This letter almost set a record for the shortest time spent as a control at Phillips Publishing (the newsletter giant)… but it wasn’t my fault. They mailed it, it scored a hit with outside lists… and then they decided not to publish the newsletter after all.
I forget the details. This is why I loathe working for the financial newsletter industry: Too volatile. You slave away for a month crafting the perfect letter… and then either someone critical to the enterprise quits to become a beach bum, or the economy tanks.
I actually had three pieces — all for newsletters with a bullish slant — in the mail on Black Monday (October 19th, 1987), when the Dow took a 500-point dive and Mr. Recession closed the party down. I didn’t attempt another financial piece for over twenty years… until I wrote this ad, in fact. And when I subsequently did a second ad (for Boardroom) the market took another apocalyptic drop (October of 2000, when the tech heavy Nasdaq bottomed out).
Tough racket, I’m tellin’ ya. Not easy to predict the stock market months in advance (and because of printing schedules and bulk mail delays, what you write in, say, December doesn’t arrive in mailboxes until March). I’m burying my money in the backyard from here on out.
The reason I’ve included this letter is because it’s a powerful example of going against “common wisdom” in a market. On the first page, there’s a subhead: Everyone Is LYING To You! People who buy financial newsletters are not used to being told there’s an “information meltdown”. In fact, people in any market aren’t used to this kind of contrarian writing. (“Contrarian” is an economic ideology that says, essentially, when the crowd runs south, you head north.)
But mostly, this ad is notable for the sensational headline. What the heck is a “human computer”… and how did he humiliate (there’s that word again) Wall Street for 21 years in a row?
There’s a ton of information packed into the 12 words of the headline. Often, the best headlines are short and pithy. I’ve written some with 30 words or more… but as long as it’s compelling copy, I don’t care. (In fact, I’m now both admired and reviled as the “long headline guy”.)
But this headline is a great example of “nothing to spare”. There isn’t a single word that could be edited out without compromising the salesmanship. You might suggest that the word “mysterious” isn’t critical… or “Arizona”. But you’d be wrong. Those words both bump up the sensation of the headline, and give it “geography”. This is a concept many ad experts don’t get — the idea that “place” matters to people.
Well, it does. What’s the first thing most people ask strangers in a conversation? That’s right — “Where’re you from?” Each highway, city, state and country carries all kinds of baggage with it. The fact that Wall Street is in New York, and Arizona is all the hell the way on the other side of the continent matters. There’s incongruity there. It makes you frown just a little bit when reading it.
It’s intriguing.
In the letter, the use of “checkpoints” is a simple way to segment huge amounts of information. Without creating little subtexts that organize this info, the reader would be quickly overwhelmed. By giving each checkpoint a name (“debt is dumb”, “the real numbers versus the cooked books”, etc.), you don’t have to memorize all the details. I’ve created a mnemonic way to lump huge categories together as one feature-benefit. All you need to remember are the clever titles.
Eighteen pages is a long damn letter. But newsletters are actually a high-ticket item these days, costing hundreds of dollars. You don’t get people to part with that much money through a tidy little four-paragraph ad.
You need to haul out the heavy-duty salesmanship techniques.
On page 15, in fact, I’ve used the old “but wait… there’s more!” technique. I recently attended a brainstorm in Las Vegas with some of the most savvy (and richest) entrepreneurs in the country. We were going over ideas for boosting response… and high up on the list was this very technique. People balk at using it because it sounds so… corny. It reminds you of the Ginzu knives infomercials of years ago, where they kept adding new knives every few seconds to the deal. “But wait! You also get…”
Okay, so it’s corny. It’s also mega-effective. It’s what great salespeople do- tease your desire to a point of frenzy, and keep teasing until you tip. You can offer people a LOT of stuff, all of it gold-plated and totally necessary for their lives… yet they still will not buy until they are literally pushed over the edge.
The most common blunder in advertising is to walk away from a potential customer who is panting and semi-delirious, with a twitching hand near his wallet… but who hasn’t bought yet.
You walk away, he cools down, and you’ve lost the sale. It takes GARGANTUAN effort to get someone to pull out their wallet or check book, and pick up the phone or mail a letter. It is NOT a simple or easy thing.
There’s a tape of me at a Dan Kennedy seminar where I try to lay it out for the audience. I tell them to imagine their potential customer as a giant sloth–like creature... welded into the couch… unwilling to move to save it’s own life if the house caught fire. Getting up to find the remote for the TV is asking too much. So you must motivate him at primal levels, deep in his unconscious… and patiently nudge him as he moves first one sludgy muscle, then another, slowing moving toward getting his wallet out.
You must start that process… and stay on it until the deal is done.
That can take a lot of copy. And a lot of inducements. You’ll see in this piece that we keep piling it on, one report and freebie after another. All must-have material.
Just don’t ask me to predict if the market’s gonna tank again.
–John Carlton
Click here to see “The Human Computer” ad.
(It will open in a new window or tab, so you can toggle between the ad and Carlton’s commentary.)
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