Back in 2020, I reported on a saucy story involving Jack Trout.
Trout is one half of the team that wrote Positioning, which I still think is one of the best and most interesting books on marketing.
Once upon a time, Trout was in meeting with John Schnatter, the “papa” in Papa John’s Pizza.
Schnatter’s chain already had 1,000 locations around the country. But I guess he wanted more, and so he was talking to Trout.
Schnatter explained how Papa John’s makes pizza. “… and then we put the tomato sauce, which we get from Dino Cortopassi…”
“Hold up,” said Trout. “I know Dino. He doesn’t sell to chains. He only sells to small mom-and-pop shops. His stuff is fresh-packed and there’s not enough for chains. You’re telling you get your sauce from Dino?”
Schnatter nodded. A call to Dino himself confirmed it.
And so was born Papa John’s positioning:
“Better ingredients, better pizza.”
Is Papa John’s Pizza truly better? I can’t say. I’ve never had it. But the company grew five-fold in the years following the positioning change, and is worth some $3 billion today.
So let’s see how many billion I can make with the following positioning statement:
Better ingredients, better emails.
My claim is that, as for pizza, so for long-term marketing.
More interesting stories and more valuable ideas make for better emails. Independent of the copywriting pyrotechnics you invest in. Independent of the rest of your public persona, which builds you up into a legend worth listening to.
Maybe the fact that you are reading my email now, or have been reading my emails for a while, is proof of that.
But you gotta pay the piper somewhere.
Better ingredients for your emails are not free — free as in just sitting there in your head, right now, ready to be used.
The good news is, better ingredient are not hard to come by, and are not expensive.
They have been collected and sorted, organized and prepared for you, in low-cost receptacles known as books.
If you read the right books, you’re likely to find lots of interesting stories and lots of valuable ideas.
I had more to say on this topic. But I reserved that for people who are signed up to my email newsletter. If you are able to read, including books, then you might like to join my email newsletter as well. Click here to do so.