successful books. I read the book on Kindle and highlighted many great bits of advice and the names of the great writers sharing advice. If you write ad copy for a living or hope to do so, buy this book.”

As the reviewer above says at the end of his 4-star review:

Buy my 10 Commandments book. At least if you write ad copy for a living or hope to do so.

Maybe you’re still not convinced.

​​So let me tell you that the book contains a commandment by Dan Ferrari. Dan is one of the smartest and most successful people in the copywriting world right now.

Over the past decade, Dan has made himself a lot of money by writing copy for some of the biggest direct response publishers. He has a long string of controls, even when going up against other top pros. As a result, he was voted the no. 1 direct response copywriter in a recent ranking some dude put together.

So that’s another reason why you should buy my 10 Commandments book.

Maybe, maybe you’re still not convinced.

In that case, I can tell you my 10 Commandments book costs only $5. It’s by far the cheapest of my offers, and outside of any future Kindle books I may one day write, it’s also the only thing I will ever sell for under $100, at least outside special launch prices.

Are you starting to feel the refrain coming on? I’m feeling it. And it goes like this…

Buy my 10 Commandments book.

​​You can do it at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

My trivial mistake and maybe a profound human insight

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I went for a walk this morning and I passed by a small public park. The gate was closed. On the gate, hand-written in white paint, was a quote in Spanish. It said something about a man sitting in the shade, and it was attributed to actor Warren Beatty.

I’m a big Warren Beatty fan, going back to the movie Shampoo. As soon as I saw this quote, I imagined this handsome, confident, and yet accommodating Hollywood star smiling at me as he said whatever the quote said.

But what did the quote say?

My Spanish is still not so good. I googled “warren beatty tree quote” on my phone, hoping to find the original. Amazingly, the quote popped right up:

“‘Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.’ With this quote, Buffett was speaking to long-term investing…”

That was the original quote all right. But Warren Buffett? Giving a metaphor for investing? I did a double take.

I checked what I had googled. Sure enough, I had searched for “warren buffett tree quote.”

I looked at the handwritten quote on the gate. It too was attributed to Warren Buffett.

And yet, in spite of processing “Warren Buffett” on some level, the conscious part of my brain had confidently seen actor Warren Beatty’s face and heard Warren Beatty’s voice — not Warren Buffett’s.

That might seem like a trivial mistake. But to me it’s not. Consider another anecdote:

A couple years ago, I was driving a car on a mountain road. Turn after turn, all I saw was forest around me.

It got a little monotonous but I kept my eyes on the road and kept focused — the way was windy and narrow.

And then, as I was staring ahead at the next turn, straight into some bushes, in a flash, the bushes metamorphosed and became a deer that was standing in the road.

Of course, I realize the bushes probably didn’t jump into the road and turn into a deer.

What I guess happened is that my brain kept predicting “bushes, trees, turn, trees, bushes, turn…”

But then that monotonous picture became unsustainable, and a more useful picture — there’s a deer in the road — popped into my consciousness.

I’d like to suggest to you this is what the human brain does all the time. It makes up guesses, predictions, images, stories, in line with what we expect and what we hope. But it does something else also.

The brain also gives us an incredibly powerful feeling of certainty that whatever we are seeing right now, right in front of our eyes, is real and right — even when it’s far from what the “reality” is. We just don’t usually see the counter-evidence as clearly as I did today or on that mountain road.

Anyways, these are things I like to think about.

I also like to think about how to play with that feeling of “certainty of rightness” that we all experience at the core of who we are.

And that’s connected in some subtle way to my Most Valuable Email.

Today is the last day I will be promoting that program for a while. That’s not any kind of real deadline, except for the benefits you could be getting if you went through this course today.

Maybe you’ve been interested in Most Valuable Email. Maybe you’ve been telling yourself you want to go through it and apply it. But maybe you’ve been postponing it because you think there’s time and I will keep reminding you day after day.

If so, then your brain might be fooling you with certainty that isn’t very useful.

In case you want to get a jump on your brain while the image of MVE is still in your consciousness, here’s where you can get the Most Voluble Email:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Good Will Hunting disease: Why you shouldn’t join Age of Insight

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“So why do you think I should work for the National Security Agency?”

Today is the last day to sign up for my Age of Insight live training. And since this is the last email I will send before the deadline, let me tell you why you shouldn’t sign up.

I call it Good Will Hunting disease.

As you might know, Good Will Hunting is movie about a tough-talking, blue-collar math genius from the slums of Boston, played by a young Matt Damon.

In one scene, Will is interviewing for a job at the NSA.

“You’d be working on the cutting edge,” says the NSA guy in a cocky sales pitch. “You’d be exposed to the kind of technology not seen anywhere else because it’s classified. Superstring theory. Chaos math. Advanced algorithms. So the question is, why shouldn’t you work for the NSA?”

Will nods his head and thinks. “Why shouldn’t I work for the NSA… That’s a tough one. But I’ll take a shot.”

And then he goes on a 2-minute rant, all about how he’d just be breaking codes the NSA, feeling good about doing his job well, but the real upshot of his work would be burned villages, dead American soldiers, lost factory jobs, drug epidemics, inflation, and poisoned baby seals.

Will finishes up his rant and smirks sarcastically. “So why shouldn’t I work for the NSA? I’m holding out for something better.”

Of course:

Your offer is nothing like a job at the NSA. And your pitch is nothing like the NSA recruiter’s pitch.

Still I bet you that your audience, on some level, suffers from Good Will Hunting disease.

Too smart. Too sophisticated. Too skeptical.

And if you need proof of it, just look inside yourself. Don’t you smirk and scoff and shrug off pitch for top-secret opportunities all the time, even if they are at the cutting edge, and even if they promise things you superstring theory and chaos math, or whatever the equivalent is in the marketing space?

And this is why I am not making a pitch for you to join the Age of Insight training. The only offer I will make you, unless you are holding out for something better, is to join my email list. Click here smart guy.

How to handle tire kickers, trolls, and Tommy Boys

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Since I am an avid follower of news, I found out this news yesterday:

Google execs have asked Google managers to fire 6% of the Google workforce. But not just fire.

The managers are to designate this 6% of the Google workforce as poor performers.

These poor performers won’t just lose their jobs, but might also lose their stock options — and probably their self-esteem. I mean, just think of the shame of it.

“So why did you leave Google?”

“As a matter of fact, I was designated a poor performer. But I was thinking of making a change anyhow. So tell me more about this new role you’re looking to fill. I’m very excited about it.”

This might seem like a very evil tactic by Google.

But the fact is, if you spin it right, then it’s probably true that many of that those 6% really were poor performers. Maybe they got a bit lazy, a bit demotivated, a bit entitled. At least more so than the other 96% who got to keep their jobs and their “adequate performer” status.

I bring this up because what’s good for the Google is good for the gander.

I mean, the same underlying attitude that Google adopted is often adopted in the space that’s much nearer to me — the space of marketing influencers, copywriting coaches, online gurus. And in case it’s not clear, that attitude is:

If some people are bad for business, then demonize them.

You can see a playbook of how to do it in the Google story above.

The thing is, if you think about this evil tactic a bit, you might figure out a way to use it not just to lower people’s self-esteem — but to raise it also.

How to do this is something I will explain in my upcoming Age of Insight training.

The deadline to register for Age of Insight is approaching fast: this coming Wednesday, Nov 30 at 12 midnight PST. That’s just four days away.

And here’s one thing that always gets me:

Whenever I put on an offer, I always make the deadline clear, and make it clear won’t be letting people in after the deadline.

And yet, there are always a few Tommy Boy characters — puffing and panting like Chris Farley at the start of Tommy Boy, late for school, bumbling forward in a big hurry, bumping into things, dropping their lunch and schoolbooks, checking their watches in a panic, finger up in the air to try to catch the bus driver’s attention — and still missing the school bus and getting left behind in the dust.

Don’t be a Tommy Boy. Or Tommy Girl.

I am only making my live Age of Insight training available to people on my email newsletter. In case you are interested in this offer, then don’t be Tommy Boy. Or Tommy Girl. Get on the bus while there’s still time.

Booyakasha: Happy birthday to my main man, Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali

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Today is November 14, the birthday of Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

What pops into my mind when I hear that name is that the man was formerly Secretary General of the UN and that he was interviewed by Ali G. From the opening of the interview:

“I is here with the geezer who was the Secrety General of the United Nations. His name be none other than my man Boutros… Boutros… Boutros-Ghali. And him will explain about the United Nations innit?”

In case you somehow missed it, Ali G was one of the characters invented by Sacha Baron Cohen, the guy who invented Borat.

Ali is a white, middle-class boy from London who wears a track suit and orange-tinted sunglasses, speaks with a mock Jamaican accent, and conducts ridiculous interviews with high-ranking, unsuspecting marks.

AG: “Is Disneyland a member of the UN?”

BBG: “No! Because Disneyland is not an independent state.”

I’ve known about Ali G for over 20 years, ever since the show initially aired on Channel 4 in the UK.

But only today did I investigate how exactly Ali G got so many high-level interviews. Noam Chomsky… Ralph Nader… Donald Trump.

It turns out to be your standard social engineering, really nothing fancy:

It would all start with a flattering letter, often to a former official or directly to a lone personality who didn’t have a dedicated PR department, asking for an interview as part of an interview series.

The URL on the letter linked to a (real) website for a (dummy) production company, which was even registered as a business and had a real address.

If that first letter didn’t hook, there would be repeated requests, sometimes backed by endorsements from reputable people in the media world.

Once the mark agreed to the interview, and before the actual interview began, the producers would start making excuses for Ali’s appearance, manner of talking, and apparent idiocy. “He is very popular with the young-adult target audience.”

And that’s how you get high-level and often very smart people to sit through a shockingly silly interview. “We truly left there thinking he was the stupidest person ever,” said one high-level political celeb, who was interviewed on the Ali G show.

So what’s my point?

Well, maybe it’s the power of trappings of authority and status, as opposed to inherent value or talent.

Or if that doesn’t suit you, or if you’re not looking to camouflage yourself like Sacha Baron Cohen, then maybe the point is simply:

Different is better than better.

That’s a koan that marketer Rich Schefren likes to repeat.

People have a hard time truly judging who’s good, and who’s an idiot or a conman. It’s even harder before you have a chance to sit across from the person and have them ask you, as Ali G asked Buzz Aldrin:

“I know this is a sensitive question. But what was it like not being the first man on the moon? Was you ever jealous of Louis Armstrong?”

On the other hand, people have a very easy time judging who is different. It’s part of our neurology.

And that’s why, in many situations, being different — along with being persistent — is all it takes to get the interview or to make the sale.

Speaking of which:

I write a daily email newsletter. It’s utterly different from any other newsletter out there, to the point that I even advertise it as an un-newsletter. In case you’re curious to read it, you can sign up for a free trial — no credit card required  — by clicking here.

Announcing: My new 183-day challenge

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I woke up this morning to an email inviting me to promote a “6-figure challenge” challenge.

From what I understand, the challenge is for an audience of experts to build their own 6-figure challenge funnel.

I have never participated in an online challenge. I do not ever plan on participating in an online challenge. And so, simply as a matter of only promoting dogfood that my own dog has happily eaten in the past, I won’t be promoting this offer.

But this did bring to mind another challenge I read about just last night. You might want to take a deep breath — because it’s the challenge of voluntary poverty. Bear with me for a moment while I tell you about it.

I read about this challenge in a book by “the father of American psychology,” William James. A hundred years ago, James had this to say:

Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.

Maybe this sounds to you like another classic self-defeating Bejako gambit, promoting the challenge of voluntary poverty to an audience of copywriters, marketers, and business owners. But hold on. James goes on to explain:

It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases.

Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman.

What James is saying is that in many cases — maybe in most cases — there is a tradeoff between the desire for wealth and the desire for freedom and independence.

​​And freedom and independence — that’s something I bet you care about.

I’m going by my own feelings here. I’ve always cared more about freedom than money. And in fact, I originally got interested in copywriting not because of the promise of sales letters that would pay me millions of dollars in royalties. I got interested because copywriting meant I wouldn’t have to keep sitting in somebody else’s office, day after day, from dark in the morning until dark in the afternoon.

There’s a fair chance you’re like me, and that you also care about being free and independent.

And so, starting today, I would like to announce my 183-day Voluntary Poverty Challenge. ​​For the low, low price of $5,000, you can join my challenge and have my team of certified poverty coaches reorganize your life along lines recommended by William Jam—

Yeah right. My point is simply that there are often tradeoffs among our most fundamental motivating forces. ​​And also, that it’s possible to sell even something hard and mean — voluntary poverty — by appealing to deeper psychological drivers like the desire for freedom.

But really, I have a 183-day challenge for you. Join my email newsletter, and look out for my email each day, waiting for the day when I will fail and not write anything. It hasn’t happened for the past several thousand days, but maybe it will happen in the next 183 days. And then you can gloat. If you’d like to join this exciting challenge, click here to get started.

Free info on free reports

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Copy Riddles member Andrew Townley takes advantage of the Copy Oracle privilege to ask:

I was listening to a Dan Kennedy program today that got me thinking about all those direct mail “free reports.” I was wondering if you had a source of any guidance on how to build one. I remember Parris describing the process somewhere on a podcast or something, but I can’t find it now.

The background, as you might know, is this:

A-list copywriters like Dan Kennedy and Parris Lampropoulos are experts at selling newsletters. Newsletters are a direct marketing staple because they are great for the publisher. Money comes in like clockwork, on your own schedule, without any added selling of your vague and broad and cheap-to-produce subscription offer.

For those same reasons, newsletters are a suspect deal for the subscriber. Many potential subscribers instinctively feel repulsed at the thought of paying good money, every month, for a “cat in the bag” piece of content, whether they are eager to consume it or not.

Enter free reports. Free reports are one effective strategy that guys like Dan and Parris use to overcome the resistance of skeptical newsletter buyers. The recipe is simple:

1. Go through your past content (newsletter or really anything else)
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2. Find the sexiest stuff. It can either be a single bit of info, or a small number of related items you bundle together.

​3. Put that sexy stuff in its own little package.

​4. Give that package a sexy and mysterious new name.

​5. Repeat as many times as your stamina will allow. I believe one Boardroom promo offered 99 free reports along with a newsletter subscription.

When you think about it, this is really just the same work that a copywriter would do normally. Look at what he has to sell… figure out the sexiest parts of that… highlight it in the sales material, and of course, make it sound as sexy and as mysterious as possible.

And now for the pitch that probably won’t convince you:

I write a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and persuasion.

But like I said, that probably won’t convince you to sign up.

So let me take my own advice, and offer you a free report when you sign up:

“Become a Repositioning Specialist”

This report shows you how to start a profitable repositioning business, with your own home as headquarters. In case, you want this report, follow these steps:

  1. Click here and sign up to my free daily email newsletter
  2. When you get my welcome email, hit reply and tell me you want the free report

Fear and loathing inside the happiest place on Earth

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Imagine the surreal scene:

Dozens or maybe hundreds of police officers, linked hand-in-hand like eight-year-olds on a school trip, guarding the exit of the happiest place on Earth to keep people from escaping the happiness inside.

Maybe you heard the news from the last week. Some person somewhere in Shanghai tested positive for corona virus.

As a result, the entire city went into high corona alert.

A part of it was that Disneyland Shanghai lifted its drawbridge, dropped the heavy portcullis, and manned its walls to prevent any breach in the walls.

Except of course, all these measures were not to keep barbarian invaders from breaking into the Magical Kingdom.

Instead, these measures to keep peaceable Disneyland visitors from escaping to the outside.

Now think about how weird this really is:

Disneyland. The happiest place on Earth.

​​People plan a trip there for months, and pay a lot of money to be let in.

​​Also, from what I read in the news, once the gates of Disneyland Shanghai slammed shut, the rides inside the theme park kept running. To make it an even sweeter deal, Disneyland offered its prisoners free food.

And yet it didn’t matter.

Thousands of panicked visitors pressed towards the exit, trying to make their way out, becoming angry and indignant when they found out they were locked inside.

Now I’m sure different reasons possible why people wanted to get out of Disneyland.

Fear of corona… work and family obligation… getting sick of hearing “It’s a small world” playing over and over…

But there’s something else also.

Reactance.

That’s the word to describe that even the most attractive, desirable things become instantly repulsive if they contain an element of compulsion. If it’s not our free choice, but imposed on us from outside, whether by force or by manipulation.

Fear and loathing inside Disneyland is just a dramatic example of reactance. But reactance happens all the time — whenever people try to order you, force you, or of course, try to sell you something.

How do you deal with this?

I will have much more to say about that soon, and share various ways to pre-empt and side-step reactance before it even has a chance to form. If you’re interested in hearing more about that, sign up to my daily email newsletter and to be the first to find out.

The secret reason I still stick with copywriting after all these years

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Here’s a confession:

I’m not in this field because of the money or supposed freedom that copywriting brings.

Sure, that’s why I got into it in the first place. And I guess if I didn’t make any money, or if the work conditions sucked, I might move on to something else.

But the real thing that keeps me going in copywriting, that sucks me in and fascinates me, is learning more about myself and about other people.

Because it turns out that direct response marketing is an incredible lens to allow you to see inside people’s psyches, and what they really respond to.

Case in point:

Joe Sugarman of BluBlockers fame once told a story about his cousin, who was a psychiatrist. The cousin was hired by the San Diego Chargers, an American football team.

The Chargers wanted to find out what separated football superstars from the rank-and-file of all the others players. After some MK-Ultra type research, Joe’s cousin figured out there were two personality types who became superstars. They were either:

A. Egomaniacs

or

B. Deeply religious

“And when you really think about it,” Joe said, “what did they have in common? A very strong belief in either themselves or in a higher power.”

I’m not here to tell you to believe in yourself, or in a higher power.

I’m just here to point out am important fact in case you ever want to sell something:

If the thing that sets superstars apart is that they believe, either in themselves or in God, then what does that say about everybody else? What does it say about the 99.9% of people in any field who are not superstars?

They don’t believe. Or at least they don’t have anything focused to believe in.

And mercenary thought it might sound, smart marketers have been taking advantage of this lack of belief to sell trillions of dollars worth of stuff.

Because smart marketers give prospects something to believe in. An external thing… and yet, a thing that doesn’t require religious feeling or faith in the supernatural.

That thing is called the mechanism.

The mechanism is usually described as “how the solution works.” And it is that. But it’s really much more. It’s hope and belief in something outside yourself.

Of course, after a century-plus of creative mechanisms — cold showers and hyperventilation, buttered coffee, adaptogenic mushrooms — you can’t just hold up a bag of rocks and say, “Here, believe in this.”

You gotta come up with a mechanism that threads the thin line between exciting and exotic and believable and achievable.

I got a mechanism for you. It’s called “The John Bejakovic Letter” and it’s been called the most insightful newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. In case you’d like to sign up for it, click here and follow the instructions.