Charlie Byrne | Free Newsletter

Charlie Byrne's Newsletters

Charlie Byrne
Associate Publisher

Charlie Byrne is Senior Copywriter and Editorial Director for Early to Rise. Charlie spent the earlier part of his business career as a systems analyst, project manager and consultant in New York City for Fortune 100 companies including Philip Morris, Digital Equipment, and Citicorp as well as New York University and Columbia University.

He then spent over ten years at Reuters Ltd and Interealty Corp designing and implementing financial, real estate and news information services. In 2003, he joined Early to Rise as a senior editor and copywriter. Since then he has helped publish over 1000 editions of ETR, resulting in gross revenues of well over $25 million. He has also produced dozens of winning sales letters and promotions, including two that brought in over $200,000 in under 24 hours, another two that have grossed over $1 million each, and a single sales letter that sold 25 units of a $10,000 product.

Read Charlie Byrne's previous newsletter articles below:

ETR’s 7-Minute Guide to Web 3.0 – the Coming Information Revolution

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

There’s a revolution brewing on the Internet, and it doesn’t matter whether you are a retailer or a restaurant owner, a service provider or a professional, a hard-goods merchant or an information marketer, or anything and everything in between. If you work for or own a business, this WILL affect you.

I’m talking about Web 3.0 – The Semantic Web.

Now I know what you may be thinking…

"Wait a minute! I’m just getting up to speed on Web 2.0. You know, social networking, the read/write Web, the two-way Web, all that stuff… whatever you want to call it. I’m not ready for Web 3.0 yet!"

Well, yes. You definitely should be getting up to speed on Web 2.0. And we’ll be covering that important topic more right here in Early to Rise in the coming weeks and months. We’ll be explaining how to detect and avoid the myths… and how you can profit from the real opportunities.

But I believe what’s coming in Web 3.0 is going to be even more exciting… and potentially much more profitable for you or your company.

The best news is that you can start actively preparing for Web 3.0 right now. You can make some very quick, cheap, and easy Web 3.0-oriented changes to your online presence almost immediately. They could have a much faster and greater ROI (return on investment) than many Web 2.0 techniques. Plus, you’ll be getting a big jump on 99 percent of your competitors. In fact, you can start leaving them in the dust today.

Sound interesting? Okay, then let’s get going!

First, let me take you back in time for a moment. A quick "history lesson" will make it easy for you to understand the foundation of Web 3.0…

Back in 1983, I was a systems analyst at Reuters Ltd., the international news and financial information provider. Our primary business was assembling and selling electronic feeds of stock market information. This included raw market information (buy/sell prices, volume, etc.) sent to us from over 100 exchanges around the globe.

Now 1983 was six years before the debut of the World Wide Web, and so our subscribers (typically major brokerage houses and exchange trading floors) received our real-time feed over a private network (phone or satellite). The information was then displayed on custom-made CRT terminals that were basically dumbed-down TV screens. No graphics, no windows, just plain text. A typical ticker feed of information might look something like this:

IBM 43.50 +0.25 8,235… PMI 72.25 -1.75 1,525…

(You’ve probably seen a similar display in New York ’s Times Square or on CNBC’s "crawl.")

Our subscribers quickly trained themselves to understand that this meant, for example, that 8,235 shares of IBM had just been sold at $43.50, 25 cents higher than the previous trade. And that Philip Morris International had traded at $72.25, down $1.75, volume 1,525 shares.

Now stick with me here, because you’re about to find out the SINGLE most important key to understanding Web 3.0.

Though it was easy for our subscribers to look at that "raw text" and know what every item ("field") meant, everything changed with the introduction of the IBM PC in 1985. Suddenly, a new, powerful analytical tool was sitting on millions of desktops. And instead of traders processing that cryptic stream of characters themselves, they wanted their computers to do it. For graphing, importing to spreadsheets, advanced analysis, etc.

But getting a computer to "understand" the text was a whole different matter.

Computers can scan documents and try to "guess" at which info is significant – a process sometimes called "scraping." But we knew that our subscribers’ computer programs would work with much more precision if we actually TOLD the computer with absolute certainty what each field represented (symbol, price, volume, etc.) and then gave it the related value. In other words, we didn’t want the computers to have to scrape for the data they needed. So we developed a new information feed that included "tags" for each information item as it came across.

Here’s how it worked in a nutshell…

When a subscriber’s PC started up, we’d send it a table of relationships (tags), something like this:

Field Code	Data Represented
1	Stock Name
3	Last Trade Price
6	Change
7	Volume
255	Next Transaction

Next, we coded the real-time stock market stream so that each value (price, volume, etc.) coming down the line was unambiguously tied to its field code.

So instead of the feed looking like this:

IBM 43.50 +0.25 8,235… PMI 72.25 -1.75 1,525…

It now looked like this, with tags (field code) and values coming in together in pairs:

IBM

43.50

0.25

8235

255

PMI

72.25

1.75

1525

This was huge! Instead of sending raw and somewhat random TEXT, we were now sending precisely defined DATA. (Hint: Another name for Web 3.0 is "The Data Web.")

We could now transmit much more useful related information, with higher resolution and complete certainty. For example, yesterday’s closing price… number of block (high-volume) trades today… dividends paid… and literally hundreds of other important numbers. We’d simply create new Field IDs for each datum and send them to the PC at start-up.

When the PC began receiving the data stream, it would recognize exactly when these fields appeared and what the corresponding data meant. Analysis programs or spreadsheets could then manipulate the data as our subscribers desired, and add tremendous value to what we were giving them.

Are you with me so far? Good, because now you’re going to see what this means for you and your business… even if you own a pizzeria!

You see, our team had created logic from chaos for that stock exchange feed. But when the World Wide Web came along, no one was there to do the same. No one "owned" or "managed" the Web’s content. And so, until now, it’s largely been just like that old stock market text stream before any individual items had been tagged.

Just one gigantic Tower of Babel.

Web 3.0 aims to change that. It aims to transform much of the key TEXT information on the Web – the stuff that people really want and need access to (but often can’t locate) – into a highly structured and interconnected Web of easily reachable DATA.

Initial structures are focusing on very specific information that is commonly of interest to Web users. Already defined are…

A formal structure for specifying CONTACT information for people, places, and organizations…
A formal structure for specifying date-based EVENTS…
A formal structure for specifying CLASSIFIED ADS (think CraigsList)…
A formal structure for specifying recommendations and REVIEWS (of anything – music, books, products, etc.)…
A formal structure for specifying RELATIONSHIPS between people (think Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)…
A formal structure for specifying SYNDICATION of content.

Many more will follow.

So that’s some of the background and a bit of the theory.

Now, let’s take a quick look at a very simple website example – and how, with a few easy steps, we could prepare it for Web 3.0.

Let’s say you own a local pizzeria, and you’ve got your little website out on the Internet. The home page looks something like this:

Gregory’s House of Pizza

Open Daily Noon to 10PM

2006 Power Drive, Venice

802 555 1212

Come to Fifth Anniversary Party for Free Slice of Pizza – April 28th.

Customer Reviews:

"Great Pie, Just like I had in New York " – J.K.

"Best Pizza in California " – M.D.

Your site has a decent amount of useful information – all easily understood by most people. But your human customers have to find your page first. And they’d most likely look for it via one of the major search engines.

So Google and Yahoo have to "scrape" your Web page and make some guesses…

They GUESS that Gregory’s House of Pizza is a restaurant, not the TV show "House" whose lead character is named Gregory House…
They GUESS 2006 Power Drive is an address, not an automobile feature…
They GUESS the location is Venice, CA, not Venice, Italy…
They GUESS this series of digits (802 555 1212) is the phone number.

And then, when your site appears in the search results, the Web user still has some work to do.

Let’s say he’s new in town, and wants to load information for the top local pizzerias into his PDA or computer.

To save the information about your business in his Contacts List, he’s got to cut and paste your information manually or enter it by hand.

If he wants to go to your special anniversary party, he’s got to manually enter it into his Calendar.

If he wants to see a map and get directions, he’s got to hope Google or Yahoo guessed your location correctly.

Lots of room all around for errors, inconvenience, and just plain "the hell with it"… right?

But suppose there was a better way to get your company’s information to Google, Yahoo, and the Web user himself? And that it was easy to do and 100 percent correct?

Suppose your customers could have easy access to your information through specific, unambiguous tags for…

Your Contact Information – so that, with the click of a mouse, a visitor to your Web page could instantly import it into his PDA/Computer Contacts List, with all fields uniquely specified…
Your Events – so that, with the click of a mouse, a visitor to your Web page could import the date/time into his personal Calendar…
Reviews submitted by your customers – so that Web spiders could help build recommendation and review sites and include your information in a common format (number of stars, date reviewed, comments). Keep in mind that consumer recommendations are one of the foundations of Web 2.0.

Well the good news is that your site can to some extent leapfrog Web 2.0 – and have these Web 3.0 features… as soon as today!

It’s really quite simple, thanks to new "hidden" structures called Microformats that you or your Web programmer can add to your existing Web pages.

Most visitors won’t even know they are there – yet. But once they are in place, a lot of interesting things start happening.

For example, Yahoo recently announced search engine and results listings support for Microformats. Here’s an example from Yahoo of a pre-Microformat restaurant search result listing:

yelp_before 2.jpg

And here’s an example of one where the restaurant website added Microformats:

yelp_after 2.jpg

See how much more useful this can be to someone searching for your business on the Web?

Google, of course, is coming on board as well.

This means your humble little website could start receiving a more prominent search results position as soon as you add Microformats to it.

In the near future, your Web browser will be able to detect websites that have Microformatted data. And with a mouse click, you’ll be able to save that phone number, that address, that event date right into your Contact or Time Management program.

(Microformat detection and data export is actually available now as an add-on to Firefox, and will be built in to the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 release.)

And Microformats are just the first step. Related technologies such as RDFa (resource description framework) are not far behind.

This is a glimpse into the future of the Web. It’s almost like there’s a new, improved "phonebook" being built to index every business in the world – and you have a chance to get listed early! Because you can jump into this exciting future trend right now with a fairly small amount of work.

Yes, there are still plenty of questions and lots more to explain about Web 3.0. As you can imagine, I simplified and summarized a great deal today.

So in upcoming articles, I’ll step back and explain how and when we can look for Web 3.0 to hit the "mainstream." After all, none of this matters unless there are compelling reasons for consumers to adopt it. Is high resolution Search and Search Results really going to be the "killer app" that lights the Web 3.0 fuse? Or something else?

We’ll talk about both bottom-up and top-down approaches for building Web 3.0-enabled content (including some nifty new stuff from my old friends at Reuters).

We’ll drill down a bit into specifics, and I’ll show you a live example of an Early to Rise page with working Microformats on it, and give you every detail you need to create one yourself in just a few minutes’ time. ( For a preview, see my blog post here.)

And you’re sure to be hearing from our SEO experts, Alexis Siemon and Rick Maggio, on how you can leverage this technology to the maximum extent possible going forward.

The Data Web – Web 3.0 – is coming.

Keep reading ETR, and we’ll show you why, and how, to get there.

[Ed. Note: Charlie Byrne is Associate Publisher of Early to Rise. If you have any questions or comments on this article, or what Web 3.0 topics you'd like to see covered in the future, please leave a comment on his Blog.

And for step-by-step instructions on starting your own Internet business, get ETR's Magic Button program. Click here to learn more.]

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Posted in Marketing/Internet, Wealthy | 3 Comments »

Walt Disney Marketers on the Ball

Friday, April 4th, 2008

Marketing in the new Web 2.0 era was on the agenda when MaryEllen and I recently attended Rich Schefren’s "New Beginnings" conference at Disney World in Orlando.

But the folks at Disney itself clearly haven’t forgotten one of the oldest marketing axioms: The best customer is your current customer.

When I checked into my room, a placard on my bed offered me "25% off a future visit – but only if you book before your current stay ends."
The day after I checked out, I received a similar offer via e-mail.

If you don’t have immediate cross-sell programs (trying to sell customers a product similar to one they just bought) and bounce-back programs (making another offer shortly after a sale) in your sales cycle, start implementing them now.

Otherwise, it’s a lose-lose situation.

First, you are not giving your customers a special opportunity to take advantage of more of your products.

Second, you’re missing out big-time on the most efficient sales you’ll ever make.

[Ed Note: Charlie Byrne is Creative Director at Early to Rise. Sign up for e-mail delivery of his blog and get edgy and useful ideas on copywriting, marketing, and other category-defying posts.]

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Posted in Marketing/Internet, Wealthy | No Comments »

A Mission Statement That Gets Right Down to Business

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

It was about seven years ago on the cobblestone streets of Old Town Alexandria that I first enjoyed their delicious cooked-to-order burgers. Since then, the owners of that surprisingly good little place – called Five Guys – have rapidly expanded to over 200 locations.

But it was only last week that I came across the Five Guys company mission statement – and I may like that even more than their burgers and fries.

Is Five Guys dedicated to saving the environment? Celebrating diversity? Stopping war? Nothing wrong with those things… but what do they have to do with business?

The Five Guys plan is much simpler:

"Mission : We are in the business of selling burgers.

"Goal: Five Guys’ goal is to sell the best quality burgers possible. To sell the best burger possible, we focus on Quality, Service, and Cleanliness."

Sounds like THE place to go if you want to buy a burger. And isn’t that what it should be all about?

Once your business is a success, you may find tons of personal fulfillment in engaging in charitable acts on your own dime. But mixing business and charitable objectives in a company’s mission statement – especially that of a start-up company – seems risky to me.

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Posted in Marketing/Internet, Wealthy | No Comments »

It’s Good to Know: HDTV Rip-Off Update

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Just before the holidays, I wrote about avoiding paying $50 to $100 for "monster" cables when buying High-Definition TV gear. I said you could pay $25 and get the same quality.

Well, leave it to Amazon.com to "lower" the bar. They’re now offering a six-foot HDMI cable for the grand total of… $2.04. (You can get essentially the same cable from "monster" suppliers for just… 86 bucks!)

As of this writing, 417 customer reviews gave the Amazon product an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Posted in It's Good/Fun to Know, Wise | No Comments »

Here’s a Good Idea: Profit From the Next Wave of Info-Publishing

Friday, March 7th, 2008

Right now, there’s no better business in the world than information publishing.

Whether you are marketing e-books, newsletters, or any other electronically distributed product, the advantages over most other businesses are enormous…

There’s no inventory or warehouses. No spoilage. With the Internet, distribution is virtually free. You can work from practically anywhere, anytime. Because of near-zero overhead, profit margins can range from very good to incredible.

There’s just one problem.

You can’t really be successful selling information.

We’ve said it before in ETR, and now I’ll tell you again. These days, no one needs more information. What people are looking for is advice… expert guidance… trusted opinions.

Just think about today’s most popular media personalities. The days of solemn "fact-reciting" talking heads such as Walter Cronkite and Harry Reasoner are long gone. The new stars are brash and opinionated . Howard Stern… Rush Limbaugh… Chris Matthews… Jim Cramer… Anderson Cooper… Keith Olbermann… Bill O’Reilly… and on and on.

In The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman explains how the data collection of straight journalism has been largely outsourced to low-paid stringers. The value is added later, when it’s filtered and interpreted in "opinion and analysis" pieces.

So here’s a thought. Maybe instead of Information Publishing, we should start calling what we do Idea Publishing! Because when you give people advice and ideas, they’ll listen… and pay for the privilege.

Rodale Inc. reported revenue of $632 million last year, primarily from marketing dozens of advice publications such as Prevention, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Organic Gardening, Runner’s World, and others. Agora Inc. had sales of over $300 million in 2007 through newsletter publishing. And thousands of individual publishing entrepreneurs on the Web today are pulling in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

So let’s say you’re interested in getting into this field. (And why wouldn’t you be?)

One of the first problems you’ll have to overcome is very common. Here’s how ETR reader Liby Nel put it in a recent letter to us:

"My biggest challenge at the moment is to learn how to write down powerful ideas that can be used as headlines, attention-grabbers, and concept-originators. Conceptualizing is something I really have to push. So, any pointers, advice, or sources that you can provide on these subjects and on stimulating creative thinking in general will be lapped up, I think, by many ETR readers. After all, brilliant ideas and original concepts presented perfectly is what everyone is after."

Liby is correct. You won’t become wealthy or successful publishing boring, unoriginal ideas and advice.

Your readers or customers will pay for unique, interesting, useful, actionable, and cutting-edge ideas. They will pay more for ideas that can help solve their biggest problems.

But how do you, as an aspiring "Idea Publisher," get such ideas?

I’ve looked into this challenge myself, and through research and personal experience, I’ve discovered five distinct stages:

Stage 1: Preparation

You should always be gathering raw material for ideas. Do this by becoming an information junkie. Explore new areas. Be active. Do stuff. John Locke said that "all valid knowledge comes through experience." You’ll probably get lots of little ideas during this stage. They won’t seem especially interesting, but "hold that thought"… because they’ll be back soon.

Stage 2: Mastication

Here’s where you take the problem you’re trying to solve and chew it over… toss it around… think it over for a while. Start mixing in the little ideas, the fodder, and see if anything happens. Usually it won’t. Not right away, anyway. That’s why you need…

Stage 3: Disassociation

Take a nap. Go for a workout. Do something else for a day. Free your mind of the details. This is a key step, and it’s why I’m not a big believer in "brainstorming" sessions as the be-all and end-all of idea generation.

Brainstorming is really the mastication step done in a group setting. Yes, sometimes good ideas will come up here. But if that’s where you stop working on them, you’re going to miss out on some far better ones.

Stage 4: The Aha Moment

Out of nowhere, there it is. You don’t know why, but you’re lying in bed… taking a shower… driving the car. And suddenly, BAM! You’ve got it! This is what you’ve been hoping for.

What you’ve got to do now is get it on paper, tape recorder, or computer as soon as possible. At this moment, you’re going to be filled with energy and the details will be gushing out of your neurons. You have to capture that immediately or you’ll lose the magic and power of the idea.

"When it comes to getting brilliant innovations actualized, time is your enemy," says Michael Masterson. In Ready, Fire, Aim, he explains: "Time fogs the memory, erases important details, and eventually dissolves all great ideas. The faster you can get a great idea out of the realm of the conceptual and into action, the better your chances of preserving its original brilliance."

Stage 5: Refinement

But wait just a second. You need a reality check here to make sure your good idea is not really a stinker. How will you know? Michael advises that you define what "good" actually means. For example, if it is a product idea, does that mean it’s better than the competition? Or that the market needs it? And in what quantity?

Be humble. Don’t assume the world is dying for your idea. Make sure there’s already an unmet need for it.

So now that you know the five stages of developing good, marketable ideas, here’s some practical advice for generating those ideas:

* Read and Absorb Life Like a Sponge – ETR’s good friend and business futurist Rich Schefren says he starts the day with one goal: Learn one new, useful, interesting thing. Just one.

As I mentioned, exciting new ideas rarely appear out of nowhere. They need plenty of fodder – the little ideas you get from reading and observing and learning new things.

* Get Pissed Off – Television infomercial genius A.J. Khubani is always on the alert for little annoyances in his life that are likely to be irritating to many other people. And then he thinks of ways to eliminate them. AdAge.com tells this story…

"When Khubani went to fix a fuse in his house a few years back, he found himself on the dark side of his basement. ‘I said, "When we built this house, we really should have put a light bulb here,"’ he recalls. ‘And that was it.’ Light bulb! He invented a battery-operated light that looks like an ordinary incandescent. Its holder sticks to the wall, but the bulb can be removed and carried around. It made its debut in September 2006. More than 5 million have been sold – so far."

* Recombine – Take existing ideas and try fitting them into different places and spaces. In ETR’s program Think Inside the Box, David Deutsch has tons of unusual suggestions for getting results this way. For example: Do the Opposite (flip it or reverse it)… Divide It Up (split it into pieces)… and Take Something Out (extract, isolate, or highlight one part).

* Zone Out – At Rich Schefren’s recent "New Beginnings" conference, Product Launch guru Jeff Walker was asked how he comes up with good ideas. I was a little bit annoyed when Jeff "stole" what I considered MY best practice…

"When I’m trying to solve a tough problem, I go for a run," said Jeff. "Chances are better than not that I’ll come up with a great solution by the time I’m home."

I’d say at least 75 percent of my best ideas come to me when I’m out running. I strongly suspect there’s some kind of chemical change that kicks in and actually triggers something upstairs. Sometimes I’ll get one idea. Sometimes all sorts of stuff starts popping up. What fun! More than once, I’ve come home from a run and had to scramble for a sheet of paper to write down the ideas before I forgot them.

Kellogg School of Management professor Andrew Razeghi agrees with Jeff and me. "Encounters with extraneous and apparently irrelevant bits of information appear to be common precursors to moments of creative insight," he writes in his just-released book The Riddle – Where Ideas Come From and How to Have Better Ones. "Write down the problem or question you have. Then do something else for a while. When you come back to it, see what new ideas may have emerged."

Try out this physical approach to mental inspiration and see if it doesn’t work for you!

* Travel and Network - Here at Early to Rise, we’re big believers in getting frequent exposure to new ideas from outside the office.

I’d estimate ETR’s Internet Marketing Director, Patrick Coffey, attends an outside conference at least four times a year. Inevitably, he returns bursting with ideas for new marketing strategies and tactics.

ETR’s Publisher, MaryEllen Tribby, always seems to be flying around the country to attend various events. In fact, she spoke at Rich Schefren’s big summit in Orlando just two weeks ago. She explained to over 200 attendees that ETR’s success has come largely from being an idea publisher rather just a marketing company. "If you’re just trying to sell the next hot product, you’re going to be spinning your wheels and working too hard," she told the crowd. "But a single good idea can explode into multiple marketing ideas, multiple content ideas, and multiple product ideas."

And this week I’m off to South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW), where I’ll hear from (and report back to you on my blog about) cutting-edge idea generators like MIT professor and futurist Henry Jenkins, Mark Zuckerberg (23-year-old founder of Facebook), Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Workweek), Frank Warren (of the viral "My Secret" postcard phenomenon), and dozens more.

Start thinking today about how you can integrate the "idea factory" steps I’ve given you into your life… and how they might help you become the next multimillion-dollar "Idea Publisher."

You know the old saying: When you can invent a better mousetrap (or light bulb or social-networking website…), the world will beat a path to your door.

And with wallets wide open!

[Ed. Note: Charlie Byrne is ETR's Creative & Editorial Director. Once you've put his idea-generating advice to work, you will be well on your way to creating a lucrative "idea-publishing" business. Get step-by-step instructions for getting that business off the ground with ETR's Magic Button program.]

Rating: -1 (from 1 vote)

Posted in Money Making Opportunities, Wealthy | 1 Comment »

Use “Stravinsky’s Secret” to Supercharge Your Marketing Copy

Friday, January 25th, 2008

The two black men, clean-cut and well-spoken, casually stroll down an upscale California street.

Mostly-white yuppies step into and out of restaurants and clubs on this busy Saturday night. Well-dressed 30-somethings stroll about, window shopping.

Now, one white couple comes from the opposite direction, walking toward the black men. The camera zooms in, showing the white woman suddenly clutching her bag and the arm of her male companion just a little bit tighter as they approach and then pass the black men. The camera pans to the men.

"Look around!" says one of the men to the other. "You couldn’t find a whiter, safer, or better lit part of this city. But this white woman sees two black guys, who look like UCLA students, strolling down the sidewalk and her reaction is blind fear. I mean, look at us! Are we dressed like gangbangers? Do we look threatening? No. Fact, if anybody should be scared, it’s us: the only two black faces surrounded by a sea of over-caffeinated white people, patrolled by the trigger-happy LAPD."

You may recognize this scene. It is at the beginning of the 2005 Academy Award-winning film Crash.

And it was at this exact point that I recall thinking, "Oh brother, here we go. Looks like I’d better get ready for a politically correct Hollywood preachfest."

I had it all figured out. I knew where it was heading, and I was ready to tune it all out.

But that’s when something very interesting happened. Back to the black men talking…

"So, why aren’t we scared?" asks the first man.

And now, the big surprise when the other one replies…

"Because we have guns?"

And then the two men run into the street and violently carjack the white couple’s BMW SUV, throwing them to the ground and screeching away. Wow! I didn’t expect that! NOW, Crash most definitely had my attention. Not because I was glad to see the black men fall into stereotype, but because I’d been perfectly set up to anticipate just the opposite.

In films and books, it’s sometimes known as a “ deus ex machina”… You may think of it simply as a plot twist… But in copywriting, it’s defying what Michael Masterson has termed the “Categorical Imperative”.

When readers start knowing where the copy is going… when they can predict the next step in your story… they tend to dismiss it – tune it out, just as I was about to do with Crash . They might still be reading, but really, you’ve lost them.

You see, the mind tends to simplify its work by slipping incoming ideas into pre-existing slots ("categories") it has already created. It does this so it can shift its attention to something else (anything else). And it will do this with promotional information as well as other experiences.

In order to circumvent this tendency of the mind, strong writing – and, in particular, good sales promotions – must avoid a straight-line, logical approach.

Instead, use "indirection." Approach the reader in a way, or from a place, he doesn’t expect. And then, keep changing things up. The overall effect is to keep the reader from anticipating where the promotion is going and keep his mind from wandering.

In his engaging new book Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Rhodes Scholar Jonah Lehrer explains how Russian composer Igor Stravinsky used what I’ll call the musical equivalent of indirection to overcome the Categorical Imperative of his listeners.

It began in 1913 with Stravinsky’s audaciously shocking ballet music, "The Rite of Spring" ("Le Sacre du Printemps"). Instead of lulling his audience to sleep with predictable chords and rhythms, Stravinsky constantly changed time signatures and added unpredictable and off-beat accents.

Traditionalists at first rejected " Rite" as a dissonant disaster, but most soon realized the genius behind it. American composer Aaron Copland has since characterized "The Rite of Spring" as the foremost orchestral achievement of the 20th century. It was further popularized through Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

With his background of having worked in the lab of Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel, Lehrer explains how the brain actually generates dopamine – the "pleasure" neurotransmitter – when presented with interesting, new information. Usually, dopamine release is triggered during enjoyable experiences, such as eating and having sex. It also gets "fooled" into being released with drugs such as cocaine, nicotine, and amphetamines. But Lehrer points out that not only enjoyable experiences but also new experiences and new stimuli trigger dopamine release. [Full disclosure: I too worked in Kandel’s Columbia University lab some years ago.]

"Stravinsky forces us to generate patterns from the music itself, and not from our preconceived notions of what the music should be like," writes Lehrer. "By abandoning the conventions of the past, he leaves us with no pattern but that which we find inside his own music."

"Stravinsky’s greatest fear was dying the slow death of predictability. He wanted every one of his notes to vibrate with surprise, to keep the audience on edge."

So, how can you use "Stravinsky’s Secret" to make your writing as fresh and compelling as "The Rite of Spring"?

The best way to defy the brain’s Categorical Imperative is with indirection. Go back to your copy and mark any areas that are boring, obvious, or predictable. More likely than not, here’s what has happened: You’ve fallen prey to writing clichés.

Michael Masterson explains it in AWAI’s Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting:

"When a prospective customer reads your copy, you want to get him excited about your product or service. You want to say something fresh and tantalizing to engage him. But when you use clichés, something else happens to your prospect. A little switch inside turns him off. He says to himself, ‘I know this already… I don’t need to give it any more attention.’"

Just like I was thinking at the beginning of Crash . Just like Stravinsky’s audience was probably thinking when they heard the opening notes of " Rite ."

In your writing, the solution to the Categorical Imperative is to drill down, examine what you really wanted to say, and then say it in a fresh, new way or from a new angle.

What you want to do is direct the prospect’s thought process in such a way that he’s uncertain where he’s being led.

In AWAI’s copywriting program, which catapulted my own career, Michael Masterson gives six ideas you can use for indirection:

1. Paint an image in your reader’s mind that shows him all the benefits he can enjoy.

Example: "You look out your window, past your gardener, who is busily pruning the lemon, cherry, and fig trees…" From Bill Bonner’s famous promotion for International Living. Bill is evoking certain thoughts and feelings in the reader in order to gain his attention. He doesn’t want to initially admit that he’s selling a newsletter.

2. Ask the reader a question or make a statement that challenges him on a subject related to your product or service.

Example: "This invitation isn’t for deadbeats, rip-off artists, or ‘gentlemen’ who hate to get their hands dirty." From Popular Mechanics’ promotion of the Do-It-Yourself Encyclopedia. Here, the copywriter wants to align himself with the emotions of his target audience before he lets them know he’s selling an encyclopedia.

3. Raise a threat or warning that begs for a solution (provided by your product or service).

Example: "Your wealth is in imminent danger." From a Swiss Money Strategies insert. This gets the reader’s attention by evoking a whole range of fears. He can’t quite know from the headline what it is the copywriter is selling. Something financial, but what?

4. Make a surprising or alarming prediction that leads to your big promise.

Example: "A bank run like no other will hit every major bank on earth in 1999. A worldwide panic is now inevitable…" This prediction of catastrophe forces the prospect to read on to learn what the solution might be.

5. Share a new piece of information, which will benefit the reader.

Example: "This may be the most startling health news you have ever heard…" In order to know if it is the "most startling" (a pretty bold claim), the prospect has to read on.

6. Debunk a myth with evidence that demands the reader’s attention.

Example: "Conventional wisdom: You can’t push an insurance company when it comes to collecting money. Wrong ! Here are two proven ways to get your check within days." By contradicting what most people think is true, the copywriter forces the reader to listen to his "proof."

"When you use indirection," Michael explains, "your copy will be infused with life. Your words will be fresh and thought-provoking. And your reader will keep turning the pages.

"Remember, as a copywriter, you’ve always got to keep your reader from getting ahead of you. If he can anticipate what you’re going to say, he’ll assume he knows what’s coming – and you’ll lose him."

So whatever you want to call it – indirection… the plot twist… or even "Stravinsky’s Secret" – approach your reader in a way he doesn’t expect. You’ll then start triggering that dopamine release Jonah Lehrer writes about – literally making reading your copy "a pleasure"!

Result? Your sales letter gets read throughout, response rates skyrocket, and so will your sales and royalties.

[Ed. Note: Charlie Byrne is ETR’s Editorial and Creative Director. Drop Charlie a line at charlie@ETRFeedback.com if you’re interested in getting his occasional off-the-record “insider” emails on advanced copywriting techniques, or if you have any comments on this article.]

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Posted in Copywriting, Wealthy | No Comments »

"A Service Company That Just Happens to Sell Shoes"

Thursday, March 17th, 2005

Previously, I told you about my good experience buying at online shoe store Zappo’s. Just recently, the heel on a pair of Doc Martens I’d ordered from them started falling off. I had been wearing the shoes for just a few weeks. Must have been defective. So I e-mailed them explaining the problem. Their response was better than I could have expected. Look at how many things they do right in this letter:

Hi Charlie,

Thank you for contacting the Zappos.com Customer Loyalty Team.

I am sorry to hear that there is a problem with the Dr. Marten shoes you have. This item has been discontinued so I am unable to send you a replacement pair. I have credited your American Express card for the full amount that you paid for the shoes. I hope this helps.

We are constantly striving to improve our service. If there is anything more we can do for you or if we could improve your experience, please do not hesitate to let us know. We are always here for you – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We like to think of ourselves as a service company that just happens to sell shoes.

Thank You,

Dana
Customer Loyalty Representative in Training Zappos.com
The Web’s Most Popular Shoe Store!
Phone: Toll-free 1-888-4ZAPPOS (492-7767)
e-mail: cs@zappos.com
http://www.zappos.com

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Posted in Marketing/Internet | No Comments »

Send E-Mail Bounce-Backs to Get More Sales

Wednesday, January 19th, 2005

Here’s one company that knows the best person to sell shoes to is . . . someone who just bought shoes. Literally.

About two months ago, I bought a pair of Doc Martens on sale at Zappos.com. They’ve got an extremely shopper-friendly website — and good prices too.

Last week, I received this e-mail:

"Just wanted to let you know, we’ve got just one pair of your shoes remaining in stock. After that, we’ll never have these again."

I ordered them that minute.

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Posted in Marketing/Internet | No Comments »

Simplify Your Life (and Make It Pay Off in More Ways Than One), Part 2

Monday, October 18th, 2004

When we left off on Friday, I said, “Just a few weeks ago, my wife and I decided that something need to change, because we didn’t want to live that way. [And what I meant by "that way," was the way our friends Chuck and Laura were living.] We came up with a plan and have already started fixing the problem.”

Here’s what happened . . .

It was Saturday morning at breakfast. Patty and I had come to the realization that our life was getting way too complicated . . . starting with the “stuff” that was piling up. The closets were full . . . all kinds of bric-a-brac everywhere. We figured our house looked the way Chuck and Laura’s house probably looked a few years ago. That was an unsettling thought.

We knew that we had to simplify, but hadn’t yet come up with much of a plan to do so. That’s what we hoped to accomplish over the weekend.

But before tackling this major issue, we engaged in some minor small talk. And that’s when I made the mistake of mentioning that I wanted to renew my basketball season tickets. Understand that this is something that is important to me — one of the ways I promised to reward myself for working so hard. My mistake was that I’d “forgotten” to mention it to my wife sooner, and it didn’t get added to our budget when we set our yearly goals. Now payment was nearly due, and that’s when the crap hit the fan.

“You want to spend HOW MUCH?!” was my wife’s vociferous (see “Word to the Wise,” below), but fair, reaction.

So it wasn’t a good start to the weekend. I’d probably picked a bad time to bring up the subject in the first place. We weren’t exactly looking forward to the effort that was going to be involved in “simplifying our life.”

But then I got an idea.

“Suppose those basketball tickets don’t cost us anything? Then it wouldn’t be a problem, right? I can sell a lot of this old stuff. And whatever I make, I can put toward the tickets. We were going to throw out half of it anyway.”

“If it gets this mess cleared up, it’ll be fine with me.”

So it was settled.

I set some goals. I would do one room at a time, one each weekend. Anything we hadn’t used recently or that had no sentimental value was fair game. Big items would go to charity or a yard sale. Other things, I’d put up on eBay. I decided on a certain amount of money that I wanted to make each week.

That was about a month ago. The plan is working. By linking the unpleasant task of clearing out old junk to the reward of my tickets, I’ve become highly motivated.

We’ve already gotten rid of:

last year’s cell phones

reference books from an old hobby or two

an awful but fairly valuable poster (temporary insanity — bought in New Orleans)

various obsolete (to me) electronic gizmos

about half a dozen horrible gifts, too tasteless to even pass on to distant acquaintances

Now my wife is getting ready for the yard sale we’re going to have in a few weeks. We’re going to take advantage of some good tips that she picked up from a radio program the other day: Only put out decent stuff, not garbage . . . sort things by category and set up separate areas (clothing, kitchen, toys, etc) . . . buy some donuts and offer them free to the first people who show up (”Free donuts, while they last!”).

Meanwhile, as a result of the eBay sales, our shelves are already starting to empty. Space is reappearing that we haven’t seen in years. My wife is delighted.

My basketball account rep called the other day to say my tickets would soon be on the way. I am delighted.

Having an emptier house gives it a lighter, fresher feeling. It almost seems to have more energy. Chuck and Laura will be down this winter to visit us. Maybe they’ll be inspired to make some changes themselves after they see our new, simpler life.

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Posted in Wise | No Comments »

Simplify Your Life (and Make It Pay Off in More Ways Than One), Part 1

Friday, October 15th, 2004

Judy and John are great friends of ours. Recently retired, they own a beautiful waterfront house in Maryland, a small condo in Florida where they “winter,” and a sailboat just large enough for the occasional cruise down to the Bahamas.

They are kind and generous people, who lead a very rewarding and enviable life. But what struck my wife and I when we visited them this summer is how remarkably simple it is.

Their home is tastefully but almost sparsely decorated with quality furniture, a few pieces of just-right art, household necessities, and little more. They have no cable TV and no magazines. They buy books (lots of books), read them, and then pass them along to others. And when they decide to take a trip (which they often do), nothing stands in their way. Their children are grown and they have no pets. So they can pack up and leave for a month, on a few hours’ notice.

The simplicity of Judy and John’s lifestyle made a big impression on us. It was even more striking in contrast to what we witnessed at our next stop, the home of two other good friends of ours.

Like Judy and John, Chuck and Laura are kind and generous people — and their children, too, are grown up and living on their own. But there, the similarities end.

Literally thousands of trinkets and knick-knacks overpower their entire South Carolina home. There is “stuff” everywhere. You can’t even sit down without moving a pile of something or other.

The dog seems to have some kind of psychological problem (I believe he thinks his tail is a cat) and requires almost constant attention.

They have five — five! — cars that are shuffled in and out of their narrow driveway on a regular basis, depending on . . . it’s not clear what. There are only two people here, yet some of their vehicles have enough room to accommodate the Von Trapp family.

We brought a “hospitality thank-you gift” for them, but after walking in, we realized that giving it to them would be a cruel joke. The last thing they needed, was one more thing.

The issue came into focus when the trip was over and we were back home.

Looking around our house after being gone for those few weeks made it distressingly clear that we were in danger of creeping into the scary territory we’d just left. We were getting very close to having “stuff” all over.

Back at work on Monday morning, I mentioned it to Michael Masterson.

“I’ve written about this before,” he said. “Your home should reflect who you are, what your values are, and the things that you feel are important in your life. If it doesn’t, neither you nor your guests will feel comfortable in it.”

I looked through the ETR archives and, sure enough, that’s one of the main points he made in Message #835.

Our home was starting to not feel like “us.”

My office was full of computer reference manuals and old entertainment equipment was piled up on shelves and in closets. My magazines were stacked in almost every available space throughout the house. A poster that my wife hated from the day I brought it home was still hanging on the wall (and I wasn’t really crazy about it anymore either).

It’s easy for things to slowly deteriorate — so slowly that you don’t even notice it at first. The toll it takes is subtle but very real.

You begin spending time shuffling things around instead of engaged in productive activities. You start buying extra things because you can’t find the originals. (”I know it’s buried here somewhere.”) At some point, you get so overwhelmed it’s tempting to just give up trying. You feel that you’ll never get out from underneath all the mess.

You don’t have to live that way.

About a month ago, my wife and I decided that something needed to change, because we didn’t want to live that way. We came up with a plan and have already started fixing the problem.

On Monday, I’ll tell you how we did it, and how I got a very nice “personal bonus” out of it to boot!

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Posted in Wise | No Comments »

Charlie Byrne's Newsletters

ETR’s 7-Minute Guide to Web 3.0 – the Coming Information Revolution

Walt Disney Marketers on the Ball

A Mission Statement That Gets Right Down to Business

It’s Good to Know: HDTV Rip-Off Update

Here’s a Good Idea: Profit From the Next Wave of Info-Publishing

Use “Stravinsky’s Secret” to Supercharge Your Marketing Copy

"A Service Company That Just Happens to Sell Shoes"

Send E-Mail Bounce-Backs to Get More Sales

Simplify Your Life (and Make It Pay Off in More Ways Than One), Part 2

Simplify Your Life (and Make It Pay Off in More Ways Than One), Part 1

Sign Up for our Free Newsletter

Main Menu

Newsletters