Last week, one of the boldest direct response campaigns went live.

* Print ads in The New York and LA Times.

* Banners on the home pages of CNN, The Huffington Post and The New York Times.

* And a website counterattacking an injunction by the Federal Trade Commission by using the very statements of the Chief Administrative Law Judge as ringing product endorsements.

The average direct response advertiser would never dare such a campaign.

But pomegranate juice maker, Pom Wonderful, is not run by your average DR operators.

The owners of the company are California billionaires, Lynda and Stewart Resnick, who built Teleflora and Fiji Water into behemoths. They also took over the Franklin Mint, founded by the venerable direct response player, Joseph Segel.

And with revenues soaring above $165 million per year, in part thanks to print and billboard advertising like the one above, Pom is in a unique position to take on the regulatory powers that be.

[Read more…] about The FTC As Your Ad Agency

This lead generation ad supposedly ran in the Times of London seeking recruits for Ernest Shackleton’s heroic Antarctic expedition.

“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

This “damning admission” classified ad supposedly brought in 5,000 applications virtually overnight.

Oh, how copywriters wish it were so.

But to my knowledge, no one has been able to locate this widely attributed ad in any archive of The Times.

I still love the idea of the ad and you’re free to test out this advertising strategy in quest of your own glory.

And now it’s Hollywood’s turn for a swipe.

See if you recognize any Shackleton influence in the soon to be released gem of a film, “Safety Not Guaranteed.“

In 1759, Samuel Johnson came up with this immortal line:

“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.”

For most of the last two-and a-half-centuries, his quote has stood the test of time.

But Johnson could never have envisioned a world in which people took in over a thousand advertising messages a day.

And with the meteoric rise of advertising in the 20th Century, so too came the fall of the effectiveness of big promise.

Today, even big promise ads backed up by the most carefully selected proof often backfire because prospects tend to ignore advertisers who come on too strong.

What’s an ad writer to do?

Benefits… Benefits… Benefits

Most competent copywriters know the importance of emphasizing benefits — big benefits, hidden benefits and everything in between.

But similar to Johnson’s line about big promise, benefits alone get repeated, drowned out and eventually ignored.

I’ve seen (and written) masterful ads, laden with sparkling benefits, that resulted in next to no orders.

I’ve also observed ads which were technically questionable but nailed the appeal… and pulled in orders like a mule. Fortunately, I’ve written a few of those too.

So, how do you strive to create a winning appeal in your ads?

Here are two direct mail pieces and two print ads whose success can be traced back to the appeal.

Sick of getting GOUGED when gas prices go up?… How ’bout a little GASPUMP REVENGE?

This DM from Agora is mailing now for Jim Nelson’s Lifetime Income Report.

With tensions escalating daily in the Middle East and the likely rise in oil prices, we’ll be seeing a LOT more promotions with this type of appeal.

[Read more…] about Forget Benefits: 4 Examples of Advertising Appeals

Few things about advertising get my heart racing faster than headline split testing.

All the more so if it concerns email subject lines.

Like traditional headline testing, subject line testing can lead to dramatic increases in response rates. But without the sloth factor.

With email, you know almost instantly whether you’ve got a barnburner, a dud, or something in the lukewarm middle.

Here’s a killer email subject line I came across the other day and the author was… my wife.

[Read more…] about Beaten By My Wife

Here’s a howler of a headline that surely hails from a martini soused agency person.

“Everyone has opinions. We have convictions.”

Turns out this platitudinous ad writer was a pretty good forecaster, if jail time isn’t simply a matter of opinion.

The drivel continues.

“Proclamations are common on Wall Street. But they’re meaningless if you don’t stand by your words. Particularly if you’re a broker-dealer. At MF Global, having convictions is a big part of our culture.”

Speaking before Congress today about the missing $1.2 billion of account holder’s cash, MF’s illustrious CEO and former New Jersey Governor and Senator, Jon Corzine, had this to say:

“I simply do not know where the money is.”

Okay, Jon, fair enough. Why don’t we just drop the whole thing then? Probably enough people have forgotten about Enron and WorldCom by now.

Has reality finally caught up with financial direct mail?

Here’s a sampling of the covers from the latest promotions going through the mail.

* The End of America from Stansberry and Associates

* American Apocalypse from Martin Weiss and

* Checkmate, America! from the Sovereign Society.

Gloom and doom has been the zeitgeist of financial direct mail for quite a while for the simple reason that it’s nearly impossible to get someone’s attention in this market without the two key drivers of fear and greed.

But with the fiasco (an apt Italian word for failure) now unfolding in Europe, nothing seems so far fetched these days in the financial markets — both here and in Europe.

Last week, The Mail Online published a piece by historian, Dominic Sandbrook, entitled:

“Europe at war 2018: German troops storm Greece. Putin’s tanks crush Latvia. France humbles the British Army. Unlikely, yes, but as Angela Merkel says euro meltdown could endanger peace, a historian’s imagination runs riot…”

As I was reading the piece, it struck me that it was little different from the average financial direct mail promo but for the fact that it didn’t sell anything.

Too bad because it’s classic direct mail ad copy — facts plus imagination plus taking a firm position… even if it turns out to be wrong.

And you can glean as much or more from the guts and raw emotions in the comments as you can from Sandbrook’s story.

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Who are the Crypto-Nazis and what in the world do they have to do with copywriting?

It started with a conversation some years ago with a marketing colleague who proclaimed: “my customers are crypto-Nazis.”

“They watch Fox news, read Newsmax, and are influenced by the loudest voices with lightest intellects.”

Intrigued with this topic, I said, “tell me more.”

Though I’m a political and economic centrist and reluctant to cast myself as a member of a group, marketing-wise, I’m fascinated with the behavior of extremes and extremists.

• Why do people choose and maintain their allegiance to certain groups?
• What are their core beliefs?
• How are they influenced… and who are the influencers?
• Which products do they fawn over… and are prepared to pay almost anything to get?

Get someone like this going for ten minutes and you can pick up a lifetime’s worth of education to ply in a relevant market.

Back in my New York days, my next door neighbor was a French communist film director who could rail for hours about his pet causes. I remember him most for his habit of rolling a bowling ball down the long hallway of his railroad apartment after a few glasses of his beloved bordeaux.

[Read more…] about Crypto Nazi Copywriting

“Bin Laden’s dead.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” the sarcastic little New Yorker in my head instantly uttered, on hearing the news.

Since I lived in Lower Manhattan at the time of 9/11, I like most New Yorkers, recall far more than the TV images the rest of the world watched for weeks on end.

And gratefully, though I didn’t lose any family or friends, I know several people that did.

One of the things I recall most as a New Yorker in the aftermath of 9/11, was the acrid smell of burning jet fuel and debris that wafted several miles uptown… all the way to 14th Street, near where I lived.

[Read more…] about Bin Laden’s Ghost

One evening, eight years ago, I was sitting in my high-rise apartment across the Hudson River from New York City.

I was working on my laptop when my wife broke the silence.

“Hey, have you heard of Joe Sugarman?”

“He’s giving a workshop on copywriting at the Learning Annex.”

“Heard of him!?” I excitedly fired back.

After living in New York for many years I cultivated a proud indifference on seeing film actors and other luminaries. I was a true New Yorker.

But it’s fair to say Joe Sugarman was my idol back then… and my wife still rides me about the goofy smile on my face that night.

“Have I head of Joe Sugarman?” [Read more…] about The Lost Sugarman Tapes and a Sugarman Story

Posted this with the permission of my friend Bill in Chicago who sent this to me a few months ago. Bill’s a sales and marketing genius. Last year, he outsold everyone else in his home office combined.

Here’s his recap of this strip mall merchant’s success story — quick and concise the way all effective marketing and sales should be.

Lawrence,

Thought you would appreciate hearing this success story.

Tonight I took my daughter to get her hair cut and colored.

Went to a new place, and ended up talking with the owner for 2-and-a-half hours about business, marketing and life in general.

Check this out.

He opened his salon 17 weeks ago with zero clients.

[Read more…] about Strip Mall Marketing Success Story

A friend brought this successful print ad to my attention about a year ago and sent it my way.

I recently wrote a post about it with the headline “Manufactured Proof,” based on the model disclaimer in the ad and the incorrect assumption that the photo was not that of the doctor, Meir Shinitzky, but a model.

The writer of the ad politely explained the purpose of the model disclaimer in the comments below and it’s clear that the man in the photo and Dr. Shinitzky are one in the same.

Lipogen PS looks like a first rate operation as the brief Hopkins’ style video expose of the production facility shows.

I was wrong and apologize for making a snap conclusion without digging deeper.

Here’s a free publicity case study I’ve been meaning to post for a while.

Years ago, when I first heard marketing consultant, Jay Abraham, talk about getting control of a marketing asset you don’t posses, I understood the concept but didn’t have the faintest idea how to execute it.

Here’s a paint-by-the-numbers way to do it and how it resulted in over $52,000 in traceable business for my most important client at the time: my wife.

But to really grasp the nuances of what I’m about to share, you’ll need to imagine a world quite different from ours today.

And it’d help if you’re acquainted with Bizarro World in D.C. Comics — the place where incompetence is rewarded, stupidity is praised and ugliness is treasured. Interestingly, Bizarro World boasts a popular financial instrument called the Bizarro Bond, “guaranteed to lose money for you.”

The backdrop for this story gives Bizarro World a run for its money.

Imagine a place where…

• Little things like collateral, income and creditworthiness are totally irrelevant factors when buying a home.

• Property values can go nowhere but up.

• Generous credit lines are given to anyone with a beating pulse.

• And similar to the Bizarro Bond, something called the sub-prime note is the preferred ruinous investment of choice.

Well, you needn’t imagine it. This was that very strange year known as 2005 and the place was the good ole’ US of A.

But don’t worry. Even if you resided elsewhere, we almost certainly exported these to a place near you.

[Read more…] about $50 Thousand In Free Publicity And The “Mystery Briefcase”

“Consumer confidence is the degree of optimism on the state of the economy that consumers are expressing through their activities of saving and spending. This confidence is measured by the U.S. Consumer Confidence Index (CCI). In the United States, the CCI is issued monthly by The Conference Board, an independent economic research organization.”

Yakety-yak.

For the last few years, I’ve found a far more reliable indicator I can see (and taste) up close.

And though this data will never make it into a General Accounting Office publication, I trust it implicitly.

What is it?

Why, it’s the Costco Confidence Index: a simple measure of consumer confidence, easily gauged by going to your nearest Costco, and seeing how much stuff is in shoppers’ wagons.

Costco is is the largest membership warehouse club chain and the third largest retailer in the U.S.

What’s interesting about Costco, unlike Walmart, is you can just as easily be standing on line behind a single working parent who’s stocking up on toilet paper, as you can a surgeon buying brie and bordeaux for a dinner party. [Read more…] about The Costco Confidence Index