Please Don't Shoot The Messenger!

[Pete Grantaire]

Hi everyone. I have a good friend who ghostwrites and writes copy too, and he can be a bit opinionated. Anyway he asked me to share this with you because he was bewildered by some of the talk he's seen from IMers (myself included) the past couple of days. He also wanted to protect his identity. Now I don't agree with a lot of what he says, but there is some valuable stuff in here, especially in the part about complying with the new FTC rules, and like I said he's a friend. Anyway, do you have any opinions? Please don't shoot the messenger. Here goes nothing:

Internet Marketers and Warriors, listen up.

I'm a copywriter, freelancer, and all around content creating and sales pitch slinging superstar. I know you. Some of you have hired me in the past, and hell, I might be writing copy for you right now, but I am not going to reveal my identity. No, I am choosing to operate under anonymity so that I can tell you some cold, hard truths, and some even harder opinions of mine too.

Shut the f*ck up for a second and think. Stop whining. The past two weeks I have had clients and friends write me emails filled with all sorts of raving nonsense. I have seen some of my favorite work related haunts on the internet devolve into conspiracy theorizing Randoid hell pits. Please, allow me to reintroduce you to your old friend, Reason. Look, I know you and Reason have lost touch, you couldn't find the time to write, she was just too busy with the kids, it happens! But now is the time to make amends. Join us, won't you?

First things first. No, Google Sidewiki is not the "greatest evil," as one Warrior Forum member put it. Anything that increases regular old people's opportunities to communicate and share their knowledge (and yes, their opinions!) is a triumph of culture and technology. I love the internet because it democratizes everything, even the **** you would rather keep under lock and key. Sidewiki in no way, shape, or form infringes on your rights. All it does is give everyone (including you) a new way to exercise their freedom of speech. Is Google leeching off your server's space? Is it going into your code and inserting snarky disapproval beneath your op-tin forms? No. It allows people to make comments about a website in a separate frame that is hosted by the Big G. We can, and do, do the same thing every day on forums, in chat rooms, and the like. I can have the same experience by opening two browser windows and putting them side by side on my laptop's screen. This is a game changer, but not nearly as big of one as Digg, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Facebook, or ANY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA TOOL EVER. Relax, darlings!

Your complaints about others' exercising their freedom of speech appear all the more absurd when taken in with that other thing that has your banana hammocks in a bunch. You know, the FTC's new rules (rules which will be revised, I'd like to point out). I believe it was the great philosopher Marshall Mathers who once wittily observed, "The FTC won't let me be, won't let me be me." He may have been discussing the FCC... look, I moved on to Wittgenstein a few weeks after that hit the shelves, and I can't be arsed to look it up or anything... But I digress. My point is that you sound dumber than the results of a freakish genetic experiment that merged the DNA of Dubya, Eminem, and a sack of White Castle Sliders. I have had a client tell me that he doesn't see how he can even market things anymore. Silliness and stupidity, but it takes all kinds.

You can look up the rules for yourself, I don't need to break them down here. You can also find a translation of the rules from the obfuscating lawyer speak, so in vogue this fall, into something any idiot could understand. Oh, and now would be a good time to tell you: I am not a lawyer and I do not even play one on TV. I am completely unqualified to give any advice on anything legal or otherwise, you should ignore what I am about to say and, indeed, if the subject comes up, disavow ever having read this at all. You know the deal.

What I want to do is show you what, in my completely unqualified and no doubt disastrous opinion, is how we should go about writing our sales letters from now. I see two ways some of us need to alter our copywriting behavior.

Example the first: When writing those exciting sorts of sales points our industry is so fond of, we often come up with something like, "I'll Show You How to Make 10,000 Bucks in One Week!!!" But now, or once the new rules drop really, we should aim for something more along the lines of "I'll Turn You Into a Marketing MACHINE!"

Example the second: This one has to do with testimonials. A lot of you are understandably fond of the sort of customer comments that go something like "Your Super Duper **** Seller Program made me a millionaire, Bob!" Well, obviously your **** Seller Program is a piece of ****, and that person just got lucky. The results are not typical. But hell, even if the majority of your feedback is telling you that your customers now have millions of dollars coming out of the wazoo thanks to you, you will probably want to avoid using those sorts of testimonials. Better to be safe than to have your tacky McMansion ripped out from under you, oh Captains of Industry! I humbly suggest that you, or whoever is writing copy for you, start collecting feedback that sounds more like this: "THIS REALLY WORKS! You changed my life!"

Alright. Now I want you to go over what I just wrote and try to figure out just what is significantly different between the old way of doing things and the way I am suggesting we carry on from now on. I'll wait.

Well, I won't wait that long. Here, let me spell it out for you. We used to pepper our sales pitches with quantitative claims. We said X amount of dollars. We talked about exact results reaped within a certain time. We used figures that actually meant something. Now we have to be careful about that. We should, I think, avoid making any quantitative claims at all, and focus instead on the qualitative. We need to become masters of slight of hand and suggestion. We need to let the customers paint the picture of themselves.

Marketing is just as possible as it ever was. The FTC is not breaking anything, just increasing the value of good copy. The real masters and mistresses of the sales pitch are going to be the ones who can get the customer thinking about millions of dollars without so much as saying anything about ten cents. Good copywriting has always been an art. All the FTC has done is take your Crayolas away. Leave the art to the artists.

Got it? Great. I'll let you and Reason catch up now. You have so much to talk about.

From Russia With Love,
Deepthroat

PS. Just to prove that I'm not trying to scare you into forking over your hard earned cash to the ever-so-talented moi, I've told Pete not to tell anyone who I am, even if they beg him. Hell, after what I said, I couldn't trust you folks not to come chasing me down with pitchforks and torches.