Yesterday, I mentioned an embarrassingly titled book I bought, “Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!)”
The book is written by a brand marketing guy, George Lois. On the face of it, it’s all about pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box, following your bliss, and other cliches that advertisers who work for prizes, rather than for sales, resort to.
Take for example Lois’s advice no. 50, which says:
“Research is the enemy of creativity, unless it’s your own ‘creative’ research (heh-heh)”
Nonsense, right?
Like direct response giant Gene Schwartz said, copy is assembled, not written. And it is assembled out of diligent, detailed research, deeper and more penetrating than the other guy is willing to do. No research, no sex, at least when it comes to copy that gets real results.
But really what Lois is talking about is the kind of research that’s common in brand advertising:
Focus groups.
Ask people who have no skin in the game, who aren’t being faced with decision whether or not to buy your product, what they think of your ad. “Is it good? Is it bad? Do you like it?”
It’s completely reasonable that research like this won’t give you useful feedback.
Not unless, as Lois says, you get creative.
He tells the story of Aunt Jemima pancake mix.
The makers of Aunt Jemima pancake mix, Quaker Oats, never wanted to create a matching Aunt Jemima syrup, in spite of Lois’s insisting that it would make tremendous $$$ business sense.
So Lois got creative.
He sent out a survey to a bunch of pancake mix consumers, asking a series of questions.
One of the questions was which syrup these people used. There were 10 brands to choose from, among them Aunt Jemima syrup.
And get this:
89 out of 100 pancake eaters selected Aunt Jemima syrup as their preferred choice, even though it was entirely imaginary at that point, just something in Lois’s head.
Result:
The head honchos at Quaker Oats were finally convinced, and put out the syrup. Within a year, just as the survey predicted, Aunt Jemima went on to become the number one brand in the billion-dollar-plus syrup business.
Is this scientific advertising?
Hardly.
Is it a useful idea which could potentially be worth a lot of money to you?
Well, consider this:
Direct marketer Justin Goff recently sent out an email exactly about this topic.
Justin said that he and his pardner Stefan Georgi often poll their audience about what offers to create next.
But they don’t go the focus group route.
“What should our next offer be? Do you like the sound of ‘Copy Accelerator By The Beach’? Would you buy ‘8.F.F.G.M.S.’ if that stood for ‘8-Figure Facebook Group Marketing Secrets’?”
No, none of that.
Instead, Justin and Stefan make a list of a few specific offer ideas. They ask people which one they want best.
This bit of research, Justin says, matches up very well to actual results of how well an offer sells when they do create it.
In this way, a simple creative poll can be worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to Justin and Stefan.
So there you go. An idea that you can use, starting today.
Or an idea that I can use, starting right now.
Because there are a few live presentations or trainings that I’ve been thinking of creating. They might be paid, or they might be free. They might be a single lesson, or multiple, depending on the topic.
Based on this limited info, and the short descriptions below, which one would you like the best?
If you would like to vote, sign up to my email list. And when you get my welcome email, tell me your preference among the four choices below. If you vote honestly, you will have the best chance of seeing a training about this topic from me in the near future:
1. A presentation about horror advertorials, the front-end funnel that I’ve used to help clients sell millions of dollars of dog seat belts, door stops, and detergent-replacement balls
2. A presentation about the most valuable email I regularly send to my daily email subscribers — the one type of email I would resort to if I had to stick to only one type for all of time
3. A presentation about creating a feeling of insight in your prospects, as a way of overcoming resistance and driving people to spontaneously want your offer, without you doing any overt selling
4. A presentation about natural authority — the rare, most penetrating, and longest-lasting form of authority, which is not built on either expertise or overt status or association