Warning: Learning Copywriting from Marketing Masters Can Radically Change Your Mind

(Is the dog chasing the calf, or the calf leading the dog?)

 Doing some intense study with the Masters of Marketing Secrets and Copyblogger Authority - which has shifted my mind immensely.

This quote is fascinating from "Masters of Advertising Copy" by J. George Frederick (1925):

Two Types of Advertising Copy

Speaking loosely, there have been and are in America only two types of copy analysis and prospectus which by any stretch of the imagination can be dignified by the name of definite philosophies.

One of these two schools of advertising thought assumes in the mass-mind an almost invariable response to certain adroit and plausible appeals.

The other holds the mass-mind in somewhat higher esteem but assumes a similar responsiveness to appeals of a substantial and more or less virtuous character.

Putting it crudely and bluntly, the first is a clever and semi-scientific application of the thesis that all men are fools, while the second maintains that while men may be fools and sinners, they are everlastingly on the search for that which is good.

Needless to say, both formulas have registered great successes because each is at least founded on a half-truth.

That tells everything about how our modern media (and government) is acting and why. It also tells how people are widely rejecting that influence in their lives. And why marketing is changing drastically from what it's been up to this point.

We are really dealing with the situation of that 97/3 or 99/1 percentages. The bulk of humanity is at the effect of their emotions - which is a self-willed activity, since they created their emotional patterns and programs to begin with.

If you release all these programs, then you can get outside the traps of conventional wisdom and start living simpler and more peaceful lives.

Marketing will always be part of such lives, as it is a communication to our journey. We should each understand it fully and master it's complexities. Below is an overview which forces these into simpler statements.

Freud's Foibles

The biggest problem within marketing is that they don't understand the true motivations of humankind, since the bulk of this is based on stimulus-response studies which are in turn based on Freud's study of the insane. There isn't a similar magnitude study of the successful as Maslow did.

Advertising (and all "news" media) are into this rabid "avoiding pain instinct is stronger than seeking pleasure." And that immensely shortcuts the wealth of data which tells you why and how a person will respond to your marketing, your communication. It also leads down a more and more limiting rabbit hole (which is why more people are rejecting what passes currently for both advertising and "news".)

While the bulk of humanity is also seeking entertainment, it's not true that people are trying to always trying to avoid their personal journey. In fact, the apparency is that people have few choices other than either doing their journey or not-doing their personal journey. (To say any of us has a single journey is also in error - there are journeys within journeys and journeys following journeys. Every journey is a metaphor - if that doesn't warp your reality a bit...)

Entertainment can be said to be a simple distraction from the business-end of living. It exists with education and enlightenment as the three types of valid marketing approaches. These have application to the Hero's (Heroine's) Journey, which gives us a pragmatic handle on marketing.

Roughly speaking, there are two-flip sides to Campbell's mono-myth which are divided right at the journey start, and the rebirth/metamorphosis. You have the travel to and the return. Both halves encounter various trials.

• Entertainment is doing something else than whatever it is you should really be doing to progress on your journey. 
• Enlightenment happens at both crux points. 
• Education is needed to help survive the trials, solve the puzzles, and meet/survive all the challenges.

All of these are themselves just meta-scenes, which can be understood by Huna's four methods: objective, subjective, symbolic, and holistics. The most optimal solution solves them in all four ways at once. None of this is written in stone, there is no single correct answer, and "no school has all the teachers."

Back to our Marketing Hero

That really gives you a short-hand solution to the basic problem all the Marketing Masters never solved. Each of them had a piece of the puzzle, which is only being solved now in our Internet Age - when all the historic data is readily available in digital format.

The Marketer must work to become self-transcendant, and always create to help others live their lives in order to improve the Marketer's own.

So the motivations stem from Maslow's observations, which are actually more powerful than the motivations which are found in the Freudian-based psychology and its related research (the ones which ignore the spiritual basis of life to concentrate on the material.) Physical and Spiritual are just two of the four approaches to living (see Huna above.) A balance is required for optimal results.

(Sidebar: While Cialdini (in his "Influence" book) has studied the 7 points which marketing has used and abused to make their sales, the only more basic work along this line has been Levenson, who sorted out that the glue holding all of these motivations together were the urge to increase or escape control, security, approval, and belongingness - with an underlying motivation of "fear of death," which is actually a problem in losing/retaining individuality. See my "Get Your Self Scam Free" book.)

Campbell's Soup: Marketing's Missing Ingredient

That is the breakthrough which came to me. Why I write it here rather than on a marketing blog is that it's so philosophical in it's native state that no marketer would accept it. Those are very pragmatic types with the mindset: "But will it make me more money?"

Schwartz' "Breakthrough Advertising" starting talking this way at the end of his book, but he missed the next step. When you stir in Campbell's Monomyth into Marketing, you see what's been missing this entire time - you also get an explanation as to why the incredibly successful marketing campaigns worked.

Marketing works when it forwards a journey with products that "make sense" (meaning, both emotionally and logically simultaneously) by filling a symbolic, practical, rational, and holisitic need - preferably all at the same time. In short, they provide a useful tool for continuing the journey (or avoiding it.)

You need only determine which part of the journey your avatar-customer/client is looking for and communicate to them with that reality/understanding.

Within those paragraphs above lies a definition of "desire" which explains what star you hitch your marketing wagon to. (Yes, a study of Scwartz' book makes this easier, although I should be starting a series of lessons on that Masters of Marketing Secrets blog soon.)

"What's It All Mean Mr. Natural?"

The shorthand version of this is then:

• Everyone has a personal journey they are on.
• People are motivated to either continue their journey or avoid it. Maslow, Cialdini, and Levenson list these.
• Marketing is communication which enables people to get tools to assist or avoid their journey.
• The consumer/client is always the protagonist (hero/heroine) of that journey, the marketer is preferably the Mentor (but could fit another archetype.)
• The best-selling marketing campaigns have provided optimal solutions of one or more (or all) of subjective, objective, symbolic or holistic natures.

There is no "bad" way to do marketing. You can run out of money to advertise with.

You cannot market something to someone they don't want or desire. Or not for very long. Once you've tricked someone once, you are shunned thereafter. The point is to treat others as you'd like to be treated, which balances things out for everyone. In order to improve your life radically, you are going to have to be working at improving other people's lives radically. Screw people over and find yourself screwed.

Too simple. None of us truly are individuals, as hard as we work at it - because we are all connected.

The point of this is to help you improve how you interact with others.

That's Marketing.

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To Hell in a Handbasket - or Business as Usual?

Following what passes for "news media" or "popular entertainment" will give you a headache, or gas, or worse.

(photocredit: bagsgroove)

The question is whether the world as we know it is actually imploding, or is it gradually (almost in spite of itself) getting better?

I'm a long-time advocate of the 80-20 rule (Pareto's) and the related 97-3 rule. While originally, it was 80% of a farmer's crop came from 20% of the field, it's been extended to "80% of your income comes from 20% of your clients" and "97% of  any area's crimes are committed by the same 3% of that population." Etc., etc.

You can find many examples for yourself (and I encourage that you do, as it is not something to take lightly - and no one will at first believe you until you tell them to see if they can find examples out of their own experience. Because it seems too uncannily accurate.)

The perception seems to be skewed when you watch what passes for "news media." On their half-hour "national news" segment, you are constantly confronted by 1) Murder, mayhem, malevolence, 2) Chaos, cacaphony, and consternation. 3) Ads for drugs and diversions to take your mind off 1 and 2.

What brought this up was a calf I tried to save while it was busy dying. The problem was in its genetics, and this recent bitter-cold-then-warm weather showed that it didn't have the internal resources to save it's own life. Now matter the shots and personal care, it just kept getting worse. Yesterday, it left us. At the same time, I helped two other calves being born in the same lousy weather...

Meanwhile, I had also been trying to revive an old blog which had been deleted and left for dead. I thought no one would care if I brought it back to life. Turns out the original owner got alerted, changed the passwords, and deleted it again. Of course, the rest of my blogs (including some I had salvaged after others had left them for dead) were going along just fine.

In both of instances of cheating death, it just wasn't meant to be. In both of these cases, the vast majority of the rest of the world carried on surviving as usual.

The analysis of this is that you are going to have some times where you want to do the right thing, but what you're really doing is just teaching yourself another lesson. In both cases, it wasn't where life needed to be invested. To be sure, I won't let any animal die on our farm without trying to do what I can to save or at least extend its life. (Blogs aren't people, but they seem to take on a life of their own sometimes...)

Life, itself, is the answer to this.

That 97/3 rule above says that there are a very small minority who are trying to destroy everything around them. (No, politicians are generally in the 80/20 segment, meaning they are just creators of problems, major disappointments, but mostly need to be changed regularly as, like Mark Twain pointed out, they  -  like diapers -  need changing frequently and for the same reasons.)

If you look at the idea that 3% are really destructive, you'll find they are also destroying their friends, family, and own lives as well. So they often get sick and die off more rapidly - or their associates do, so their reach becomes limited the longer they live.

On the other end of the scale, there are 3% who simply whole-heartedly are helping others live and succeed better. These are the handful who are described by Maslow as being Self-Trancendent and who only work for the improved welfare of others. Maslow is better known for studying differently from other psychologists - instead of what made people crazy, he studied what made them exemplary. Two ends of the scale.

Which explains why most Psychology texts have become the butt of jokes - while Maslow's starts to explain how to make a miracle-worker. (Not surprisingly, most people don't know about his later research - even Wikipedia misses it.)

However, that is the point to all survival, and you'll see that by constantly working to keep yourself and everything around you positive, you'll see more positive results in your life. And you'll find various books and materials coming to you which support that approach. Like attracts like.

If you surrounded yourself with "news," you are going to get a bit desperate and gloomy about things - and disappointed as to how they turn out.

While destructively-inclined people move down Maslow's hierarchy, constructively-inclined people move toward its top. People who push and forward bad news become ill more easily and frequently, while people who push others and themselves positively will wind up healthier and with better outcomes in general.

Some tidbits which ran across my plate recently (sorry I don't have links to these):

• For all the wars in the news, there are now fewer wars occurring on this planet than at any time in history. 
• While the "gap" between rich and poor is larger than ever, there are fewer poor than ever in history - and they are living longer with fewer child mortalities.
• The overall increase in middle-class, along with better health care globally, has resulted in a slowing of the population growth.
• The myth of peak oil is being debunked by creative people finding ways to get more out of the ground than ever before. (Yes, we would all do better if we didn't have to burn this stuff.)

These are the results of positive people putting emphasis on positive-ness around them. Creative people being creative, in spite of.

This is why, since positive people are longer-lived, the world overall is improving and becoming an easier place to live in. Destructive people kill themselves off by degrees and become self-destructive to any goals they may have set.

While the 20% and the 3% tend to set the pace for the rest of the planet, you could either look at the fact of 80% of the populace being adversely affected, or 80% being inspired. (Figure that it's really just 60% in the middle who are waffling - the other 40% are pretty dedicatedly one way or the other.)

If you want to live a better life, start weeding out those people who are routinely critical from being around you, distance yourself from those who are not routinely supportive of everyone they meet.

Yes, turn off the news. Yes, surround yourself with positive and constructive media you can watch, read, listen to, involve yourself with.

Engage people only in constructive conversation about how people could be helped to improve their lives and those around them.

And so your world will become easier to live in. You'll see more life around you.

For all the sickly, dying calves you have to confront, you'll find a few dozen who are perfectly healthy and doing fine.

Life is what you make it. It is what you think it is.

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