Last Sunday, Kanye West appeared alongside Reverend Martin Short at the 18,600 seat Lakewood Megachurch in Houston, Texas.
Kanye was there to give testimony. He announced the arrogance and cockiness that people know him for is now in the service of God.
At one point, Reverend Short asked Kanye to speak about worshiping fame and money. To which Kanye replied,
“It’s like the Devil stole all the good producers, all the good musicians, all the good artists, all the good designers, all the good business people, and said, ‘You gotta come over and work for me.’ And now the trend, the shift, is going to change. Jesus has won the victory.”
Did you catch that?
Did you see how Kanye instinctively crafted a sticky message?
Rather than talking about vanity, and fame, and riches, all of which are abstract concepts that the mind can’t really latch onto, Kanye wrapped them all up in a single, crystal-clear, memorable character:
The Devil.
Which brings to mind an action-packed and high-value talk I heard by a guy named Fred Catona. Catona, who called himself the “father of direct response radio advertising,” was a high school gym teacher who first made a small fortune by selling Philly cheesesteaks by direct mail.
Somewhere along the way, Catona figured out the power of radio for driving traffic to his cheesesteak business. He then launched a little agency to help grow other businesses through direct response-style radio ads.
Catona’s giant breakthrough came around 1995. A guy named Jay Walker called Catona up, and asked for his help in launching a little startup in the travel space.
Catona took the job on. He hired the cheapest relevant celebrity he could find (an out-of-work William Shatner), and started running radio ads. 18 months later, thanks in large part to Catona’s radio ads, that little travel startup had a valuation of $20 billion. It’s still around. It’s called Priceline.
Anyways, Catona once gave a talk about his experiences and the lessons he’s learned from his massive radio campaigns. One thing he said is that you should always ask yourself, “Who is your enemy and what does he do?” Your enemy doesn’t have to be a competitor. It can simply be a way of doing business or living life, like Kanye illustrated in his testimony above.
Anyways, Catona unfortunately died a few years ago. But his talk is worth listening to. And even though it was part of Brian Kurtz’s $2,000 Titans of Direct Response, you can watch it for free once you get a copy of Brian’s Overdeliver book.
The book is apparently on sale now, and you can get it for $10 and with free shipping. And along with the Fred Catona talk, it’s got about $1,213 worth of other bonuses, including some rare direct marketing gems you can’t find anywhere else. In case you want to find out more, here’s where to go: