Saturday, 2:35pm
Reno, NV
“Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!” (Gen. Patton, ambushing Nazi’s before they could ambush him)
Howdy…
Early Halloween memory: I’m getting ready to go extort candy from the neighbors with my older sister (cuz while I’m starting to suspect that Santa Claus ain’t real, I’m still pretty convinced that ghosts and witches are out there, thus requiring a bodyguard)…
… and, putting my worldly experience to work, I choose the biggest bag available to carry my haul in.
Dreams of endless sugar-rushes have my 5-year-old brain twitching like a junkie as we join the throngs of vandals and kids outside, and I’m raking it in.
However, just before calling it a night and heading home, I realize that my bag was a little TOO big… and I’d been dragging it along the ground, and all that glorious booty had fallen out in the street somewhere behind me.
The horror.
It was unfair. It violated every code of how kids should be treated by the universe that I knew about. It was a memory-scarring traumatic event.
I felt…
… cheated.
And I’m pretty sure that was my first lesson in empathy. Because it sucked to feel like I’d been cheated out of something.
Sucked, sucked, sucked. I’d headed out that evening snickering to myself about being so clever with the big bag… and… and…
Well, I can’t even talk about it anymore. It’s just too painful a memory.
And from that moment on, I have nodded in solidarity and sympathy whenever someone else was cheated. “Yeah,” I’d say to myself. “Been there.”
In fact, there are three lessons here:Read more…
Monday, 11:34pm
Visalia, CA
“I never drink… wine.” (Bela Lugosi, “Dracula”)
Howdy.
Special treat today. I’ve asked an old friend (and killer copywriter) to guest post on the blog here.
Jim Curley and I go way back (to, gasp, Before The Birth Of The Internets As A Marketing Force)…
… and he’s one of those Web-hip veteran copywriters who brings a healthy dose of old-school wisdom and experience to everything he does. He’s well steeped in all the manly markets (golf, self-defense, hot rod body artwork, family life, vampires, stuff like that). I’ve had him as a wingman at multiple seminars, and I’ve hired him as a writer for my own projects.
That’s how good he is.
I didn’t give Jimbo any directions on what he could write about, either. I trust the guy completely…
… and just told him to dig into one of the subjects he and I enjoy talking and bitching about when we get together.
This is a good lesson Jim’s sharing with you.
Enjoy… Read more...
Thursday, 11:49pm
Reno, NV
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” (Talking Heads,”Psycho Killer”, ca. 1979)
Howdy.
Quick lesson today, which should help you understand one of the fundamental truths of kick-ass marketing.
That truth: There is almost always a way to fix or solve a marketing problem.
Actually, that truth is also functional in every-day life…
… but that’s a much longer lesson.
Here’s the quickie version, for marketers: I was just delivering this story in one of the Simple Writing System classrooms, and thought I’d share with you here, too.
As any decent marketer knows, the Prime Directive of a sales process is to discover your best possible prospect… and “reach” him with your sales message.
Seems simple enough. Sometimes, it is. If you’re selling hamburgers near a starving crowd, you’re set. Just open your doors and tell folks to line up.
For a while (back in the Good Old Days of Internet marketing), all you had to do was:
Step One: Be the first into a hot niche…Read more…
Thursday, 8:06pm
Reno, NV
“Here come Johnny Yen again…” (Iggy Pop, “Lust For Life”)
Howdy…
Oh, my God!
They killed the sales letter again!
Will this horror never stop?
Actually, you can relax. Just like Kenny in South Park, the traditional sales letter is on some kind of perverse “Permanent Hit List”…
… where every marketer trying to claim he just invented a new fad stands astride the image of a quaking letter…
… and slays it.
Huzzah! Death to you, vile long-copy sales letter! Take that… and that…
… and that.
This latest round is clever as hell, too. The new trend is putting your sales letter in a video, and reading along with it.
The irony: The dude selling you the “Magic Box” product that kills the sales letter forever…
… uses a sales letter to do the killing.
Hey — don’t get me wrong. I love video. Been using it in marketing since… well, since it was actual videotape on reels. (Yeah, shocking, I know. We were so backward in the last century.)
In fact, the “Magic Box” product I’m talking about is, I’m guessing, an excellent solution for many marketers who can’t figure out how to make a video sales letter work.
And all’s fair in love, war and advertising. So all the dudes out there telling you the sales letter is dead, and you can sell without selling, and the Web has changed everything…Read more…
Monday, 3:29pm
Reno, NV
“You’re either on the bus, or off the bus…” (Ken Kesey)
Howdy…
Quick lesson here I thought you’d enjoy.
The phrase “there are two kinds of people” is used by comics, politicians, and just-plain-folks trying to set up a point with an easily-understood little story.
It’s an over-simplification, most of the time, of course. Life is too nuanced and complex to fit into just two tidy categories.
However, sometimes you can make a damn good argument behind the two-groups thing.
In selling, this is what we’ve called “the dichotomy of futures”…
… meaning, you can make two distinctly clear divisions:
1.) The “in” group, which is your target market…Read more…
Thursday, 7:41pm
Reno, NV
“Please allow me to introduce myself…” (Stones, Sympathy For The Devil)
Howdy…
This is one of those lessons that arrived accidentally…
… and I had to stop and ruminate about it for a while before it made sense.
I’m lucky I learned it early, too.
It’s provided me with a home base of sanity when the chaos has reached shuddering crescendos and it was hard to think straight (let alone make snap decisions when crisis loomed).
You may find it obvious.
That’s fine. Just don’t go thinking it’s obvious to the rest of the mean ol’ world out there… cuz it ain’t.
Here’s the story: One of my first jobs working for Gary Halbert was to fly to Detroit… and interview a guy who’d just lost 750 pounds.
Yeah, you read that right.Read more…
Thursday, 11:30am
Reno, NV
“You’re young, you’re drunk, you’re in bed, you have knives… shit happens.” (Angelina Jolie)
Howdy…
Did you go out and do any damage on New Year’s Eve?
Hope you got home safe, if you did.
The world turns into Crazy Town every 12/31, and you can’t projectile-puke in any direction without hitting people who seldom (or should never) drink pounding down Jagermeister and double-bourbons like they’re channeling Hunter S. Thompson in his prime.
It’s been years since I’ve ventured away from home for New Year’s…
… and even then, I only went out because I was sitting in with a band in some bar or club.
There’s a small bit of safety being on a stage while the rookies party below. Even in the sleaziest biker bar I’ve ever had the pleasure of performing in… the bad-asses never assaulted the band.
They might bust a tweaker’s head against the bar just to see what the dude looked like sprawled on the floor…Read more…
Saturday, 2:48pm
Tampa, FL
“Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean?” (Monty Python)
Howdy…
Special treat today on the blog.
Another guest post by our good friend, colleague and former stand-up comic (before his new career as killer copywriter), Kevin Rogers.
(Kevin is also the head writer for my Stable O’ Copywriters project, where you can find a recommended freelancer who meets my strict standards of professionalism — and who has my ear for consultations: www.carlton-copywriting.com.)
This cat is funny. And every time Kevin and I hang out, I’m reminded of two things:
1. Nearly every top marketer and writer I know personally… has a shockingly-acute high-end sense of humor. (This explains the comraderie you see among the best in the biz. We make each other laugh.)
2. And… there are awesomely valuable insights to life and success available in studying lessons in tales from the “vice squad”. (Meaning, that part of living well which includes hanging out, challenging the boundaries of sobriety, and squandering time laughing as hard as you can for as long as you can.)
Being funny won’t make you smarter. And it doesn’t bestow an automatic deeper understanding of human behavior.
However… if you pay attention… Read more…
Saturday, 12:17pm
Reno, NV
“So what?” (Miles Davis)
Howdy…
Okay, I know I’m a few hours late delivering the answer to the very excellent Quiz #8.
I had writer’s block. Just couldn’t think of what to write…
Kidding! I’m joshing with you.
I apologize for the delay. Simple matter of being abducted by friends and whisked off to an enjoyable Friday adventure. I earned it, and knew you’d forgive me for being a tad late with the solution to the Quiz. (You know it takes me several hours to concoct these posts, right?)
Let’s get down to it, then.
First: I want to thank, and congratulate, everyone who posted for the Quiz. The threads on this blog are always energizing mini-riots of good critical thinking…
… along with a smattering of cleverness, sheer brilliance, pontificating idiocy, and (always) one or two utterly outraged comments from folks who wandered into the fray by accident.
I love it all.
As many have noted… the comment threads at this blog rival the actual posts for being fascinating reading.
There’s some smokin’-hot wisdom out there, for anyone paying attention.
Second: Here is the answer to the Quiz question…
“Writer’s block is…Read more…
Saturday, 8:53pm
Reno, NV
“It’s the end of the world as we know, and I feel fine…” (REM)
Howdy…
Nice big glob of seemingly-nasty news hit the grid this week.
The FTC (brrr, even the name causes Halloween-style chills, doesn’t it) fired a shot across the bow of the good ship Capitalism with their “final guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials”.
In case you’ve been in a coma or something, here’s the Fed-sponsored link:
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm
What immediately followed was a lot of hair-on-fire screaming and rending of clothes by both online and offline business owners who use testimonials or endorsements in their marketing.
It was kinda fun to watch, actually.
A lot of entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed over the decades, are skittish enough already about the whole “provide a product to customers in exchange for money” model of doing business.
They’re like “Are you sure we can do this? Actually accept moolah just for giving people this thing of value we created?”
It’s understandable to be a little paranoid. Business is part of the grown-up world, all full of consequences and responsibilities and risks…Read more…
