Hidden Nazi treasure — that’s the gist of a video that’s been circulating around the Internet for the past few months.
The video starts off with footage of WWII personalities and tells you about a German-Jewish scientist and doctor, whose research was so valuable that he got a personal hall pass, signed by Adolf Hitler himself, to keep working in Nazi Germany.
If you take a look at this video and you squint just right, you can convince yourself you are watching the History Channel or perhaps a roided up version of a BBC documentary. Of course, that’s not what this video is. Instead, it’s a VSL for an Agora health newsletter.
Here’s a second example to illustrate the point I want to make. It also comes from an Agora imprint, Banyan Hill. It’s a short 3-minute video, and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
Well, unless you’ve ever seen that viral Purple Mattress video. Or the viral video for Squatty Potty. Or the viral video for Poo-Pouri.
In other words, this Agora imprint hired the Harmon Brothers ad agency (which did all the videos I just mentioned). And the result is an ironic, self-referential, Will Ferrell-inspired ad for a stock picking service.
Will it work to get new customers for Agora?
I don’t know. But the trend is clear in both the Nazi treasure video and the Harmon Bros video. And the trend is that, even for hardcore direct response businesses who sell to cold traffic, entertaining is becoming more important than big promises. In the words of Kevin Rogers of Copy Chief:
“‘Aggressive persuasion’ is dying with the Boomers, but Big Tech will kill you for it first. The best modern copywriters spend more time studying Quentin Tarantino than they do Claude Hopkins.”
Here’s some un-aggressive persuasion:
I write a daily email newsletter. If you would like some entertainment and maybe even useful copywriting knowledge, click here to sign up.