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Schwartz a snake oil salesman? Say it ain't so!

by Alex Cohen
7 replies
Interesting Michael Senoff interview with Denny Hatch.

Hatch calls Eugene Schwartz a "snake oil salesman". And calls several of his headlines "crap".

Starts at 27:53 into the interview...

Denney Hatch Interview

Alex
#oil #salesman #schwartz #snake
  • Profile picture of the author Cam Connor
    Originally Posted by Alex Cohen View Post

    Interesting Michael Senoff interview with Denny Hatch.

    Hatch calls Eugene Schwartz a "snake oil salesman". And calls several of his headlines "crap".

    Starts at 27:53 into the interview...

    Denney Hatch Interview

    Alex
    Where does one draw the line between a snake oil salesman, and just good persuasion? Truly, the Copywriters' riddle of the Ages.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alex Cohen
      Originally Posted by Cam Connor View Post

      Where does one draw the line between a snake oil salesman, and just good persuasion? Truly, the Copywriters' riddle of the Ages.
      How about drawing the line between true hope and false hope?

      Alex
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  • Profile picture of the author John_S
    Write the ad -- first. Use it as a blueprint for the product or service.

    Problem solved.

    Snake oil -- hype -- is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product. If the product does what the ad says, it ain't braggin'.

    You could walk into a tepid, inbred industry, and eat everyone's lunch. Raise the product to the level it needs to make good sales. Don't force sales people to foist a mediocre product on the market.

    Who's being more dishonest? The guy who comes to the market with the inferior offering? Or the guy who discovers what the market wants to buy?

    Who's more deluded? The guy wanting to force the market to buy his **** product? Or the guy who gets it done?

    Please show me the law preventing you from raising the product to the level of the ad.

    Ask Apple CEO Steve Jobs about it, and he'll tell you an instructive little story. Call it the Parable of the Concept Car. "Here's what you find at a lot of companies," he says, kicking back in a conference room at Apple's gleaming white Silicon Valley headquarters, which looks something like a cross between an Ivy League university and an iPod. "You know how you see a show car, and it's really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory!

    "What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers, and the engineers go, 'Nah, we can't do that. That's impossible.' And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people, and they go, 'We can't build that!' And it gets a lot worse."

    When Jobs took up his present position at Apple in 1997, that's the situation he found. He and Jonathan Ive, head of design, came up with the original iMac, a candy-colored computer merged with a cathode-ray tube that, at the time, looked like nothing anybody had seen outside of a Jetsons cartoon. "Sure enough," Jobs recalls, "when we took it to the engineers, they said, 'Oh.' And they came up with 38 reasons. And I said, 'No, no, we're doing this.' And they said, 'Well, why?' And I said, 'Because I'm the CEO, and I think it can be done.' And so they kind of begrudgingly did it. But then it was a big hit."


    -- How Apple Does It
    There is exactly one difference between an Apple and the scumbag little shyster. This is it.
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    • Profile picture of the author Harlan
      Since I'm blessed with a good friend who is a doctor of Chinese medicine so I know that everything Schwartz said is true according to Chinese medicine.

      Factually, a lot of what Hatch says is not true.
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      Harlan D. Kilstein Ed.D.
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      • Profile picture of the author JMCM
        Totally off-topic, so I'm sorry. Just wanted to tell Harlan that I really like that meditation site. Very nice and helpful. Thanks.
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        • Profile picture of the author Cam Connor
          Originally Posted by JMCM View Post

          Totally off-topic, so I'm sorry. Just wanted to tell Harlan that I really like that meditation site. Very nice and helpful. Thanks.
          If only these forums had a private message feature... OK, he can't PM yet, I get it
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  • Profile picture of the author gjabiz
    Hatch isn't big on many copywriters, including Gary Halbert. You'd be hard pressed to find ads in his books by many of the best known copywriters from the West Coast school...

    that is, the perception was NY was home to REAL ad agencies, and real copywriters...LA was home to the Entrepreneurial style ala Halbert.

    So, it comes as no surprise he doesn't care for Schwartz...

    As for snakeoil???? No one has ever beaten the Rockefeller's for selling more of that stuff than anyone in history...and their partner:

    The American Medical Association...

    Last year over 100,000 people died from FDA approved prescription medications...and many feel that number is way lower than reality.

    Vioxx, Phen-Fen...a list a mile LONG...of FDA approved drugs known to have killed tens of thousands of people...

    which begs the question...how many deaths were attributed to acupuncture?

    Or herbalists? Or Alternative medicine in general?

    From a copywriting standpoint...I think those copy guys who write for AMA/Big Pharm are the real snake oil salesmen...with FTC and FDA and Big GOV approval...

    And for the many books I bought from a Schwartz written ad...I always felt I rec'd MORE than the value and they delivered what the ads said they would.

    Even amongst the experts like Hatch...there is still debate on what really is the LINE between real hope and false hope.

    There are claims from some that Cancer can be cured...is that false hope?

    There were claims that people could lose a lot of weight using Phen-Fen...and some did lose as much as 200 pounds...when they died.

    That was REAL HOPE, tested and approved by a Gov agency...the FDA...

    So, I, for one, don't know where that line is...

    But for my money, and MY health, I'll go with the alternative crowd of hope before I go with the REAL hope presented by the snakeoil salesman of the AMA/FDA/FTC

    gjabiz

    PS. And I have heard from many people, they think ALL copywriters/marketers are selling false hope and snake oil...and even then, there is the ancedotal person who drank the oil and was cured...of their constipation.
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