While I was in Chicago for Ken McCarthy’s System Seminar, I had the opportunity to meet Drayton Bird.

He’s incredibly bright. And he’s got a wicked sense of humor.

Anyway, he says the best TV ad ever is this one advertising the Volkswagen Beetle. It’s from 1964.

A few things stand out to me:

1. The commercial immediately activates your imagination.

2. It asks a question that a lot of people have probably wondered about. If you’ve ever asked yourself this question, you’ll watch the entire commercial to discover the answer.

3. It demonstrates the product without being a blatant product demonstration.

4. It indirectly reveals multiple product benefits: reliable, starts in cold weather, handles well in the snow, etc.

What do you notice?

-Ryan M. Healy

Direct mail advertising is very different than online advertising.

With direct mail, you have to find or compile a list of people who will be a good fit for your offer. The people you mail may or may not be interested in your product or service. They’ve never asked for you to contact them.

Plus, to complicate matters, the cost of printing and postage can be significant, especially if you’re mailing a large list.

Online, you get a few clear advantages. You either market to people who’ve already given you permission to be marketed to; or you market to people who are searching for exactly what you have to offer.

And, as an added benefit, the cost to advertise online is usually lower than advertising with direct mail.

Before I ever start writing a word of sales copy, I want to know how the message I’m writing is going to be distributed.

Is it going to be sent via direct mail? Is it going to be published in a magazine or newspaper? Is it going to be posted on the Internet and advertised via Adwords? Is it going to be advertised via banner ads on targeted web sites? Etc.

The answers to these questions have a HUGE effect on how you should write your copy and how you should design your conversion process.

Fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to help with both online and off-line direct mail advertising campaigns. Every experience teaches me something new: sometimes the lesson is obvious, other times it’s subtle.

There is one thing that all forms of advertising have in common. That is you must make sure that you are going after a market that 1) can be reached affordably and 2) has money to spend on your product or service.

If either of these two pieces is missing, you’re headed for swift and possibly devastating failure. (It always depends on how much money you’re spending up front, before you have any results.)

It seems this year I will be doing more work in the direct mail advertising field. I’m actually really looking forward to it because it seems that there’s something more “real” and gratifying about physical forms of advertising.

Certainly, every piece of mail a client pays to send is that much more accountable to results — a true test of skill and dedication.

-Ryan M. Healy

Back in the summer of 2005, I found myself between a rock and a hard place.

On April 19, 2005, exactly one month after my second child was born, I quit my job to pursue a new career as a financial planner. I was able to do this because I had received a bonus and, at the time, it was enough to pay my bills for about 2 or 3 months.

Now, I did have a plan. I had partnered with a successful financial planner. He was going to pay me a commission for calling his leads and getting them to attend free dinners. He would then give them a presentation to encourage them to invest with him.

Everything looked like it was going to work out perfectly.

Except one little thing happened that I did not expect.

The local paper in which my “partner” was advertising went belly up the same week I quit my job. And just like that,

All the Leads Dried Up!

Well, I didn’t let that discourage me. I began calling all the old leads in the database… and actually succeeded in filling a couple dinners.

This was no easy task. I was calling leads up to 12 months old — and they didn’t remember anything about the postcard they filled out a year ago.

I might as well have been cold-calling.

Two months later, I had made a couple hundred bucks and was going nowhere fast. Not to mention, my bonus money was nearly gone. I estimated I had about two weeks of money left before I would be unable to pay my bills.

Now, I could have gone back to my previous employer and begged for my old job back… or I could have tried to find a new job… but deep down I didn’t really want another job.

I wanted to be self-employed!

So I did what any slightly crazy entrepreneur would do: I started my freelance copywriting business.

And here I am four years later, still enjoying the freelancer’s life.

Why did I succeed where so many others fail? There are probably many reasons, but the biggest reason of all is

I Had No Choice!

I literally had to make it work… or face losing my house, my cars, and everything else. I had no “plan B.”

In fact, “plan A” was “plan B!”

It seems that among successful entrepreneurs, many of them have experienced a similar “moment of truth” — a moment when they had no choice but to succeed.

As Ken McCarthy points out in his System Secrets book, “Having been in desperate straits more than once in my life, I know there is nothing like ‘do or die’ to focus the mind.” (p. 146)

This is a big reason I think having a “plan B” is overrated. In fact, if you’ve got all kinds of contingencies and backup plans in place, they may even be keeping you from succeeding!

That’s because anytime there’s a safety net, we’re likely to use it. It’s just human nature. We’ll set out to try something new, give it less than our best effort, then fall back into the relative comfort of our “safety net hammock.”

Why?

Because the Safety Net Is There.

Whenever you have a “plan B” or backup plan or safety net, it’s probably blocking you from the success you seek.

You don’t hear many success stories from 30-year-old guys living in their parents’ basements. Now you  know why.

You know who else has a great “moment of truth” story?

Copywriter and “kitchen table entrepreneur” Doberman Dan.

He tells of a time when he turned his back on a job (in spite of having almost nothing to his name) — and then digging down deep to pull out a five-figure income in a matter of months.

It’s a great story filled with lessons for the observant marketer. I highly recommend you take a moment to read it here:

From Kitchen Table Business to Million-Dollar Buyout

-Ryan M. Healy

There is a huge dichotomy in advertising.

• On the one hand you’ve got the pressure to perform: to make your advertising as profitable as you possibly can.

• On the other hand you’ve got the pressure to be ethical: to be as honest as possible in your advertising.

Last week I raised the issue of using fake scarcity to drive more sales. Many people said they disagreed with such a deceptive tactic and would fire any client who did such a thing.

Not to muddy the waters too much here, but the issue of honesty in advertising is very complex. In fact, it seems dishonesty in advertising is accepted as a matter of course!

So, since I already brought up the issue of fake scarcity, let’s turn the lens of scrutiny toward…

Fake Stories

When I asked my mastermind group how they would handle dishonest clients, the responses were very interesting. Not one of them was the same. And yet each person seemed passionate about his position.

Daniel Levis mentioned how John Caples’ most famous ad was an imaginary story. You know, the ad that begins, They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano But When I Started to Play!~

The story in this ad is completely fictitious. Some may say it is dishonest. Is this okay? And how is it any different than the fake weight loss stories and fake body building stories published on “flogs” these days?

Maybe the difference is in class, style, and sophistication. If you tell an imaginary story framed as a real story… and you tell it believably enough… does that make it okay?

Fake Endorsements

Or how about TV commercials with paid actors and actresses giving fake endorsements of products? This is extremely common.

The “perfect” house wife comes on screen, kids in the background: “Ever since I started using Product X, cleaning up even the messiest spills has been a breeze. After all, I need all the help I can get!”

Everybody knows these “TV testimonials” are fake, the stories completely made up, the “families” patched together from the most attractive people on the set. It’s quite possible the actors and actresses in these commercials have never even used the products they’re promoting!

And yet I don’t see anybody complaining about this particular genre of dishonest advertising.

Real Ad, Fake Story

Here’s another example. I’m a subscriber of World Net Daily’s Whistleblower magazine. On the back cover of the November 2009 issue there is a full-page ad put out by Swiss America to advertise gold.

The headline reads: “Our retirement account has tripled in the last 5 years…”

Underneath the headline there is a picture of a happy couple in their 50s. It is obviously a stock photograph to support the headline.

Now, the headline is dishonest on two levels. By saying “Our retirement account has tripled,” they’re implying that this really happened to a certain couple. I’m fairly confident that this is not the case.

What’s more, the price of gold has tripled from 2004 to 2009. Which means that for the headline to be true, this couple would have had to have had 100% of their retirement account invested in gold. Again, not likely.

But I don’t look at the ad and get angry. I actually get kind of interested. Hey! Maybe I should be investing in gold! I start to think. On that level, the ad works.

But How Far Is Too Far?

My point is this: We see LOTS of dishonest advertising every day. But we don’t think of it as being dishonest. We accept it. We may even approve of it.

So what then makes one dishonest ad okay but another one not okay? Are we going to label John Caples a liar for telling a story that wasn’t true, but could have been? Where do we draw the line?

In other words, just how far is too far in advertising? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

-Ryan M. Healy

You might wonder why I asked you to tell me your favorite brands a couple weeks ago. The reason I did this was to prove a point: brands are powerful.

In a world of information overload, brands are even more important. They give us a decision shortcut — a way to side-step all the choices we’re faced with every day.

We don’t evaluate dozens of different brands every time we go to buy a certain type of product. We do our evaluation once, maybe twice, then we default to our “brand of choice” for months, years, and possibly decades.

This is the power of a brand.

In a way, we are brainwashed… or brandwashed… to make certain buying decisions.

Does this mean that brand-name “image” advertising is good advertising? No. In fact, most image advertising is terrible. Yet brands thrive in spite of their advertising. The question is Why?

If you look at all the brands people listed as brands they love, you’ll find that most of them deliver more than just a product or service; they deliver a positive memorable experience.

For instance, Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks were all listed more than once. And all of them deliver an experience.

• Apple offers a fun, low-stress environment where you can demo all their computers and ask as many questions as you want before you buy. (Of course, they have an amazing product, which doesn’t hurt either.)

• Amazon offers a fast, convenient buying experience that is customized to you and your buying habits. Ordering is easy, prices are hard to beat, and Amazon’s personalized recommendations often lead you to new musicians and authors you would have otherwise never discovered.

• Starbucks offers more than just coffee — they offer a pleasant environment where you can relax, read, study, visit with friends, or check your email. When you buy a cup of Starbucks coffee, you’re also buying ambiance.

Starbucks also showed up on my list. That’s because my wife and I used to go on dates at Starbucks. It was our favorite hang-out both before and after we got married. We’ve been going to the same Starbucks/Barnes & Noble combo for more than a decade now. That’s a lot of talks and a lot of memories.

So each time I support Starbucks, I’m buying not just the coffee (which I happen to like), I’m also buying my memories and all those good feelings I’ve associated with Starbucks.

In my view, people love brands that:

• Create a (positive) memorable experience.
• Stand for a certain value system or world view.

I believe a “memorable experience” is created primarily through one of two ways.

First, there is the experience that is designed to be extraordinary from the get-go. Take Disney, for instance. There’s nothing like it. And you’ll always remember the time you spend there because of that.

Second, there is the unexpected experience, usually in the form of outstanding customer service. This is why USAA showed up on my list. They’ve repeatedly given me excellent customer service. I haven’t experienced that anywhere else. So USAA stands out big time.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting because people hate brands for the same reasons they love them. We hate brands that…

• Create a (negative) memorable experience.
• Stand for a certain value system or world view.

Two examples…

Example #1: I hate Borders because I’ve repeatedly had bad experiences at their stores. And not just at one location — multiple locations. I was so upset by how I was treated at these stores that I literally “black-listed” them for years and refused to even step foot in one. Even today, years later, I will go out of my way to support their competitors.

Example #2: I strongly dislike Wal-Mart because of the values that run the company. Their approach to business is to save money at any cost — costs to the environment, costs to third-world countries, even costs to taxpayers. This is not what I believe in, so I intentionally avoid shopping at Wal-Mart.

So you see, we love and hate brands for essentially the same reasons. Interesting, eh?

Glenn Livingston dropped by and left an insightful comment. I’ve reproduced some of it here:

When I was a Fortune 500 consultant, we were involved with an advertising agency which wanted to promote the belief that people could define themselves by the three brands they absolutely couldn’t live without. They’d ask people what a typical day would be without those three brands. [...] Is your brand one of the 3 your customers couldn’t live without?

What a powerful question that is!

This is not to say we can all create “indespinsable brands” — but it’s certainly something worth striving for.

Remember: The more choices there are, the more important your brand is. Because a brand is how we shortcut the decision-making process. So, believe it or not, having a strong brand is important even for information marketers.

Case in point: How many blogs do you read on a daily/weekly/monthly basis?

I bet your daily blog list is short indeed. Maybe 3-7 blogs, max.

Taking a cue from Glenn, a good question to ask if you’re an information marketer might be, “Do I write one of the three blogs my customers couldn’t live without?”

Keep this in mind whenever you write blog posts… create information products… or do anything that defines (or refines) your brand.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. If you participated in my brand question from the previous post, thank you. It made this “thought experiment” much more interesting.