Talk about a direct mail headline that brightens your morning! Here's the latest ride-along with the Bob Livingston Newsletter. Step right up and claim your FREE Survival Reports if you renew your subscription today. … [Continue reading]
The red HOT promo for "37 Passive Income Secrets to Crush Inflation" continues to march on in 2024 and is reminiscent of... Gene Schwarz's ad for Joe Cossman's "37 Instant Money Makers You Can Use Tomorrow." Yes, of course, it's the direct … [Continue reading]
Perhaps I'm too consumed with the Marshall McLuhan gem, "the medium is the message." What's it mean? It means THE WAY people receive information matters just as much (or even more!) than the actual information itself. Think about this. … [Continue reading]
It's been a while since I've posted anything other than print or direct mail, so it's time to pay some more attention to online display advertising. Here's one for the "Defiant Child?" The Total Transformation program consistently made the rounds … [Continue reading]
There was a time before big pharma was inviolate, when it was common to shine a spotlight on the horrible side effects often connected with prescription medication. No one was better than Clayton Makepeeace when it came to PROSPECT DRIVEN copy … [Continue reading]
Here's a fitting insertion from the August 27, 1995 edition of The Guardian ahead of Jay Abraham's "first European holiday." This is a quintessentially 1990's lead generation and business development ad that brings together the medium of print … [Continue reading]
Here's a headline (and lead!) I flat out swiped from a publisher, copywriter and marketer across the pond... whom I've long admired. And this advertising lead (with some of the most potent positioning you'll ever see) sold a mountain of product. … [Continue reading]
Updated for 2024! It's 40 pages of some of the biggest pulling story ads that ever ran. This is an especially valuable one, that's why there's a password to open this direct response dossier for the ages. … [Continue reading]
This cartoon was published in The Daily Mirror on January 23, 1923. It's astonishing to think someone had this foresight 101 years ago. Here's the "date-stamp" from that edition so you don't think I'm pulling your leg. … [Continue reading]
This magalog has mailed so often, I think my mail carrier can quote it. Here's what I did NOT share when this piece was still killing it. Here's the copywriter's one line comment which is pretty insightful. And oh... he's being thoroughly … [Continue reading]
Would you like to see a PERFECT PITCH for a mass market product, in which the promoter lacks any semblance of credentials... yet uses it to his advantage to sell a TON of product? Here's one. … [Continue reading]
Too late for those inclined to get out their pitchforks over the "class-bound" name of this 125-year old British aid society. The "Old Gray Lady" hammered the Distressed Gentlefolk's Aid Association in a 1989 article entitled "Lifting a Pinkie for … [Continue reading]
Here's one of the usually excellent insertions from the Great Courses. Think about this. Most "non-math people" -- and I count myself in the vanguard of this group -- aren't in a hurry to grab a lecture on calculus. … [Continue reading]
It's amazing when you reflect on the power the average solopreneur (whatever his or her specialty or market) today has compared with a like minded person of fifty years ago. I was struck by the footnote in this DPS (double page spread) for the … [Continue reading]
The timing for this unusual Gary Halbert insertion, signed by Scott Haines, could not have been worse. It appeared just three months and a week after 9-11 and nobody was buying anything. … [Continue reading]
This was the world class direct response that Rodale churned out in the years when J.I. Rodale's daughter-in-law, Ardath Harter Rodale, was at the helm and Rodale Inc. and around a $500 million company in the early to mid 2000s. … [Continue reading]
Paul Michael was the originator of the lift letter for Greystone Press. As the name suggests, the lift letter's job is to LIFT response for the offer on tap and it's usually a one-page single or double sided sheet of paper separate from the sales … [Continue reading]
Health and beauty marketers needn't stand front and center in the pages of their promos. Sometimes it helps, most of the time it's a hindrance. Case in point: CELERGEN, the “Swiss BIO DNA Cellular Regenerative Skin Serum.” … [Continue reading]
Gary "the Great" Bencivenga called the Hume Financial press ad series, "uniformly great." Hume was a dynamo in investing home study courses and direct mail marketing for decades. Hume's pinnacle was in the mid 1980s when they were GIANTS in … [Continue reading]
Many in-the-know marketers and copywriters have never heard of him. But his near anonymity aside didn't stop him from pulling down some HUGE sales numbers in the mid-to-late 2000s. … [Continue reading]
It's hard to go wrong with an origin marketing lead. It packs the universal belief that the grass is greener on the other side. What is it that Canadians know about successful investing that Americans don't? The slippery slide into the copy … [Continue reading]
Sorry for the head-spinning title! Not only did I achieve another alliterative accomplishment. :-) But at last, I got the chance to "think on paper" about direct mail marketing during the tumultuous times we find ourselves in. It's often … [Continue reading]
I remember this startling concept while sitting up in the third row at the great Bencivenga Bash in May of 2005. Gary shared one of his potent trade secrets of presenting TWO direct mail packages to his illustrious clients: one a "High … [Continue reading]
Not clickbait, I promise, ! I remember the first time I spotted this ad 20 years ago. - It was an epiphany... - It was metanoia... - It was an idea so darn good... it ought to be SHOUTED from the rooftops... Over a hundred years later. … [Continue reading]
Who's ever heard of a business opportunity ad in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal or even Cosmopolitan? The trailblazing Joe Karbo didn't look much in his rear view mirror. He was the first to knock down the barriers to biz-op advertising in … [Continue reading]