“Spitballing” with a marketing genius part 3

Belching on with my interview about copywriting & online empire building with Ken McCarthy… KEN MCCARTHY: Yeah, it's like they've taken stupidity and put it on steroids. BEN SETTLE: Last year, my dog died…it was almost a year ago today. She lived a good life. She was 15 plus years and I can't ask for more than that. But my point is it's very devastating to lose a pal like that. And a few months later when I got back on Twitter, everybody's talking about AI this, AI copy that. You’re going to be left behind if you don’t start writing copy with Chat—I call it FapGPT. And I don't know anything about it. So I'm like: "Well, show it to me." And one of my friends showed me something, he wasn't supposed to, he went into a private copywriting community because nobody can show me an example that doesn’t look like a robot or like Data from Star Trek mindlessly reading a bunch of swiped-together ads, all out of context, awkwardly stated with zero heart or humanity in it. But my friend goes: “Here, look, this guy did it selling a dog product." And I can tell you, as a dog owner who loved his dog, I mean, this would've absolutely not appealed to me at all. It was obviously not written by a dog owner or someone who cares about dogs, or who ever did the necessarily research to empathize with a dog owner who loves his dog. But these copywriters in the comments he showed me were basically getting morning wood over it. Yeah, show that kind of copy, regardless of the offer, to someone in the market, who has a dog, who’s been burned, wasted money on nonsense already, their dog is suffering, needs real answers. I’m telling you, your course, it's more timely now in 2024 than it was in 2004. KEN MCCARTHY: Wow. Well, here's the thing. There's way more people marketing on the internet than when this course came out. BEN SETTLE: Yeah. Absolutely. KEN MCCARTHY: I mean, it might be a hundredfold. In a way, I feel bad that I got out of the education market because I did all the spade work, the digging for a pretty small audience because there just weren't that many of us back then. Now, every freaking person that's got a pulse is trying to figure out how to do this. BEN SETTLE: There's a glut of copywriting training and a lot of people have trouble finding out what's real and bull crap now. KEN MCCARTHY: Yeah. So the next thing that I contributed to this thing was take pain to conceive of and project a distinct character. And I'm not new to this. I'm not the first person that said this, but everybody wants to corporate speak or bogus copy speak. They don't realize it's got to come from the mouth of a character, a person. You know what I mean? And I also tell people, don't make yourself up. Don't pretend to be something you're not. Whatever you are, be that thing, but be that thing, and be that person who's emanating the message because that's what makes the sale happen. You know what I mean? BEN SETTLE: Absolutely. KEN MCCARTHY: That's a very important lesson. And a lot of people are shy about that. They think, "Well, I don't know." I'm like, "No, you've got to do that." BEN SETTLE: This is very timely, too, because this is a problem that I'm seeing people have right now and it didn't seem to be a problem as much 10 years ago. I think it's because you have a lot of younger people and they're just not getting good advice and they are just trying to mimic whoever their favorite so-called goo-roo is, right? Everyone is Andrew Tate suddenly. Or whoever. Everyone’s a stoic or a red pilled Casanova or a health or fitness Greek god statue even though they weigh 105 lbs soaking wet. It’s the same in copywriting. KEN MCCARTHY: Yeah. BEN SETTLE: And it's amusing because there's people who mimic me. I'm like: “Stop. Don't try to sound like anyone else for heaven’s sake.” I have a customer who teaches method acting. And he obviously teaches you how to create a character. Some of these actors are handed crap scripts and they have to create their own backstory and stuff. I remember Val Kilmer saying he had to do that with his character Ice in Top Gun. Nothing to work with, so he figured out how to make the character work by giving the character a backstory of never getting his father’s approval. And when you see him play that character, you can see it, it adds depth to an otherwise stock villain of sorts even though it's never addressed in the story anywhere. KEN MCCARTHY: Yeah. BEN SETTLE: And so anyway, I read his book and he inspired me to go do something. I don't know if somebody can find this useful or not. But you talk about old-school internet like forums and stuff. So I like to find these really rabid sites in the entertainment business. And I did this last year just to see what would happen. And I created a character who's the opposite of me in real life. I based it on Stefania’s mom. And so it's just like she was an immigrant with broken English. I made her super left wing. Everybody's racist. And everyone who's white is evil and practices identity politics, even as she’s doing just that. And so all the movies need more POC. Every other word is “POC” this and “POC” that. And so I did this because it was so much fun. And I found myself creating this lunatic character and I started sympathizing with this character and and almost believing my own bull crap! I could literally make a case for her nonsensical world view cobbled together by watching race baiting journalists on CNN all day and listening to Creepy Joe and his press secretaries. KEN MCCARTHY: Wow. Wow. BEN SETTLE: If I can do that with a fake character, anybody should do this with themselves, which is my point. How many people really dig into their own background, past experiences, pains, whatever it is, to show the real them? Instead they all want to pretend they’re the second coming of Andrew Tate of Frank Kern or whatever. KEN MCCARTHY: Did people engage with you as if you were for real? BEN SETTLE: They did. They absolutely did. And I got away with it for about a week before I said something that made me such an obvious troll where I said: ”The guy who played Joker in the movie, Joker, Joaquin Phoenix…they need to replace him with a POC. They need to replace him with the character who played Urkel in Family Matters!” Even the brain dead blue haired social activist harpies who look just like the cats saw I was trolling at that point. But I got to tell you, it was such a good exercise in that character you're talking about. It just gets you thinking. And if you can take the other side's argument ... And I used to drive people crazy with this in a Facebook group in the Trump-Hillary election. I said: "If you like Trump, write an email trying to convince me to vote for Hillary. And if you like Hillary, try to write an email convincing me to vote for Trump." It forces you to take that other side and builds that character. You're going to know yourself better than you ever will otherwise. I don't know, these are little things that aren't copywriting, but, man, they really can help. And your course didn’t teach that. But it inspired that kind of thinking in me at least. KEN MCCARTHY: We got to learn how to think. People have to learn how to think. And that's what you're presenting is the ultimate learn how to think exercise because part of thinking is to realize you may be wrong. So you really need to see it from all angles. BEN SETTLE: And everybody has a point of view and it's like that's who we're writing to. We're selling to people with a point of view. We can't just go barreling in there shooting our personality on them blindly. Everyone does not think like us. And I'm not even talking about politics. I'm just saying in general, our worldviews, our thought patterns and all that. But people are just like: "Oh, I want to sound like so-and-so. I just have to write really cool bullets like this guy or whatever." And it goes so far beyond that. KEN MCCARTHY: Yeah, which is why that idea of having a character who is the spokesperson. I mean, look at the Pillsbury Doughboy. They had to put a Doughboy, they had to have some character, some being on that label, Aunt Jemima, all these products of the old Jolly Green Giant. BEN SETTLE: All the old school Leo Burnett stuff. I read everything by that guy. He was the master at that coming up with these characters. KEN MCCARTHY: Yeah. And if you couldn't find a character, make one up. And he knew how important it was. BEN SETTLE: And he created them from arch types, which is so interesting. Arch types from Greek mythology or whatever. Those guys thought a lot deeper than the people that you've been talking about who are just out there mindlessly swiping and prompting content with fapGPT. And I think about Jim Henson, his biography's really interesting where it talks about Miss Piggy. And they actually gave her a very dark backstory, almost disturbing, even though you never hear it. But that informed the character and that's why that character probably was so beloved because they had such time to do that. KEN MCCARTHY: Interesting. BEN SETTLE: Her parents were killed on the farm. It's so weird. KEN MCCARTHY: Oh, wow. BEN SETTLE: It's very dark, but it makes sense why she's so clingy with Kermit. So it's all very interesting. And when you think of at this level, and I think of Denny Hatch with his method marketing stuff. It’s been a few years since I read that, but it was very good. But this is the kind of stuff that when you say create a character, it's like, man, it's so deep once you go down the rabbit hole. # # # That ends part 3 with Ken McCarthy about copywriting & online empire building. While you’re waiting for tomorrow’s final part: Ken’s offering his prestigious “Advanced Copywriting For Serious Info Marketers” course at a gigantic discount for my Horde only, until Friday, 1/12 at midnight EST. Plus, if you use my affiliate link and send me your receipt, the title of the book you want me to send you, & the shipping address by that deadline (not after — to be clear, you must send your receipt, shipping address, and the title you want to me, not just buy the course, BEFORE the deadline to get it), I will send you: 1. Free copy of any ONE book I sell I don’t care if it’s one of the bigger ticket ones or one of the more inexpensive ones. Simply buy Ken’s course by the deadline and then email me your receipt with your shipping address & the book you want me to send you (also by the deadline — if you send me your receipt, the title of the book you want, and your shipping address AFTER the above deadline, I am not sending you the book, let me be very clear about that here) 2. Live call with me and Ken about: The end of the world! I want to grill him about the economy. And the reason why is because Ken “came of age” in finance during the 80’s in Wall Street. I have learned more from him (and I told him this recently) about not just basic economics that is not taught in school than from anyone else, but he genuinely has given me a lot of peace of mind knowing what he does on this topic. Those who read this month’s Email Players issue will know what I mean by that. Not only peace of mind, but he has helped me position and adjust my own finances, what I invest in (it’s not investing advice, just by understanding what’s going on you can make better decisions), what I buy and don’t buy, how I think of money, how I am planning for the fallout of what’s been going on for over a decade and is about to completely unravel probably this year — maybe sooner than the end of the year, maybe later, but it’s inevitable — and the list goes on. This call (day & time TBA) will be live to customers of this promo. All right ‘nuff said about that. The deadline is Friday 1/12 at midnight EST to get Ken’s course at the discount, get any ONE book I sell (if you send me your receipt, shipping address, and the title of the book you want me to send you by the deadline, if you send the above to me after the deadline I will NOT send you the book, many-a-disappointed-customer who couldn’t tell time has learned this hard way…), plus access to the live call above. Hopefully that is all clear. Whatever the case, here is the link: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com/secret-course]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2024 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