Goldmine Marketing

Tag: ego

  • Brand-Ego lessons from the White House

    11:48am Saturday
    Saint Paul, Minn

    Recently there have been memes* floating around the web of Vice President J.D. Vance’s face superimposed on all kinds of popular images.

    (*when I used “meme” as a Scrabble word some 15 years ago, having read it in Howard Bloom’s The Lucifer Principle, other players were unfamiliar with the concept of self-spreading ideas. They disqualified the word, and ended my turn. Anyways…)

    Maybe you’ve seen these Vance memes. Vance as George Washington. Vance as a character from Game of Thrones. And more.

    Both his supporters and detractors have been posting the images.

    J.D. Vance himself says the memes don’t bother him, and I read somewhere that because he was once a Marine, he can take some good-natured ribbing.

    This is great anti-branding and has a valuable lesson for direct response marketing, if you ask me.

    Let me explain.

    (more…)

  • J. Peterman’s Boring Ego

    11:08am
    Saint Paul

    Remember the J. Peterman character from the Seinfeld TV series?

    Last night I was watching Seinfeld (I could say that many times each week).

    In this episode, J. Peterman—who sells clothing via catalog using romantic, emotional, visual copy—is taking Elaine out to dinner.

    She is afraid of the tedium of listening to Peterman’s stories, so Elaine invites Jerry to join…

    (more…)

  • 7 things you’ll learn in Dan Kennedy’s “The Ultimate Sales Letter”

    10:20pm

    Saint Paul

    I was browsing my bookshelf the other night, looking for something to start.

    (I have more unfinished books than I have fully-read books. Not every book is worth finishing, I’ve learned… though many I plan to return to… I think…)

    Now, I noticed my slightly neglected Dan Kennedy section. Dan is a prolific and accomplished copywriter and businessman who has recently fallen ill.

    I pulled down my worn copy of The Ultimate Sales Letter and (more…)

  • Persuasion Articles of the Week

    "Head shot" by erat, Flickr, CC-By-2.0
    “Head shot” by erat, Flickr, CC-By-2.0

    #bias #ego #comfort #health #lies #bodylanguage #introvert (more…)

  • Destructive Power of “Why”

    Behold… the Destructive Power of Why!

    615am

    Saint Paul

    Yesterday we discussed how we can increase support and investment in our ideas and plans.

    Check it out if you haven’t seen it:

    https://www.persuasionreadinglist.com/building-with-the-power-of-why/

    Today we’re looking at the destructive power of the word Why: (more…)

  • Persuasion Articles of the Week

    Maths! Photo "Amherst63-012" by NealeA, Flickr, CC-By-2.0
    Maths! Photo “Amherst63-012” by NealeA, Flickr, CC-By-2.0

    #science #benefits #identity #sales #ego #religion

    (more…)

  • 10 Things You’ll Learn from “Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)” by Tavris & Aronson

    “Why do you hate so-and-so, so much?” And he had answered them, with his shameless impudence, “I’ll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a dirty trick, and ever since I have hated him.”

    –Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”

    Can you justify such behavior? Image from Steve Martin's movie "The Jerk", 1979
    Cat Juggling! Can you justify such behavior? Image from Steve Martin’s movie “The Jerk”, 1979

    The human brain is excellent at keeping itself free of blame. We have a self-image that we’re a good person, and we also do things that harm others. The cognitive dissonance this causes can be uncomfortable… until we rewrite our memories or justify our actions. (more…)