• Spying On John Carlton
  • Full Tilt Boogie
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  • Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, & Choosing The Right Weapon
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  • Confessions Of A Story Junkie, Part One
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  • The Quiz, Resolved. And Prize Awarded…
    Tuesday, 4:06pm San Francisco, CA “I left my heart…” (Tony Bennett) Howdy. By the time you read this, I’ll be back home in Reno… a better man for having spent a week in San Francisco. Even though it was all business, I still get invigorated just from hanging out in that city by the bay.  It’s one of the few […]
  • Quiz Time. With a prize!
    Wednesday, 8:40pm Reno, NV “Money, money, money, money, money, money…” (Cabaret) Howdy… Hope you enjoyed the last post, where I offered up 3 observations about moolah. For this current post, I promised to reveal the 4th observation… … which is so powerful, it can instantly change the way you move and get things done in the world. However… … I’ve just had a [ […]
  • Money, money, money, money…
    Sunday, 4:24pm Reno, NV “… keep your hands offa my stash…” (Pink Floyd) Howdy… Let’s talk about money. Do you have enough? Do you know how much “enough” is, for you? Most folks are pretty clueless about moolah.  They desire it, they fear it, they respect and hate and love it… and they assign all kinds of magical powers to it. So here […]
  • Congratulations, And Now Stop Being A Wuss
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  • Takin’ It Too Far…
    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 muc […]
  • Night Of The Living-Dead Sales Letter…
    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 […]
  • There Are 2 Kinds Of People In The World…
    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 […]

We all have heard that sentence… but Michel Fortin points out that as a copywriter, that’s really not enough. You want to “do unto others as they would want to have done unto them.” That’s a quote from Tony Allessandra, the behavioural psychologist and sales trainer.

If you have anything to do with copywriting at all, you probably know the names Gene Schwartz, Robert Collier, Gary Bencivenga, Gary Halbert, John Carlton, Clayton Makepeace, etc.

A lesser-known copywriter is Mel Martin, who created lots of mindboggling successful sales messages for Boardroom Boards.

First time I heard of him was when Michel Fortin recently wrote about him, mentioning his name in line with the aforementioned.

Over at the InfoMarketingBlog you can get a little Mel Martin Swipefile for free.

And then there is a little, tiny threat with some sparse information over at the Copywriters Board.

Apparently Mel Martin locked himself up in a room for a month when writing copy.

He’s the one who’s mostly credit for “fascination bullets” in copywriting.

Yanik Silver shared the process he goes through when writing copy – really good, he sais that it’s the editing that most often makes the difference between a ho-hum salesletter and a blockbuster.

Read his post8 Ways to Turbocharge Your Writing.

John Carlton sometimes talks about Richard Simmons and how brilliant his informercials were.

I didn’t know the guy (not many people here in Europe do), so I checked him out on youtube.

A funny ad on the side caught my attention:

Homosexuality
How should christians respond to
homsexuality within the family?
ChristianityToday.com/marriage

I clicked on it and landed here:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/tcw/1997/novdec/7w6046.html?start=2

It’s an article written by a mother who just got a letter from her son that he’s gay. She’s a God loving Christian and is devasted by the news and… well… read it for yourself.

You can tell the person who wrote it knew what she was doing. I got sucked into reading it.

(Btw. I’m neither Christian nor homosexual, and I think neither one is wrong).

Just found this little “free-entrance” goldmine.

The Free Swipe File.

Successful ads from some of the best in the field, available for free. Good stuff. Great stuff. Read it.

Well, since I made a pledge to digg deeper into popular culture I’m a regular visitor to the NationalEnquirer.com and Yahoo buzz.

I also started reading a movie script that I found on the Internet Movie Script Database – great resource if you’re looking for million dollar scripts!

John Carlton put out a pretty cool system for getting your research done before you write a piece of copy.

Here’s it:

1. Get every book on the subject you can (library or bookstores are a great help).
2. Put a whole bunch of books next to you on a desk.
3. Take the first book and scan the contents page and the index pages. Take about 3 minutes per book.
4. Make a snap decision: is this a) a really bad book; b) not sure; c) a good book?
5. Rinse and repeat with all the other books until you are through.
6. You will end up with three piles of books: the bad ones (just put them back in the shelve); the not sure books (have another look at them to decide they’re either “good” or “bad”) and the good books.
7. This way you will get a feeling for which terms are repeated in all the books worth reading, names, places, etc.

But if you want to get the process from the source, read the blog entry where John Carlton shares this cool technique.

This is a great site when you are looking for English idioms:

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/

“The magazine I spend most of my days reading.” Bill Gates, Chairman and Founder, Microsoft

This is a subheadline of an advertisement for “The Economist” I recently came accross that caught my eye.

Compare that to the main headline: “Great minds like a think.” which reads pretty rotten to me.

Read John Carlton’s the Meathead From France.

Has some great information that every marketer should know about.

• Why you need a reason why (and how to use it right)
• When having multiple offers, which one to offer first (high priced or low priced?)
• The dump/gem take-away tactic

Next Page →

• Spying On Clayton Makepeace
  • Lovable Scoundrels - Part Two
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  • Lovable Scoundrels Part One
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  • Is there such a thing as a magic success pill?
    Fellow Business-Builder, Last summer I was in Vancouver speaking at the Canada Marketing Summit. They had a great lineup of speakers … covering everything from lead generation, copywriting, teleseminars, information publishing, right through to motivational content.  The audience MORE than got their money’s worth.  … If they implemented what they learned. Ho […]
  • The Story of My Wife, and Red Fife …
    Dear Web Business-Builder, For normal people, writing and speaking are a means of expressing their point of view. For you and me – on planet copywriting – we have an entirely different objective. We write to create an effect in people that compels them to want to purchase a product or service when we ask them to […]
  • The Ninja Turtle Marketing Strategy
    Dear Business-Builder, About 15 years ago, traveling to California with K and Number Three Son, I met one of the originators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He was sitting next to my son. We got to talking. My son was a big fan of the turtles back then. This guy, I forget his name, drew a […]
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• Spying on Michel Fortin
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    A recent blog post has stirred quite a lot of controversy. It specifically made some stark accusations about a certain number of marketers who appear to be colluding. Some call it unethical. Others call it smart business. And a few go as far as calling it an illegal cartel that should be charged with breaking […]
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