Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - A Little Known Marketing Secret I Learned From Seinfeld... (And It Has Nothing To Do With Email)

Episode Date: June 6, 2017

Who was J. Peterman and why should you care? On this episode Russell talks about taking inspiration for writing good copy from the J. Peterman catalog (of Seinfeld fame). Here are some of the fascinating things you will hear in this episode: Learn something new about Seinfeld, like that the J. Peterman catalog was actually a real catalog that really had great copy. Hear a couple of excerpts from the catalog that are amazing and see for yourself why it's so awesome. And find out how Russell made a book about copywriting seem sexy. So listen below to learn something new about Seinfeld that you can tell all your friends the next time you watch the show, while also being inspired by the amazing copy contained in the real catalog. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/a-little-known-marketing-secret-i-learned-from-seinfeld-and-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-email Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, the big question is this, how are entrepreneurs like us, who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, who are spending money from our own pockets, how do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing Secrets. What's up, everybody? This is Russell.

I just wanted to jump on real quick, kind of spur the moment, because I wanted to share something with all of you guys that is important. And it has to do with the show Seinfeld. I knew as soon as I said Seinfeld, some of you guys were like, I read your book, Russell.

It's the Seinfeld email sequences, and it's not. I wrote something completely different that a lot of you guys probably didn't even know about. Yeah, this is one of, like I don't know about a lot of you guys, a lot of you guys are into marketing now

and you're loving it because like we're talking about it, we're making it exciting and making it sexy, but I want you to understand, marketing has been like the old timers. Most of them are dead now. They're no longer live.

Like the legends, this is where the coolest stuff comes from. And so people ask me what I do for fun. Okay, look, I spent $4,000 buying these right here. These are a whole bunch of swipe files of ads from dead people because they're so amazing, right? And so anyway, where do I get weird stuff like this? Someone's already asking. So I get stuff like this on eBay.

And I just recently got a purchase that showed up today that I want to show you guys. It's what it's marketing. Go something like me. It's like the greatest marketing thing on planet earth. Here's a snapshot of what is really quick. That's all you get. Okay. Based on that, who can tell me what this is? It has to do with Seinfeld. This is a pop quiz. I want to know your answer down below. Anyone who gets the answer to this quiz, I will have so much respect for you as a marketing person. So there's something that has to do with this and Seinfeld. Anyone knows what it is? Post it down below.

I want to see if any of you guys know. Okay, there's a hint. It's an old catalog from 1994. What does it have to do with Jerry Seinfeld and Elaine and the crew? Anyone of you guys know? Okay, I'll give you guys another hint. I'll give you the title of it at the top. It's gonna be backwards on Facebook live, but this is one of the original Jay Peterman catalogs from 1994. And we're getting closer to what I'm talking about.

Okay. All right. For those Kramer's roommate. All right. For those who don't know, I'm gonna explain what's happening. So many of you guys, hopefully everybody has watched the show Seinfeld. You guys remember that Elaine got a job at the J. Peterman catalog, right? And if you remember, J. Peterman was like this eccentric person and he'd go on vacations and he'd go buy hats and then he'd write all this amazing copy in these catalogs. And Elaine became one of the copywriters and had all these people. It was like this huge spoof for multiple different seasons. What many of you guys probably don't know is the Jay Peterman catalog is a real thing. It was a real thing and any of the old school direct response copywriters know

and you study stuff like this. And so the other day I was doing an interview, a podcast interview with some e-com sellers and they're asking me like, well how does this sort of stuff work for e-commerce people? I was like, you guys, do you not know who Jay Peterman is? And they're like, that guy on Seinfeld? I'm like, no, are you serious?

Like, you need to understand your roots. Where did you come from? You were marketing and selling. You need to understand your roots, you guys. We understand your roots. There's so much gold that's laying there waiting for you to take it. So anyone selling e-commerce, anyone selling anything, you need to understand who Jay Peterman was. So Jay Peterman was a visionary, a genius, an amazing copywriter who built a huge company based on these catalogs.

Now, I went to eBay and I searched for J. Peterman catalogs after that interview, so I wanted to get some of them to show all of you guys the foundation, the history, where this whole thing's coming from. And if you have an e-commerce site, this is a hint. So, here's four J. Peterman catalogs. I got Dave and Steven here are geeking out on them. Geeking out big time, awesome stories.

Awesome stories. So, he doesn't just say, give us an example of one real quick okay hold on hey here's a blue shirt to sell or here's yeah this is the best okay do you want to read it in your um in your marketing voice so this is what is it it's the slinky slinky cord so if a lot of you guys would have this on your e-com store your e-com funnel you'd be like it's a ugly green pants and a white shirt right so excuse me listen to the copy on every single page in the peterman catalog to see why uh why this company grew so big and what

you guys should be doing in the copy on your e-com amazon listing all sorts of stuff so you're ready to be our order absolutely a bedouin horseman chase you halfway across the desert a beautiful woman on a camel in the desert alone is too ripe a target to dismiss. Your heart leaps in your throat again and again. An exquisite torment the Arabs call katukalab or heart-cutting. Delirious, half-dead, you reach the emir's palace. A gallows slave rears his horse in your path. You notice he is speaking in Peter O'Toole's voice. Just then you awaken in the royal suite of the Lanesborough in London.

Lawrence of Arabia blaring from the television set. You rush back to sleep. Slinky silk cord tank top and slinky silk cord pants not harem pants but clothes 100 flowing loose silk more romantic more interesting than you remembered now that is how you sell something that's called good copy you don't put like brown orange or yellow add to cart you sell your stuff so every page in this catalog, they're selling, and they don't even have pictures, it's just like paintings of the pictures, because this is pre-pictures apparently.

But every single one has amazing copy to sell it. And so it would behoove most of you to go to eBay, I don't know how many are still available, or even Google, I'm sure you can find online as well, but search for the Jay Peterman catalogs, the original ones. These ones I bought here on eBay are from 1994. The older the better, because stuff like this gets better with time um and uh there's one line of description okay so this is you already so this is steve's gonna order this

this is the this is the famous miss blue the famous miss blue hat so like if this was on a shopify site how it'd be like one button like like add to cart, I'll get. Yeah, basically in a picture of it. All right, so what would Jay Peterman do? So what he would do is he'd say something like this. He said,

you know who I mean. It could have been you. One day you arrived by train, but from where? Nobody knew. You carved a plantation out of a thousand acres of dry land,

which the money called worthless. You diverted a stream and proved them wrong. You wore a big Panama hat like a man's hat. Or like a man, but you didn't look like a man. Sometimes you wore it and held it in a chin strap.

Sometimes you wore it down on your back. You became rich, I guess, anyway you had a piano. I heard it. I saw you in those. Anyway, it's really cool. And at the end he goes, I remember all that. And it actually kind of rhymes as you go through. And there's literally just one line.

Made in Ecuador, leather, chin strap, four inches. Like 40 bucks. Like, what? I want just one line. Made in Ecuador, leather, chin strap, four inches. Like, 40 bucks. Like, what? I want this hat now, it's for a woman. Alright, so, what the lesson and the moral today that I want you to understand is that copy is the king. It's the key to everything. I told this on the Marketing Secrets Podcast,

and a lot of you guys may not have heard this, but copywriting's not sexy, it's not exciting. And so, when I wanted to teach copy, if I call it copywriting, guess what all of us do? We all fall asleep, our eyes glaze over. But if you read the Expert Seekers book, guess what that book is? It's my contribution to copywriting, teaching how to tell stories, how to do it the right way, how to tell epiphany bridges, how to tell kind of like bridges, how to position the offer, all those kinds of things. it's copy, it's copywriting. So that is the study that you guys got to understand.

And understand that wherever you're coming at, some of you guys have been doing this business for years, six months, five years, ten years, but like there is like people that have gone before us that have mastered this stuff. And so like the reason why I do good today is because I study the old timers. The old timers are the key, you guys, to so much of this stuff. If you have an e-commerce site and you want to do well, like master Jay Peterman, buy his catalogs, read the copy, understand that.

If you want to understand how to do newsletters, go read Gary Halbert letter, go read, you know, like go back to the foundation where this stuff all began because that's the key. So anyway, there you go, you guys. There's our sneak attack episode of the Jay Peterman catalog. If you like this, please share it as much as you can. I'd love people to hear more about it. But now you guys are all in on the secret.

So understand that, you guys. Copy is the key. It's the secret. And next time you watch Seinfeld and you see Elaine working for the Jay Peterman catalog, now you'll know kind of the joke behind the joke, what she's talking about, why it's so cool, all sorts of stuff like that.

So that's all I got, you guys. And if for some reason you've been living in a rock and you don't have the Expert Seekers book yet, just go to expertseekers.com because it is my contribution to copywriting. I always said I would never write a copywriting course or product because it's not sexy or exciting and it's just not that cool.

So I called it something different, but it's copywriting. That's what that message, that book is all about. Helping you understand how to write good copy, tell good stories, all those things tied together. So that's what i got you guys anyway have an amazing day hope you guys had a good job and uh we will talk soon bye everybody want more marketing secrets if so then go get your copies of my two best-selling books book number one is called expert secrets and you can get a free copy at expertsecrets.com and book number two is called

dot com secrets and you can get your free copy at dot com secrets.com. And book number two is called Dotcom Secrets, and you can get your free copy at dotcomsecrets.com. Inside these two books, you'll find my top 35 secrets that we've used to become the fastest growing non-VC backed SaaS startup company in the world.