Psychology Behind Advertising

“I’ve made a huge mistake”

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I loved the original run of the TV show Arrested Development, in large part because I identified with the no-good character of Gob Bluth.

If you’ve never seen the show, I can’t do it justice here. So let me just say Gob is an irresponsible, childish, struggling stage magician.

He doesn’t think too far ahead and he consistently jumps into problem situations, such as making unintended marriage proposals or voluntarily going to prison. This sets him up for his catchphrase:

“I’ve made a huge mistake.”

Like I said, it might not be funny here in this post, but it’s funny in the show. And it’s funny because I, and I guess many other people, know that sinking feeling.

It happens when you’re here on your grassy but dull knoll… looking at that other grassy but sparkling knoll over there.

Your desire builds until it becomes unbearable. So you charge down your grassy knoll and up the other grassy knoll. And once you reach the top, all sweaty and winded, you notice this new grassy knoll is no better, and is probably worse, than where you started.

“I’ve made a huge mistake.”

Thing is, this pre-existing condition in the human mind — that anything else must be better than what you’ve currently got — can be exploited for sales.

Don’t take my word for it. It’s an idea that many successful marketers have expressed in slightly different ways.

Todd Brown advises not selling improvement on what your prospect already has, but a new solution.

Rich Schefren’s koan for this is, “Different is better than better.”

And Dan Kenendy says, “Sell escape, and not improvement.”

But doesn’t that mean setting your prospect up for a huge mistake? It certainly can. But if you are more forward-thinking than Gob Bluth, then you will water and prune your grassy knoll… so when your prospect arrives, all sweaty and winded, he will see the grass truly is greener there.

And now for something completely different:

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The “knitted eyebrows” copywriting technique

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If you ever wished you had the nerve to engage in more risk-seeking behaviors such as unprotected sex or high-stakes roulette, here’s some good news:

Scientists have found a way to help you out.

According to a study published by researchers at the University of Ohio earlier this summer, a 1,000-mg dose of acetaminophen — ie. Tylenol, Panadol, etc. — not only reduced physical pain such as headaches, but also increased risk-seeking behaviors in a batch of 545 college students.

So the next time you find yourself nervously turning away from a suspect sexual partner, or walking away from the big bets table at the Casino in Monte Carlo, just pop a couple Tylenol and you will be good to go.

You might think I’m being foolish or trivial, and perhaps you’re right. But there is a point I’m trying to get to, if only my fingers would follow my brain.

I’ve read somewhere, and I think the Tylenol study above supports it, that we humans have grafted modern brain processes onto old physical hardware.

In other words, when we have the intellectual or emotional experience of, say, trusting somebody, this is connected to physical sensation of warmth in our bodies. The link goes both ways — trust inspires warmth, and warmth inspires trust. (Again, some scientists have run experiments to prove this.)

Similarly, other human emotions such as fear, disgust, anger, and joy, can and do trigger — and are triggered by — physical cues.

“So why is this relevant to me,” I hear you asking as your eyes roll to the back of your head.

Well, if you’re in the business of writing some frightening or infuriating or energizing sales copy, your first move might be to reach for adjectives. Like “frightening.” Or “infuriating.” But that’s for kids.

What grownup copywriters do is pay attention to their own bodies.

​​Dry swallowing… gritted teeth… a fully expanded chest… these are just some of the hundreds of physical cues you can include in your copy, and play your readers’ emotions like a keyboard. ​​Or if you want them to focus and read on, just talk to them about their eyebrows knitting together.

Maybe your face is forming into a frown right now. But maybe you’re nodding along after your eyebrows have shot up. If your reaction is the latter, you might like to sign up for my daily email newsletter.

Sexy stories = dogs and cats living together

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“You could believe Mr. Pecker,” says Bill Murray, “or you could accept the fact that this city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportion.”

That’s from a scene in the original Ghostbusters. The Ghostbusters are at the mayor’s office, trying to convince the mayor to let them do their work. But what’s this biblical proportion stuff?

Dan Aykroyd: “What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor. Real wrath-of-God-type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling…”

Harold Ramis: “40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes…”

Ernie Hudson: “The dead rising from the grave…”

Bill Murray: “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!”

Funny scene. But here’s something deadly serious:

Have you heard it’s good to include stories in your copy? That the human brain loves stories… and that stories have a way of sneaking around our inborn “So what?” and “Bullshit!” detectors?

It’s true. But here’s the deadly serious thing a lot of people fail to grasp. Your stories have got to be sexy. And what is sexy?

Well, all that stuff the Ghostbusters talk about.

Of course, maybe your story doesn’t literally involve fire and brimstone, or dogs and cats living together. So that’s where your job lies. Even if your story covers a mundane event, you’ve got to find the drama… the high stakes… the life and death in this situation. Fail to do so, and your sales letter is headed for a disaster of biblical proportion.

And here’s something even more deadly serious:

I’ve got an email newsletter. It features life and death topics like this every day. If you’d like to subscribe, click here.

Self-loathing in Hollywood and direct response copy

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A holstered gun comes flying through the trailer door and crashes into the opposite window. A furious Rick Dalton follows.

He’s just been humiliated on set, or rather, he’s humiliated himself.

“You forget all your lines,” he screams. “You embarrass yourself in front of all these people. You been drinking all night. Eight goddamn whisky sours. You’re a fucking miserable drunk.”

Maybe you know this scene. It’s from Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Dalton, played by Leonardo Di Caprio, is a fading Hollywood actor. Regardless of what he does, he can’t seem to turn things around.

After forgetting his lines on set (even though he practiced them), he’s disgusted. He proceeds to trash his trailer. And then he sets himself an ultimatum.

“You’re gonna show that fucking girl, you’re gonna show that goddamn Jim Stacey, you’re gonna show them all on that fucking set who Rick Dalton is.”

And if he doesn’t?

“Let me tell you something,” Rick says while looking at himself in the mirror. “You don’t get these lines right… I’m gonna blow your brains out.”

A while back, I wrote about psychological shortcuts our brains like to take. Specifically, the ones that relate to direct response copywriting.

Well, there’s one for you in that Tarantino scene above.

When things aren’t going well for your prospect, even though he’s tried and struggled to turn things around, his brain jumps to a conclusion.

The conclusion is that he is a fuckup, and everybody knows it. Or if you want it in quotes:

“It’s my fault because I’m worthless.”

Of course, your prospect probably won’t say it out loud like Leo above. He might not even admit it to himself consciously.

But it’s there, beneath the surface, roiling around in his brain. You’re gonna have to address it. You’re gonna have to fix your prospect’s self-esteem, if only for a few moments, if you will have any hope of selling him.

Perhaps you’d like to know how to do this. Well, I’ve just finished writing a book on A-list copywriter wisdom, and chapter 7 tells you one technique you can use.

This book isn’t out yet, but it will be soon. If you’d like to know when it’s available, you can sign up for my daily email newsletter.

Sad Kermit noises in Bejakoland

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Whenever a big tennis tournament finishes, nerdy tennis fans shift in their armchairs and take to their keyboards to post the same sad Kermit meme.

The meme consists of a few pictures of Kermit the frog.

So there’s Kermit looking wistfully out of a rain-streaked window…

Kermit fishing alone on an empty riverbank…

Kermit leaning on a lamppost and staring off into the bleak distance.

I bring this up because I just wrapped up my new book on A-list copywriting commandments. This is something I’ve been working for the past month. And now it’s done.

I’ve asked a friend to read over it and give me final feedback… I’ve ordered a cover for it online… and inshallah, I will publish it in the next few days.

And then what?

I’m grunting those same sad Kermit noises right now. Or if you prefer, I’m looking for ideas for the next one-month project.

Now here’s a quick lesson I want to share with you:

I heard it from Ben Settle. Ben, who makes a play of being contrarian and dismissive, said you should never survey your audience or your customers about the next product you should create.

It’s the old Gary Halbert movie/play argument. Gary would give lectures and he’d ask the audience which they preferred, going to a play or to a movie.

Everybody said they preferred plays.

Bull, Gary would say. And to prove it, he’d ask people to raise their hand if they’d been to a play in the last week.

No hands.

How many had been to a movie?

Many hands.

That’s why Ben, himself a big student of Gary Halbert, says that if you want to ask your list anything, ask them what they bought recently.

I asked this question today of the people subscribed to my email newsletter. We will see what the responses will be.

By the way, I don’t only ask and query my list for ideas. Lots of time I give out ideas, and sometimes even more tangible things, too.

Of course, you have to be on my email newsletter to get any of this. In case you’d like to subscribe right now, click here.

Enemies, enemies, enemies

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Famed A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga once wrote a promotion called Lies, Lies, Lies. It was about all the scheming swindlers — the lawyers, the politicians, the IRS — working to rip off small investors.

Speaking about this promo in an interview with Clayton Makepeace, Gary said the following:

“Instead of the usual “I’m trying to sell you something,” which sort of sets up immediately in the reader’s mind a you-versus-me mentality, I found a way to shift gears by saying, “it’s you and me against these other guys.” 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.”

Then and now, creating an enemy = power.

But what if you’re a peace-loving hobbit who only has good will, even towards orcs and trolls? Well, in that case, young Frodo, you have to start thinking outside the box.

To help you out, here are 10 categories you can look to for potential enemies, along with a couple of examples I just made up from the copywriting and marketing space.

By the way, I’m not telling you to go out and make war against these specific enemies. Nor am I saying these are enemies of mine. Just use these examples to get your ideas jogging around your head.

Anyways, here are 10 rocks under which you can find gruesome and evergreen enemies, enemies, enemies:

1. Industry insiders. Examples: Successful copywriters boasting about their fees and selling their “secrets.” Copywriting coaches who haven’t written a word of copy in years.

2. Snake oil salesmen. Examples: No-name marketers who have only sold copywriting courses by tricking those less experienced than themselves. Newbies who regurgitate what they’ve read but never tried writing copy themselves.

3. Government institutions. Examples: The FTC, which makes regulations to keep the little marketer down but allows big corporations to get away with murder. The FDA, which will suppress promising products, because it is in the pay of secret interests.

4. Big corporations. Examples: Facebook and Google, who will gladly take your money and sell you fake clicks. Amazon, which will take your successful product and make a clone of it.

5. Price points: Examples: Ridiculously high prices (eg. $10k) for a couple of videos. Ridiculously low prices (a free guide on how to achieve a 7-figure income).

6. Customers and prospects. Examples: Freebie seekers. Serial refunders.

7. Ways of doing business. Examples: Copy hype backed up by low-quality products. Maximizing one-time sales at the cost of long-term business.

8. Ways of leveling up. Examples: Hand-copying old ads. Writing ads for nonexistent products.

9. Ways of working. Examples: Working for an hourly wage. Not working for an hourly wage and getting paid peanuts.

10. Received wisdom. Examples: Making big promises in your headlines. Writing your body copy in choppy sentences…

… with each sentence fragment on its own line.

Still not enough enemies? Come and join my daily email newsletter. I sometimes rail against my enemies there, but these rants are reserved for my subscribers.

The beginnings of empire: How Agora made its first sales

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You look out your window, past your gardener, who is busily pruning the lemon, cherry, and fig trees… amidst the splendor of gardenias, hibiscus, and hollyhocks.

The sky is clear blue. The sea is a deeper blue, sparkling with sunlight.

A gentle breeze comes drifting in from the ocean, clean and refreshing, as your maid brings breakfast in bed.

For a moment, you think you have died and gone to heaven.

But this paradise is real. And affordable. In fact, it costs only half as much to live this dream lifestyle… as it would to stay in your own home!

What you’ve just read is the opening of the International Living sales letter.

Bill Bonner — the founder of Agora, a $1B+ publishing company — used this sales letter to launch his first newsletter over thirty years ago. The letter supposedly brought in $3 for every $1 of advertising spend. Today, it still continues to bring in new paying readers.

I bring it up to illustrate a powerful marketing truth, which I first heard from another famous copywriter, Dan Kennedy:

Sell escape, not improvement

Bonner wasn’t selling people on eking out more from their meager social security. He was selling them escape, to heaven, with nothing more than what they already had. Well, with nothing more but a subscription to International Living.

You too can do the same. ​​Selling people a lighter shade of drab is hard work. Selling them a bright and exciting new color, well, that’s the kind of approach that can help you start a billion-dollar empire.

Speaking of escape:

Imagine checking your email every day, and among the dozens of boring, pushy, or irrelevant messages from God-knows-who, you see it.

It’s a daily email, one that I sent you. It talks about marketing and persuasion, but mostly, it’s a way to escape for a few moments.

For a moment, you think you have died and gone to heaven. But this paradise is real, and surprisingly affordable. In fact, it’s free. You can sign up to make this dream a reality by clicking here.

Shortcuts in bear-and-wolf country

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For the past several days, I’ve been hiding in the wilderness in Croatia.

I came to bear-and-wolf country for a break from the city and to avoid having to celebrate my birthday.

It’s been mostly good, except not one wolf, not one bear. Beyond that, this place (Risnjak, if you ever need somewhere to hide) is very nice.

Now, even in the wilderness, you can learn something useful about human brains and persuasion.

For example, today, I wanted to see two things: a lake and a park.

I asked my host how to get to the lake.

(Bear with me for a moment now, because we get into some simple geometry.)

It turned out the location of Bejako, lake, and park were like this:

Bejako —– Mountain
|                        |
|                        |
Park ——– Lake

So my host told me that to get to the lake, I’d need to head out, pass the mountain peak, and then turn right.

So I did. I found the lake. It was nice.

And then, completely on default, without consulting the map, I headed back from the lake, across the mountain peak, to my original starting point, so I could get to the park.

I hope I haven’t lost you with all this topology.

If you look at my diagram above it should be clear how stupid I was, and how I spent an unnecessary 40 minutes in the car.

Because the location where I was halfway through the day, the lake, was about 10 minutes away from where I wanted to go, the park. I only figured that out at the very end.

And now the persuasion point of all this:

People are not logical. They will not choose what is best for them in some grand and impartial scheme of things.

Human brains love shortcuts, even when those shortcuts mean a three-times longer distance in real life.

Thing is, these mental shortcuts are well-known and predictable.

It is your job as a copywriter to catalogue these shortcuts, and to use them to guide your prospect where you want him to go.

What’s that? You want an example of what I mean by “mental shortcut”?

Well, here’s a powerful one which I unfortunately take all the time:

Mental Shortcut #1: People will almost always take the disinterested advice of others rather than trying to figure out something on their own.

For more shortcuts, as they come out, you might like my daily email newsletter.

More “maybe” for more influence

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Right now, I’m waiting at the airport. In front of me is a little girl riding a Shaun the Sheep suitcase.

I’ve never seen one of these before. It’s got a cool design (S. the Sheep on top, Union Jack below, suitcase inside). It also has wheels and works as a push bike. That’s how the little girl is using it now.

I was so impressed by the suitcase and by how much fun the girl was having, that when she rode by the first time, I stared at her and smiled. (That’s not a weakness I normally indulge in.) The girl spotted me smiling at her and looked away, embarrassed.

She kept rolling around, going in circles.

But I had stuff to do. I started checking my phone. I then got out my laptop to write this email.

Meanwhile, the girl kept passing in front of me, making ever more elaborate attempts to retrieve my attention. I cruelly kept writing. She kept riding around, until she finally stopped in front of me flailing her arms.

I’ve read this is a fundamental truth about human behavior.

In general, if you want to instill a new behavior, negative reinforcement can work, though not terribly well.

Positive reinforcement works much better.

But what works best of all is intermittent reinforcement. As Robert Sapolsky once put it, you never get more behavior out of an organism than when you introduce a “maybe” into the outcome.

That’s something to keep in mind when you’re trying to influence, in real life or online.

But maybe writing about influencing a 5-year-old human organism sounds a little callous, even for me. So I’ll wrap up this email here, and get back to admiring this girl’s suitcase-riding skills.

One more thing:

I write a daily email newsletter about influence and marketing. It’s a cold-hearted affair but some people find it interesting. If you want to get my emails (much like what you’ve just read) in your inbox each day, you can sign up right here.

How to agitate any market’s problem

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I kept glancing left and right. Each time I spotted another bicyclist, my fears were confirmed.

I went for a bike ride today.

It was hot. It was smoggy. I had to compete for roadspace with tons of cars and trucks.

But that’s not what really cooked my liver.

I kept glancing around. I soon realized that, out of all the other bikers I passed, I was the only one wearing a helmet.

Food delivery guys… little kids on oversized mountain bikes… pretty girls in big pantaloons on “classic” bikes…

Nobody had a helmet. I was the only one dorky enough to be concerned with my safety in this way.

This growing realization put me in a state of mild panic. Which is pretty strange. If anything, I should have felt safer and superior wearing my protective pudding padding.

But here’s the thing:

Loneliness, which is a horrible physiological reaction involving tightened blood vessels and gurgling in the gut, has two forms.

One form is the familiar one, when you’re literally alone, in your house, like during lockdown.

The other form is when you’re surrounded by lots of people — but in some significant way, they are all strangers. You’re in a crowd, but you don’t belong.

As you can probably guess, this human instinct can be used to “guide” your prospects in the direction you want.

“I really sucked at the piano and it seemed hopeless…”

That’s the level at which most headlines stop. It works.

But could we do better? John Caples could:

“They laughed when I sat down at the piano…”

In short, the vast majority of people, myself included, want to be consistent with the herd. If you’re lagging in some noticeable way behind the others, you’re liable to start feeling lonely, and to wind up in a state of mild panic.

So when you write your sales copy, remember this:

An easy way to agitate any market’s problem is simply to introduce an audience.

You know how sometimes you feel lonely? Getting an email from me at that point won’t fix that. But it might help, just a tiny bit. So if you want to get a bit of protection against loneliness, and maybe get some lessons about persuasion and marketing in the process, sign up for my daily email newsletter here.