This may sound dorky…<\/p>\n
… but one of my favorite ways to “unwind” is watching old cartoons on YouTube.<\/p>\n
And recently I came across one of my childhood favorites — “Commander McBragg.”<\/strong><\/p>\n I get such a kick out of this dude.<\/p>\n His show starts with an image of a revolving globe and the title “The World of Commander McBragg.”<\/strong> And each time, the Commander is hanging in his gentleman’s club with a friend (who always tries to make an excuse to leave), points to a country on the globe with his pipe, and says something like: <\/p>\n … and then tells some cockamamie story about busting the Chicago mafia or becoming the all-time rodeo champion, or bringing down 5 enemy planes single handed in the War, etc.<\/p>\n You can actually learn a LOT about story-telling from The Commander.<\/p>\n But at the same time, he’s also an example of how NOT to sell.<\/p>\n In fact, he reminds me of some of the ads submitted for my recent “Mob Critique.”<\/p>\n Nothing but brag brag brag brag brag.<\/p>\n “Me! Me! Me!” <\/p>\n “I am the best!” <\/p>\n “Look at all the stuff I have!” <\/p>\n “I’m like a little money-making god!”<\/em><\/p>\n I won’t say this never<\/em> works.<\/p>\n But I learned this the hard way a few years ago when one of the world’s highest-paid copywriters gave me an ad critique.<\/p>\n It was written in the product creator’s “voice” and started out talking about all the money he had, his boats, his cars, all the golf he plays, etc etc etc.<\/p>\n The copywriter read a few lines, and threw it back to me: <\/p>\n He was soooo right, too.<\/p>\n I was basically “Copywriter McBragg”<\/strong> — pointing at a photo of all my client’s cars and toys and money saying:<\/p>\n Dumb.<\/p>\n Anyway, since then I now do regular “brag checks” on my ads.<\/p>\n And I highly suggest you do, too.<\/p>\n Just ask:<\/p>\n Is this ad talking about solving someone’s problem?<\/p>\n Or is it just yammering on about how wonderful I am?<\/p>\n You might be surprised how much difference this makes.<\/p>\n Ben Settle<\/p>\n P.S.<\/strong> By the way…<\/p>\n If you want to learn more about selling without resorting to empty bragging, check out my “Copywriting Grab Bag”<\/a><\/strong> book.<\/p>\n It covers over 122 ways to write powerful, “blockbuster” sales letters without bragging or sounding like an arrogant, chest-pounding jerk. <\/p>\n You can jump on the notification list for when it’s ready at: <\/p>\n This may sound dorky… … but one of my favorite ways to “unwind” is watching old cartoons on YouTube. And recently I came across one of my childhood favorites — “Commander McBragg.” I get such a kick out of this dude. His show starts with an image of a revolving globe and the title “The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-copywriting-and-sales-letters"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}