Psychology Behind Advertising

I’ve thought this email over a lot, I wanted to get it just right

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Picture the scene:

A man, wearing a pastel flower-print shirt and unmatching shorts, runs down the street after a stylishly dressed woman.

HIM: Um, look.

She turns around.

HIM: Sorry. I just… um, well this is a really stupid question, particularly in view of our recent shopping excursion [they had just been shopping together for the woman’s wedding gown]… but ah… I just wondered… if by any chance, um… ah… well obviously not, because I’m just some git who’s only slept with nine people… but I just wondered… I really feel… um… in short, to recap in a slightly clearer version… in the words of David Cassidy, in fact, while he was still with The Partridge Family… I THINK I LOVE YOU. And I just wondered if by any chance you wouldn’t like to… um… ah… um… no… no… no, of course, not. I’m an idiot. He’s not. Excellent, excellent. Fantastic. Lovely to see you. Sorry to disturb. Better get on.

The man turns to leave.

HER: That was very romantic.

The man turns to face her again and winces.

HIM: Well, I thought it over a lot. I wanted to get it just right.

That’s a scene from the 1994 movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. The man in the scene is played by Hugh Grant, in his typical 90s role as a boyishly charming uber-Englishman.

I bring this scene up because over the last few days, I’ve been talking about denial. When people are faced with a situation… or realization… or personal characteristic that they find unacceptable… and so they take various evasive maneuvers.

Such as for example, making a joke out of it.

That’s what’s happening in the last line of that scene above. Hugh has just put his heart on the line, he’s been tacitly rejected, and he’s made a donkey out of himself.

​​What better way to put it all behind than with a bit of irony?

Vilaynur Ramachandran, the neuroscientist whose book got me thinking about denial in the first place, says that denial explains why so much of humor deals with sensitive topics like sex and death.

​​And I guess it explains 90% of the life work of Woody Allen.

So the conclusion is, when you hear people making a joke out of something… well, um… ah… to put it more concretely, in the words of Eric Idle in fact, while he was still with Monty Python… WHEN YOU PURSE YOUR LIPS AND WHISTLE, IT MEANS YOU’RE CHEWING ON — but of course. How silly of me. Sorry, terrible. You must already know what I’m getting at. And you wouldn’t perhaps want to… but of course not. No. Excellent. Excellent. Lovely to see you. Better get on.

Five years ago, I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, notebook in hand, surrounded by trashbags full of my old clothes… but then what happened?

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Over the past few days, I’ve been telling you about different mechanisms of denial. So far, I’ve written about a troll to illustrate flat-out denial… I’ve had some pop science to illustrate reaction formation… and today I wanted to give you a personal story to illustrate a third mechanism of denial.

The trouble is, I cannot remember the personal story. Literally. I’m not joking or making this up.

Because that third mechanism of denial is repression of unwanted memories.

Of course, we all forget stuff all the time. But if you’re like me, you probably think you either forget stuff that’s unimportant… or you forget stuff at random.

Of course, there’s a third option, and that’s to forget important stuff on purpose, because it is inconsistent with the world as you want it to be.

I’ll be honest with you. While this repressed memory topic is definitely interesting… I’m not sure how it can be useful for self improvement, or personal power, or better marketing.

Perhaps it’s because I hate dwelling on the past. Or perhaps it’s because I did think of some useful option, but it was too unpleasant, so I forgot it since.

In any case, if you have any ideas for me on how to use this fact — that people can selectively forget stuff to suit their desired image of the world — then write in and tell me. ​​I’d love to hear what you think.

​​​And I’ll be back tomorrow, if I can remember to do so, with a much more cheery and productive way that people deny unacceptable facts in their lives. You can sign up here if you’d like to read that.

The denial theory of the fake female orgasm

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Over the past few years, it’s become trendy to say, “Stop reading the news, it’s like junk food, bad for your health.”

Maybe so. But without The Daily McMail, where would I find tasty morsels like this headline today:

“Women who make more money than their partner are TWICE as likely to fake orgasms, study reveals”

The revealing study, which came out earlier this year, was pretty straightforward.

Researchers at the University of South Florida surveyed 157 women in sexual relationships with a man. And the researchers asked these women embarrassing personal questions.

Result:

It turns out women who earn more than their male partner (29.6% of the sample) were twice as likely to fake orgasm.

Like I said, that part of the science is pretty straightforward.

Where it gets more murky is the moral interpretation of this sensitive issue. According to Professor Jessica Jordan, the lead researcher behind the study, the interpretation is this:

“Women are prioritising what they think their partners need over their own sexual needs and satisfaction. When society creates an impossible standard of masculinity to maintain, nobody wins.”

In other words, society says that men should earn more than women… but some men fail at this and their egos crumble… and then their women are forced to coddle them as a result.

Perhaps. But perhaps there are other interpretations?

For example, here’s a personal confession:

Some 20 years ago, my mind was warped by reading a pop-science book called Sperm Wars. And ever since, I’ve been a bit of a science Columbo on all things female orgasm.

That’s why I remember a second study, one that came out in 2009, in the pre-gender-dismantling era.

This study was also based on a survey, in this case, of 1,534 couples. The results were summarized in the headline of a Business Insider article:

“Study: Rich Men Give Women More Orgasms”​

The author of the underlying​​ study, a certain Dr Thomas Pollet of Newcastle University, gave his interpretation of the statistics. From the Business Insider article:

“He believes the phenomenon is an ‘evolutionary adaptation’ that is hard-wired into women, driving them to select men on the basis of their perceived quality.”

Perhaps this could also explain all those extra fake orgasms in 2022?

Perhaps those faking women just find themselves horribly unattracted to their lower-earning partners. And that’s a problem — both personally and in the relationship.

So what to do?

The best thing really is to watch a little When Harry Met Sally… take notes on the restaurant scene… and put on a similar show the next time it’s time.

Because like I wrote yesterday, denial might just be a fundamental human activity. It might just be something we all do, all the time, in order to make life acceptable in our minds and bearable in practice.

And the fact is, denial manifests itself in different ways.

There’s flat-out denial, which I wrote about yesterday:

“No, of course not. I’m not bothered that you earn less than me. It’s certainly not any kind of turn-off.”

But another type of denial is what psychologists call reaction formation. That’s when you don’t just deny… but you claim or do the exact opposite:

“Yes, yes, take me, you low-earning animal!”

Of course, if my theory is true, it begs the question why these women would deny their lack of attraction in the bedroom… but break down and confess it when questioned by Professor Jessica Jordan.

My only answer to that is that there are different levels of denial.

Some denial is complete — we can’t face up to the fact at all, and we have to change our inner movie to fit what we want to believe.

But other denial is partial — we act as if, we claim as if, but on some conscious level, we are aware it’s not really as if.

Anyways, perhaps you say I’m completely off with my denial-of-unattraction theory.

But perhaps you feel there might be something to my idea. In that case, I’ve got two takeaways for you.

First, if you’re a guy, and the thought of your woman faking orgasm makes you shudder with feelings of shame and inadequacy… then the best thing to do might be to get better at sales and marketing, and start earning more money.

My second takeaway can be summed up by the following headline.

It comes from the tabloid The Daily Bejakovic. And it’s about a study performed at the University of Bejakovic, by a certain Dr. Johann Bejakovic. The headline reads:

“Study: Men and women who emphatically claim anything are TWICE as likely to secretly believe the exact opposite”

Anyways, if you want more ideas on denial, which you can use for your own research into your own mind or the mind of your market, then sign up for my email newsletter here.

A defensive Internet troll sets me straight

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Last night, while my Copy Riddles promo was still going on, I sent an email about a troll who chimed in to say Copy Riddles isn’t good enough for him.

He started by accusing me of name-dropping.

​​He ended by telling me to “go read some stuff from Settle, Tony Shepherd and Andre Chaperon.”

So I did. And I used what this guy wrote to illustrate Ben Settle’s idea that Internet trolls always project.

But no.

​​It turns out Ben and I are wrong about that. Or least that’s what my troll claims, in a message he sent me today:

Kind of sad when you think someone being critical of your emails is ‘a troll picking a fight’ with you. Most people would see that as an opportunity to examine, review and possibly improve. You get defensive and start making (bad) assumptions about someone you know NOTHING about.

1. I’m NOT the one dropping names, 2. I’m doing very well with my own sites and 3. I’m not interested in the new ‘shiny’ objects.

Why would you make assumptions like that?

You’ve written a book that may be the best copywriting book ever – but based on the way you’ve responded to me I doubt it.

PS: I’ve read ALL of Settle’s books. Copy Trolls is easily the worst. Read the Infotainment Book, there’s ideas in there you can use.

I’ve done enough unpaid promotion of Ben Settle’s ideas, so I won’t talk about infotainment today.

Instead, let me get back to what I really love to do. And that’s finding illustrations for deep persuasion, influence, and psychology ideas that I can share with you.

Today’s idea comes from neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran.

At one point, Ramachandran studied people people who had suffered a stroke and were paralyzed in one arm. And yet, these people stubbornly refused to admit they were paralyzed.

This wasn’t just a brave face they were putting on in public.

They truly could not accept that their arm was hanging limp by their side, not responding to any command they gave it.

Ramachandran performed clever experiments to try to elicit whether these patients actually believed they were 100% fine.

The answer was yes. They themselves were convinced their arm was not paralyzed, in spite of the very obvious evidence otherwise.

So is this just a strange corner case in the medical literature… or something for the archives of Internet trolldom?

Ramachandran thinks it’s more than that.

He claims this is a dramatic and concrete illustration of the kind of thing we all engage in, all the time.

Denial, Ramachandran says, is a fundamental human activity. It’s how we manage to live in a complex and often nasty and brutish world, and still maintain an illusion of a coherent, in-control self.

I personally find this idea both terrifying and fascinating. Which of the things I know to be true are a flat-out denial of reality?

​​Or maybe, not even a flat-out denial, but something more complex?

Because flat-out denial (“I’m NOT the one dropping names”) was just one of the mechanisms Ramachandran came across in his paralyzed-but-no patients.

There were five other types as well. You can see a few more of these denial strategies in my troll’s response above.

​​But if you can’t spot them, don’t worry.

I’ll spell out the other five types of denial in my emails over the coming days. You can sign up here if you want to read that.

Like I said, I find this stuff personally fascinating. But it can be valuable, too.

It can help you understand other people better, whether those are your friends… family… customers… prospects… or trolls.

And of course, it can help you understand yourself better. And who knows. Maybe, one day, it can even be an opportunity to examine, review, and possibly improve.

Torture-free deadline for Copy Riddles is near

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Perhaps you don’t care that the deadline to sign up for Copy Riddles is approaching in a few hours. Such is the society we live in.

But it wasn’t always so. For example, Julius Caesar once wrote about a curious urgency tactic used by his enemies, the Gauls:

“By Gallic intertribal law all adult males are obligated to attend the muster under arms; and the last to come is tortured to death in sight of the host.”

Ah the good old days… when a deadline really meant something.

But again, we live in a modern and a civilized society. So the only torture I can inflict upon you is to say:

Come 12 midnight PST tonight (Sunday), I will close the doors to Copy Riddles.

And no amount of pleading about how your car was in the shop, or how the kids were sleeping, or how you only had cash on hand (all excuses I’ve gotten before) will make me crack those doors open a single inch.

​​Not until some uncertain future date, at least a few months down the line, when or if I decide to reopen Copy Riddles.

Again, perhaps you don’t care. But if you do, there’s still a bit of time. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Knock twice before you open this email

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Welcome. First, let me share the traditional greeting:

“Email is great! Yes it is.”

And now, you and I can get started with today’s content:

A few weeks ago, I was rea​ding a New Yorker article. In that article, I came across an interesting idea that’s stuck with me since. ​​I’ll share it with you in today’s email and then we can wrap up this part of our lives and move on to other things.

The article I read was about how good technology is getting at reading our minds, in a very literal sense.

You can now scan people’s brains and have a good idea of how their brains are lighting up in real time.

Combine this with a lot of data of other people’s brains and a lot of fancy software… and we are nearly at a point where somebody can know exactly what you’re thinking… even if you’re just sitting there, eyes closed, doing nothing but smirking.

Anyways, the idea that stuck with me had to do with “event boundaries.” From the article:

He had the class watch a clip from “Seinfeld” in which George, Susan (an N.B.C. executive he is courting), and Kramer are hanging out with Jerry in his apartment. The phone rings, and Jerry answers: it’s a telemarketer. Jerry hangs up, to cheers from the studio audience.

“Where was the event boundary in the clip?” Norman asked. The students yelled out in chorus, “When the phone rang!” Psychologists have long known that our minds divide experiences into segments; in this case, it was the phone call that caused the division.

In other words, neuroscientists now know something that writers have known for millennia:

Our brain loves to create scenes, snapshots, and scripts as a way of making sense of the immense complexity of the world.

This is so obvious that it might not sound like much of a breakthrough. But it has some interesting consequences. Again from the article:

Walking into a room, you might forget why you came in; this happens, researchers say, because passing through the doorway brings one mental scene to a close and opens another.

But perhaps more interesting is the basic influence idea of exaggerating what people already want and respond to.

​​For example, is it any wonder so many religions have strict rules for entering and leaving a place of worship?

When entering the church, dip your fingers in holy water and make the sign of the cross… do not enter or leave the sanctuary while the ark is open… leave the mosque using your left foot while reciting the dua.

And the point of this sermon is:

People want scenes… clearly marked beginnings and endings… so give it to em. Create doors, entrance rituals, dramatic event boundaries.

You will be helping your audience make sense of both you and of their world. They will thank you for it, with their attention, trust, and perhaps even money.

And that all I wanted to say. Except of course the traditional farewell:

“This email is finished! You can sign up here to get more. Yes you can.”

The Playboy cartoon of A-list marketing truth

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When I was 12 years old, I had an accidental run-in with my first-ever, real-world copy of a Playboy magazine.

Along with the usual titillating stuff, all of which I’ve forgotten, I saw a cartoon that’s stuck with me for years. It had three panels:

Panel one showed a guy at the office, sitting at his desk, looking over a bunch of papers. But a thought bubble above his head showed what he was really thinking about:

​​Being out on the golf course.

Panel two showed the same guy at the golf course, about to take a swing. But there was a thought bubble above his head again.

​​Now, he was really thinking about being at home and having sex with his wife.

And maybe you can guess panel three.

It showed the same guy in bed with his wife. And the thought bubble was there also.

​​It showed — of course, the papers back on the desk at the office.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an email about how the best DM sales copy is not selling what it appears to be selling on the surface.

So financial copy is not really selling stock gains… but a feeling of vision and foresight.

And Boardroom’s Big Bastard Book of Secrets is not really selling clever ways to save on car insurance. Instead, it’s selling clever ways to feel smarter than your neighbor.

For a while, I wondered if there is one deep need that could be made to fit all sales letters in all markets.

One option is something that A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos said once. Parris said that, once you ask the “so what” question enough times about any feature or promise… the ultimate benefit always turns out to be, “So I can feel better about myself.”

So that’s one option.

Option two is not to worry about going deep. Instead, just keep the Playboy cartoon above in mind. And just subtly suggest something other than what’s on your prospect’s mind at the moment.

For example, all bizopp offers are upfront about selling big money now. But more subtly, many also suggest a new level of attractiveness that money will make possible.

On the other hand, pickup gurus are directly selling a new level of attractiveness. But on a deeper level, many also suggest the self-acceptance that will come from success with women.

And finally, many meditation programs are selling instant self-acceptance. But on a deeper level — and not even very deep — they are also promising the money that more self-acceptance will bring.

And so it goes, like a kitten chasing its tail. As another A-list copywriter, Gary Bencivenga, said once, “Desires are infinite in variety… and desires are replaced as soon as they are fulfilled.”

So there you go:

Remember the Playboy cartoon above. And you will have a subtle new spell hidden under your wizard’s cloak, which you can cast whenever you want to make money appear out of thin air.

But perhaps you don’t want money out of thin air. Perhaps you just want a spell to drive away doubt and career insecurity, on demand.

Right now, the closest I can give you to that spell is my Niche Expert Cold Emails training. It’s my bribe in case you help me get the word out about this newsletter.

By the way, this promo event I’m running seems to be close to saturating the copywriting world with links to my site. So I won’t keep it going for much longer.

But in case you’re interested in still joining while the joining’s good, here are the details:

https://bejakovic.com/free-offer-niche-expert-cold-emails/

The Rule of One applied to online communities

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A few days ago, copywriter Stefan Georgi sent out email with subject line,

“Hang out with me in Scottsdale on Jan 29th?”

Stefan was promoting an entrepreneurs’ event in Scottsdale, AZ. So what’s the primary benefit to anyone on Stefan’s list in attending this event?

Well, it’s right there in the subject line. Getting to hang out with Stefan.

This made me think of series of ideas I got exposed to a few months ago. They came from a certain Stew Fortier.

I don’t know Stew, but online, he bills himself as a “former technologist, current writer.”

Anyways, Stew wrote a bunch of interesting and valuable tweets — a horrible format in my opinion — about online communities and why they die or thrive. The answer:

“A purpose is the primary value that members get by participating in the community.”

Stew gives the example of a community of designers. Designers might want many different things. But a purpose is one specific thing, such as:

* Mentor each other
* Help each other find work
* Invent new typography together
* Give feedback on each other’s work
* Lobby Congress to replace the English alphabet with Wingdings

Stew then gives the hypothetical of somebody in this community of designers proposing a book club:

“If the community exists to help designers get higher-paid work, you’ll know to pick books about design careers. Your core utility isn’t diluted, it’s amplified.”

You might recognize this as the Rule of One from the Mark Ford and John Forde’s book Great Leads. And if you ever decide to create an online community, then as Mark and John write,

“Put the Rule of One to work for you in all your communications, especially in your promotions and their leads. You’ll be amazed at how much stronger — and successful — your copy will be.”

And by the way, as Stefan’s email and most online copywriting communities show, gazing at the guru is a completely valid purpose.

Because purpose in an online community is much like value in email copy. Hard core, practical stuff is ok on occasion and for a while. But more illogical, entertaining, emotional stuff is both more powerful and evergreen.

And now:

Would you like to join the community of readers who gaze at my entertaining and fluffy marketing emails every day? Our purpose is simple — to expose you to the most subtle and powerful persuasion ideas out there. If that’s a community you’d like to join, then click here and fill out the application form.

Blessed are the proud

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“No man succeeds in everything he undertakes. In that sense we are all failures. The great point is not to fail in ordering and sustaining the effort of our life. In this matter vanity is what leads us astray. It hurries us into situations from which we must come out damaged; whereas pride is our safeguard, by the reserve it imposes on the choice of our endeavour as much by the virtue of its sustaining power.”
— Joseph Conrad, The Duellists

Here’s one thing that’s kept me interested in direct response copywriting for so long:

The best sales letters are not really selling what they seem to be selling on the surface. So they are not really about 100x stock gains… or getting your ex back… or ways to travel free on luxury cruise ships.

Rather, they are about being a man of vision… or being a man with a hole that nothing can fill… or being a man who knows others are always plotting behind his back.

That’s why the seven deadly sins and their offshoots are so powerful to think about when you write copy.

And even though I’ve thought about this quite a bit, I always thought that the two most powerful human failings — vanity and pride — are overlapping or even synonymous.

The passage I quoted above was the first time I heard anyone make a distinction between vanity and pride. The passage even puts them in opposition.

This made me think what the difference between pride and vanity might be. After some thinking, here’s what I’ve come up with:

Pride – the internal belief in your own worth or superiority

Vanity – the desire for others to acknowledge your worth or superiority

So for example:

If, as in the Conrad story above, an old soldier enters a woods with two loaded pistols, with the intent to kill or be killed by his opponent, according to the norms of civilized, honor-bound men…

Then pride is doing it to prove to himself his courage and his greater skill than the opponent. It doesn’t matter at all if nobody else will see it or know it.

But vanity is doing it so others will witness and acknowledge his courage and his greater skill. The audience is the whole point. If nobody sees it, the victory itself means nothing, or is worse than that — a wasted opportunity.

So pride and vanity are really two fundamentally different human drives, and I suspect, motivate different types of people.

At least that’s my interpretation. It might be relevant to you for two reasons:

One are those pesky hidden motives that underlie so many purchasing decisions. Again, it’s not really about the stock returns, the toxin-free pots and pans, or the better golf score.

Instead, it’s about vain status-seeking and wounded self-respect. Understanding these things, and having a good name to attach to them, can help you when it’s time to write breakthrough copy.

The other thing is something I’m personally curious about:

Why we put so much emphasis as a society, at least historically, on the evils of pride. Pride is even supposed to be the head of all the deadly sins, from which all the others spring.

Which brings me to one of my “competitors” I mentioned yesterday.

He might have something to tell you about why our society says pride is so bad.

The man’s name is Jason Leister. He started out as a direct response copywriter. He then wrote daily emails for years about clients and why they suck and how copywriters can cope with that fact.

But gradually, Jason drifted off into new and uncharted waters.

He now lives somewhere off the grid with his wife and ten kids.

And he’s stopped writing about copywriting and clients.

Instead, he writes about… well, check it out at the link below. That’s where you can sign up to get on Jason’s email newsletter and get Jason’s lead magnet, “How the World System Was Constructed to Make You a Slave and What You Can Do About It.”

You might find Jason’s ideas repulsive, conspiratorial, or like me, intriguing and sometimes enlightening. If you want to check them out, here’s the link:

https://sovereignbusiness.org/

The most tastless and offensive Christmas song ever?

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“I’m not singing that line. I’ll sing anything, but I’m not singing that line.”

“You have to. That’s the line I saved for you. That’s the one that’s going to make them hurt the most.”

Here’s a potentially offputting and offensive Christmas eve story:

Some 37 years ago, on November 25 1984, dozens of British and Irish pop stars gathered at 10 Basing Street in London.

The event was Band Aid:

An attempt to record a hit song in just one day and get it to the top of the charts before Christmas. All proceeds were to help relieve the crisis in Ethiopia, where drought had put 7 million people at risk of a slow and miserable death.

Against all odds, Band Aid turned out to be a success.

The song, “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” became the fastest- and biggest-selling single in UK history. It raised some some $25 million outright. It also spawned later efforts like Live Aid and USA for Africa, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars more.

In spite of all this, “Do They Know It’s Christmas” has had many critics over the years.

People hate the song for different reasons, but one strain can be summed up by the disgust at the line that fell to Bono of U2 to sing.

Bono initially refused to sing the line.

But Bob Geldof, the organizer of Band Aid and a personal friend of Bono’s, was too persuasive and won out in the end.

And so at the end of the first verse of “Do They Know It’s Christmas”… after contrasting the world of British plenty to the world of dread and fear in Ethopia, Bono belts out:

“Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you”

Was this necessary? Would the song have worked as well without it?

We won’t ever know. But going by how much controversy, attention, and outrage this one line has caused over the years… it’s possible it tipped the scales of guilt and shame needed to stir action.

So that’s the rather harsh and out-of-season message I have for you tonight.

You might feel reluctant to offend, to say something that people might find provocative, shocking, or tasteless. You might put it off and say, “It’s not the right moment now. I’ll do it after the holidays… in the New Year… once corona passes… when the Cleveland Indians win the World Series.”

Sooner or later though, this attitude means you will miss an opportunity to make a real difference.

So Merry Christmas. And let me sum up my message with a few words by the original Grinch of direct marketing, Dan Kennedy:

“There is never any need to be or behave like a prick in order to be successful, but you must be okay with some, possibly many, people thinking of you as an insufferable prick.”

And on that note, I’d like to advertise my email newsletter. It’s been praised by many people in the direct response industry… and it’s been ignored by others. If you’d like to check it out, you can sign up here.