Direct Response Marketing Copy & Strategy
Hello #PRL reader! Today we’re starting our next PRL book, Joe Navarro’s What Every BODY is Saying.
Awesome book. After understanding the concepts in What Every BODY is Saying, your eyes will be opened to these non-verbal behaviors around you, all the time. Continue reading “I can’t hear a word they say: Decoding Non-Verbal Communication”
I see a lot of my friends and family scared with Trump in the Oval Office. Within a year, he went from a clown that many dismissed to the President of the United States. Among my friends, I see suffering and confusion. I hear their stories of protest and anger, fear and sadness.
My new boots came in the mail. They were far too small. I felt like a kid again and my feet had grown over the summer.
These boots had everything I wanted. Leather, waterproof, and insulated, I expected to keep them for years. But of course, they had to fit right.
Luckily, the online retailer made the exchange simple and free. I mailed the boots in to try a second pair, and I waited.
It was going to be a cold, snowy Thanksgiving in Wisconsin.
Continue reading “How to Please Your Customers: Hopkins’ My Life in Advertising Wrap-up”
Most books on persuasion are written as how-to manuals. They may include information about social science research to explain why persuasion techniques work, or may include information about history’s greatest persuaders. Primarily, though, persuasion books are made to help you use or resist persuasion techniques.
The Extended Phenotype, by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, is not like those books. Continue reading “Persuasion Machines
A review of Richard Dawkins’ The Extended Phenotype“
Last week on PRL, we discussed Hopkins’ career in medical advertising. After seeing all the cash being made by his own advertising efforts, Hopkins gets interested in his own profits.
Chapter Eight, Hopkins is recruited to work at Liquozone, a failing company selling another medical tonic.
Against the opposition of his friends, Hopkins takes the job. He is to be paid no starting salary. He reasons that if most people fail to meet their goals, why would they have good advice? [tweetthis display_mode=”button_link”]”If most people fail to meet their goals, why would they have good advice?” [/tweetthis]
Hopkins creates a new scheme for Liquozone, where six bottles are available for $5, guaranteed to work. Again, he has a druggist sign the paperwork for the guarantee, lending authority to the tonic.
“I had a proposition which no reasonable person can refuse.” Hopkins insists that a salesman should remove all attempt of protecting himself in a deal. Make an offer that the buyer should not reasonably refuse, and the sale is easy.
Within one year, Hokpins has enough sales to turn the Liquozone company around with a large profit. The advertising lesson learned is “ask a person to take a chance on you, and you have a fight. Offer to take a chance on him, and the way is easy.” [tweetthis display_mode=”button_link”]”Ask a person to take a chance on you &you have a fight. Offer to take a chance on him…”[/tweetthis]
Successful people look successful from the outside. They only get that way by making (and learning from) many, many mistakes on their way to greatness.
Claude C Hopkins made many mistakes in his career, as we’ve learned while reviewing his 1927 book, My Life in Advertising.
Most of Hopkins’ mistakes were small marketing and advertising tests. They were intentionally designed to have a successful outcome and a failed outcome, to refine his ads and better hone his craft.
Chapter Eighteen, Hopkins’ Great Mistake. At age 21, Hopkins is advised by his boss, Mr. Bissel, to not get tied to the company. Hopkins remains an employee over the next decades while he watches others in his field build their own firms. He laments that he’s taken many risks that bring reward to the vendors or failure to the ad-man, while the ad firm gets the lion’s share of the earnings.
Hopkins wishes he had struck out on his own. He eventually did, starting a successful cosmetics company.
Nineteen, Some Personal Things. Hopkins talks about his lifelong love of work. He tells how he woke early to encourage the homeless to work. He inspired his daughter’s suitors to work harder. “They found that…. winning a contract was better than winning a trophy.”
At the end of his career, Hopkins is disinterested in his finances and doesn’t want to know the value of his property. Instead, “Now I have the privilege of setting down my findings for the men who follow me…. I have gained… the satisfaction of knowing that I have discovered some enduring principles.”
This is the fifteenth part in a chapter-by-chapter summary of Claude C. Hopkins’ My Life in Advertising. First published in 1927, this book was as insightful then as it is today. I encourage you to sign up for PRL to learn more about persuasion and influence today!
