How This Bull’s Eye Can Make You Millions

Some years ago, I had the benefit of working as the Art Director of Rodale Press Books.

At the time, Rodale was one of the Big Three direct mail book publishers, along with Time-Life and Readers Digest. It was the heyday of direct response. Gary Bencevienga had just written the package for The Doctor’s Book of Home Remedies, which mailed around 60 million pieces.

Everyone was making a fortune.

I learned a valuable lesson there from one of the top-guns health writers during a company-wide seminar.

It’s one of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned about copywriting and it has helped me make millions of dollars. And it has to do with this bulls-eye image right here.

Now, to illustrate my point, let me ask you to answer a hypothetical question:

Let’s say I ask you to solve a problem. And the problem is this: You’re commanded to make a chicken-salad sandwich, but there’s a problem.  There is no bread. Or anything even like bread. No croissant, no bagel, no roll, no tortilla wrap,

Nada.

So what do you use to make the sandwich? Think about it right now for yourself in the next five seconds… remember, you’re at work and you’re pressed for time.

Whenever I do this exercise with groups of writers about 40% of the folks will answer: Lettuce.

Another 40% will answer: Crackers.

It’s inevitable.  You yourself may have likely had one of these two answers  yourself. 

So where does that put you? After all, you just solved the problem right?

And yet, if the bulls-eye is the most creative answer to the problem…the one that will make you a million dollars… you’re still miles away.

After all, half of the people in existence have probably thought of the exact same boring thing.

In other words, your solution is where the X is located on this image. 

You’re on the outer edge of solving the problem.  Nowhere near a solution that’s any good.

So, what happens if you spend a bit more time and you come up with a sandwich made of two slices of avocado… or maybe American Cheese?

Congratulations. You’ve now pushed the boundary closer to the bulls-eye… maybe to here:

Okay, but what if you’re still not satisfied? Maybe you come up with a chicken-salad sandwich made with layers of toasted almonds in a semi-brittle caramel confection. 

(Okay, I just made that up and I’m not a chef.) Probably not one person in a million would have thought of that.

And like it or hate it, it’s interesting.

That might push you to the outer orbit of creativity, here:

AND THIS is where you want to live as a copywriter, whether you’re writing health or money or anything in between. 

You want to be close to the bulls-eye as you can get. That’s where the million dollar packages live.

It’s the thing that will set you apart and make your copy beat every other

package.

To put it more simply, most writers get to the first solution to the problem and quit.

So my message is this: DON’T CLOSE ON THE FIRST THING YOU COME TO!

Closure is a powerful mental morphine. We’re taught to strive for closure on almost everything from the time we are seven years old, the point when reason takes over our brains and we first learn to be truly boring people.

Of course, closure feels good. A sense of accomplishment. Pour a scotch and have a cigarette.

Especially when people are screaming for your package yesterday. (More on that in another missive.) Some decisions will suffer.

But for the things that count, DO NOT CLOSE. DO NOT SETTLE FOR THE FIRST SOLUTION.

Here’s an example from some actual copy:

At a cost of $1 Trillion Dollars, were looking at the biggest

re-engineering of technology in Human History… And one company partnering Nvidia owns the patents that will make it all possible... more than 2,800 of them…

Microsoft, Google, Amazon all wish they could do without this one company – but that’s only a pipe dream…

Host: Hi my name is _______.

Today, we’re on the cusp of the largest infrastructure project in Human History.

I’m not talking about roads or bridges, or water or oil pipelines. I’m talking about the largest scale reengineering of obsolete technology ever to take place since the dawn of man.

It’s starting to happen right now, and the $1 Trillion dollar cost is only the beginning.

Okay, this head and lead makes it to (maybe) the most outer circle of solving problem.

I’m not sure I really want to know more about it.

(Also, like many pieces of copy, there are multiple problems here that I’ll address at a later time.)

Anyway, not ready to close on this idea, we pushed it IN a bit further on the bull’s eye chart - closer to the center.

We just weren’t ready to close on this first take… So we came up with:

Meta… Google… Amazon… Microsoft…

They’re All Running on the Same Technology That Powered This 1970 VW Beetle… 

It’s No Joke!

Do you really think AI has a future in this?

ME NEITHER!

And Neither Does Nvidia – and that’d why it’s going BIG

on one, small “patent” company selling for a few bucks a share…

Just for the record, all this material is already copyrighted by the author. Of course, we have no idea how well or how poorly this will perform. We hope to get it out soon. I’ve just shown it here so that you can get a sense of comparison between the first, lazy solution to a problem,

and what happens when you refuse to “close” too early.

And during our journey together, I will be giving you a ton of examples like this. We'll be looking at lots of copy together - copy that's out there now - we'll dissect the good and the bad. I'll be looking at my readers copy too. I'll be giving folks my insights every week. To be part of this, just click here and sign up while it's still free.

All the best,

Mike