Posted by:
Michael Masterson
August 24, 2010
Issue #995
Dear Business-Builder,
About 15 years ago, traveling to California with K and Number Three Son, I met one of the originators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
He was sitting next to my son. We got to talking. My son was a big fan of the turtles back then. This guy, I forget his name, drew a turtle for him.
I asked him how he came up with such a creative idea.
"It wasn’t creative at all," he said. "It was a calculated marketing strategy."
This young man was in his early twenties at the time. He and his friends had developed the concept when they were in their teens. It didn’t seem likely to me that they could be so calculating, as he put it, at that age. I figured he was pulling my leg.
But then he explained.
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Posted by:
Michael Masterson
July 13, 2010
Issue #965
Dear Business-Builder,
I recently got an interesting e-mail from Brian Ochsner, an ETR reader in Denver. He said, “As a direct-response copywriter, I’m skeptical about the number of marketing people who are enamored with the need for ‘branding’ or to ‘build their brand’ to effectively market their business.
“I know that brands such as Kraft and Coca-Cola have power and influence with Americans, but I’m not sure ‘branding’ has much of a place with most small- to medium-sized business marketing.”
He posed three questions:
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Posted by:
Michael Masterson
May 18, 2010
Issue #930
Dear Business-Builder,
Years ago, I was given a challenge by a client of mine. They asked me to help them create stronger direct-mail advertising packages than those being used by their main competitor.
Problem was, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the packages my client was using. They had good products. And they were well-known in the industry for writing highly effective advertising copy to sell those products.
In fact, they were the second most successful direct marketers of investment newsletters in the world at that time. Their competitor was somehow beating them. But neither they nor I knew why.
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Posted by:
Michael Masterson
April 6, 2010
Issue #900
Dear Business-Builder,
I spend at least half of my time teaching writers how to write better. I’m speaking of writers who work for the information-publishing companies I consult for and for other publishers who pay me to help them make more money.
Over the 30 odd years I’ve been doing this, I’ve developed many complicated theories about good writing. But now I use a brief, straightforward definition. And it applies to every sort of non-fiction writing that I can think of. It applies to writing books, magazine articles, and direct-mail sales letters. It applies to business correspondence, telemarketing scripts, and speeches.
Here it is:
Good writing is good thinking expressed clearly.
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Posted by:
Michael Masterson
February 23, 2010
Issue #870
Have you seen The Most Interesting Man in the World?
I’m referring to the TV commercials for Dos Equis beer. They star a rugged-looking, silver-haired man who is always surrounded by beautiful women.
In one version of the commercial, he arm-wrestles a Third World general and releases a grizzly bear from a trap. In another, the narrator relates that even his enemies list him as their emergency contact and that the police often question him just because they find him interesting.
If you are a student of advertising, you know this is a knockoff of David Ogilvy’s famous ad campaign: The Man in the Hathaway Shirt.
If you don’t know the history of this ad, you should.
In Brief: It was 1951. Ellerton Jette, a shirt maker from Waterville, Maine wanted to grow his little business into a national brand, but he didn’t have much money. He had heard about the advertising prowess of David Ogilvy. So he booked a meeting with him.
“I have an advertising budget of only $30,000,” he told Ogilvy. “And I know that’s much less than you normally work with. But I believe you can make me into a big client of yours if you take on the job.”
If he’d stopped there, Ogilvy would have thrown him out of the office. But then he said something that sold the great salesman.
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