How to crawl right into tortured souls of the damned

Here’s a fantastical story about writing ridiculously profitable ads for you: Many years ago my pal Michael Senoff interviewed a guy (Michael Samonek) about his insanely popular (promoted all over the Food Network at the time) special effects cookbook and its recipes that move, and smoke, and do crazy stuff, that he sold primarily via direct response and media publicity. And at the start he talked about his main copywriting inspiration: Comicbooks. He said he just got fascinated by how the ads in those comics (pre 1990’s, when they were all direct response, before they started accepting boring corporate advertising selling cereal or whatever) got into his soul and knew exactly what he wanted... even if he didn’t even know it at the time. I suspect a lot of old school comicbook fans can relate. Those ads were sometimes BETTER than the content around them: more fascinating, more exciting, and more interesting. Mail-order millionaires were sometimes made from a single ad back then. But, you may wonder, exactly how did they crawl right into your soul? Well, it went way beyond just “copywriting.” In fact, the writing isn’t even all that great in a lot of them. Look at the ridiculously popular Sea-Monkeys ads, for example. We ain't exactly talking Caples, Halbert, or Bencivenga-level copy. So to understand what they were doing, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the average comic book reader at the time: introverted & awkward teenager who is an outcast and total “girl repellant” — scrawny, bullied, lived in his own head, thinks of himself as the damned amongst his peers going on dates and getting girlfriends… and using comicbooks as escapism to experience what it was like to be tall, powerful, and superhuman, and not so timid, awkeward, and afraid of his own shadow. So he's reading these comicbooks about people with superpowers. And amongst these stories about people with super powers are ads. And these ads promised something quite different than other kinds of ads. Something far better. Something literally irresistible no matter how bull shyt the ads sounded. And what these ads promised the tortured, scrawny, “girl-repellant” yutes was: Super powers! * X-ray vision (like Superman!) glasses. * Skinny-to-muscular (like the Hulk!) overnight programs. * Long-lost ancient secrets from the Orient (like Iron Fist!) to kick ass. * How to grow taller (like Hank Pym!) * Pets (Sea-Monkeys!) that live in a little underwater magical kingdom. * How to impress people with magic (Dr. Strange!) tricks. * And even how to control other peoples’ minds (like Professor X!), become a “rockstar-level” guitarist (like KISS!) in 7-days, perform strong man stunts (like The Thing!), become rich (like Bruce Wayne!) selling newspapers… to becoming a secret agent with a spy camera (like James Bond!) - and all for just a postage stamp plus $1.00 for shipping! Totally irresistible. Anyway, they make great case studies for marketers. Dan Kennedy ain’t just whistlin’ dixie when he says: “What works to sell the incredible, sells even better to sell the credible.” If more email marketers took this to heart we’d see a lot better emails. We’d also see a lot more quality emails selling higher tier (credible) offers, too. In my opinion we’d see a lot of the cold emailers clogging up the inboxes go away too, before those young guys pitching the agencies and coaching or whatever are all drafted for the next war. If you want to take the above approach, I suggest using BerserkerMail. Yes, I am biased, as a co-owner of the platform. But, we don’t police thoughts. We don’t bombard you with social agendas. And we don’t really care who you vote for. Just stick with the platform guidelines and all is well. More here: [( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2024 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA