Posted by: Daniel Levis
November 21, 2007
Issue #287

A Brand New Spin on Thanksgiving,
And An Unusual Marketing Lesson …

Dear Web Business Builder,

Imagine if every day was Thanksgiving, and gratitude was your permanent state of mind.

What would it mean?

I submit it would mean greater levels of wealth, health, and happiness all around.

Here’s why …

To be thankful for something means by definition we appreciate its value. We see the good in that thing. Conversely to be discontented with something means we see the bad and the useless in that thing, and discount its value.

But as the Bard of Avon wrote, "Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so." These 10 little words are much more than a clever little bit of iambic pentameter. They hold the keys to the kingdom, because the mind attracts that which it thinks about most.

Thoughts are things. An idea held in the mind consistently can’t help but manifest itself in the life of the thinker.

Is this the result of some kind of metaphysical magic? I prefer to think of it in more mundane terms …

John Smith and Jim Brown both get downsized out of their jobs at the same mid-western manufacturing company.

John is indignant about it. It’s just not fair, he reasons, and although he hated his job anyway, he is very discontented with being unemployed. Fear of remaining so consumes his mind. Opportunities for advancement are all around him, but he can’t see them, because his mental antenna is attuned to joblessness.

Jim Brown on the other hand, sees unemployment as nothing more than an opportunity to spend some time looking for a better way to make a living. Because that’s what he’s looking for it, he soon finds it.

Success at anything in life isn’t really much more complicated than that. It’s just mental discipline: training your mind to be appreciative of the things you have and using them as stepping-stones to getting more of what you want. Everything happens for a reason, good, bad, or indifferent. Regardless, it’s your job to find value in the situation and use it to your advantage.

The power of your mind to think independently
is your greatest gift …

Isn’t it time you threw off the negative social conditioning that’s fooled you into accepting other people’s fears, anxieties, limitations and negative attitudes as your own?

Very few people have the wakefulness to do it. Instead, they sleepwalk through life, complaining about their circumstances, thinking about what they don’t want, and looking for someone to blame. And they’re miserable and unproductive as a result.

The only thing any of us has total power over is the meaning we ascribe to our life experience. Yet how frequently we fail to use that power. Instead we fume, fuss and worry about outcomes we can’t control.

Let me tell you a story that illustrates how powerful the human mind is at filtering experience …

Victor Frankl was a Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist. During WW2 he found himself on a train to Auschwitz, one of the infamous Nazi concentration camps where 6 million people were burned alive in gas ovens.

Upon arrival, he was one of the 5% who were spared immediate execution. These “lucky” individuals were taken aside and made ready for Nazi work camps in the German interior. Frankl was stripped naked, shaved from head to toe, and the number 119,104 (his new identity) was tattooed on his body.

The following dawn, just before leaving for the camp, he watched his best friend floating up to heaven in a cloud of smoke. Frankl’s wife, whom he’d been separated from earlier in the melee, was also incinerated. Luckily for him, he only found out after the war.

Conditions were so deplorable in the camps that prisoners usually lived for only a few months …

Imagine yourself going through what Frankl did:

• The humiliation of brutal beatings at the hands of the SS guards …
• Having to dig trenches through the frozen topsoil in bitter sub-zero winds wearing nothing but filthy rags and ill-fitting wet shoes … hand-me-downs torn from the corpses of prisoners already succumbed …
• Not being able to sleep for more than a few hours at a time due to the pestering of vermin and lice in overcrowded quarters where men lay packed like sardines on bare wooden floors in their own filth and excrement …
• Subsisting on a cup of watery gruel, 5 ounces of bread and the occasional slice of poor quality sausage or cheese each day as your body slowly but surely devours itself …
• Watching the living prisoners pinch the “belongings” of the dead, approaching the still warm corpses to pinch the remains of a messy meal of potatoes, or exchanging shoes with the unfortunate cadaver if they looked like an improvement …

The suffering of the dying and the dead became so commonplace they soon failed to move Frankl, and he joined his fellow prisoners in a kind of emotional death. Disgust, horror, and pity were no longer possible.

What possible “spin” could you put on something like that? How could you possibly look on the bright side of such an experience, where such little hope exists … and where so little possibility of pleasure or escape from pain is possible – save death?

In Frankl’s own words: “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future – his future – was doomed. Without his belief in the future, he lost his spiritual hold: he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.

Usually this happened quite suddenly, in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmates.

It began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and washed or to go out on the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blow, no threats had any effect. He just lay there, hardly moving. He simply gave up. There he remained, lying in his own excreta, and nothing bothered him anymore.”

How Frankl Survived …

Frankl avoided this fate by finding meaning in his experiences. He imagined himself standing at the podium of a warm and well-lit lecture room, addressing an appreciative audience seated in comfortably upholstered chairs. He was giving a lecture on the psychology of the concentration camp.

He used the power of his mind to become an objective observer, watching the proceedings from the remote viewpoint of science – as though they had already happened.

He, and his troubles, became an interesting psycho scientific study. Using this “frame” he survived for three long years while hundreds of prisoners – one by one – gave up and died all around him in abject misery.

Now I ask you, if Frankl could turn them lemons into lemonade, what about you? Do you think you can find a way to be grateful for all of the crap in your life? Do you think you might be able to turn it your advantage?

After the war, Victor Frankl spent 9 days writing the narrative that outlined his findings, and published the book, “Man’s Search For Meaning”. This little one-sitting book has been published in 19 languages, and is now in its 73rd English printing, having sold almost two and a half million copies in English alone.

Frankl’s experiences in the Nazi death camps laid the foundation for a whole new branch of psychotherapy that he developed upon his release called Logotherapy. This bold new approach has helped millions of people to lead more meaningful and rewarding lives.

In short, the premise behind logotherapy is this: Where traditional psychotherapy focuses on the past, attempting to dredge up repressed memories that are causing the patient suffering, and attempting to resolve them, logotherapy encourages the patient to focus on the meaning of their future life.

Frankl believed man’s search for meaning is his strongest motivation, exceeding all other instinctual and ego-based drives. The big reframe that saved his life was the realization that it doesn’t really matter what we expect from life. What matters is what life expects from us … and that when man finds that it is in his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task, and be grateful in his ability to find meaning in it.

Victor Frankl died in 1997, at the ripe old age of 92.

Is there a marketing lesson here?

In fact there is. Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, on which most marketing motivational theory is based, takes a bottom up approach. It says that our motivations are the result of ascension from physiological needs … to safety needs … to love and belonging needs … to self esteem needs … and finally to self-actualization needs.

Maslow’s central premise is that human need moves in an orderly procession up the hierarchy. Until a person’s physiological needs (such things as food, water, sleep, the avoidance of pain etc) are met, he or she will be unmotivated to pursue safety needs (order, structure, freedom from fear and anxiety etc.), and even less so for belonging needs (affectionate relationships, friends, social contact) and so on up the hierarchy.

Likewise, once a lower need is largely met, the next one up automatically becomes a dominant motivational force in the person’s life. Obviously, there is some truth in this.

But Frankl’s theory turns the model on its head. He says that man’s primary motivational force is a search for meaning, which corresponds to the self-actualization needs at the very top of Maslow’s pyramid.

Frankl even goes on to say that there exists in society today an existential vacuum – a widespread and growing emptiness in people’s lives, characterized by boredom, and a deep longing to derive more meaning from both work and leisure.

These self-actualization needs are largely overlooked and untapped by most advertisers, because it’s assumed that only a small portion of the population can be motivated by them.

Frankl’s research indicates the contrary may be true. After studying his book, I decided to test self-actualization appeals in my sales copy. Results are preliminary, and astonishingly positive.

Have a safe, happy, and meaningful Thanksgiving.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE™

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1 Comment »

1. Comment by Derek Naylor — November 21, 2007 @ 8:32 am

   Hi Daniel!

   Excellent article! I always love your contributions to the Total Package but this one really resonated with me.

   In terms of \”Self Actualization\” copy and sales approaches, can you please give me an example?

   Thanks!

   Derek

2. Comment by Kevin — November 21, 2007 @ 9:09 am

   Very well done, Daniel.

   Lessons of thankfulness quickly become trite this time of year… but this is a knock-out.

   Stopped me cold.

   So, thanks!

3. Comment by Michelle Quintana — November 21, 2007 @ 9:45 am

   Wow! Excellent article Daniel, I was moved. This concept is exactly waht the Secret is all about.
   Thank you for sharing this moving story with all of us

4. Comment by Daniel Levis — November 21, 2007 @ 10:24 am

   Thanks for your support guys. Derek, every product has reasons why people can be motivated to buy it, and those reasons can be classified roughly into Maslow’s hierarchy. An example, let’s see. AWAI’s six figure copywriting course could be sold based on it’s ability to lift a person’s financial means to the point where they could afford better food, medical treatment and lodging (physiological needs), it could appeal to the person’s needs for financial security (safety needs), it could appeal to the person’s need for social status and recognition (self esteem needs), and it could appeal to the person’s need to do something altruistic for society, aided by the power of the pen (self-actualization need). “Finally, A Highly Lucrative Career That Lets You Spend Your Days Fulfilling Your Life’s Purpose…” Hope that helps.

5. Comment by Wendy Makepeace — November 21, 2007 @ 7:11 pm

   Thanks Daniel for another great article. Our readers love your stuff and I appreciate all your contributions to The Total Package.

   Wendy

6. Comment by Jessan Dunn Otis — November 22, 2007 @ 2:55 am

   Daniel,

   The strength of the human spirit, throughout human history, has
   fascinated and terrified me. When one studies what we\\\’ve done to each other in the name of almost anything (or, with no \\\”name\\\” at all) - that\\\’s the terror part. When one reads (or hears) the story of Frankl, Franks or so many less \\\”famous\\\” tellers of their own stories and how they physically and spiritually survived and, indeed, triumphed (ultimately) immerging as, like the phoenix, rising from the ashes of torture, dispair and hopelessness - it\\\’s a profound lesson of that strength.

   In my experience, those profound lessons have been (and, continue to be)testimony to the power for sheer survival and, more importantly, how that power is found, created and sustained, without loosing one\\\’s essential humanity.

   Even in these times, we are witness to humankind\\\’s inhumanity to each other - from the homeless to the disenchantment of the young and the old, to the devisations visited by war and natural disasters; and, by our own prejudices and adherance to old and totally worn out dogmas.

   Thank you, Daniel, for reminding me to be thankful for the abundance of gifts of spirit that have been given to me in my lifetime; and, thank you for bearing witness to our greater human spirit by \\\”telling the tale\\\” of Frankl.

   \\\”To make all life
   more poetical, more sane
   more living, loving
   To experience
   the true of all things
   this moment…
   this moment…
   this moment.\\\”

   ~ William Segal