The other day, I returned from my dentist appointment. It was still raining, but for a brief moment I just stood there, admiring my car. I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks, and I’m still in awe of it. It’s a dark grey sedan, and while there are plenty of more expensive, faster vehicles out there, I just love how it looks: sporty without being too much of an obnoxious show-off.
And while this one’s a bit more modern, I’ve also enjoyed my previous cars. A couple of years back, I had a Volkswagen Polo, and I just loved the interior of that car. Whoever built that car knew what they were doing. It looked just right. And I’m not even a car guy. The thing is, you don’t need much expertise to know when something looks nice. It’s something which I’ve admired about Apple for quite a long time. Their products are expensive, but at least they’re great to look at. That being said, I’ll admit, when it’s time to buy a new PC, I’m not going with Apple; I don’t want to spend any more than I have to. But I don’t buy into the all too common notion that Apple buyers are stupid, just because they pay more for inferior specs. Nowadays, I believe there’s value in aesthetics. We don’t scoff at the guy buying a slightly more expensive car, just because it looks better, now do we?
On that note, let’s look at the complete polar opposite. Looking back on some of the previous newsletters, I’ve often touched upon something without fully explaining it. See, the many gurus and grifters out there, they employ a certain kind of advertising. You’ve seen it before, whether you know it or not. It’s called direct response advertising. The idea is simple. You write up your ad in such a way that it gets a response from your target audience, whether it’s to go and get that free ebook, or whether it’s to buy that three thousand dollar course. Direct response advertising is neither good nor bad on its own, but in the hands of unethical people, it can be used to devastating effect. If you think you’ve never come across it, think again. Just open your mailbox and look. You’ve probably, at one point or another, subscribed to one of these e-mail newsletters, and received a pitch for a product. You probably didn’t give it too much thought, but behind that ‘sales letter’, there’s a little over a hundred years of theory, all about writing the best (i.e. most effective) sales pitch possible. Some do it well, others not so much. In any case, it’s all about getting a response, like getting a sale for example. And just like some sales people out there, some only care about getting the sale, long term consequences be damned.
In fact, in the world of direct response advertising, there’s this notion that all that matters is what you can measure, nothing else. They don’t care about how pretty their website looks, the fact that their product looks like hot garbage, etc. etc. If you can’t measure it, they don’t care. Typically, they also believe that brand advertising is a complete waste of resources. At least, that’s what they tell themselves and others. Meanwhile, they tend to buy into the concept of a personal brand, conveniently ignoring it goes against everything which they claim to stand for (as it’s difficult the measure the value of a personal brand).
These kinds of people typically don’t see the importance of workmanship and aesthetics. They believe you can get rich selling crap, as long as you’ve got a great ad. But for all their claims of being objective, supposedly being data-driven, they don’t put two and two together, comparing what the big companies with good reputations are doing, with their rinky-dink scammy operations, abusing direct response. I’m not saying direct response is a scam, by the way, but it seems to me that short term strategies tend to be abused by those with bad intent, unfortunately.
If there’s a point to this rant, I guess this is me saying you need to think long term, and value things even if their worth can’t easily be measured. Food for thought!
Kind regards
Vincent J. Dancet