And somewhere in the darkness
The gambler he broke even
But in his final words
I found an ace that I could keep
— Kenny Rogers, The Gambler
This morning, I started writing my bread-and-butter piece of copy. It’s an advertorial of a person on a quest.
In this case, the quest is a mom looking for a way to cope with her 8-year-old’s ADHD without drugs. I’ve also used the same quest structure to sell tens of thousands of shoe insoles, silicone kitchen sponges, even fake diamonds.
The quest has 3 acts.
Act 1 is the hero coming face-to-face with the horror of the problem… and then getting sucked deeper and deeper into promised solutions that don’t work or even make things worse. Despair sets in.
Act 2 starts with a chance encounter. And that’s what I want to tell you about today.
In my advertorials, this chance encounter is usually a friend or acquaintance the hero hasn’t met in a long while. The friend casually mentions the key missing ingredient for the hero’s quest.
At first, the hero is skeptical. But the friend isn’t pushy, plus there’s a good reason why the solution could work. So the hero goes home to do more research and— EUREKA!!
If this sounds familiar, it’s because something like it is present in more than 99% of all make money, rags-to-riches, “I was living in a trailer but look at me now” sales letters. The hero in those stories wouldn’t be the success he is today were it not for the trick he learned from a Yoda-like guru who lives on top of a mountain or in a gated retirement community in Florida.
In fact, according to Dan Kennedy, this same trope goes back to at least the middle of the last century. It’s called a “Blackie story.”
Old Blackie was this horse track regular until the day he died. He had a secret for bettin’ on the ponies… and then on his death bed, he revealed the secret to the writer of the sales letter.
What do you think? Corny? Overplayed? Transparent?
Think what you like. The fact is these Blackie stories work.
Because chance encounters in stories are like spike proteins on the surface of corona virus. They jam themselves into your soft defenses so the payload can worm its way in.
And if Blackie dies to boot, like The Gambler in the Kenny Rogers song, it’s even more powerful. Because the secret is now lost… unless you buy the product on sale.
This all reminds me of a run-in I once had with an old door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. He showed me a neat little trick to get your foot in the door, every time, without fail. It works brilliantly online too.
Unfortunately the poor bastard died just a few weeks later. Rest in peace, Jerome.
If you’re curious to learn Jerome’s “foot in the door” copywriting trick… it’s one of the things I share inside my email newsletter. It’s free to subscribe. You might find it entertaining, and you can always unsubscribe if you don’t like it. Here’s where to sign up.