How to Make 4.1 Billion People Mad
One of the most valuable lessons you can learn about writing high-performing copy is not to try to make people believe something brand new. There’s not enough time on the page. Beliefs are a function of identity and they’re tied pretty tightly to existing values and experiences. It takes a while to untangle them. So […]
9-5 Nihilism
It feels like something big is about to happen. A great detachment. Too many people hate their jobs. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to an office worker who wasn’t coasting on caffeine and apathy on the way to burnout. They’re trapped in someone else’s system; measured, monitored and voluntarily probed for efficiency […]
Geometric Focus
For the haters, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is a love letter to capitalism and greed. They read it as a book about smug jerk billionaires who let the word go to shit because they don’t like taxes. But that’s not the book Rand wrote. She hated communists and slave morality. She came from the Soviet Union and […]
How to Nabokov Your Copy
As I wrote on the Copywriting Gems page: “There is a TON of bad advice out there about how to write high-performing copy. And things seem to be getting worse, not better.” One of the solutions is to put down the copywriting books. Pick up some novels instead. Reading fiction is a gateway to high-performing […]
The Frame Control Horror Show
The year is 1997 and Jack has just moved his two daughters from Los Angeles to Aspen. The city is not safe. A man has been watching his house. The new place in Aspen is not like the homes he had known in the city. It’s not big and it’s not new. It sits by […]
Freelance like Gandalf
The seventh question someone asked me inside Copy Custard was, “What’s the Number One Reason People Fail to Achieve Copywriting Success?” The question is still valid and the video I made still holds true, but the more I’ve thought about this the more I see there is something else. It’s a trait. A trait that’s so strong […]
Toxic Humility
First I must tip my hat to the absurdity of this position. We all know humility is a positive trait. It is one of Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues. It sits with competence and honor and responsibility. It is the guiding hand of Jesus, Socrates and everyone’s favorite grandma. It is the sort of quality a […]
Introducing the Fourth Way
In the soft pink hues and twinkly cityscapes of Spike Jonze’s movie Her, sad sack Theodore Twombly bumbles between skyscrapers, drawn like a moth to the warm glow of holographic projections and the floaty promise of connection. It’s a mesmerizing movie. But there’s a particular scene that’s stuck in my head. Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is […]
The Recognition of Necessity
Significant, life-altering, “Oh my God, what happened to you?!” mindset shifts all come from the same place. If you research history, literature, movies and sacred texts there are dozens of different examples. But they all amount to the same whisper in the dark. Julius Caesar crossed The Rubicon. Joseph Campbell christened it “The Call to […]
The Power of Promise
A quick marketing challenge for you: How do you take a book that few are buying and quickly push it onto the best-seller list? Revise your target market? Optimize your online presence? Run ads? First, take a step back. The first question to ask: “Is the book any GOOD?” Yes, the book is good. Very […]