A website subscriber asks:
(About the John Caples email last week)
“How do you know the Caples ad was unethical? Do you know, for a fact, that the course didn’t produce the promised results?”
Why, yes, I do.
It breaks down like this:
How could the ad’s narrator have gotten the promised results if he didn’t actually exist in the first place?
And how do I know he didn’t exist?
Simple:
Because any copywriter with half a brain (and Caples was a genius copywriter) would have signed the narrator’s name as a testimonial showing it was a real person.
Even the noobest of noobs would.
But, he didn’t.
Because it was a fake person.
Incidentally, lots of ads did that back in day.
Like the 1919 classic ad:
“Here’s an Extra $50, Grace — I’m making real money now!”
So I ain’t picking on Caples.
I’m simply saying don’t write your sales letters using fictional people saying they used your product to get specific results. (Especially if you’re in the health or financial markets — I’m no law dawg, but I’d bet green money the FTC would be on you like white on rice…)
But let not this discourage you.
There are many other ways to use stories.
More ethical ways.
And, yes, more profitable ways.
The next “Email Players” issue touches on the power of honest writing (not specifically about storytelling, in another way) with a lesson from a blogger whose audience regularly grows by tens of thousands of monthly readers simply by writing honestly and bluntly and not screwing around with the truth.
It’s a short teaching.
And it takes balls to do.
But, it’s one helluva a powerful email principle.
Subscription info here:
Ben Settle
