Psychology Behind Advertising

No meddle! Only help

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I thought the cartoon above was funny when I first saw it, years ago.

But it’s been popping up in my mind in many situations ever since.

I realized this cartoon is profound. Because these three simple panels show real fundamental truth, not just about dogs, but about people, too.

A truth about so many situations in life.

When you have one thing…

And you also want the other thing. But you can’t get the other thing without letting go of the thing you already have.

And if somebody offers you the thing you want…. at the cost of the thing you have… you react.

“No meddle! Only help”

For example, this is my explanation for what I talked about in my post yesterday, of why so many people reflexively hate advertising.

People might want the thing you’re advertising. Six-pack abs. A million-dollar paycheck. Total self-acceptance.

But they’re not willing to let go of the ball they are gripping between their teeth. The ball that holds their self-image… their feeling of control… their sense of meaning and consistency in their lives.

I’m not sure how to end this post, except to tell you to keep the cartoon above in mind, the way I’ve done for years.

And when you see people retreating from you, even though you have something they really do want…

Realize that, like dogs, human beings are conflicted. So take the attitude of the adult who can give them what they want… without making them feel they are losing something else as they get it.

And if you want regular other ideas to help you influence people, at no cost to your self-image, feeling of control, or your sense of consistency in life… then you might like my regular email newsletter.

“Raping of our night skies”: A growing problem for marketers

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“Fuck this guy and fuck his raping of our night skies. Fire him into the fucking sun. Billionaires are a planetary cancer.”

That was a tweet written by one Alan Baxter a few weeks ago. Thousands of other people wrote equally outraged Tweets, while a few had deep Tweet-thoughts like this:

“can you just ask him to do something abt climate change @Grimezsz”

@Grimezsz is the Twitter handle of Grimes, the Canadian singer and musician.

And the “him” in the Tweet above is Grimes’s boyfriend and well-known planetary cancer, Elon Musk. How quickly things change:

For many years and until what seems like yesterday, Musk was loved and celebrated by the mass mind.

His Tesla electric cars made it sexy to take smoke-billowing gas guzzlers off streets.

His Hyperloop concept promised a cool way to travel far without the environmental costs of airplanes and airports.

And his SolarCity company brought clean energy to hundreds of thousands of homes across America.

So what changed? Why the sudden outrage towards Musk?

What did he do to make his personal brand plummet… and to make people forget all about his solar energy company… and his electric cars… and his minimal-impact human gerbil tubes?

As you can imagine, it took something big.

It took a cardinal sin.

It took for Elon Musk to get into advertising.

Because the tweets above, and thousands like them, came after Musk announced his plans to put a “billboard satellite” in space.

In reality, Musk’s space billboard will be something like a 4-inch-by-4-inch TV, floating among all the other tin cans miles away from the surface of the Earth. It will be invisible from the ground. It certainly won’t rape anybody’s night sky.

And yet, people hate the idea of a billboard satellite. And they hate Musk for working on it.

Because, as you may have noticed, many people have an allergic reaction to advertising. And the numbers of the afflicted are growing.

You can see it in the blowback to Musk’s space billboard plan.

You can see it in the bubbling anger over online tracking and targeted ads. (Which, if anything, people should welcome, because it makes advertising more relevant to their needs, habits, and interests.)

And you can see it in the reports of big-name direct marketers, who say skepticism and indifference are rising, while conversion rates are dropping year after year.

So I’d like to suggest to you that this is a big problem.

And one way or another… if you are doing any kind of marketing, advertising, or proactive selling… and unless you want get out of business and go work for the federal government… then I’d like to suggest you have to face up to this problem and find ways to deal with it.

You can back away… and make your sales softer and more indirect.

Or you can get confrontational… and turn up your sales pitches while mocking those who object to your trying to run a business.

Or you can use subtle psychology to strike some sort of middle ground. That’s my preferred approach.

But whatever your preferred approach, you have to start thinking about it. And you have to start acting on it. Because if there is one thing that the growing numbers of people who hate advertising react to… it’s new advertising, which is just like the old stuff, only done a little bit better.

So that’s all. Except:

Would you like to know more about subtle psychology and how to use it in your marketing? You can get it in regular drips if you sign up to my email newsletter here.

Dan Kennedy, Rich Schefren, and a monkey named John B.

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Let me tell you a true story about a social primate I will call John B.:

Six months ago, John was reading the “Million Dollar Resource & Sample Book.” This is a 270-page document that Dan Kennedy prepared for his Titans of Direct Response talk.

Toward the end of this doc, John saw the mention of a seminar of Dan’s, called Opportunity Concepts. Opportunity Concepts is all about using ideas from bizopp marketers more broadly, in other kinds of businesses.

“Sounds valuable,” John muttered into his cereal, which he was eating at the time.

So John googled Opportunity Concepts and found the sales page.

“Interesting… interesting…” John said as he scrolled down the page. But suddenly, he bared his teeth and grimaced.

“Ouch!” he said, mouth full of cereal. “$2,000!…”

Now let me tell you with confidence, because I happen to know this social primate intimately, that John has been training himself to look at things in terms of their value… rather than in terms of their price.

Even so, after a few moments of grimacing and weighing access to Opportunity Concepts on the one hand… versus the pain of giving up $2,000 on the other… John found himself closing down the sales page and browsing away to happier, less stressful webpages.

Now fast-forward a few months.

John was watching a livestream put on by marketer Rich Schefren. Rich paused his scheduled programming to answer questions. And one of the questions that came in was this:

“Which products from Dan Kennedy do you think are the most valuable?”

Rich thought for a second and said, “I think Opportunity Concepts is number one.” And by the time Rich named his second favorite Dan Kennedy program, John was already gone. He was in a deep trance, credit card out, filling out the order form for Opportunity Concepts.

So that’s the true story for today. I hope you liked it. And now let me tell you why this story is meaningful to me, aside from my close relationship to the primate in question.

It’s not just that this story illustrates the power of social proof.

Or the value of an endorsement from a respected authority.

No, it’s about something broader.

Because one thing I’ve learned by working in direct marketing is how much our brain loves to avoid the hard tasks of thinking and making decisions.

That’s why we are constantly looking for shortcuts and excuses. Shortcuts to conclusions. And excuses to make a decision or to not make a decision.

If you’re new to direct marketing, you might think this only applies to those gullible people out there. The ones who buy magic pill weight loss supplements… at $47/month… based on obviously fake testimonials.

Well, I’d like to suggest it’s not just them.

Even people with greater advertising literacy make decisions in the same way. Even for much bigger purchases.

And if you’re selling something, including yourself and your services… it’s a good idea to give your prospects helpful shortcuts and excuses to make sure their decisions are the right ones.

And by the way, this same stuff applies to business owners looking to hire copywriters. You might think they will make a detailed, reasonable decision about who to hire. You might think they will evaluate all the data, and weigh all the pros and cons of each application.

Nope.

Business owners, like everybody else, are just looking for excuses to dismiss an applicant straight out the gate. And they are praying they will come across an applicant who will signal in some clear way that he is THE ONE… so they can hire him and get on to happier, less stressful tasks.

Even more by the way, are you yourself looking to get hired as a copywriter?

Then I have something that could be valuable. It’s a system for giving business owners those helpful shortcuts and excuses to make sure their decisions are the right ones — i.e. hiring you.

This system is inside my “Win Your First Copywriting Job” workshop, which kicks off this Friday.

For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/win-your-first-copywriting-job/

Most people are too busy digging an escape tunnel to notice the cell door is unlocked

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I used to prepare to escape. Away from the office job. Away from the 40-hour workweeks.

But I didn’t experience real freedom until I started preparing less — a lot less.

For example, yesterday I crafted a new offer, with no preparation, in just about two hours from start to finish. With a little luck, it should earn me enough money to cover all my expenses for the next month, maybe longer.

What’s more, I’m going to ask you to send me $197 dollars for this offer, even though it won’t cost me more than a few minutes of my time to fulfill it. And I’ll try to make it so irresistible that you’d be a darned fool not to do it.

After all, why should you care if i make a $197 profit for a few minutes’ work if I can show you how to make a lot more — in just the next week, and in every week after that?

I’ll tell you about the offer in a second. But first, let me address the strange sense of deja vu you might be feeling right now.

Because what you’ve just read is the reworded lead to Joe Karbo’s Lazy Man’s Way to Riches ad.

It’s a famous ad. There is a lot in there. A lot I didn’t see when I first read it. And even a lot I didn’t see for many years after.

For example, here’s one thing always gets me:

In the fifth sentence, Joe admits he’s selling something. Even though he’s formatted his ad to look like a neutral newspaper article.

And then in the seventh sentence, he reveals the price of his offer — and that the price is entirely unrelated to his cost of fulfillment.

It’s a great pattern interrupt.

Because most marketers try to lull you into buying. They think if they hold off long enough, they can hypnotize you so deeply that you won’t mind when the pitch comes.

The trouble with that is, all of us are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

It’s very hard to fool modern consumers into thinking they are not reading an ad when they in fact are.

And people’s reactance to ads — leading to perfectly good sales messages getting tossed out on sight, marked as spam, or simply browsed away from — has never been higher. In fact, it’s increasing.

Which is why it can make sense to disarm your prospect’s skepticism right away — by admitting you are selling something, and maybe even revealing the price.

Which brings me to that $197 offer I mentioned up front.

It’s for my “Win Your First Copywriting Job” workshop, which kicks off this Friday.

Like I said at the start, I used to have an office job. I’d sit there each day, lusting after the kind of freedom I have now. To work when I want… where I want… and as much or as little as I want.

And still, to have as much money as I need.

Fortunately, I was tossed out of my office job and into my first copywriting gig without too much time to prepare, doubt myself, or try to line up everything perfectly.

But perhaps you’ve had the curse of too much time. Perhaps you’ve been studying maps of the terrain… digging your escape tunnel… and waiting for the perfect moment to make your break.

And waiting.

In that case, my workshop might be what you need to escape for real.

The workshop is not a “Lazy Man’s Way to Copywriting Riches.”

​​But if you’re willing to do some work… and if you have a couple basic requirements satisfied… then I can help you open the cell door and take that first step through it. All within the next week.

​​For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/win-your-first-copywriting-job/

Profit from your prospect’s lack of common sense… even if… you don’t deserve it!

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Here’s how a typical argument goes in the Bejakovic family—

My father [an economist by training and profession]:

“We are living in the best moment in history. We’ve got free education on every topic on Coursera… effective cholesterol-lowering drugs from Pfizer… and a Nespresso machine in every home! The most powerful kings of 500 years ago, or the wealthiest robber barons of 100 years ago, couldn’t dream of riches like these.”

Me [who also studied economics… but found it more heat than light, and dropped it for other pursuits]:

“Yeah, but people don’t seem so happy today. Maybe people were happier before we had Nespresso machines.”

Or maybe they were just the same. For example, here’s a quote by George Orwell, writing about Mein Kampf in 1940, 46 years before the first Nespresso machine was invented:

“Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.”

I’m not arguing for Fascism. But that other stuff, the stuff Orwell says about psychologically sound conceptions of life — that’s inarguable.

And if you’re writing sales copy, then you have to take it into account.

​​You have to tap into the dark, hidden, and often nonsensical parts of the human existence, at least intermittently. Because human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, and Nespresso machines.

History and sales results prove it.

Which is why I put together a list for myself, and for people who go through my Copy Riddles program, which I called The Dirty Dozen. I made this list by looking at successful sales copy, and stripping out the direct self-interest.

Whatever was left — well, my father wouldn’t understand that.

But you can. And you can profit from it.

You don’t even need my Dirty Dozen list. You can make a list like it yourself. It might be a long, lonely road… and you might doubt yourself along the way. But I’m sure you can do it.

Or of course, you can join the Copy Riddles army, when enlistment opens up again in a few weeks’ time (sign up here to hear from the recruiting office). We’ve got flags… loyalty parades… and thanks to some stuff I’ve been working on, we will soon have safety in numbers also.

Evergreen “wireless” fears

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Did you ever hear of “radio face”? It was a curious affliction that swept through households in England in 1925.

​​The background:

Radio had started to spread in the early 1920s. It became more and more popular to have one at home. As a result, radio programming started to explode like corn over a fire.

By 1925, many people found themselves leaning in to the loud speaker… straining to hear each crackling word of the news or the radio drama.

Finally, a companion who was ready to entertain all day long!

Radio seemed perfect. Until, that is, some of the female listeners noticed a worrisome thing. From an article I read:

“The strain of trying to catch every word of wireless broadcast constantly puckers the lines around a woman’s forehead, and draws more lines around the sides of her mouth.”

As a result, many women in England started to live in fear of “wireless wrinkles.”

“Concentration at the Earphones Brings Wrinkles to the Brow.”

Who knows, maybe they were right?

In any case, this made me think how evergreen the fear of “wireless” has been. You could use it in 1925… and also in 2021.

For example, over the past couple of years, I’ve written a lot of copy for a team of ecommerce guys.

One of the longest-running front-end advertorials that we’ve had going is about the fear of “wireless pickpockets.” The offer is an RFID blocking card you put in your wallet, to keep these wireless pickpockets from swiping your money… and giving you wrinkles from all the frowning you would do afterwards.

A few years ago, Stefan Georgi and Justin Goff ran a webinar, offering to critique copy. I submitted the “wireless pickpockets” advertorial.

Stefan and Justin looked at the advertorial tweaking the copy wouldn’t produce much improvement… but Justin had some tested-and-proven advice about the rest of the funnel:

* Add a lot of reason why copy for the first upsell — even though it was just more of the same RFID card.

I passed that golden info on to my clients. But as far as I know, they never implemented it. So maybe it will be useful to you instead, in case you or your clients also run some kind of ecommerce offer.

Anyways, Justin and Stefan put out two more webinars over the past few weeks. If you haven’t watched them yet, I might write more about them in the coming days… and tell you about any golden info that I find inside.

Meanwhile, I want to tell you about a cool newsletter. It’s called The Pessimists Archive. It’s where I found the above story about radio face and wireless wrinkles.

The whole newsletter is really just interesting newspaper cutouts from decades past. It shows you how many things never change… how many fears and appeals stay the same… how predictable human reactions can be, even century after century.

And you know what? This can be valuable if you are the type to track trends and profit from them.

​​So in case you want to check out news from the past that’s still news, here’s the link to the Pessimists Archive:

https://pessimistsarchive.substack.com/

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.

Free self-assessment: Which ad won?

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Do you want a little self-assessment? If you do, take the A/B test below:

VERSION A

[Illustration: Panel containing a list of symptoms of nervous trouble]

Headline: Thousands suffer from sick nerves and don’t know it

VERSION B

[Illustration: Photograph of a nerve specialist]

Headline: Have you these symptoms of nerve exhaustion?

One of these ads was a big flop and ran only once. The other was a big success and ran over and over.

So which is which?

Think about it…

… think…

… take your time…

… all right. You ready?

The winner is B. But the right answer is less important than what you yourself thought the right answer was. Here’s what I’m thinking.

According to John Caples, who reported this A/B test in his Tested Advertising Methods, headline B won because it has the word you. On the other hand, says Caples, the losing headline is “simply a statement of fact.”

It certainly could be that. But maybe it’s the word these in the winning headline. Or maybe it’s the picture of the nerve specialist.
​
Or maybe, and this is just my guess, it’s that word thousands that killed the losing version. Because dig it:

One of the fundamental needs we all have is to feel special. That need is so powerful that sometimes, we are willing to hang on to our pain because it allows us to keep feeling special.

“Thousands might suffer from sick nerves… but that’s not my case unfortunately. My case is unique.”​​

So if you chose Version A in the self-assessment above, here’s a diagnosis:

You might be too truthful and direct with your marketing. You could benefit by protecting your prospect’s specialness a little more. At the least, don’t bluntly say, “I’ve seen your case a thousand times before. Here’s a cure.”

And if you chose Version B above, you probably have an intuitive understanding of the value of making people feel special.

​​In that case, remember there are simple and easy tactics for making people feel special. But you probably already realized this — since you’re a Type B.

Finally:

Here’s a special offer for you if you guessed A on the test above.

But you say you guessed B instead? How unusual. In that case, here’s a special offer for you also.