The fugly ducklings of million dollar brands

Last year I wrote about iconoclast fashion designer Virgil Abloh. He was a civil engineer-turned architect-turned fashion designer, who eventually became the artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear collection. And while some of his work is like every low IQ swipe file-addicted direct response copywriter’s wet dream even I can’t argue with the results. Example: In 2012 he launched his first brand, Pyrex Vision, in New York. And what he did was, he bought a bunch of dead stock Ralph Lauren flannel shirts for $40 each, merely screen printed them with the word “Pyrex” and the number 23 (an homage to his childhood hero, Michael Jordan) and sold them for $550 each. He did this with things like cups, too. And when his brand was really big people would cop the free plastic cups from his store and sell them on eBay for $40. Just because of the brand, and his design-wiles. As Stefania put it: “That’s like people selling the envelopes their email players issues come in” Then there’s his website. A total Drudge Report swipe job. And Drudge is already one of the butt fugliest sites on the internet. Yet Virgil Abloh made this approach to his design & brand work all the time. Anyway, after he died, I was reading an article on Medium and the writer said: (About Abloh’s Drudge-like site design) “The site’s design, reminiscent of The Drudge Report, reveals something deeper about the intersection of art, architecture, design and how engaging with these forms have changed as the internet has become a ubiquitous form of consumption.” And I couldn’t help but think that yes, some of what he did was pure hackery. But some of it was pure genius, too. And while I am 100% against blatant swiping of designs, there is something to be said about someone who is able to get people fighting over buying commodities for 1000x markup, or what makes ugly get more extreme levels of engagement on sites like Reddit, or what makes crooked on the wall sell more paintings in high-end art galleries, or what makes a little hard to consume get more consumption of info products, or what made comicbook artist Rob Liefeld's art the highest selling comics at the time even while he butchered anatomy and continuity to the point at least one writer quit the book they were working on over it. There may be exceptions, there always are. But in 20 years I have yet to see perfect beat imperfect in any way in A/B split tests. At least, not with any metric that matters (i.e., sales, etc). And this spanned lots of markets. This was especially the case when I did client work, with a lot of reluctance to test anything that wasn’t what everyone else was doing. If one was to ask anyone else who's been around the block you'd see them say the same thing. Gene Schwartz used to pride himself on his ugly ads and layouts, even as they outsold the pretty ads and layouts he was split tested against time and time and time again. A lot of offline marketers have always known this. Even to the point of purposely creating & charging through the nose for no-production value videos, gravelly sounding audio, ugly pages stuck in binders, purposely misspelling words in sales letters to give it a more “human” element, using a faded-looking font that looks like a worn out typewriter ribbon to give it that “just dashed off” look, a coffee stain on the page, or poking holes in roofs of warehouses so furniture got a little wet and they had an excuse to mark them down, etc. The design snobs chasing perfection hate all of this. But I’ve known too many of them who begrudgingly admit when pressed: It doesn't have to be "ugly", necessarily, or gross, or offensive. But Un-okay & imperfect almost always sells better than okay or perfect. I once read John Carlton say he's had entire pages missing from sales letters and saw no drop in response if the story - the emotion - was tapped into correctly. Not a 'design' thing. But it's related enough. I will never forget a client telling me when prepping to sell his business many years ago, how he had the sales pages prettied up even though it lowered response. The reason? Buyers & investors don't want to see it look like something made in a garage. Pure emotion, and very little (if any) logic. But that is just how buyers — even intelligent buyers — think. Hence my new Markauteur book. It’s still on sale for a little bit longer during the launch. And it brings another perspective on direct response design. The snobby designers won’t want to hear it. And even the “low brow all the time!” marketers will argue with it. But it’s not really for them. It’s for those who already understand the power of design and who want to be able to: 1. Build a visual marketing universe people love to enter and hate to leave 2. Crank out all kinds of cool looking & responsive online sales letters, opt-in pages, product covers, logos, ads, and other marketing design pieces that can have an almost spooky impact on your sales, influence, brand, & status. Not by swiping & copying. And not by doing what anyone else is doing. (Including me) But by taking your own unique peculiarities (flaws and all), working them into the visual & design-side of your business and marketing, and not giving two shakes of a rat’s puckering gluteus assimus what the snobs or low rent marketers say or think or are doing. It all goes back to why this is the highest priced of all my books so far, and why in my (obviously biased) opinion I think it is far more valuable than all the others I sell: Because it can help you create that visual universe in your business. A place that is far from perfect but that people might love to enter, and hate to leave. And that they potentially buy from no matter how good or bad your other marketing skills are. Thus the sticker shock price. But to take some of the sting out of the price, it’s on sale until tonight. To get the full details on the book do this: 1. Read every single word at the URL below to make an informed purchase 2. Buy it before tonight, Friday 12/23 at midnight EST to get it at the launch discount. 3. Use code POMPOUS at the checkout (Make sure you see the price change before entering your info) Here’s the link: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com/design]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2022 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA