Copywriting
Yesterday, I ran a group training for my Story Generator VIP members. I showed them how to boil down storytelling to a simple process of gathering the building blocks and then assembling them. “We don’t write copy,” I told the VIPs. “We assemble it.” When you learn the simple process (the gathering), the “hard part”…
Read More
First a music recommendation and then a business lesson… I’m a big fan of Aaron Lee Tasjan. I recommend all of his albums, including his new one “Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!”Maybe you’ve heard of him. Maybe you haven’t.Maybe my recommendation influences you. Maybe it doesn’t. But don’t take my word for it. Check this out… That’s this…
Read More
When a top-notch copywriter forwards to me an example of great marketing, I pay attention. My buddy Adam is one of the best copywriters I know. And yesterday, he forwarded to me a subject line that caught his eye. The subject line: “MIT Device Cuts Power Bills By 65%” Adam said, “That’s about as good…
Read More
This is a story about how hardcore, ultra-conservatives found common ground with a bunch of hippies. I know that seems unlikely these days, but it happened not that long ago. And this happening is loaded with business lessons. Our story begins soon after the turn of the millennium, in 2002, when the Internet was just…
Read More
Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone during his keynote address at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, January 2007. Standing on stage, in his bluejeans and that black, mock turtleneck, Jobs whipped the crowd into a frenzy by confirming the Apple phone was here. And then it was time to reveal it. Three minutes into the…
Read More
Remember that movie with Mel Gibson playing a male chauvinist pig who magically acquires the superpower to “hear” women’s thoughts? I just heard a real-life version of that story. Both the real-life and Hollywood versions reveal a ton about marketing. The real-life story features a marketing guy named Ben Settle who, like Gibson’s character, has…
Read More
Back in the 1990s, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise were Hollywood’s IT couple. A fairy-tale marriage. Three movies together — including a really creepy one called “Eyes Wide Shut” and this: When their love was shining brightly, Nicole dished out a few dozen bucks to the International Star Registry. She chose a twinkly little star…
Read More
Back in April, I made a Spotify playlist for my 23-year-old daughter, Maddie. She lived on High Street in Denver. I named the playlist “Shelter in Place on High Street – Volume 1.” In the letter I sent with the playlist, I wrote, “…sharing music is sharing love. It’s about connecting.” I imagined she and…
Read More
I was browsing through some of my favorite old marketing training discs the other day and came across one by Dave Dee… …whom I still listen to today. Back in 2007 Dave offered some unconventional advice about how to write better emails: Watch Regis Philbin on television, Dave advised. I don’t recall what I thought about…
Read More
The war between the Superpowers has begun. Not a traditional war with guns and tanks and airplanes, mind you. This is a war between two digital Superpowers — Facebook and Apple. Apple fired the first shot when it announced recently that iPhone owners will soon have to give explicit permission before apps can track their…
Read More