Made To Stick

Murdered billionaire pedophile secrets

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You can’t beat a royal flush.

That’s not the case with other hands in poker.

Full house… Straight… Four of a kind…

Given the right combination of cards, each of those hands is beatable.

Just as beatable as certain ideas are beatable.

So for example, I once read (in Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick) that during WWII in the US, there were widespread race-baiting rumors that were hurting the war effort.

Some of these rumors said American Jews were profiteering from the national war effort.

Other rumors claimed that black soldiers were stockpiling weapons in advance of massive race riots.

Still other rumors claimed that Japanese Americans being held in internment camps were living high and consuming meat, sugar, and other restricted items.

Trouble is, these kinds of rumors were eating away at the national effort to actually go to Europe and fight in the war.

So how would you combat those rumors?

Well, here’s how you don’t do it:

You don’t try to argue…

You don’t present the facts…

And you don’t harp on about “reality” and “truth” back of it all.

Instead, you come up with a better rumor, and you start spreading that yourself.

So, during WWII, the government agencies in charge of rumor control started publishing posters which depicted Nazi agents going around the country and spreading misinformation about racial minorities.

The campaign was successful. America got united enough to fight in the war. And we now remember that time as a unique moment of righteousness in world history.

Anyways, point being, if you want to fight sticky ideas, come up with more sticky ideas.

Of course, sometimes that’s not possible.

Sometimes you come across a royal flush.

As you’ve probably heard, billionaire pedo Jeffrey Epstein was successfully suicided in his prison cell yesterday.

Epstein was supposed to have info on the sexual perversions of all the powerful people in the world, including Trump, Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and maybe even Jonah Hill.

This information was too explosive…

The people involved too influential…

And now, Epstein is dead.

How predictable. We will never know the truth. At least that’s the current feeling, even in the mainstream, in spite of the best efforts of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to dismiss this as “rampant conspiracy theories.”

Whatever you think actually happened to Epstein, I think you will have to agree with me:

“Billionaire pedophile murdered because of his secrets” is the kind of story that is an absolute royal flush in terms of stickiness.

No other rumor, including that Jeffrey Epstein was actually a female lizard alien funded by the Illuminati so they can make America a new Islamic state, can dislodge this in the public mind right now.

And that’s why the development of this story is worth watching.

Assuming, of course, that idea spreading is the kind of thing that gets you turned on.

Which it certainly does for me.

And so, if you need help spreading some ideas, which I hope are more positive and less explosive than the whole Epstein drama, then consider the following, non-mainstream guide:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Prematurely moving out of Maslow’s basement

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Just coz it’s science don’t mean it’s true.

I’m currently reading Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick. This brotherly tome teaches you how to present your ideas in a way that sticks in people’s minds — long after you’ve made your pitch.

Overall, I am digging this book.

But there’s one section that irked me when I read it. Somewhere along chapter 4 or so, the Heaths talk about how to make people really “hear” your message. How to get them emotionally invested. How to get them to care.

Of course, you can appeal to their self-interest, which is what direct response copywriters like myself love to do.

But no, say the Heaths.

That’s short sighted, and there’s science to prove it. So they cite research where people are asked to explain what would motivate them to take a new job:

Option 1: more security because the new position is so important

Option 2: more visibility because the new position is so important

Option 3: the great learning opportunity this important new position would provide

Apparently, most people choose 3 when explaining why they themselves would choose a new job. But when asked what they think other people would be motivated by, they choose options 1 or 2. (Short-sighted buggers, those other people.)

So the Heath brothers draw this conclusion, referring to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

In other words, a lot of us think everyone else is living in Maslow’s basement — we may have a penthouse apartment, but everyone else is living below. The result of spending too much time in Maslow’s basement is that we may overlook lots of opportunities to motivate people.

To which I’d say, “Interesting… But do you prefer going to the movies or to the theater?” It’s a question the grandpapa of modern-day direct marketing, Gary Halbert, asked once:

Once I asked at class at USC how many of them preferred to go to plays more than movies.

Lots of people raised their hands.

“Bull!” I said to them. “You are all fooling yourselves and I’m going to prove it.” I then asked for a show of hands of those people who had seen a play in the last week or so.

No hands.

I then asked to see the hands of people who had seen a movie in the last week or so.

Many hands.

Does this mean you always have to appeal to brute self-interest when trying to convince people? Not necessarily. This ad certainly doesn’t seem to:

MEN WANTED
for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.

This was an ad put out by Sir Ernest Shackleton, a polar explorer, and it supposedly drew an enormous response of men interested in accompanying Shackleton into the penguin-infested waters of Antarctica.

The point of all this?

Maslow’s basement can work.

So can Maslow’s penthouse.

But talk is cheap, and what people say is not necessarily what they will do. Even if they themselves wholeheartedly believe it.

So when choosing which appeal to go with in an advertisement, look at what people actually do, rather than what they say they want.