Four days ago, I sent out an email inviting readers to reply with one truth and one lie about themselves. It turned out to be both fun and informative.
I got hobuncha responses.
Inevitably, a few people didn’t follow the instructions I gave. Not much I can do there.
Others followed the instructions perfectly but then went one further, and told me which of their statements was the lie and which was the truth. That’s my fault. I forgot you can never be too specific in your CTA.
But the vast majority of people played the game as intended. As a result, I found out some interesting and true stuff about my readers. A curated selection of the most intriguing:
“In a small town in Thailand, a monkey on top of a tree threw a stump which hit my forehead and crushed part of my teeth.”
“Last April I appeared on the UK TV quiz show Countdown, 24 years after first applying as a 12-year-old and being told to wait for my vocabulary to develop.”
“I was almost bitten alive by a poorly-anesthetized tiger in an animal photoshoot session in Thailand when I was just a high-school student.”
“As a senior in high school, at a small, private day school in Harrisburg, PA, I set 2 school records in basketball. At 5’7”, I scored 44 points in one game and 309 points for the season.
So how did I do? Could I distinguish the true statements like the ones above, and separate them from the lies, like the following:
“I met Kevin Costner at the premiere of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and he was quite rude.”
“My daughter packed her own school lunch today and it was only waffles and syrup.”
“I got hit over the head with a stray chair at a pro wrestling show, and got to go backstage afterwards to meet the roster.”
I will tell you honestly, I dug myself into a hole at the start. I made a lot of wrong guesses. But I slowly realized two things kept happening over and over:
#1. When one statement was hyper-specific and the other was vague, it was more likely that the vague statement was true and the hyper-specific was false
#2. When one statement was outrageous and the other was bland, it was more likely that the outrageous statement was true and the bland statement was false
The common element to both of these realizations is “persuasion knowledge.” It’s kind of like the battle of wits between the Dread Pirate Roberts and Vizzini the Sicilian in the Princess Bride.
Bejacco the Croatian: “Only a great fool would not look to specific details to verify a statement. But I am not a great fool, and you know that I am not a great fool, therefore I can clearly not choose the hyper-specific statement in front of me!”
Spoiler alert:
In The Princess Bride, the Dread Pirate Roberts wins the battle of wits because he has developed immunity to iocaine powder, a deadly, odorless, tasteless poison that he puts into both cups, the one in front of him, and the one in front of Vizzini.
Likewise, over the course of playing this truth/lie game, I developed immunity to the persuasion knowledge of my readers. I then went on a tear, guessing almost all of the last two dozen truths/lies right, using the two realizations above and a few more like them. In spite of the bad start, I eventually ended up in the black, with more right guesses than not.
My ultimate point for you is a fundamental truth, something I heard a very great copywriter say once.
As a marketer, you have no power. Your only power is anticipation — knowing how your prospects are likely to think and behave, and adjusting for that.
And with that, let me end this email with a tease. I won’t tell you which great copywriter said the above. But I will tell you it is one of the A-list copywriters I built my little 10 Commandments book around.
​​If you haven’t gotten that yet, and you would like to see who is inside, and maybe unravel the riddle of who said that anticipation is the only power marketers have, you can find the book below: