Bernard Baruch

How to succeed in copywriting more than the other guy

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Legend says that, as Wall Street titan Bernard Baruch was nearing the end of his long and influential life, somebody asked him how he did it.

How did he herd a bunch of U.S. presidents and countless other bull-sized egos, and get them to go where he would? Baruch’s answer was simple:

“Figure out what people want, and show them how to get it.”

Interesting. Except… Did Baruch really say it? Just like that?

That’s how the story was told once, in a closed-door session of top copywriters and rich and powerful direct marketing execs.

But I wanted to use this anecdote in a book I’m writing. So I decided to find some context and proof for this quote. And there went a morning, about two hours of work, straight out the window.

First, a random Google search… then more in-depth reading about Bernard Baruch… then searching through a database of old newspapers and magazines… and finally downloading several BB biographies.

Nothing. The closest I found was a similar Dale Carnegie quote, along with other blogs that refer to the same second-hand source (Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar) that I already knew about.

In the end, I gave up and told the anecdote much as I told it above. But I started it with, “Copywriter Gary Bencienga once told a story…” Because I couldn’t confirm that the damn story really was true, or that the quote really was as Gary B. said it was.

So were the two hours of fruitless research a waste?

Yes. But I don’t regret it. I enjoy researching and obsessively tracking down original sources. The fact I get to do it is a perk of how I make money.

But wait — there’s more!

Because I’ve long had a feeling that obsessive research can be a competitive advantage. It can surface gold where you’re only looking for silver.

And along these lines, I hit upon the following quote today. It’s by a man who took his obsessive copywriting research… and turned it into a Park Avenue penthouse and a world-class modern art collection. Take it away Gene Schwartz:

“This is what makes success. There’s nothing else in the world that makes success as much as this. I will take the best copywriter in the world who is sloppy and careless, and match him against a good copy cub, and two out of three times, the sloppiness of the great person will be beaten by the carefulness of the other person. […] The person who is the best prepared and the most knowledgeable makes the most money. It’s so simple!”

In case you want to be knowledgeable and prepared, at least when it comes to marketing and copywriting, you might like my daily email newsletter. Click here if you want to subscribe.

The “translation problem” of persuasion

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I recently learned about the “translation problem” in persuasion.

For example, if I recommend a movie to you (like I did in my post a few days ago), you don’t really know whether to take that recommendation.

After all, my taste in movies is probably not the same as yours. I might also be recommending the movie for some reason you don’t care about (like learning better storytelling).

In other words, when I tell you a movie is great and you should watch it, you have to translate what that really means for you.

But there’s another way to look at this problem, which is more relevant for every-cent-counts direct marketing.

Specifically, I’m talking about the marketer’s job of translating a message into language his reader cares about, or at least understands.

I gave an example of this in yesterday’s post. In 1983, President Reagan got convinced of the importance of cyber security. A part of how this happened was the format of that persuasive message — a story, as told in the movie WarGames.

But another part of this persuasive message was that cyber security — a non-issue in 1983 — was translated into the threat of nuclear war.

Think about this for a moment. Another story probably wouldn’t have worked. A movie in which a hacker controls a weather satellite for a business man’s evil plans (Superman III, also from 1983) probably wouldn’t have gotten Reagan to take action on cyber security.

So what’s that point here?

It’s the old story. It was financier Bernard Baruch who, according to copywriting legend, summed up what it means to persuade:

“Find out what people want, and show them how to get it.”

Except, there are many situations in today’s sophisticated market where you don’t want to make overt promises. So instead of focusing on the positive outcome, you focus on the negative present. In that case, the real translation problem of persuasion becomes:

“Find out what people are afraid of, and show them how to avoid it.”

But whatever you do, don’t put out a message and hope your reader will translate it into terms he cares about. That’s your job. As copywriting coach David Garfinkel likes to say, “Either you work and get paid, or your reader works and gets paid.”

Do you want more of these kinds of persuasion lessons? I’ve got an email newsletter, where I send out one such essay each day. If you find that it’s not for you, you can always unsubscribe. To sign up, click here.

How to dupe Hollywood’s 2nd biggest action star into humiliating himself

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Back in 1992, a terrible movie came out called Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.

(If you want to go on YouTube for a minute to check out the trailer, go ahead. I’ll wait.)

It starred Sylvester Stallone as a tough cop who has to team up with his overbearing mom to solve a case.

Stallone later said this was the worst movie he’s ever made, and he expressed regret for getting involved.

Critics seem to agree.

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot has a remarkable 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with one reviewer generously saying, “Give it half a star for being in focus.”

All right, so the movie sucks.

The question then becomes, why would Sylvester Stallone, one of the biggest action stars of the 80’s and early 90’s, agree to be in this clearly terrible production?

The answer is simple.

​He got conned.

It turns out Stallone had a long-running “Whose is bigger” competition going on with the other massive action star of the period.

I’m talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Who is clearly a better politician than Sly. Case in point:

Arnold read the script for Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.

He saw immediately that it was godawful.

And dyed-in-the-wool politician that he is, he then leaked something to the press about how he was tremendously interested in the movie.

Knowing how Hollywood works, he also asked for a huge amount of money to star in the movie.

So of course the producers then approached Stallone, hoping to get a better deal.

And since Arnold had made it known he wanted to do this movie badly, Stallone accepted, thinking he’d swiped a good opportunity from out of Arnie’s jaws.

Clever.

And an illustration of the most fundamental principle of human persuasion, which I heard goes back to Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch:

“Find out what people want, and show them how to get it.”

Of course, you sometimes have to dig deep to find out what people really want.

Stallone didn’t want money. Or even a hit movie. His real motivation was to one-up Schwarzenegger.

Sometimes it takes political genius to uncover this (like in the case of Arnold and Sly).

Other times, you simply have to do extensive research. And if you want to see my approach to doing research to figure out what people really want, specifically for writing up sales copy, then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/