Elon Musk

“Raping of our night skies”: A growing problem for marketers

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“Fuck this guy and fuck his raping of our night skies. Fire him into the fucking sun. Billionaires are a planetary cancer.”

That was a tweet written by one Alan Baxter a few weeks ago. Thousands of other people wrote equally outraged Tweets, while a few had deep Tweet-thoughts like this:

“can you just ask him to do something abt climate change @Grimezsz”

@Grimezsz is the Twitter handle of Grimes, the Canadian singer and musician.

And the “him” in the Tweet above is Grimes’s boyfriend and well-known planetary cancer, Elon Musk. How quickly things change:

For many years and until what seems like yesterday, Musk was loved and celebrated by the mass mind.

His Tesla electric cars made it sexy to take smoke-billowing gas guzzlers off streets.

His Hyperloop concept promised a cool way to travel far without the environmental costs of airplanes and airports.

And his SolarCity company brought clean energy to hundreds of thousands of homes across America.

So what changed? Why the sudden outrage towards Musk?

What did he do to make his personal brand plummet… and to make people forget all about his solar energy company… and his electric cars… and his minimal-impact human gerbil tubes?

As you can imagine, it took something big.

It took a cardinal sin.

It took for Elon Musk to get into advertising.

Because the tweets above, and thousands like them, came after Musk announced his plans to put a “billboard satellite” in space.

In reality, Musk’s space billboard will be something like a 4-inch-by-4-inch TV, floating among all the other tin cans miles away from the surface of the Earth. It will be invisible from the ground. It certainly won’t rape anybody’s night sky.

And yet, people hate the idea of a billboard satellite. And they hate Musk for working on it.

Because, as you may have noticed, many people have an allergic reaction to advertising. And the numbers of the afflicted are growing.

You can see it in the blowback to Musk’s space billboard plan.

You can see it in the bubbling anger over online tracking and targeted ads. (Which, if anything, people should welcome, because it makes advertising more relevant to their needs, habits, and interests.)

And you can see it in the reports of big-name direct marketers, who say skepticism and indifference are rising, while conversion rates are dropping year after year.

So I’d like to suggest to you that this is a big problem.

And one way or another… if you are doing any kind of marketing, advertising, or proactive selling… and unless you want get out of business and go work for the federal government… then I’d like to suggest you have to face up to this problem and find ways to deal with it.

You can back away… and make your sales softer and more indirect.

Or you can get confrontational… and turn up your sales pitches while mocking those who object to your trying to run a business.

Or you can use subtle psychology to strike some sort of middle ground. That’s my preferred approach.

But whatever your preferred approach, you have to start thinking about it. And you have to start acting on it. Because if there is one thing that the growing numbers of people who hate advertising react to… it’s new advertising, which is just like the old stuff, only done a little bit better.

So that’s all. Except:

Would you like to know more about subtle psychology and how to use it in your marketing? You can get it in regular drips if you sign up to my email newsletter here.

Gary Halbert’s second best copywriting tip

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On January 7 of this year, carried on the wings of Twitter, Elon Musk became the richest person in the world.

That was good news for the folks at Agora, who could now run the following promo about Jeff Bezos:

“World’s second richest man’s NEW world-changing disruption”

I don’t know about you, but this sounds more intriguing to me than:

“World’s richest man’s NEW world-changing disruption”

And I guess Agora’s readers agree. After all, Agora keeps mailing this second richest thing, even though Bezos is actually back to being the richest person ever, as of February 16.

My point is this:

When it comes to copy, superlatives and extremes are great. But they can become unbelievable, or simply tired. If that’s happening in your market, it can make sense to go to the extreme… and then back off 1%. Just like Gary Halbert did with the following bullet:

* Almost foolproof contraception: It’s over 99% effective but… so new… most people have never even heard about it!

You might wonder what this new form of contraception is. That depends, like Bill Clinton said, on what the meaning of “is” is. But I will tell you this:

The secret Gary is talking about is actually 100% effective. (I found that out by following Gary’s top copywriting tip, which was to study bullets by comparing them to the source text.)

And yet, Gary decided to cut down the effectiveness of his promise. Why?

Because round numbers seem less specific, and therefore less convincing, than jagged numbers.

So if your number is round (like 100% contraceptive effectiveness… or the world’s richest man), then take Gary’s lead. Find creative ways to rough up your promise and make it more believable.

And if you want more second- and third-best copywriting tips:

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My prediction about the future of direct response hits

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“The next Tesla may even hire creators to evangelize the company or at least, serve as a paid marketing channel. Creators are essentially media companies now, which means that the creators of tomorrow will operate a lot like the New York based publications of yesteryear.”
— David Perell

My email yesterday looked at some fancy science, and made a simple point:

A hit product is the result of chance. The first few raindrops of popularity determine which spots in the product landscape become lakes, and which ones deserts.

I think this leads to a few conclusions. One is that, just because a product (or an offer) was successful before, this doesn’t necessarily mean it is worth studying. It might have become successful due to chance more than any intrinsic quality or real demand. And vice versa. You clearly cannot count on the quality of your product as your only key to success.

So what can we do about this?

One option is simply to put out lots more offers. This will increase your chances of getting at least one big hit.

And then there’s the fact that early buzz seems to be crucial to long-term success. Which to me suggests that street teams.. astroturfing… or influencer marketing are really where much of your marketing efforts should go.

And that’s what David Perell is saying in the quote above. Media-savvy businessmen like Elon Musk are already using creators as their main marketing channel. And the “next Tesla” will probably do more of the same.

But hold on a second. Tesla? That’s a whole other country from the direct response businesses I normally talk about.

After all, if some guy in 1995 got a sales letter from Gary Halbert about a book on killer orgasms… he probably didn’t go down to the local bar to ask his buddies if they knew anything about this orgasms book, and if it’s worth the $39.95 Halbert was charging for it.

In other words, people chose traditional direct response offers in a more independent way than they choose cars or movies.

But as I’ve written before, I feel that’s changing. In the same way that traditional brand businesses are becoming more direct response savvy… traditional direct response businesses are discovering the power of having a brand. So the same reality of what makes a big hit matters for modern DR businesses too.

The way I see it, that means you’ve got two options:

One is to become a creator yourself, because businesses will need you more and more.

The other is to hire creators or influencers to promote your offers, so you can create enough initial buzz to make it a hit.

That raises the question of who to hire and when and what they should say… All interesting questions. I’ll talk about that another day. And if by some strange circumstance you want to hear what I have to say then, you can subscribe to my email newsletter.

Where will you be in March 2091?

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Right now, Elon Musk’s cherry red Tesla Roadster is cruising through outer space, somewhere beyond the orbit of Mars. A dummy named Starman is sitting inside the car, wearing a pressure suit and listening to David Bowie.

Musk launched his car into space last year, Starman dummy and all, as part of a test launch of his SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Now, Elon Musk is clearly a smart guy.

But there are lots of other people in the world who are as smart as he is.

And yet, he’s the only one who has managed to make electric cars sexy…

And to then send them into space on a rocket built by his own private company.

In other words, there is something to be said for thinking big.

The more I learn about business, the more I realize many people do not think big enough.

Again, many people out there are smart. Many of them have honed valuable skills or expertise. And many are willing to work hard.

And yes, all of these ingredients are necessary.

But for making a big success, you also have to develop the habit of thinking bigger than you’ve been used to.

This can be surprisingly difficult.

And I feel that, past a certain point, it’s really the only thing that distinguishes people who have enormous success — like Elon Musk — from those who don’t achieve very much.

Now, I’m sure there are lots of psychological strategies you can use to get yourself to think bigger.

But ultimately, I think it comes down to a simple decision.

You can start to think bigger.

So why not start it now?

Anyways, that’s my pep talk for this Friday. In case you decide to start thinking bigger with your business, and you want help with marketing, you might get some good ideas from the following:

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

And one final point before I take off:

The starbound Tesla Roadster is on an elliptical trajectory around the sun.

The next time it gets close to Earth, it will be 2091.

The question is, where are you going to be then?