Below is the Brian Kurtz interview transcript.
’twas an absolute blast interviewing him, and the gems he dropped for anyone in marketing and copywriting are extremely valuable.
Read it.
Enjoy it.
And, yes, profit ye from it.
Also, to check out his “Titans Of Direct Response” event go to:
www.TitansOfDirectResponse.com
In the meantime, let’s get thy learn on…
[START]
Ben Settle: This is Ben Settle at bensettle.com, talking to Brian
Kurtz – Executive Vice-President of Boardroom which is a
nine-figure newsletter and book publisher. Brian was named marketer
of the year by Target Marketing Magazine. He’s been at this for 35
years. I would assume he’s seen millions of dollars in split tests.
He’s worked with all the top A list copywriters like Gary
Bencivenga and Doug D’Anna and even the late great Gene Schwartz –
all the best of the best.
He’s putting together a historic marketing seminar this year where
he’s basically like what I would consider Nick Fury — assembling
the avengers, all the marketing superheroes in the direct marketing
world under one roof. And, from what I hear, he’s the best in the
world at picking the winner in AB split test after he knows the
results.
So Brian, I got to tell you man, I’ve been wanting to talk to you
for a long time. This is a very cool opportunity. Thank you so much
for doing this.
Brian Kurtz: Vice versa, Ben. Of all the people that I follow … so
much stuff comes into my inbox from various copywriters and direct
marketers and creatives, your stuff is about as good as it gets.
Not only that, when I went out to people and I said … and this
isn’t just about talking about the Titans event, I really did want
to deliver some content for you first and foremost. But I said to
people, you know, if I was going to go out and talk to somebody
about the Titans event who would really be able to talk with me
about copy at the deepest level, without me being a copywriter, who
would it be. And your name comes up every single time. So feel good
about that.
Ben Settle: I do. I do. I had no idea. I’m kind of a hermit, you
know?
Brian Kurtz: Yeah. You know you and Ray Edwards are like similar
like that. I think Ray’s name comes up a lot too. He calls himself
a hermit. These guys are some of the smartest marketers I’ve ever
known and I don’t get to meet them because they’re hermits which
kind of sucks.
Ben Settle: Oh, well. Maybe sometime. I’m going to ask you a bunch
… like some questions that my list had submitted. Some very good
questions they’ve asked. I’m going to ask some of mine first though
and be a little greedy here.
Brian Kurtz: Okay.
Ben Settle: But first can you tell us about how you got into this
industry and what it was like and some success principles that
you’ve learned during your years; especially working alongside
Marty Edelston. Just give us like some background just for anyone
listening to this who isn’t really familiar with Boardroom or you
or anyone else like that.
Brian Kurtz: Yeah. Like a lot of people I fell into it. I thought
after college I was an English major so I perfectly suited. I would
say to people I was voted in my high school yearbook most likely to
become a list manager. Out of college I thought I was going to
either be a baseball umpire, which I still umpire, or I was going
to be a college professor of English or I was going to be the next
great film critique to the New York Times. Obviously I didn’t do
any of those things.
I found … we’re not going into the whole long story. I did end up
with Boardroom, my second job. I was in the list side of the
business. Started learning direct marketing and I actually
[inaudible 00:03:30] I was going to be an editor or a writer at
Boardroom when I got here. And I remember maybe a year or two in to
Boardroom a job opened up at the … on the editorial side and I went
to Marty and I said, “Hey Marty, this job opened up. I think I’m
ready to go to the editorial side.” Marty in his infinite wisdom
said, “You know Brian, I’ve been watching you for the last two
years. You have a real nose for marketing.” I mean I have a pretty
big nose too. He said, “You have a real nose for marketing,” was
his quote. You’re two years out of college or three years out of
college, the owner of the company looks at you and says he wants
you to stay where you are and I’m liking it. It wasn’t like I was
disliking my job at all.
I think the lesson might be you get on this track that you think,
oh, of course I’m going to be an editor, right? Because I’m a
writer. Why would I either think about being on the marketing side?
The rest is sort of history in that respect as far as learning the
direct marketing business from the list side.
Boardroom sold mostly newsletters and books, started with a
business newsletter called Boardroom Reports, Bottom Line Personal
then became the lead newsletter which is more of a consumer
newsletter. And then we started doing a ton of health books and
stuff. So it was a journey of the content change but the journey
was very much learning direct marketing from the list side and the
audience side which was a great place to come from.
Marty really took me under his wing very early on. I think he saw
some of himself. He was more driven than I was and probably … I
didn’t start this business, he did so we know who the bootstrap
entrepreneur was and it wasn’t me it was him. He saw something in
me that was very entrepreneurial in terms of idea generation. He
made me a partner not that long into my tenure into Boardroom.
Maybe ten years in. He was an amazing, amazing man in terms of not
just spotting talent I’ll say that he spotted me, maybe that was
his exception, but he spotted a lot of other talent. But he really
understood what it meant to be excellent. Really understood that
mediocre just wasn’t good enough.
The Henry Kissinger story when I describe Marty. Henry Kissinger
would send an aide to go write a speech and they come back. As soon
as they come back he goes, “That’s not good enough. Go back and
write it again.” After the eighth time, the guy comes back and
says, “Mr. Kissinger, I wrote this thing eight times. I can’t do
any better. It’s finally, exactly the way I want it.” And
Kissinger’s response was, “Okay, good. Now I’ll read it.”
That’s what kind of Marty was. It wasn’t like he was … he wasn’t a
demand for the sake of being a demand but he always knew that you
could do better. He had something on his stationary that said ‘good
better best, never let it rest until the good is better and the
better best.’ And he really demanded excellence in everything.
The other big lesson I got from Marty was … I love this quote of
his. It was “The only things worth talking about are the things you
can’t talk about. That’s not about figuring out what the gossip of
the day is. What Marty was so great at and what I’ve continued to
be good at, not as great as him, is what I’ll say calling the
question. They call it the old moose on the table. It’s like a big
issue that is confronting us and it could be creative, it could be
marketing, it could be anything. It could be personnel.
Everybody sort of skirts the issue and the image, of course, as
you’re sitting at a boardroom table. Not our Boardroom, any
boardroom table, and there’s a big rotting carcass of a moose
across the entire table with the guts spilling out and everybody’s
having a conversation looking around the dead moose saying anything
but the dead moose is on the table spilling its guts. And Marty
would never be shy about calling out what we really needed to talk
about, what was the most important thing. And I think that’s why we
ended up getting the best copywriters to work for us, the best …
list selection. No compromise, just never a compromise.
There is an expression now that people say done is better than
perfect. Marty wasn’t so great at that. Eighty percent done for him
a lot of times wasn’t good enough. I think in today’s world, with
the internet, we tend to … in some cases 60% good is good enough.
Since he can slap it out there you’re thinking it’s good enough to
test. But I maintain that you spend a lot of time putting out
crappy tests even on the internet there will be diminishing returns
in the long run.
I think those are the big, powerful 30,000 foot [inaudible
00:08:30] lessons from Marty. There was so many little ones as far
as how we talked about … how we thought about copy and how we
thought about hiring copywriters. I think we’re going to talk about
that later anyway. So maybe we’ll get into more granular. But those
are some of the bigger one.
Ben Settle: Okay. You mentioned that he was good at spotting
talent. I couldn’t help but think of the guy … what’s his name? Mel
Martin, the guy who created the fascination.
Brian Kurtz: Yes.
Ben Settle: Wasn’t he like the secret copywriter for you guys for a
while?
Brian Kurtz: Yes. It’s funny I was on a call with Bob Bly, the same
question came up. I’m going to do a blog about it because after … I
think right after Mel died or shortly … maybe shortly before or
shortly after, Denny Hatch did an article and it was something like
the best copywriter you never heard of.
I was telling Bob Bly and I’ll tell you this too which is really
important. That Marty and I were great sharers. We would share
everybody, everything. We were very open with … because to us
competition was co-existence. There was no such thing about keeping
a great list to ourselves. If Agora told us the best list they are
mailing and we told us, told them the best list we are mailing,
[all boats rose 00:09:43].
So it’s weird because Marty had this reputation of keeping this
writer, Mel Martin under wraps like he wasn’t going to share him
with anybody. The true story is that Mel and Marty went back to the
days of when Marty was at commentary magazine and before he started
Boardroom and he also was part of this Jewish book club and he had
Mel Martin write copy for him that was this … the secrets of the
[inaudible 00:10:09] page 47, the Jewish encyclopedia or something.
And so Mel had followed the work of Ralph Ginzburg in terms of
using page numbers, using … calling out these fascinations and
Marty and Mel were this incredible team. Marty wasn’t a copywriter
but Marty was not too shabby when it came to crafting words. And so
the two of them were almost like writing stuff together.
So when Boardroom was launched then Gene Schwartz did write the
first promotion for Boardroom Reports but Mel was in the
background, I think he had another job. And eventually Marty and
Mel teamed up again probably late ‘70s early ‘80s when Bottom Line
Personal was launched and Mel just wanted to work for Marty. Mel
said, “I want to write copy for you. Let’s work on this together.
I’ll help you launch Bottom Line Personal. I want to start doing
some of these consumer books and all the stuff we learned at the
Jewish book club.”
Interestingly the reason why Marty kept Mel a secret was on Mel’s
request. Mel said I don’t want to work for anybody else. I don’t
want to be a copywriter for hire. I want to be your partner at
Boardroom. He wasn’t a full time employee, he still had some
freedom but Mel wanted just to work for Marty. They were two peas
in a pod. The keeping Mel Martin under wraps and not sharing him
with the industry was Mel’s request more than it was Marty’s. Mel
had no interest in kind of getting into the occult the rat race of
selling his wares as a copywriter. He just wanted to be Marty’s
guy.
Mel was a character. I had a cubicle next to him in 1981 in New
York. He used to come in to the office totally scruffy, unshaven.
He wore like, you know, always wore a white or beige suit with no
tie of course in the middle of winter and he wore this white buck
shoes and he chain smoke. Then you could smoke cigarettes in the
office. If he didn’t have cigarettes he couldn’t write which was so
cool. He was like a throwback. He could be a madman. He is just
like chain smoking. He was [inaudible 00:12:19] drinker but he was
like a chain smoker. He would just churn out the copy, just churn
out the fascination and back then Marty would write a lot of the
bridge copy.
And the other thing that I shared with Bob and I’ll share with you
with a different version. I think that what I’ve seen over the
years is the evolution of fascination copy where back then it was
always about … it was always about … you there?
Ben Settle: Yeah.
Brian Kurtz: [Inaudible 00:12:50] turn my phone off.
It was always about … sizzle no steak, like you only gave away the
sizzle. That’s what the fascinations were about. It was always
about making the prospect vibrate, getting under the surface of
things but not giving away anything.
And then as we progress in our history of different formats from
number ten envelopes to magalogs and bookalogs, those formats lent
themselves to telling a much long story even though we used 12-page
letters even back in 1980. I think the 12-page letter moving into
the bookalog and magalog you really … it was so designed. I think
there was a question later on about design which is really
important and it was so important to start giving away some of the
steak. Clayton Makepeace was one of the first that did this for us.
Four secrets to lowering your blood pressure, you give away two and
then the other two are on page 63 of the premium.
So the evolution of the fascination evolved to that, to our format
and, of course, now you look at the internet and it’s like on
steroids, right? You give away so much content for free first
before you even sell anything if you do it right, product launch
formula methodology. I always found that interesting as I’ve
watched the evolution of that. I was taught to never give away the
steak but I think copywriters on this call, and I think you’ll
agree, that there’s a lot of opportunities to give away steak and
do it intelligently and actually have a much better sell-through by
doing it in a different way than we were taught back in the 1980s.
Ben Settle: That’s very interesting. I know with emails I’m still a
sizzle guy. Not just me but a lot of people who understand how to
do the emails certain ways can kind of make it look like steak even
though it sizzle.
Brian Kurtz: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. They make it seem like I just
gave away something even though I didn’t. Yeah, it’s absolutely
right. You know what? That’s just as good Ben. If you do that then
you’ve gotten the customer’s attention but, you know, however you
get it done that’s what makes great copywriters. And I’m not one. I
have copywriter envy. I really do. I’ve had it my whole career. I
know how special it is to be a great copywriter. I value it at the
highest level.
I was having a conversation with John Carlton the other day; he was
one of my heroes and a good friend. I just talked to Carlton for an
hour and it’s like one bit of wisdom after another. John was making
the point to me that he thinks the next big breakthroughs online
are not going to necessarily be completely technological. Not that
we’ve gotten to everywhere we got … there’ll be a lot more
technological wiz bang stuff coming forward but he thinks … and
then we got into this conversation about the game changing isn’t
going to be the technology, I think it’s going to come back to a
lot of the storytelling and a lot of the copy. And I’ve already
seen it so I’m not like making believe, I’m not making this up. And
it’s so interesting when you look at the people talking about how
important storytelling is in the internet space. It makes me sort
of smile, you know? Sort of like internet people saying that
physical product is the new deep dark secret of internet marketing.
Giveaway physical product on the backend for higher perceived value
and all I can do is like, “Really? Oh, thanks for telling me.”
After selling … I’m not bragging but, you know, we sold three
million books in one year. That was a physical product.
Ben Settle: I’m glad it’s going that way. I think physical products
are just … they get consumed better than digital usually. Does it
do so any good if they downloaded PDF they never read but they get
something to mail, physicals in their hands, they can take it
around, it’s portable.
Brian Kurtz: Yeah.
Ben Settle: I love it.
Brian Kurtz: I think though that the prospecting … you know, I
don’t want to sound like a [inaudible 00:16:54] and I love email
and I think … as I always say the internet thing, this internet
thing will catch on. But I think that prospecting intelligently
online with digital content makes a whole lot of sense in terms of
margins but to ignore direct mail and physical product on the back
end, I say ignore [inaudible 00:17:19]. You have this opportunity
to go multichannel with something that still scales. Direct mail
still scales. We still get three, four, five percent response rates
in direct mail. And the lifetime value of a customer in direct mail
is still much higher. So to ignore it completely seems crazy to me.
I’m not sitting here saying everybody should be in direct mail nor
am I saying you should launch in direct mail. But I guess maybe
I’ll be the T-Rex dinosaur roaming the Wild Wild West for quite a
while kind of preaching the fact that I don’t care if the online’s
your medium of choice for your first sale. Why don’t you think
about a bunch of other? Think about TV, think about radio, think
about print, you know?
I bought a URL recently. I own this URL, I swear to God.
Singlechannelmarketingissoboring.com. I own that. Yeah. If you go
to it I think you’ll link to my site, to my personal site. But
singlechannelmarketingissoboring.com is to me … it’s also not all
that exciting to be in single channel marketing. And, just saying,
what if Google decides to shut you down? You won’t really like that
channel anymore, will you?
Ben Settle: Yeah, that’s a big danger. Relying on one, like,
online. Just relying on the internet is a big danger.
Brian Kurtz: I totally agree.
Ben Settle: Yeah. The stamps never changed technology, right?
Brian Kurtz: No. The postal inspector can shut you down too. Some
people deserve to be accused of mail fraud but yeah. It’s a little
different being shut down. The possible [inaudible 00:19:03]
monopoly like Google almost is a monopoly. There are some analogies
there but yeah. I always say the least crowded inbox is the one you
grew up with assuming you’re over, what? Thirty years old?
Thirty-five years old.
Ben Settle: You know what? We’re talking about this so I wanted to
ask you this. Since the internet’s becoming more and more popular I
guess with marketers, have you noticed an increase in response in
direct mail since the internet’s been out or has it stayed the same
or gone down or …
Brian Kurtz: No. [Inaudible 00:19:35] hasn’t gone down. In some
cases it’s gone up, in some cases it’s been kind of the same. But,
of course, if we have a crappy control package it will go down
because then the creative sucks, right? It’s a different
discussion. For if the list selection sucks the response will go
down. But pound-for-pound, direct mail still scales like it always
did.
The biggest difference in direct mail today is the availability of
universes of outside list. Because so many people have abandoned
direct mail, you’re not going to get to as many outside list. But I
will tell you this, the sophistication with which you can do a
direct mail campaign, you can actually weed out much more that
there is such sophisticated dead files where I could sell with a
[bill me 00:20:21] offer, a soft offer where you don’t have to put
your credit card in. When you get a free book or a free
subscription or trial subscription and I could do so many great
screens that my response rate might be lower than it might have
been five years ago. My pay up is going to be so much higher and my
lifetime value will be that much higher as well.
I’m going to rephrase your question. Our response rate is higher,
maybe, maybe not, depends on the creative, depends on the offer,
all that, it all depends. But the sophistication with which you can
do list segmentation indirect mail is as good as is ever been and
the ability to bring in new customers that have the highest
lifetime value is as good as it’s ever been if not better.
Ben Settle: I know a lot of people who are … they’ll test
everything online where it’s cheap and then they’ll take it offline
after they have it working online. They tell me that it’s just that
much easier to make it work.
Brian Kurtz: Yeah. We’ve done a lot of online testing. Some of it …
most of it translates. Good copy is good copy, right? I guess the
proof was when we took our 32-page magalog or tabloid and stuck
them into an HTML format and put them online and then when we tried
to cut them and made them shorter online they didn’t do as well.
I’m sure you subscribe … knowing you because I read you a lot, it’s
not about how long or short the copy is, it’s about how effective
it is.
Ben Settle: I’m always trying of like finding ways and make things
shorter but it never happens.
Brian Kurtz: Yeah. It’s amazing, isn’t it? If you can write
compelling copy, write to your heart’s content.
Ben Settle: Oh, yeah. Recently I have been partnering in a golf
business. I wrote the ad just to get it launched. I wanted it to be
like a page, ended up being 12 pages.
Brian Kurtz: Right.
Ben Settle: It’s the way it goes.
Brian Kurtz: Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Settle: Okay, I got to ask you about one of my personal
marketing copywriting heroes. I’ve never met the guy of course and
that’s Gene Schwartz. Huge fan and I know a lot of people on my
list are a huge of fan of his. You actually knew the guy. What are
some things you learned just from working with him?
Brian Kurtz: Gene and I were pretty close actually. Marty and Gene
were very, very close and Gene wrote the launch package for
Boardroom Reports when Marty started his business. Read 300
business magazines in 30 minutes and get the guts of each. That was
Gene Schwartz’s headline. He launched this business with Marty
Edelston. Not as a partner but as a copywriter.
You know what I would do for your readers if you want. I wrote a
blog post, which you probably have, because I think I gave it to
you. It was called “It’s not about the money,” “It’s not always
about the money.” That was a big lesson I learned from Gene
Schwartz. So one of the stories I love telling and it’s in this
blog post in detail but Gene … I learned from Gene who’s a very,
very wealthy man. He was an art collector, he had a world class
modern art collection. In fact, he couldn’t even fit all the art he
had in his apartment on Park Avenue. So when I used to have monthly
lunches with him I would go to his apartment and then if I went two
months later all the art had been changed. It was almost like going
to a museum exhibition.
But the other thing you would notice in Gene Schwartz’s apartment
is that what wasn’t covered up by paintings was covered up by book
shelf. Gene Schwartz understood that copywriters are not … they
don’t happen by accident. They are people who are veracious readers
who know a lot about a lot. It’s not that you have to be an expert
on everything to be a writer about one thing but if you are an
expert on a lot of things and you are a veracious reader, you’re
going to be that much better a writer and Gene totally understood
that. So that’s like a big, big, big lesson I learned from him.
Another one that I learned from Gene is this … going back to it’s
not just about the money. That you really have to start looking at
how you build a business and Gene, as a copywriter, understood how
important list were. He wasn’t necessarily a list guy, I mean he
used to call me all the time for list advice and I used to tell him
all the list of Boardroom was mailing so he can mail them for his
little company which was called Instant Improvement. Instant
Improvement mailed these like little small books and they were
weird. He had some weird health books. He had [inaudible 00:24:55]
and he had How to Rub Your Stomach Away. I mean classic Gene
Schwartz copy and book.
Gene understood that his little Instant Improvement which was his
love, I mean even though he wrote copy for other people and all
that, he understood that he needed to mail outside list because he
didn’t have a big database – a small little list, a small little
publishing company.
So Gene, in his infinite wisdom, became really close friends with …
he was already close friends with Marty Edelston, and he was
already close friend … and he became close friends with Pat Corpora
who ran Rodale Books. So between Rodale and Boardroom we were
probably the two biggest mailers of health books in the 1980s.
Rodale, if people don’t know who Rodale is, that’s the publishes of
Prevention Magazine and Men’s Health Magazine and they do a whole
line of health books which are just, you know, they’re probably the
largest health book publisher. I guess you might say … there might
be some people who surpassed them since but Rodale was the number
one.
So we used to get together at Marty’s apartment on 72nd Street in
New York and it was Gene Schwartz, Pat Corpora, me, Marty and we
would just sort of talk marketing for the evening and Gene would
talk about what products were coming up for us and which products
he might want to write for both Rodale and us. Basically Marty
never paid Gene a penny for his copy and Gene had controls galore
for Boardroom.
What Gene would do is he would write a package for a book that we
had Healing Unlimited and we would give him 750,000 names from our
database that he could mail for Instant Improvement. Gene
understood that the idea that he’d be able to mail that many name,
sell more books of his own then he’d be able to [inaudible
00:26:45] more books which he really like to do –it was something
that he love. So he was doing what he loved and you know what? The
money did follow. Because he was selling books, more books because
he had more list to mail therefore he made more money on the book
sales and then he was able to mail multiple times to that same
list. And then his list got bigger and then he was able to rent his
list and he made list [inaudible 00:27:08].
So by not thinking about that I could charge Boardroom 20 or 30,000
dollars for a package he was looking long term that he could make
hundreds of thousands of dollars by getting 750,000 names per
package. And I just thought that was brilliant and he told me that
any copywriter who doesn’t pay attention to list and what their
client is mailing on a regular basis is missing a huge boat. I look
at it as something … when I hire a new copywriter they’re not
asking me a lot of questions about the list universe we mail, the
list universe that’s work and not work, who we exchange with in our
list and all that. Of course you want to know the demographics and
the psychographics and all that but it’s such an important
component that a lot of copywriters I think let that slip past
them.
Dick Benson who was another one of my mentors who’s a direct mail
guru always said mailers don’t spend enough time on list. Now he
did before he died gave me permission to say no one spends enough
time on list except Boardroom – because I came out of the list
business. When I met Dick for the first time he actually was
impressed that I was a list guy who was moving toward the
circulation marketing side which was rare. I became a good friend
to Dick Benson in terms of recommending list to him too because he
had the University of California Berkeley Wellness letter and the
John Hopkins Wellness letter. That was a big lesson from Gene, just
about the whole list thing. And if you want that post, that blog
for your list I would give you a link to that.
I think one [inaudible 00:28:52] quick thing about Gene is that
this concept that sometimes your best copy could be sitting on the
editing room floor. What I mean by that is that Gene … give Gene a
book and say write a package, he would always think beyond the
book. He would see what was in the book and be able to write
fascinations from which is one of his real talent.
But then he would think about what’s not in the book that could be
in the book that should be in the book. I’ll use a loose example
but he’s reading our health book and he sees three secrets about
lowering blood pressure with certain fruit for example. I used that
example in my Bob Bly call. But then, you know, maybe he’ll come
back and say “Can you go to your editors and see if there are any
other blood pressure cures that are not medication that aren’t
fruit so then I can write a fascination that would be really
fascinating that said ‘Did you know that you not only can find
blood pressure cures in your fruits but also your shoes,’” I’m
making that up, “whatever the thing that the editors could find.”
And so Gene never let … he never let it rest. So that he always
wanted to find stuff.
He would actually interview our editor and find out what they
didn’t put in the book or what they thought was too controversial.
And I’ll tell you, one of the writers we work with today, Parris
Lampropoulos who’s a great writer and a very good friend. Paris is
like … he’s a slave to this sort of thing. It’s like he always
wants to know what’s not there that I might be missing out on.
He’ll go to the editor of a newsletter or someone who wrote a book
and say, “What didn’t you put in this book that you thought was too
controversial or too edgy? Let’s go take another look at it. I’m
not saying we should take it if it’s responsible but if we can
then take it to another doctor or somebody else to prove it out
maybe, just maybe, we’ll able to come up with a great edgy
fascination and a great piece of content to put in the book or the
newsletter.”
I think copywriters need to think like that. It’s not just what
you’re handed by the client but you’re the creative guy or gal. You
can start dictating. And you may not get there. Some publishers
just aren’t going to help you with that but imagine if they do and
imagine if you come up with some great stuff; it could lead to some
of the best headlines you’ll ever write. And I think Gene would
have said that some of the best stuff he ever wrote might not have
been stuff that was in the original version of whatever he was
writing about.
So, really important lesson that I learned from Gene. It’s just
that veraciousness, you know what I mean? He never let it rest. And
Marty was like that too. That’s why they were such good friends.
They just never let it rest.
Interesting about both of them, even though they both had strokes
in their life, I never thought that they were like really stressed
out about this never letting it rest because some people get really
stressed about that. There’s always like something they’re not
doing so they’re getting all uptight about it. I never got that
from Gene or Marty, even though they both ended up having strokes
in their life but interesting. I just thought of that.
Ben Settle: You know what? It’s interesting. It sounds like …
because I know a lot of people listening to this … the people on my
list are listening to this or reading the transcript, a lot of them
are not … there’s a lot of freelancers but there’s also just a lot
of entrepreneurs who want to get better at writing ads and all that
and [inaudible 00:32:15] information doing what Gene did … because
I’m the same way. I just saw my own stuff. We have the power to go
and create whatever fascinations we want because we control the
content anyway.
Brian Kurtz: That’s correct. That’s correct. In fact I think Gene
very often … I remember our editor is going nuts. Adding stuff to a
book late in the process because Gene came up with a great
fascination that we could end up supporting with a new piece of
content.
Ben Settle: It almost sounds like what they used to do in the old
days where they would write the ad first and then create a product
around that.
Brian Kurtz: Yeah. There’s something to that Ben. I think that …
I’m not a student of the madman but I think that … I think there’s
something to what you just said. Absolutely. Sometimes we fall in
love with our products and we think that it’s just that. What do
our people really want? And I think we talk about that a lot but we
don’t necessarily do it when the rubber hits the road.
Ben Settle: I haven’t read all Gene Schwartz’s books but the one
I’ve read like … I don’t know, 14, 15 times. Going to go deep into
it again actually soon is Breakthrough Advertising. Like a lot of
copywriters we rave about that book but it’s hard to find. Are you
guys selling that anymore?
Brian Kurtz: We own the rights to it. I have copies of it. It’s not
on the Bottom Line website because the Bottom Line website is more
of a consumer site that supports our newsletters. Breakthrough
advertising is in a different category of the B to B side. I’m
thinking maybe after the Titans event that I’m doing in September I
might create a site that puts the book up there. We do sell it
technically for $95 but I’ll tell you that I’ve given away a lot of
copies over the years because it became a labor of love to
republish that book.
The story behind it is interesting because after it went out of
print, the original edition was written in 1966 – not a word was
changed. Marty and I reprinted like 250 copies I guess sometime in
the early 80’s and we gave it away to the list community just as a
gift. And then we just didn’t think about it again. And then maybe
ten years later, it was after Gene had passed away, we saw a live
bid on eBay. It was later than that because eBay wasn’t around then
but maybe it was after 2000. That we saw a live bid on eBay for
like $925 for an original edition of Breakthrough Advertising.
Marty and I looked at each other and said this is crazy. It’s a
forgotten classic.
We then went to Barbara Schwartz, Gene’s widow and we’re friends
with her still too. She’s still wonderful. One of the great art
collectors in New York. We said “Let’s do the book,” and she said
“Absolutely. Continuing Gene’s legacy would be great.” So that’s
when we reprinted it. Didn’t change a word. Marty wrote a new
forward for the book. That’s the version we have now, it’s a black
cover. Again, we technically sell it for $95 and we do sell some
copies but it’s more of like something that we have.
So it is available from me for $95. Maybe I’ve had other people
offer it to their list. I don’t really care about the money so
much. I’d rather get the book out there. Splitting 50-50 with
somebody to sell book copies for us is fine. So I’m not making an
affiliate deal on this call but I certainly would do that because
it’s more about spreading Gene’s wisdom than it is about being a
money maker.
Ben Settle: I’m happy to spread the word about it whether it is an
affiliate, commission. I don’t really care about that either as
much; people just keeping asking me. One of my friends, Dan
Meredith he actually asked one of the questions I’m going to ask
you soon. He’s kind of a newer copywriter and he’s like, “Man,
where can I get it?”
Brian Kurtz: You can get it from me. You can get it from me.
Ben Settle: So now I want to kind of ask you something like more of
your experiences here. I know you’ve seen a lot of split test
because you’re the best in the world of picking the winner after
you know the results.
Brian Kurtz: Yeah. The quote that I use sometimes is I can predict
the result of any test once I have the results.
Ben Settle: Like what are the two or three or maybe just one – I
don’t know how many of these on top of your head, of crazy test
results. You’re just like I cannot believe that one.
Brian Kurtz: You know it’s funny. I will tell you that single
variable testing which is critical in direct mail especially where
you just test one thing and everything else in the package are the
same. That’s where … I have seen … it’s not crazy but changing just
a couple of words on an order card, I mean certainly changing the
price is huge. I’ve not had the one that … the 29.97 versus the
29.99 type of test. I haven’t seen like big shifts in response
rates over my career. I’ve seen winners and losers but not big
shifts. But I think that little things do mean a lot especially on
the order card.
But as far as like straight copy there’s been certain copy that I
read and I said “You know? This is so crazy written by a great
writer.” One that comes to mind is a package that Jim Rutz wrote
who’s one of the great copywriters of all time. He wrote a magalog
for us and it was all about this fictitious couple called limo
Larry and champagne Cherry and how they … it’s a classic package.
I’m going to give away a PDF of it at my event as one of the
classic Boardroom packages.
I’m sure that when we read that the first time it was like,
“Alright. You know what? I guess I’m going to trust Jim Rutz that
he knew what he was doing with this. Some of the copywriter told me
recently, Jim was one of those writers that he was almost
impossible to copy or to learn from because he had a really unique
style. You could learn a lot by reading Gary Bencivenga copy, you
can learn a lot by reading Jim Punkre copy, you can learn a lot by
reading Clayton Makepeace copy. I don’t know that Jim Rutz copy
like you’d want to try to imitate it because you’d probably screw
it up.
So that was one, you know, from a copy platform and the way that he
structured it just seem sort of silly on the surface. You know,
live like this rich couple kind of thing and it went through the
roof. It was just incredible. It was just so entertaining and so
insightful as far as what the customer that we were going after.
And then I think I’ve had some crazy results over the years when
I’ve tested what I’ll call gimmicks versus deep copy. Those are the
terms I’ll use. By a gimmick I’ll say a package that looks like a
survey that’s not really a survey. We want your opinion, send this
in today with your opinion and we’ll start your subscription,
whatever. Or one of those packages that we actually send a real …
we don’t do these anymore and that they’re dangerous. But you send
a real check in the mail, like a dollar check and when they cash
the check that triggers the trial subscription. And you can do that
legally. The disclosures have to [inaudible 00:39:37].
When I see results like, you know, and we’ve gotten packages like
that way back to work and then you start testing those against like
a 64-page bookalog that spends so much time selling the product,
selling the message, the copy is so expertly crafted whether it’s a
Gary Bencivenga or a Mel Martin or whatever. Seeing the results in
both cases, sometimes the purely gimmicky transactional type
package win and sometimes a long copy, get into under the surface,
read 64 pages on your nightstand wins.
And then winning and losing, the actual analysis is so interesting
because usually the gimmick or the transactional is going to be a
very high front end response because it’s a bill me offer. So
you’re going to get a lot of people saying yes, yes, yes; five,
six, seven percent sometimes. But the amount of people that’ll
actually convert or pay for the subscription of the book could be
20, 30 or 40 percent or 20 or 30 percent. Maybe even less.
And then when you do the 64-page bookalog your frontend response
might be 2 ½% or 2% instead of five or six but your pay up could be
55% because you’re basically getting somebody who’s wedding
themselves … not wetting with a T, wedding with a D. Wedding.
[Inaudible 00:41:06] wedding themselves too because they’re so
excited. They become much more familiar with the product, what they
get is not a surprise obviously because you just sold them for 64
pages or 52 pages or whatever. What you find with those people too
is that they stick around longer. Your renewal rates are higher on
those people.
So it’s really important to track the results of those kinds of
packages against each other into year two and three. What’s the
lifetime value of a new person coming in from a transactional
package versus deep package, [inaudible 00:41:42] gimmick versus
deep or transactional versus heavy copy? But you got the message of
… those are extremes. I wouldn’t say crazy results but you can see
that the analysis is just not so simple. You know? It’s not just
this one got a 6% response, this one got a 3% response, 6% wins.
No. Now you have to look at pay up in our case. Six percent got a
20% pay up, 3% got a 50% pay up. Okay. Another piece of data. And
now a year later the people from the 3% front end and 50% pay up
renewed at 35% where the people who came up at 6% and 20% pay up
renewed at 8%. Now you’ve got a two-year analysis that says this
isn’t even close. And that you got to be in the deeper bookalog
package. I’m not quoting exact numbers of course but I think you
get the idea.
Ben Settle: Right.
Brian Kurtz: That’s where testing [inaudible 00:42:48]. It’s funny,
as I’m saying all this, I’m thinking about my friends from high
school and college who knew that I never took a Math course after
like 10th Grade because I hated Math. And I’m not good at Math till
this day. But when I say I’m a slave to my numbers where as Dick
Benson used to say, “You have to believe your number,” that’s what
direct marketing is all about. I am a slave to my numbers. Someone
else is doing them for me. If you think I’m doing the spreadsheet
you’re nuts. Because I don’t know how to do it, I suck at it. But
give me the numbers, I’ll tell you what the winner is. Because I’m
going to analyze it up and down. I guess I’m sort of proud of
myself for actually not being resistant to that because being an
English major I was like, “I don’t want to do Math. Screw that,”
but there’s a lot of Math in direct marketing.
Ben Settle: That sounds like there’s a lot of creativity in that
too. Did look that far into the future and try to strategize all
these different offers and what work … who’s renewing two years
later.
Brian Kurtz: Yeah.
Ben Settle: I don’t know anybody who goes that deep. That’s really …
Brian Kurtz: I think you have to … I think [inaudible 00:43:56]
marketing you have to. Otherwise I think you’re really missing the
boat. And once you have an advertise, if you’re a magazine, you
need advertisers so you’ll pay ridiculous amounts of money to get
people on your list but that was [inaudible 00:44:08] advertising.
We couldn’t afford to do that.
So we had a thing with Canada. We did a mailing into Canada once
and Canadian response rates are like double what the US were back
in the 1980’s. And we got double the response rate. But we got like
a third of the renewal rate because we were … given the same
newsletter. So Bottom Line Personal talking about US banks. Can you
imagine someone sending in Toronto thinking that this is useful?
Ben Settle: Yeah.
Brian Kurtz: You know? We didn’t think about that until we saw the
11% renewal rate instead of a 33% renewal rate. So we got burned
without looking a year or two. So there’s an example. We’re not
perfect by any means. We make a lot of mistakes. But then we … that
one we didn’t make a second time.
Ben Settle: This is a little off topic but you just got me thinking
about something. We’re talking about selling physical products to
the mail and all that using physical mail to send your ads and all
that. Actually I have a print newsletter that I sell and what I
love about it, and I’m assuming you guys probably love this about
it, is that people are paying you to send them advertisements. It’s
something stuck an envelope with it.
Brian Kurtz: Yeah, I think that’s good. I mean I think that because
our Bottom Line Personal and Bottom Line Health newsletters mail
flat, they mail us self mailers, we didn’t have the opportunity for
advertising. But we did have … One of our other newsletters, we
don’t have any more, which was our natural healing newsletter
mailed in an envelope. The ability to put inserts in there,
advertising other products of ours and also third party gave an
opportunity even in the newsletter business to not do on page
advertising but at least to do some advertising that was related to
the original product.
It wasn’t as big a deal for us because we were just not interested
in the advertising revenue; it just wasn’t part of our DNA. But
there was a guy back in the 80s name Mac Ross, who passed away, who
I always give credit for really discovering the newsletter
business, advertising. I think he was the first one that really
turn that whole business on a tier in terms of Philips putting
advertisements in their health newsletters in the envelop for, you
know. I remember they used to sell ionizers and then they got into
the supplement business later on and that was huge. Without mailing
in an envelope and advertising for supplements. By the way, it just
happened a couple of weeks ago. Philips Publishing which became
healthy direction just sold for $195 million two weeks ago.
Ben Settle: Wow!
Brian Kurtz: And that’s not because it was a newsletter business,
it’s because it was a supplement business. And that supplement
business started as ads, as inserts in the envelopes. You can check
that but I think anybody from the Philips publishing crew back in
the 80s and I followed what they did. I believe they would source
the advertising with the newsletter to being able to get into the
supplement business initially.
Ben Settle: Well. That’s [inaudible 00:47:17]. Kind of like an
accidental thing for them?
Brian Kurtz: I guess. I don’t know what was happening behind closed
doors with Philips at the time. I know Mac Ross was a great
marketer and I’m sure he sold that to the [inaudible 00:47:29], to
management. Let’s get some ads in this thing. We’re mailing it in
an envelope anyway and it’s mailing … there’s room in this
envelope.
Ben Settle: Yeah. No, exactly. I subscribed to that one newsletter
of Dr. William Campbell. Or what’s his name? Doctor …
Brian Kurtz: Campbell I think might be Agora but you might be
thinking of either Julian Whitaker or … God! Steven Sinatra,
Williams, David Williams. [Inaudible 00:47:59] newsletters are
pretty well-known. But it’s the same principle whether it’s Agora,
whether it’s Phillips, the old Philips, whether it’s Soundview.
They all have doctors with supplement lines that they sell as ads
with the newsletters.
Ben Settle: I’m going to switch over to some of these subscriber
questions. I don’t want to … I promised them I would do this. As
much as I’d like to hog all your time. My friend [Gabor Wolf
00:48:26] ask: Brian, what’s your preference about graphic
designers, copywriters, website coders? Would you have them
in-house on the payroll or do you outsource these jobs?
Brian Kurtz: You know, interesting. I think they’re all a little
different, the one that he listed here. I mean we have people who
do graphic design in-house and we do have website coders in-house.
I think the website coding, once you get big, could probably be
completely in-house I think. Because I think you’ll get it done
faster. Although I’m a big proponent of anything you can do better
on the outside do it on the outside.
On the designer side I think your graphic designers in-house should
be there for sort of the basic housekeeping stuff and the basic
stuff then you give them jobs if they want to spread their wings a
little bit. But if you’re doing full blown direct mail, like,
magalogs, bookalogs, advanced HTML, I’m thinking that graphic
designer’s … the best graphic designers are not looking for a full
time job in a company. They’re going to be freelance because they
can make more money that way.
And you can see that I’ve avoided copywriters completely so far in
this conversation because I’m of the belief except that Agora prove
me wrong because they developed an in-house copywriting school and
got them trained under Bill Bonner and Mark Ford that I think it’s
incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to create copywriters
internally that are going to rival the copywriters that can demand
the big money in royalties on the outside because by the time they
get to the outside demanding those royalties, they are so
[inaudible 00:50:04] tough that they know that no one can pay them
more than they can make as a freelancer.
I learned this lesson at a very young age when we tried to once do
a mailing package through an agency. I don’t want to, like, put
down all the agencies in the world but Gary Bencivenga worked
[inaudible 00:50:24] I think until he realized he didn’t need to
work [inaudible 00:50:29] anymore because he can make ten times or
hundreds times more freelancing because he was that good. To work
on a straight salary would have been crazy.
So anybody who’s a copywriter at that level, it’s going to be hard.
I once tried to take one of my copywriters, one of my A plus
copywriters and say, “Would you work for us full time in-house?”
Literally I would have to probably pay him well over a million
dollars to hire them as a “employee.”
As a P.S. to this whole thing, I’ve told the story before that
Marty had a philosophy that it didn’t matter sometime. There were
years where our copywriters, outside copywriters were our highest
paid employees. If you counted them as employees, I put employees
in quotation marks. So if they were equivalent to employee they
would have been making double what the highest paid employee was
making. They’re not getting the benefits of course of being a full
time employee but in terms of straight dollars in the bank, in
their bank account, they were making double what the highest paid
employee was making.
And you know what Marty’s attitude on that was? Some people would
say, “How could you pay them that much? You have to renegotiate
that. It’s too much to pay them,” and Marty would just look at them
with a wry smile and say, “Well, if they’re making that much, how
much do you think I’m making?”
Ben Settle: Yeah.
Brian Kurtz: And what he said was “And if I don’t pay them that I
have to go to a copywriter who’s not going to beat them. And then
I’ve got inferior piece of creative that’s not going to make me as
much money. [inaudible 00:52:01], I’d rather pay the A plus writer
that much and have a bigger business than pay the B writer and have
a smaller business that’s not going to grow.”
Ben Settle: Way back in the day Gary Halbert wrote a newsletter
about how … and this is I guess in the 80s. All the best writers
work for Philips and going … they make … the copywriters get paid
more than anyone else [inaudible 00:52:25] except for more Mr.
Philips. He’s the only one who made more in the copywriting.
Brian Kurtz: This is a true statement. Marty didn’t take a huge
salary. I know for a fact because I saw the numbers. There were
years where there was a copywriter in a particular year who made
more money than Marty.
Ben Settle: That’s A plus plus copywriter I think.
Brian Kurtz: It was. It was.
Ben Settle: Well, speaking of the A plus copywriters, next
question. Wayne Brown at businessbuildingtechnician.com asks, who
are the top three copywriters currently and who do you think are
all the time greats?
Brian Kurtz: You know? It’s hard to say. I think there are people
who are all time greats who never really wrote for Boardroom and
yet I think they’re all time great. That would be John Carlton for
example who was just one of the all time great copywriters and
teachers of copywriting. He’s a perfect example of someone who’s
really never had a control for Boardroom and yet I consider him one
of the greats of all time. But I always think in terms of Mount
Rushmore. US have three, I’m going to give you a four. I’ve got the
Mount Rushmore of pre-1995 and then the post-1995. So I have two
Mount Rushmores.
The Mount Rushmore in our early days I always used to say were …
for Boardroom, were Gene Schwartz, Mel Martin, Gary Bencivenga and
Jim Rutz. They had the most controls, they were the hardest
workers, they studied everything, they did everything right. That
makes them the best Boardroom writers. The current Mount Rushmore
is actually speaking at my event and I’m calling them just that.
The Mount Rushmore since 1995 who have been responsible for over
620 million pieces of direct mail since 1995 between the four of
them and that will be Parris Lampropoulos, David Deutsch, Eric
Betuel and Arthur Johnson.
Are they the best writers? Now, let me just get a couple of big
honorable mentions. Clayton Makepeace had a bunch of controls for
us. Not as many as those four. Couldn’t put them on the Boardroom
Mount Rushmore but he’s on a lot of people’s Mount Rushmore.
Richard Armstrong had a bunch of controls for us. Can I put him on
Boardroom’s Mount Rushmore? I can but he’s an amazing writer.
Jim Punkre. Jim Punkre had some of the … was probably the number
one health rider in the hay day of Rodale Press. He was an in-house
copywriter. He’s had a couple of controls for us and some big ones.
Not as big as those other ones. I wasn’t going to just … and I’m
probably now didn’t mention somebody that I’m going to kick myself
later on that I didn’t because then I’m going to hurt their
feelings and that’s going to make me feel bad. I’ve worked with all
of them. There are many more.
Gary Bencivenga, while he’s not writing for other people right now
he does have this olive oil business. If you look at what he’s
doing with that, writing for himself, he hasn’t lost his touch –
believe me. I would say that if I had to pick the best living
copywriter today it’s probably Gary Bencivenga. I think that my
Mount Rushmore, all four of them would probably agree so that’s a
good sign. I think Clayton would agree, I think Carlton would
agree.
Halbert is another one, like Carlton. Halbert’s up there but he
never had a control for Boardroom, didn’t know Gary Halbert that
well. I can’t speak to it as much but some of the stuff he wrote
was just pure genius. Another guy was Bill Jaime, more in the
magazine world, and he did write some controls for us. Not as well
known in the newsletter business but in the magazine business. Bill
Jaime was god. Bill Jaime was … I have a blog about him too. He was
an interesting guy and a great copywriter. So I’m betting …
Ben Settle: Can you give us your blog? I want to read it.
Brian Kurtz: Yes. I do a weekly email; I guess that’s a blog. I
don’t know what the definition of a blog is.
Ben Settle: Either way it’s cool.
Brian Kurtz: Yeah, it’s a weekly email. And if you sign up its
briankurtz.me, www.briankurtz.me. The squeeze right now is an
interview that I did with Joe Polish with Marty about building
Boardroom. If you opt-in to that then you’ll be on my list and then
you get a weekly email. My plan is to take all my blogs of the last
year and put them into a book pretty soon actually. So I’ll have an
eBook pretty soon which will be free as well. So if you’re on my
list you’ll eventually get all my past blogs as well. I have a
title for that too it’s How Life Imitates Direct Marketing.
Ben Settle: I’ve been wanting ever since you mentioned it.
Brian Kurtz: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that.
Ben Settle: I know everybody listening to this are going to want
to. Okay, the next question [inaudible 00:57:49]. He asks how do
you bridge your offline marketing efforts with your online
marketing at Boardroom?
Brian Kurtz: Yeah. There’s a bunch of ways we do it. It’s not just
a simple bridge, it’s kind of like … it’s a lot of different … I
don’t know, tributaries? I’m trying to think of a good analogy
here. One thing of course is that every time we get a control in
direct mail we create an HTML version, we’ll be calling e-magalog
and that becomes the online version of that promotion. That’s one
way.
Another way is we obviously have e-newsletters that sell our
offline products in the newsletter. So there’s a lot of
crosspollination sales wise. I think that there’s a lot of traffic
building online for people to come to our site and then interest
them in a digital version of one of our newsletters and then once
they’re on the digital subscription file they get to see if they
also want the print version so there’s a lot of that going on.
There’s clearly … you can sign up for the digital and the print
version of our newsletter at the same time. Other online offline. I
know I’m missing stuff. But it’s not like … it’s not church and
state but it’s not … there are still some things that we can do in
each of the channels that don’t involve the other.
Oh, another one would be … basically with all the … any email
addresses we have of the people that we’re mailing offline in
direct mail we can send them a pre-email to say keep an eye out on
your mailbox [inaudible 00:59:48] publisher’s clearing house thing.
Keep your eye in your mailbox because there’s a piece coming for
such and such product then they get the piece in the direct mail
and then we send them a post email. So pre and post …
[END]
My apologies the interview was cut off.
Apparently, there was a time limit on the phone recorder their
audio guy set up (something like that).
Again, check out Brian’s “Titans of Direct Response” even here:
www.TitansOfDirectResponse.com
Ben Settle
