Brian Kurtz

Man, or mouse?

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Marketer Andre Chaperon once wrote an intriguing email/article titled, Chefs vs. Cooks. Here’s the gist in Andre’s words:

When you go to a restaurant: there are two types of people who cook the food that diners order.

One type typically works in Michelin star establishments, like the Aviary in Chicago, or Gordon Ramsay in London, or the Mirazur in Menton, France.

These people are called chefs.

The other type are cooks.

You’ll find them in places like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Chili’s Grill & Bar. Even your local “pretty good” restaurant.

The difference between the two is vast, of course.

Andre’s point is that there are chefs and cooks among marketers too. “Nothing wrong with that,” Andre suggests. “The world needs both!”

Thanks, Andre. But who the hell wants to be the marketing equivalent of a pimply 16-year-old, wearing a Wendy’s paper hat, shoveling out 15 lbs. of french fries from a cauldron of bubbling canola oil?

Nobody, of course. Not if they have a choice. Which is why Andre offers you the choice to join his course for creators at the end of his Chefs vs. Cooks pitch.

Dan Kennedy calls this man-or-mouse copy. And he explains how this isn’t just about men, or mice, or chefs, or cooks:

Great direct response copy makes people identify themselves as one or the other. Great direct response copy is all about divide and conquer. It is all about, you tell us who you are — smart/dumb, winner/loser, etc. — and then we’ll tell you the behavior that matches who you just said you are.

Dan says this is one of the four governing principles at the heart of each of his hundreds of successful campaigns.

Which brings up a man-or-mouse moment for you:

A lot of marketers have a certain contempt for their market. “Make them pay,” these marketers whisper. “Because when they pay, they pay attention.”

In other words, these marketers think most people are too stupid to value a thing properly if it’s given away for free.

And you know what? There’s probably truth to this.

But I hope you’re smarter than that.

Because that Dan Kennedy quote above, about making people identify themselves, is from Dan’s speech that I linked to yesterday.

This was the keynote speech at the Titans of Direct Response. The Titans event cost something like $5k to attend… and it still costs several thousand if you want to get the tapes.

But for some reason, at some point, Brian Kurtz, who put on the Titans event, made Dan’s keynote presentation available for free online. In my opinion, Dan’s is the most valuable presentation of the lot. And if that’s something you can appreciate, you can find it at this link. But before you go —

I also have an email newsletter. If you got value out of this post, and if you’re about to go watch Dan Kennedy’s presentation, there’s a good chance you will like the emails I send. If you want to try it out, you can sign up quickly here. And then go and watch that Dan Kennedy presentation.

Hollywood tear-jerker: Billion-dollar psychology lesson for cheap

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“Look at what they’ve done to you. I’m so sorry. You must be dead… because I don’t know how to feel. I can’t feel anything any more. You’ve gone someplace else now.”

You recognize that? It’s from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. One of the biggest movies of all time.

When I was a kid, the main movie theater in my town for some reason kept the marquee for E.T. long after the movie had stopped playing.

I was too young to see it when it came out. And I suffered for years, seeing that marquee. I wanted to watch the movie so badly — a real life alien, and cute too! On Earth! Makes friends with a little boy and gets the boy’s bike airborne!

It’s everything my 5-year-old self wanted in life. But the movie was no longer in theaters, and there was no VHS either.

So a few weeks ago, I downloaded E.T. to finally heal this childhood wound and to see why this Spielberg fantasy is called the #24 greatest film of all time.

Unfortunately, the moment has passed.

I couldn’t really get into E.T. But I did get some use out of it. That scene above.

That’s when E.T. dies, about nine-tenths of the way through the movie. And the boy, Elliott, who had a psychic link with E.T. and who has felt everything E.T. has felt, suddenly cannot feel anything any more.

I can imagine that when E.T. played in movie theaters, both the kids and the parents choked up at this point. The kids, because the cute little extraterrestrial is dead. The parents, because they felt on some level how this scene might be about their childhood dreams, hopes, and capacity for joy and wonder… which have been drained out of them as they grew up and became adults.

And then of course, E.T. comes back to life and everything works out just fine. Which is the insight I want to leave you with today.

I recently re-watched Dan Kennedy’s Titans of Direct Response keynote speech. In one part of this amazing presentation, Dan tells an Earl Nightingale story. Two farmers each thought the other guy’s farm had the greener pasture. And when they get their wish and swap farms, it turns out the other pasture is no greener.

Dan: “Earl didn’t tell that story to be a marketing lesson… but I got the marketing lesson out of it.”

And you can too.

If a story reaches mass popularity — greener pastures, E.T., Bad Santa — it’s because it makes people vibrate. The thing is, social order must be maintained. That’s why each mass-market story either has a happy ending (if the characters were deep-down deserving) or a moral to be learned (if they were not).

Don’t let that fool you.

Market-proven tear-jerkers like E.T. can really show you true human nature — if you don’t wait until the end. The end is just tacked on to muddy the waters. But the psychology lesson is all the emotional buildup that happens before the turnaround.

That buildup shows you how people really are. Those are the real problems and desires people respond to, and that’s what you should speak to. Everything else is just Hollywood.

By the way, Brian Kurtz generously made Dan Kennedy’s keynote speech freely available online. If you haven’t watched it yet (or in the past month), it’s time to fix that.

But in case you need more convincing about the value hidden inside this speech, you might like to sign up for my email newsletter. In the coming days, there’s where I’ll be sharing some more Dan-inspired marketing ideas, like the one you just read.

The trouble with selling to late 50s white guys with money

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Brian Kurtz sent an interesting email today about list selection, with the following thought:

The question I wanted an answer to, in living color, although a black and white copy would do:

‘What was the promotion that got the name.’

I believe the logic behind this kind of list research applies to all media today even though most of the lists you use online don’t have data cards attached to them.

Lists are people too… and finding out as much about them — how they think, how they respond, how they read, what they read — are components you can find out before you ever send a promotion to them.

Like Brian says, this is still relevant today, as long as you’re selling anything to anybody.

Because the standard advice is to do a bunch of research on your customers or prospects. Who they are. What problems they have. What language they use.

Not bad. And certainly much better than just pulling your advertising out of your own head.

Better still is knowing what these people bought. (If they bought one copywriting course, there’s a good chance they will buy another.)

But what’s best is what Brian says. Find out “how they think, how they respond, how they read, what they read.” You get that from the type of advertising these people bought from — or didn’t buy from.

Some people respond to hype- and intrigue-filled direct response copy. Others respond to quick and brandy TV-style commercials. Others still might not respond to either, but will respond to independent recommendations, or stuff that they find through their own research.

Because lists are people too. And two people can have the same demographics… the same buying history… and yet still be very different, in the kinds of things that get them stirred to action.

James Hetfield (of Metallica) and George Clooney (of ER) are both late 50s white guys with millions of dollars in the bank. They are also both Tesla owners.

And yet, I imagine it might take a whole different appeal to move George than to move Papa Het — and vice versa. It’s something to be mindful of, if you run any kind of advertising, and if you don’t want to go bankrupt.

Near miss: 100-0 in business and private

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A tense and awkward situation today:

I was walking on a large, wide, empty road. Down the road, I saw a guy walking toward me.

I recognized him. I see him every time I go to the gym. I’ve never spoken to him, but I bet he recognized me, too.

So we were walking toward each other. There were no other people around, and no other distractions.

He saw me coming nearer.

I saw him coming nearer.

Would we say hello, even though we’d never spoken before?

Or would we ignore each other, even though we’d spent hours in close proximity?

At about 10 yards to impact, the guy dropped his gaze and started studying the pavement. I kept my eyes in the middle of his chest — a safe place in case he decided to look up at the last minute, but also not accusatory.

He didn’t look up. I kept quietly staring at the middle of his chest, without making any sudden movement. We passed by each other, as David Ogilvy says, like ships in the night.

Thank God. A near miss.

This brought to mind a post written by Brian Kurtz. You might know Brian as the former VP at direct response giant Boardroom.

Back in the 80s and 90s and 00s, Brian was the guy who hired all those copywriting legends like Gary Bencinvenga and Parris Lampropoulos and Jim Rutz. And today, Brian is still a very successful and well-connected guy in the direct response industry.

Anyways, Brian once shared an idea he called 100-0. 100-0 means you put in the extra effort to build and keep up your relationships. And you don’t grumble about it. Because it will be worth it.

It’s something I clearly need to work on, because it doesn’t come natural. I’m passing on Brian’s idea to you because maybe you are the same.

You can draw your own conclusions. But if, like me and like my nameless gym buddy, you keep waiting for others to make the first move… perhaps try 100-0 and see what it can do for you. In your private and your business life.

And maybe you’d like to start a modest relationship with me today.

Just by email. At least for now. In case you’re interested, here’s where to start.

Snowflake positioning

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Over the past year, over a half dozen “Bencivenga baseball” A-list copywriters have put out courses and coaching programs.

And in case you’re wondering, a “Bencivenga baseball” A-lister is somebody who attended Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar… and got to sign the souvenir baseball that marketer Brian Kurtz passed around.

(Not everyone there got to sign the baseball. Some people at the seminar only looked at the baseball in longing as it made its way around the room. In order to sign the baseball, you already had to be well-established back in 2005… back before copywriting became a thing in the mass mind.)

Well, now copywriting is a thing, and these A-list copywriters are rightly taking advantage.

So they are putting out “how to” copywriting courses, and creating coaching offers where there were none before.

The thing is, all of these guys and girls have been successful copywriters for the past several decades…

They all wrote for many of the same companies…

And it’s very likely that much of what they will share in their courses and coaching will be similar.

Maybe you see where I’m going. Imagine you’re a newbie entering this field. Imagine you’re looking for somebody to follow. There’s not a tremendous lot to separate these A-listers from one another.

So is this a classic fail of market positioning? And should these A-listers know better?

Maybe. And maybe not.

I’m sure they will all manage to fill up their coaching spots, and sell good amounts of their courses.

Because, while the best positioning is to be first… and while it’s hard to be first for everyone… it’s easy to be first to somebody out there.

New people are constantly entering every market.

Some of them will find you first, before they find anyone else in the space.

You don’t need anything else but to be you… a unique snowflake.

It might not be inspired… and it might not be in your control.

But as long as you’re competent… and as long as you’re putting out some kind of marketing… then by chance, for a few people, you can become their Crest, their Fed Ex, their Dan Kennedy.

Speaking of which:

Are you new to copywriting? Maybe you will like my daily email newsletter. It talks about copywriting and marketing, and also about how to succeed as a copywriter. You can sign up here.

How to create a selling style people love to read

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Let’s talk about the infamous Arthur P. Johnson.

I say “infamous” because the man was as unlikely as anyone ever to become a successful sales copywriter.

Johnson graduated from Swarthmore College with highest honors. He then went to Oxford University for a graduate degree. He had ambitions of becoming a poet, and a backup plan of becoming an academic.

Yet, through a chance runin at a bar with a former classmate, Johnson gradually got sucked into the world of direct response. He first worked at the Franklin Mint, writing copy for collectibles (a good education — how do you sell something with no obvious benefits?).

He next worked in product development at another collectibles company. Finally, even though he did not want to write copy any more, he stumbled into freelance copywriting. And that’s when things really took off.

Johnson wrote controls for a number of major publishers, including Boardroom and Agora. He made himself a fortune in the process.

He was so successful he made it onto Brian Kurtz’s Mount Rushmore of greatest copywriters, along with Parris Lampropoulos, David Deutsch, and Eric Betuel.

And here’s the lesson. When Arthur P. Johnson was asked what he attributes his success to, he said the following:

“I think that I’m able to sell products in a more entertaining way than a lot of other people are. I think that being entertaining while you are selling is a big key to success in a very crowded marketplace these days, because you really have to buy people’s attention.”

Johnson did most of his work in the 90s and 2000s. But this lesson, about having to be entertaining to sell, is even more true today than it was back then.

I’m proof of this.

Not with these emails, where I rarely sell anything.

But starting earlier this year, I’ve helped move hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ecommerce products.

​​I’ve done it by writing emails, much like this one, that tell some kind of story or share a joke or just a funny picture. And those emails most often link to advertorials I also wrote… which contain more of the same — stories, fake personal confessions, and light humor (so I think).

The thing is, I’m not particularly entertaining in real life, or when writing things other than copy. In other words, all this entertainment stuff can be learned by rote.

So how do you learn it?

Two ways:

First, start paying attention to the books, shows, emails, and movies you yourself find entertaining.

Second, read or re-read Commandment IX of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

No, this chapter is not a how-to for writing entertaining copy. But it will give you some successful examples of such copy that are running right now.

Plus it will even give you some advice on who and what to study if you want to get better at entertaining in your copy.

And once you start to entertain in your copy, expect people to comment on how interesting your writing is. Expect to have them say how they look forward to hearing from you. And most of all, expect to have them buy — as long as you’ve got anything to sell.

Speaking of which, I happen to have something to sell tonight. In case you don’t yet have my 10 Commandments book, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The coming brand marketing rapture

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When I first found out about direct response marketing, I felt enlightened.

I’d chuckle when I saw businesses trying to impress with their branding. “Where are the benefits?” I’d ask. “Tell me what’s in it for me!”

I’d shake my head. They obviously hadn’t A/B tested their message.

A big eye-opener came a year or so later (I was still very much a newb). I got sucked in by an ad to plop down $5 for a free + shipping offer:

Frank Kern’s book Convert.

In Convert, Frank revealed the secret to his massive success in Internet marketing. It was precisely that he created a brand around himself… rather than selling nameless benefit-based offers.

So this was brand marketing and direct response marketing… melded together.

Interesting.

And it keeps getting more interesting still.

Because in the past week, I’ve seen two successful direct marketers (Brian Kurtz and Ben Settle) say some pretty apocalyptic stuff. They admitted they don’t track much of what they do… and that, while their marketing should always “pay,” the currency doesn’t have to be sales, clicks, or opens.

In other words, these two masters of direct response seem to be dropping their bread-and-butter… and getting back into the horrible, laughable, ineffective world of brand marketing.

I think more direct response businesses will be making this switch in the years to come.

One reason is that people like Brian and Ben prove it’s possible. Both of them make good money. And they make it seem enjoyable.

But there’s more.

Because in a connected world full of free ways to reach your prospects, it’s hard to know what really created the sale. Was it your slick sales letter? Or was it when the prospect heard you interviewed by his favorite trusted authority?

A big business like Agora can handle both branding and direct response. But many businesses can only do so much. And I suspect some direct response outfits will find their time is better spent creating great offers and making those podcast rounds… rather than tweaking their copy and optimizing their funnels.

And like I said, it might be more enjoyable. Because direct response marketing can get pretty obnoxious, and even bad for your own mental health. I’ll reveal the shocking truth about that is in just a moment, but first…

Let me make it clear I’m not predicting the end of direct response. There will still be straight-up DR businesses… and there will be demand for direct response copywriters.

But I prophesy there will be a rapture. For every two direct response businesses in the field… the one will stay as is… the other will be taken up into brand marketing heaven. And maybe, if you start to prepare now, that business can be yours — assuming that’s what you want.

That’s what I’m trying to do. And that’s why I’m writing posts like this, day after day, for over two years now. They haven’t paid off yet… but maybe they will.

Anyways, if you want to sign up to get my posts by email each day, click here and subscribe to my newsletter.

Selfishly giving away money to a worthy cause

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You may have heard that Chuck Feeney is finally broke.

​​Feeney, who once had a net worth of $8 billion, decided in 1982 to give it all away before he died. This past Monday, the last pennies finally rolled out of Feeney’s now-empty wallet, and his life’s mission was accomplished.

You know what gets me? It took 38 years.

Because giving away money in a way that doesn’t do harm, and even more, in a way that actually does good, is a time-consuming job.

I started giving away a tiny bit of money a few months ago for purely selfish, mercenary reasons. Earlier this year, I broke through a long-standing earnings ceiling. And I wanted to make sure I never fall through the hole in that ceiling and drop back down to the ground floor.

So I took the advice of Tony Robbins, who says to give away some money — as a way of signaling to your brain that you’ve got more than enough. (You might think this is some kooky new age bullshit, but the more I learn about persuasion and human psychology, the more I believe this kind of stuff.)

The thing is though, giving away money to a halfway-deserving cause, where the money will be spent on something other than comfier chairs for holier-than-thou bureaucrats, well, that’s not easy. Some months I don’t give anything away, just because I don’t know where.

But let me snip to the chase: I just signed up to give away $40 a month to some charity. Frankly, I don’t know if the charity is any good — that would take more research than I’m willing to put in.

But the donation was recommended by direct marketer Brian Kurtz, who claims it’s worthwhile. And for this donation, Brian is also giving me (and you, if you want) an ethical bribe: the digital version of his Titans of Direct Response event.

Thing is, I’m not sure whether this will satisfy my need to give away money. After all, I’ve lusted after this Titans product for a while. It’s got recordings of top marketers and copywriters revealing things they’d never revealed anywhere else. I thought about getting this product earlier, but I put it off because it normally sells for a couple thou. Well, I can now get it for much much cheaper, and give away some money too to a charity. (But will my brain believe that?)

I can’t say this is the decision you too should make. You might not believe the Tony Robbins philanthropy/earnings juju, or you might not want the Titans course, even at a fat discount. But if you are interested, or if you just want to see how a marketing master structures an attractive offer, head on over to the following page and read the P.S.:

https://www.briankurtz.net/informationinspirationor-just-lunch/

Don’t be a dumb bunny — get this copywriting knowledge now

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Getting to the top of any field these days takes an almost obscene amount of dedication.

Take for example A-list copywriter Jim Rutz.

At one point, Rutz was one of the most in-demand copywriters in the world.

In the early days, he was so good he worked on royalties only — he was confident he could beat any control, so higher royalties made more sense than charging fees.

Later, the line of clients who wanted Rutz stretched out the door and down the hill. So Rutz also added up-front fees to his royalties. At one point, these up-front fees reached $100,000 for a single promotion.

But like I said, it took an unholy amount of dedication for Rutz to become this dominant.

Apparently, he didn’t have much of a social life or sex life. His clever attempts at finding a mail-order bride fell through.

His home life was unusual too. When Boardroom VP Brian Kurtz visited Rutz’s home, he found stacks of direct response promotions lying around. Rutz used these promotions as furniture. It seems his whole life was largely about direct response.

I definitely don’t have this level of dedication. Perhaps you don’t either. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can learn from Jim Rutz nonetheless.

For example, I always remember this Jim Rutz commandment:

“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy. This takes time and toil.”

Sure, you wanna surprise the reader at the outset. Have a paradoxical headline. Or a bizarre subject line. Makes sense.

But what about at every turn of the copy?

​​Well, let me give you an example of that. Here’s a quick paragraph from a sidebar in a Jim Rutz magalog. ​​If you want to get better at surprising your readers, read this, once, twice, and maybe even print it out to form the beginning of your new nightstand:

“The ultimate nightmare: Being trapped in extreme pain, day after day. GREAT NEWS: Some doctors have learned in the past ten years how to block almost any degree of pain. But you have to know what kind of treatment to ask for… or how to get a physician who specializes in pain management… or where to find an accredited pain management facility. It’s all on page 127. Don’t be a dumb bunny and wait until you get hit by a cement truck. Get this knowledge now.”

Speaking of knowledge:

I have a daily email newsletter. There isn’t always copywriting knowledge inside. But sometimes there is. You can subscribe here.

10 tiny marketing projects you could complete in a week

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A guy named Ben Stokes just published a free tool to help you build a one-item online store. I’m letting you know this for two reasons:

1) Maybe you want to build a simple store for a product you have in mind. In that case, you can try Ben’s free store builder instead of paying for Shopify or fussing with WordPress.

2) Ben also has a unique blog at tinyprojects.dev. He does a tiny new programming project each week. He tracks what he did and how it went. The one-item store builder is Ben’s most recent entry.

All of which got me thinking:

​Somebody could make a similar site about marketing. Just pick a tiny project you could complete in under a week. Do it. Write up how it went, what you learned, and show off the results.

You’d learn something. You’d build a portfolio. You’d make connections. Maybe you’d even make some money.

I at least would love to read it. I really hope somebody will do this — maybe that somebody will be you.

So to help you get started, here are 10 possible tiny marketing projects I came up with just now.

​​I’m not saying these projects are great. But they don’t have to be a success in order to be a success, if you’re hepp to what I mean. Here’s the list:

#1. Get booked on a podcast
​
​Make an inventory of your skills, interests, and experiences. Go on listennotes.com and search for podcasts that might be interested in hearing what you have to say.

​​Send the podcast hosts an email explaining what valuable info you can share with their audience. If you have zero upon zero valuable experience or skills, then find a travel blog and talk about where you live. Any place can become interesting with a bit of research.

#2. Promote an affiliate product
​
​Go on Clickbank. Pick a top 15 Clickbank offer. Find a subniche you could promote it to (eg. weight loss for people with PTSD).

​​Create a tiny lead magnet that answers a specific, curiosity-inducing question in 4 paragraphs max. Create a landing page offering this lead magnet as a PDF.

​​Write a soap opera sequence for people who sign up, promoting the affiliate product. Create 3 Facebook ads and run $5 worth of Facebook traffic to your page each day for 3 days.

#3. Work on getting a story to the front page of Reddit
​
​Search the Internet for a sufficiently shareable/outrageous/inflammatory story that hasn’t blown up yet. Or use your own content. Figure out which subreddits might go for it. Put it out there. Go on Fiverr and pay for 5 people $5 to upvote it using a bunch of different accounts, and try to make it reach the front page.

#4. Publish a Kindle book out of repurposed materials

​
​Blog posts you’ve written, articles, emails, your personal diary, letters to your mom, or your high school term papers. Whatever you’ve got. Put it together. Figure out a hot title. Research how to make a Kindle book. Create a cover using Canva. Write an Amazon listing for it. Publish it on Amazon KDP.

#5. Start a blog where each week, you post a profile of a different successful marketer

​​Dig around on the Internet and collect info on this marketer. Then reach out to the marketer, explain what you’re doing, and ask one or two in-depth questions to make your piece unique and more than just a rehash what’s out there. If you don’t hear back, that’s content too. ​​Write it all up. Link to the marketer’s offers and his site.

​​ If you don’t know any successful marketers, here’s a random list to get you started: Michael Senoff, Brian Kurtz, Todd Brown, Matt Furey, Hollis Carter.

#6. Same as #1 but with guest posts

​​This can be better if you’re starting out and you can’t claim to be any kind of expert, or even pretend-expert. Simply make it your goal to get somebody somewhere to accept your guest post.

​​Look at a bunch of blogs or sites. Select the most promising ones according to your own interests and how good/accessible they look. Come up with a headline or two or three, and write the blog owner an email pitching your post. Do it over and over for a week, or until you get a yes.

#7. Create a micro dropshipping site

​​Go on Amazon and dig around for ecommerce products. Look for a product that 1) has 200+ reviews, 2) makes you say, I can’t believe this is a thing and 3) sells for under $20. Then go on Ali Express and find the closest thing to it. Create a one-product store with Ben Stokes’s one product store builder. Connect it to your Ali Express supplier and make it ready to do business.

#8. Create a personal ad for your own service business

​​Find Gary Halbert’s personal ad. Model it to describe your ideal client, and to promote yourself as a copywriter or whatever it is that you want to do.

​​If you think your ad is great and you’ve got a bunch of money, buy some space in the Los Angeles Times and run it, just like Gary did. ​​If you’re not confident about your ad or you ain’t got money, put your ad in a Google Doc. Make it publicly visible. Link to it from Facebook and post it in Facebook groups, while sharing your learning lessons from the exercise.

#9. Recreate the Significant Objects project

​​Go to a local thrift shop, antiques store, or flea market. Buy 5 quirky objects, all under $5. Then go on Reddit and search around in various subreddits (r/relationships, r/letsnotmeet, r/askreddit) for personal stories that went viral or got lots of upvotes.

​​Figure out a way to tie some of those stories up with your thrift store products. Retell the story in a tight, condensed version, tie in your product, and make this into an eBay listing for the product.

#10. Create a blog about about tiny marketing projects that you complete in under a week

​​Make a list of 10 projects you will tackle over the coming 10 weeks. Write up a week 0 post about your motivation, the steps you took to create the actual blog, and hint at the first project you will handle the following week. ​​Then send me a link to it, and I will be your first reader.

​​And if you’re strapped for cash, just write up the initial post in a Google Doc and send me that. I’ll pay the $10.17 for registering the tinyprojects.marketing domain for you, and I’ll let you use my hosting for the blog itself until you make your first $1k online.