We’re ending this 4-day breakdown of 4 particular maxims from David Ogilvy’s phenomenal 1972 ad titled:
“How to create advertising that sells”
(Check out the email from three days ago titled: “How the world’s ugliest car can help you siphon more email profits…” if you need further context.)
And this one?
Of all the other 38 maxims featured in Ogilvy’s ad…
I contest it the most!
Why?
Well, here it is first:
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Headlines. On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.
It follows that, if you don’t sell the product in your headline, you have wasted 80 percent of your money. That is why most Ogilvy & Mather headlines include the brand name and the promise.
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Around 3.7B people were alive circa 1970…
Today?
There are 8 Billion of us.
The number of people alive has MORE than doubled since Ogilvy wrote that ad in 1972…
And because of that?
- There are more marketers than ever before…
- And because of that there is more marketing than ever before…
- There are more entrepreneurs than ever before…
- And because of that there are more businesses than ever before…
So as a corollary?
There is MORE competition than ever before!
(Not just in the sports nutrition industry… but all industries.)
Why is this important?
Because today’s consumer is SIGNIFICANTLY more desensitized to marketing messages – and someone trying to sell him something…
… than they were in Ogilvy’s time.
The late Eugene Schwartz called this ‘Market Sophistication’ in his terrific “Breakthrough Advertising” book.
Market sophistication TLDR; how aware, skeptical, and desensitized your audience is to the promises in your market…
…and how that forces you to differentiate your messaging to stand out.
(Google it for more in-depth – it’s easily findable.)
But when Ogilvy wrote that ad?
The market sophistication level was probably a 3 or maybe even a 4 if you stretch it…
Today?
An easy 5.
(i.e. the highest level of sophistication.)
No generation has experienced as much exposure to marketing and corporations incessantly trying to sell them something…
… as this one has.
Therefore, they’re in the 5th stage. And for the 5th stage?
You can’t really follow Ogilvy’s advice of selling the product in the headline/SL – people have learned to ignore and tune out things like:
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🚨 Get 30% of Gold Standard Whey Before Midnight! 🚨
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🪓 Sharpen Your Stack –– 25% OFF!
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Flash Friday ⚡ Extra 20% OFF Protein Powders!
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(^ All are real emails I got recently ^)
Do they NOT work at all?
Of course not:
If you have a supplement, and a list of people who are a fit for that supplement…
…and you send them an email offering them to buy…
There will ALWAYS be a small number of people who will just buy.
However…
Those people are the “hyper-buyers”
They make up roughly 1-5% of every market/industry/niche, and they’re people with such a strong demand/want for what you sell…
That you really don’t even need to do much to get them to pull out their credit card – just put that pre-workout in front of them, and they’ll be on it quicker than 307lb Marcus on his Happy Meal.
(It’s like having fish who are so hungry they’ll bite even if the hook is empty.)
But the question then is…
What about the other 95-99% of the market?
What about the skeptics, the not easily convinced, about those who want to make sure they’re spending their money wisely?
Well…
Nothing.
They just won’t buy from you.
Because they don’t buy from the kind of headlines/subject lines Ogilvy laid out.
Heck!
They don’t even open the damn email in the first place – they’re trained to just ignore it and keep on scrolling.
(Or worse, report it as spam and delete you from the inbox.)
Which is why… when I make my subject lines?
They look like nothing else the supplement industry has seen before.
(You have a few examples in Blind Spot #3 in my book)
That’s because I tailor my subject line – and entire emails – for the non-hyper-buyer. I tailor it for the other 95-99% of the total addressable market…
And guess what happens when you do that?
You not only rake them in…
But the hyper-buyers as well!
Because they don’t care how you sell them – they’ll buy it anyway by the sheer virtue of them being… well… hyper-buyers.
Anyway,
That’s the last maxim I wanted to cover in this 4-day breakdown of 4 particular maxims from Ogilvy’s ad.
This was fun – and it seems it was to you as well, according to a reply I got from the very first email:
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“There’s never been a better time to be ugly” 😆
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So I might do it again sometime – in the words of King Louis XIV:
We shall see.
[Part of this email’s content has been removed from this Email Echoes version of it.]
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