The Greatest Mind Hacks in Marketing History (Craig Clemens Interview)
All right.
You're about to hear a podcast with a guy who does over $1 billion a year in sales, and yet 99.9% of you have never heard of him. It's my friend Craig. He is the smartest marketing mind I know, period. And in this podcast, he talks about the 3 greatest lines in marketing history, and he breaks down why they work. He breaks down the ads that he used, in his business and how he took one business from $0 to $127 million in sales in year 1. Enjoy this episode with Craig Clements.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want.
I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel.
Never looking back.
Craig, what's going on, man? We, we were just having a conversation out there and you gave me this teaser that's unbelievable. You were like, well, you know, the 3 greatest lines in, in the history of marketing. And I had to put the finger up to your lips like, we got to record this. And so we came in here. Emergency podcast. Before you tell me the lines, I'll tell people who you are. So Craig Clemens, he created Uh, he's done many things, but one of the things he created is Golden Hippo. It's a company you've never heard of, but it just crushes it. Uh, it's an e-commerce company. You guys have done over $1 billion of sales online. So whenever I— a billion a year. A billion a year. Billion a year. That's an important correction. Every time I talk to you, the marketing part of my brain just explodes. I just get so much smarter. And so you're one of my favorite people to talk to because every time I learn from you, I can go do something in my business right away that's going to make more money. So I always appreciate that. You gave me the teaser, the 3 greatest lines in marketing. What are they?
Okay, so the greatest line in marketing history, if you Google or ChatGPT it, is going to say a line different than what I was gonna tell you. Okay.
What would they say?
I'm gonna tell you what they're gonna say in a minute. Teaser, teaser. Marketing is a lot about teasers, because it is a very strong line and it's worthy of discussion. But I'm going to start with my favorite headline of all time, and that was written by a copywriter named Gary Halbert. And the way it came about, he was contracted by a woman named Tova Borgnine, who was the wife of movie star Ernest Borgnine. Before our time, but apparently if we went to our parents and grandparents and we said Ernest Borgnine, they would be like, oh yes, he was a Brad Pitt type. Of the time. So his wife wanted to come out with a perfume, and she asked Gary to figure it out for her. So Gary doesn't know the first thing about perfume, but he knows a ton about marketing. At the time, he was a legendary copywriter, had many, many successes. And so he's brainstorming on what to do as he's walking through the mall one day, and he sees a kiosk where there's like these little oils and things like that. Did you ever walk by that kiosk?
Of course, there's always like a very smooth talker right there.
Yeah, yeah, make your own perfume, right? And so he goes up And he's like, hey, what are these creations of perfume? Do you make them yourself or whatever? And they say, oh yes, the essential oils are put together to make your own perfume. And he says, is there one of them that outsells all the rest? And they were like, oh yes, China Musk. China Musk is the bestseller by far. He says, why doesn't someone take China Musk, put it in a fancy bottle and call it XYZ perfume? And they're like, well, that's a great idea. No one's ever done that. He says, okay, give me some China Musk. So he takes the china musk and he walks over to the jeweler that he knows and he says, Mr. Jeweler, I would like you to put this in a fancy glass and gold bottle that is shaped like a T. Puts it in the bottle and then he sits on it for like 3 months. Calls Tove Borgnine and he goes, Tove, I have spent the last 3 months traveling the world in search of the finest perfume. And I think finally, after sampling Literally thousands. I've discovered it. I want to bring it over to your house right now and have you smell it. He brings it over. She's just in awe of how great the China Musk smells, and she decides she wants to launch it. And she wants to do the launch party at her friend Candy Spelling's boutique on Rodeo Drive. Candy is the wife of Aaron Spelling, the, the big producer. And Gary says, That is far too small. We are going to rent out the entire bottom floor of the Century Plaza Hotel. And she's hemming and hawing. She's like, how are we going to fill that with people? And this and that. And he says, you know, trust me. So she actually strokes the check, rents out the entire bottom floor of the Century Plaza Hotel, and Gary takes out a full-page ad in the LA Times. And the headline is this. 'Wife of famous movie star swears under oath her new perfume does not contain an illegal sexual stimulant.' That was the headline in big letters. And then the subhead said, 'And she is so confident in this, she's willing to prove it by giving away 10,000 sample bottles on this day at this time at the Century Plaza Hotel. So they put up the ad and near, you know, will it work? Who knows? And the phones at the Century Plaza Hotel just start ringing and ringing by people wanting to know about this event. And this kept going and going and they realized it was gonna be chaotic. So the fire department comes the day of and they like shut down the street and they figure out this way to get all the cars in. And thousands and thousands and thousands of people show up and crowd into the lobby of the Century Plaza Hotel for this big reveal. He has two, uh, in-shape gentlemen with tuxedos get a briefcase, handcuff it to their wrist, and walk it in through the crowd, bring it onto the stage, opens it up, and in there are the 12 sapphires representing all 12 ingredients in Tova perfume. And Tova auctions off each sapphire for charity, brings in a few hundred thousand dollars. The next day, the phone rang with unsolicited offers from, you know, Macy's, Robinson's May, all department stores at the time, Barney Sacks, etc., etc. It was the best-selling perfume in the world that year and went on for many, many years. I think now you'll find it like at CVS behind, like, you know, photo counter or something like that. But it still, I think, exists.
Wow.
Yeah. So look for the Tea Tova perfume.
That's amazing. So you love that headline. If we break it down. So it was wife of famous movie star.
Yes. Social proof right there.
Social proof. Not using her name. Yes.
Swears some curiosity. Yeah. Which famous movie star is this?
Which famous movie star? Exactly. So curiosity and social proof. Then it was swears under oath, which is like stakes drama, right? Or how would you describe it? Is that what you would call it? Exactly. Yes. And then new perfume does not contain sexual stimulants, which is like kind of a, an inversion, right? It's like that implies this shit must be amazing. Okay.
So I need to come up with a name for this because my favorite part of the headline is the last part. And it's like the, the secret marketing Imbed or some shit like that. You know, it's like the hidden secret message that even the reader doesn't know they're receiving. But when you read that, you're like, wait, okay, it doesn't contain an illegal sexual stimulant. Does it contain a legal one? Like, what is in this fucking thing?
You know?
And I always wanted to rip that headline and do it for like a new taco stand or something. You know, I think it's universal that you could be like, you know, uh, new restaurant owner swears under oath his tacos do not contain an illegal addictive stimulant. You know, he's willing to give away A thousand free tacos to prove that there's nothing weird in here.
And they're just that good. They're just that good. Actually, that's a, that's a, that's a great ending to it too. Yeah. And then you had actually the sort of the offer or the call to action, which was giving away so many samples at this time at this place.
Exactly. It's proof that this is going to work. You know, a risk-free offer. You're going to get this for free, right? And if you don't like it, who cares? You know, so it's removing all the risk. It's making it really easy to go get it.
Have you ever done a remix of that headline? Have you? I haven't.
I had a roommate who was gonna open a taco stand. She didn't end up doing it. I came up with a name too. It was gonna be in San Diego. It was gonna be called Burro Borrachos. So like drunken donkeys. I think it would kill it, man. If anyone out there, if you're watching this, you wanna start a taco stand together, you gotta have a good recipe, but I'm in, man. I'll do all the marketing for your taco stand and you have to name it Burro Borracho and I get free tacos for life. That could be amazing. But no, I haven't. But you know, ever since I heard about this, which was very early in my marketing career. I've been obsessed with like marketing embeds. And about the same time this, this came out, I think in the '90s or something like that before I was in marketing. But about the same time I learned about this, another marketing embed hit the world. And I think this is another of the greatest lines in marketing history. And that is Sean, I'm sure something you can personally relate to. If you get an erection lasting longer than 4 hours, call a physician immediately. So we've all heard it. Yeah, we've all heard it. It's the end of every Viagra ad. And if you're a guy that's having trouble getting it up, you're thinking about this, you're like, fuck, this could actually give me a 4-hour erection. I'll be happy with 4 minutes, man. You know? And it's such a great line.
So you think that— so I always heard that as at the end of any, you know, pharma commercial. Yes. Like, you may— side effects may include nausea, vomiting. Yeah. I kind of thought it was like that, but actually you're right. I don't think that was the mandated— the mandated side effects. I think that was an embed.
Maybe. I mean, it could have been true also. You know, it shows a way to workshop things in a way that could be a positive. Like the nausea thing for something else. It could be like, you know, if you're— oh, here's something. I literally got, um, stem cell treatments last week. And the doctor, after he shoots me up, tells me, hey, you're going to have swelling tonight and extreme pain. And that's great. That means it's working.
I was like, oh, interesting. Change the meaning, you know?
Yeah. And when it started swelling and I was fucking howling, man, it was like the most pain I've ever been in. Actually, I was literally howling. I was like, well, at least it's fucking working, you know? My knee's going to heal. So Yeah, there is, is a lot of value in being able to turn positives into negatives. Joe Sugarman was a master of this too. He used to sell a lot of devices. Do you know Joe Sugarman? I've heard the name, but yeah, BlueBlocker sunglasses. So we could talk about Joe Sugarman for a hot minute because he is one of the—
Is that a real name, by the way, or is that kind of like an ad man name?
That's his real name. And he's one of the greatest legends in marketing history. Everyone should read Sugarman and study what he did. But before he did BlueBlocker infomercial, which was one of the biggest infomercials time, he would do these devices and he had one of the early air purifiers. And back then, the way the technology— you think of an air purifier now, what do you think of? Thing I put in the corner, right?
A slick box in the corner of the room, like, yeah, yeah.
This one of mine was in the '90s or something like that, and it had to have this crazy weird wire coil on top of it to grab all the negative shit out of the air. And it was very ugly. And his ad attacked that head on. He said, like, you know, the coil that removes the toxins. And so instead of having this ugly-ass thing in your house, you're like, oh, that's— that you see that coil and you're like, that's the coil pulling the toxins out of the air. You know, I forget what his exact headline was on that, but it was turning these negatives into positive. Okay.
So are we on number 2 or that was number 2? No, that was number 2.
Okay. Oh, actually, okay, so maybe there's gonna be 5, 4, I don't know how many we said there was gonna be.
Yeah. Okay.
A shout out to another one I just remembered that's really big. When infomercials first aired, the call to action was, please call now, operators are standing by. Do you remember?
Yes.
I've heard that these, these infomercials.
Hundreds of times.
Yeah. Yes. There was a woman, a man, I, I wish I could remember her name, but it was a, a female copywriter that, that created this and It changed the entire world of infomercials and I think the entire world of selling. And she changed that line to, please call now. If you get a busy signal, please call again. And if you think of the picture in your mind, you know, of operators just standing there waiting for the phone ring, it was like, ah, you know, no one's buying this fucking thing. To call now, you, you probably get a busy signal. Please keep calling. Please keep trying. You know, the, the, the offer is gonna stay around for this many minutes. Please keep trying to call. It just gives the image of the phones flying in the room and everyone's trying to place their orders and it's like high demand and, you know, gets you excited. And when you get through and you hear that person answer, you're relieved. You're like, oh, I got through. Right. I'm going to get the special offer. Is the special offer still available? Yes, ma'am, it is still available. Right, right, right. It's like that feeling of relief. So that was a big line. I'll give a shout out to that one.
We did a similar one where for my company, we, let's say on a normal day, let's say when we launch a product, it would be awesome if, let's say, 800 people bought the thing, like right when it launches, like the kind of the first 10 minutes or so. And so I'm like trying to think about how to drum up excitement or whatever. And so part of the team's, you know, first instinct is like, do we discount? No, no, we're not going to discount that. That's going to have the opposite effect probably. Do we free gift with purchase or some kind of limited time like bonus for like the first people through the door. Okay, I think we're on the right track. And we did a similar thing where we were like, I did— the founder sent a personal note. It was like an unstyled email and it was basically apologies in advance. We expect this to go off, you know, to sell so quickly. I know that many of you are going to be upset. And so as a, you know, as a, as a, as a make good, you know, I give you my word that for the next one we're going to have more. But for this one, it's just going to be—
it's—
I know it's going to be chaos and scarcity. I'm already worried about it. Yes. And immediately we had our biggest day, which we had never had. Like, you know, $800 would have been a great day. And then all of a sudden it was like $2,800 just by apologizing in advance because we embedded the— instead of saying like, come get it.
Yes.
We were like, we're so sorry. It's— yes, you're probably not going to get it. Yes. And that just— that reversal really worked.
Embedded marketing. That's a book, man. It's a book waiting to be written.
We've like, we've like brainstormed 3 books now in the last 18 months that like somebody should write. We want to write these.
All right. Yeah. Yeah.
It's happening.
Yeah. And actually, you and I have been casually talking about writing a book. Yeah. And maybe we need some people out there to pressure us, to pressure us and motivate us.
One day we should. Yeah, we should do this. So let us, let us know below if you want to see this book.
All right.
Okay. Number 3. Number 3, 4. I can't remember which one. Which one? They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets. Of the people who live there. I have that song in my head now too.
They're eating the dogs.
Please don't eat my dog. Okay. This line was said to have lost Trump the debate and possibly the election. And what happened over the following week, in my opinion, won him the debate and possibly the election, because that line of the 20,000 immigrants that had been legally migrated to Springfield, Illinois, town of— was Springfield, Ohio? Yeah, yeah, Springfield, Ohio, town of 58,000, was torn apart by the fact-checkers, torn apart by every news station in the world. These 20,000 legal migrants in this town of 60,000 are not eating dogs. They are not eating cats. That is complete BS. Let me say it again. These 20,000 migrants that were moved into this little town of 60,000 people that probably didn't vote to have them moved in, probably didn't know they were coming in. Maybe some of them wanted them, maybe some of them didn't. They're not eating dogs. They're not eating cats. But what does it say to the entire world? Yes, large amounts of immigration, migration, whether it's legal or illegal, is happening in small towns and places like Springfield, Ohio. Right. I had never known this was happening. And, you know, some people want that and some people don't. And Trump's base and a lot of moderates don't want the small town that they live in or their parents live in, or, you know, they grew up in, to have such a huge change in population, in demographics, in, you know, the style of, uh, how businesses are run, etc. And it spread that message worldwide that, wow, there really is a lot of immigration happening. And yeah, some people thought it was great and some people didn't, But it got that message out because before that you hear about, you know, oh, there's, you know, the number was always different, right? There's 8 million people that came in under Biden. There's 20 million people that came in under Biden. And this is a big number. Can you visualize 8 million people?
I can't.
Yeah, but I can visualize 20,000. I've been to a football game. It's just 20,000 in the stadium and I can visualize 58,000 and I can put the simple math together, that's one-third, you know, of the population. And that is a change. And so it paints a picture.
Did you read Scott Adams when he was running the first time? Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. He was one of the first people back in 2016 to— when Trump first came out.
And if you remember, he did the first speech. I didn't follow much.
He was like, they're bringing the rapists, they're bringing their killers across the border.
And it was like, whoa, whoa.
That was like, I mean, this first exposure to like Yes. It's like I saw this TikTok the other day of like an African tribe drinking a Fanta for the first time. And they're like, you know, they don't even know how to get to it. They're like biting the lid off and then they drink a Fanta and they're like, oh my, like, what is this?
Yes.
That was Trump. That was the reaction Trump the first time. And Scott Adams came out and he was like, oh, not only is this not a joke, I think he's going to win. And he goes, I've been trained basically like, I think he's like a hypnotist. He's like, I have looked at how you communicate with people, not sort of overtly, but like the subtext of what's being said and how effective that is at planting messages. And he called them linguistic kill shots. He goes, Trump has these linguistic kill shots where he just labels something or he brings their attention to it in an extreme way. So like with the eating the dogs or the cats, it's like instead of arguing about the migration, you're arguing now, are the migrants eating dogs and cats? Which forced you to first accept the migrant point. But if he never said that, you have to debate the migrant point. And so, and he was talking about like, uh, when he— Jeb Bush was the favorite at the time because it's the Bush dynasty, the father, the brother. Now it's going to be Jeb. And he just called him low energy Jeb. And he labeled him that. And then no matter what Jeb did, if Jeb was just being Jeb, he is kind of low energy looking. If he suddenly got vivacious, Trump would be like, good job, Jeb, you're like, you're doing it. And he— and so Jeb couldn't win. He tied him up and neither path was like viable. And he just had to like remove this sticker off him. And nobody in politics was doing that to each other, right? Crooked Hillary. He was just coming up with these linguistic kill shots, visual words. Every time you saw the person, that's what you saw. Yes. And Scott called that out pretty early on. And whether again, whether it's natural, that's just how he is or it's like strategic, I have no idea. But I think at this point it's pretty, it's pretty clear that that is an effective way of communicating that he does.
Yes. Yes. He's a, he's a showman. Like with the McDonald's thing. Right. When he went to work at McDonald's, a lot of people didn't know why he was going to work at McDonald's. And then they found out Oh, Kamala has a questionable history. It's in debate whether or not she worked at McDonald's, you know. And he did something else where he was interviewed at a conference and he said, I think Kamala is Black now. I thought she was Indian. Everyone's like, Trump's a racist, blah, blah, blah. And it's interesting because not when he says these things, it kind of does make him look bad in a way. Does in a way make him look like a schoolyard bully. Right. But it's effective. It's weird, right?
He creates the frames that then you have to participate in.
Yeah. And the garbage truck, he did the same thing when Joe Biden called his supporters garbage. He went and got in a garbage truck. He's like, I'm going to milk this moment and make sure that I dominate the news cycle. That was the really interesting thing I realized in this election. Is you could feel in the news cycle who was winning and then you could track it on Polymarket. So like the news cycle, whoever had something positive, their odds would go up on Polymarket. And then Trump did the rally at MSG and he had Tony Hinchcliffe did the diss on the Puerto Ricans and like the Polymarket starts going down and like Kamala is owning the news cycle. And then Biden says the garbage thing and it goes back to Trump favor and the garbage truck and Trump's odds go up. It was wild to see these two things tracking.
So let's do another one of the greatest lines.
Okay, so now we can go to the ChatGPT line.
Yeah, what would they say?
And it really is— and this is something that, um, everyone knows about, but not a lot of people know where it came from. So you'll know the line instantly when I say this, but, uh, you know, in the 1940s, only about 10% of brides got a diamond engagement ring. De Beers Diamonds had an interesting run. They were quite popular in the early 1900s as like a flex, not as a wedding ring, but you know, in other jewelry or on like a lapel or, you know, necklace, earrings, things like that. And then the Depression happened, uh, around the same time as diamond mining got really good. So they had an oversupply of diamonds and then they had people losing money. And then we should talk about, uh, Joseph Duveen too, the, the greatest art dealer of all time, cuz he. Invented the American art market. So people were spending money on art and things like that, you know, and so taking more away from that luxury sector to go into another one. And it was a female copywriter, Frances Gerety, who was at an agency that De Beers hired. And the story goes is like she was frustrated and she was like, you know, I don't know, at her last, last down to her last penny or something. And one night she He's working on this campaign and can't think of anything and then wakes up in the middle of the night with this line, "A diamond is forever." And what is interesting is that was the tie-in to engagement. Before that, the engagement ring would be like a plain band, a gold band. You know, sometimes it would be like, like an offering, like a cow or like land or things like that.
And an engagement is temporary anyways. Like by definition, an engagement is like a temporary period of time. So that's true. Diamonds are forever. Yes. Is like an exact contrast to that.
Yes. And it's an embed because it then shows that if someone doesn't present a diamond, maybe they're not in it forever.
Right, right.
And what woman wants a half commitment, right? Ladies out there, do you want a half commitment from your man?
You know, so, uh, and from what I remember reading about this, they went to Hollywood and they basically were giving directors diamonds saying in the key moment, in the climax moment where the man professes his love, he's got to give her a diamond ring. And they embedded it in Hollywood, in movies, by literally bribing the directors. Yes. In order for them to show that. So then you're watching the movie and that's now become— that now influences culture that I guess that's how you do it. The big romantic gesture is to literally get down on one knee and hand her a gold, you know, a diamond ring. Yes. That became used kind of top-down influence also to do it. Right. And then scarcity. Right. Because they limit the to supply. So all the core marketing things, you know, influence, social, social proof, that frame, diamonds are forever, scarcity, they kind of used all of it.
Yes. And now there's this big debate going on between lab-grown diamonds and mined diamonds. Have you heard of this? It's fascinating because I think they're 10%, 20% of the price or something like that. They're probably priced—
they're basically 50 to 80% cheaper. It's the exact same rock. You could look at them under a microscope. In fact, it could be argued it's more perfect, right? It's a more perfect thing. And so you can get a big rock for this. But then the smartest— the thing that I guess De Beers did was that they— they— so there's a big problem. They're like, okay, if there's lab-grown diamonds that don't have these social issues with mining, blood diamond type of stuff.
Yes.
And it's just as good, if not better. This is a problem. And so what they did, the genius of their business strategy was they got into the lab-grown business and just flooded the market with cheap lab-grown diamonds. So they lowered the price intentionally.
Like crappy ones?
Good, good lab-grown diamonds. But they just lowered the price so much more that then the consumer's mind, it became a perception like, oh wow. Like, yeah, if it was just like 20% less or something like that, it might actually be more competitive. They made it so much cheaper that they like took away the, the perceived value, the prestige of the diamond doing that.
I didn't know that.
They were like involved in that, that process. Pretty crazy. You put me on to an incredible marketer, Gary Bencivenga, who I had never heard of. And he has this little example, a little exercise that I love. I want to share, which is like, I don't know if you remember this from, from learning his stuff, but he gives this example of kids going fishing. So it's like a lemonade stand type of example. So it's like kids are going fishing, they go to the fishing area and they want to sell bait, they want to sell worms. So they go, V1 is basically like, basically worms for sale, $0.99 or whatever, right? And so they go there, not much sales, come back home. Luckily the neighbor is a copywriter. It was like the story, neighbor's a copywriter. He says, hey, you know, why don't we level this up? And he goes, you know, first lesson of marketing, you don't sell the product, you sell the benefit. So buy these worms, catch more fish. So they go back day 2, sell a little bit more with, you know, these worms will help you catch more fish. Now they have a benefit. He goes, okay. They come back, they're like, hey, what else you got? How can we make even more? And then they go to the next level where they were like, he's like, well, why do they catch more fish? And I think it's Ogilvy who has this great quote that he was all about, like the, the reason why marketing. And they go, Ogilvy, you seem to be a big fan of this reason why marketing. And he goes, is there any other, is there any other way to sell this besides that? That's all, you know, that's crazy if you don't use that. So then the kids go out and they're like, well, why would I— why do our worms catch more fish? Oh, because these are local worms from the local soil. And what you don't know is that fish prefer worms that are from their local soil. It's more attractive to them. Not these imported things that you find on the shelves. We have the local ones. Start selling more, right? And then they go to the next level. He just— it just shows like layering on these like master marketing techniques. I love that example.
Once it ends with like, like, uh, You know, buy 2 cans of local worms, get a free bobber.
Exactly. It's like there's like an offer. So he's like, you know, juice it with an offer. And I think maybe I'm mixing up 2 of the stories, but like he did a kind of a sensational headline too, which was like, local fisherman accused of cheating because he catches the most fish reveals, reveals his simple secret. Right. And it's like, oh, why?
We got to know.
Because there's a guy who catches way more fish than everybody else. People accused him of like, you know, using nets and other, other methods. No, no, no. He's just fishing like the rest of us, but he uses the local worms, right? So he gets to the, to the best of it. Yeah. I love Gary's persuasion formula. He's got this very, very simple thing. And it sounds like when you first read it, you're like, oh, okay. I didn't, I didn't get anything revolutionary. Then I go look at my ads. I'm like, okay, I'm not doing any of these things. And then you start doing them and your, your ROAS starts going up. So he's got the 5 Ps. And so the first one is problem. So what's the problem that the person has? And he says, no problem, no sale. Like you can't sell someone something that they don't do.
Have some Advil.
I'm not hurting. Why would I want your Advil? Yes.
So problem.
Then the next one is promise. So what's the, the promised benefit that this product is going to give you? Proof that it works. Then there's proposition, which is your offer. And then I call, I call the last P product because He talks about the Cracker Jack secret and he talks about how in a box of Cracker Jacks they always had like a gift at the bottom. And he's like, you know, even if you give someone the Cracker Jacks and they're not hungry right now or whatever, he's like, I've never seen somebody just throw it away and not get the little gift out of the bottom. And he's like, so you want to have the Cracker Jack secret in your, in your ad, basically. That was his thing. And then you can juice them up, right? So those are the P's. And then he's got the U's. And if you, if you stack those together, he literally has a formula where it's like urgent problem. And that's 25 points. Unique promise. That's another 25 points. Unquestionable proof. Another 25. User-friendly proposition. That's the last 25. And then the Cracker Jack secret is the bonus 20 points. If you stack that whole thing together, you get to 120.
Love it. Amazing. Amazing.
So good. Who are the other ad men that you liked? Let's do that first. So you, you were telling me about an ad man that I don't— I've never heard of, or a marketing—
Yeah.
Marketing legend.
I actually study non-ad men now because I think I've gone through all the admin. So we talked about Edward Bernays the last time I was on your show, but the guy I've been really geeking out on is actually an art dealer. Okay. Edward Bernays was a PR guy. Joseph Duveen is known as the greatest art dealer of all time. Duveen's run was around like 1880 or '90. I think he died in 1935, and he came from a family that had a shop that sold like porcelain goods and tapestries. In, in London, England, and they were pretty well established. They sold to the Queen and things like that, you know, so they were the go-to place. But these tapestries and ceramics would sell for like $3,000 to $5,000, which I think in that day's money is maybe like six figures or, you know, something around there. And he noticed as a teenager that Fine artwork at certain times was selling for like $75,000. And so his uncle and father who owned the shop brought him when he was 15 years old to New York with them to do some business. And he sneaks out from them, goes to Fifth Avenue and leases a little warehouse with like an upstairs and a downstairs. And he comes back and he's like, Dad, Uncle, I got us a shop. And actually, I should preface this by saying I don't think 15 years old then was like 15 years old now. I think 15 years old then is when you're going in the real world. Yeah, yeah. You're going to get your shit started. I think, was it George Washington led his first caravan of soldiers at like 18 or something? And he'd been a surveyor and a scout since like 15 years old. Duvine was a hustler from, from an early age. He books this thing in New York because he has this realization when he's there, and that is that Americans, for really the first time, have tons of money. This is when Rockefeller was coming up and J.P. Morgan and Industrial Revolution. Europeans have tons of art. Americans have tons of money. Europeans have tons of art. So in Europe, you'd go to the duke's house, right? And the duke would have his family portraits up. There's no photographers. And so you'd have to have a painter catalog Grandma, or Grandma as a baby, or whatever. So it would be on the wall, and it would be like Raphael painting Grandma, right? Because Raphael was the portrait guy at the time, or whatever. I don't know if it was specifically Raphael, but people like that, or Gainsborough, or, you know, some of the people that are now the biggest artists of human history, were just, you know, flooding the walls of the Duke's house. And these Dukes, like anyone else, would go busto sometimes, and they'd be looking for money. So de Wijn in his first big deal, he went to this duke and the duke was kind of broke and he's like, yeah, I'll figure out how to get $3 million for your entire art collection. And that at the time was like, you know, $300 million or something. I don't know.
Huge.
But he bought the duke's entire art collection and it was some of these old masters, Rembrandts and things like that. And he brings it to America and he starts shilling it and his sales methods are just like Unbelievable.
What was he doing? How did he do it?
So, I mean, so some of these had some prestige, but like the first thing he does as he gets this painting, I think it was, was Gainsborough's Little Blue Boy. It's been a year since I read the book. Sure. But he acquires this and he makes this huge deal that this great institutional landmark of London is coming to the United States. And when it comes, he arranges to have all the reporters waiting on the deck. You know, there's no airplane. So you take the cruise liner over. All the reporters are waiting there. It comes in and now it's on American soil and it's going to be presented at this amazing spa, you know, and builds the gravitas around this, this artwork. And then he has a pool that he decides is going to be the buyer pool. They don't know it yet, but he's talking to people like Henry Frick and Andrew Mellon and John Rockefeller about this thing coming. And they'd be like, you know, oh, is this, is this going to be for sale? The crown jewel of London for sale? Are you— are you kidding me? No, absolutely, absolutely not. At any price. But if you want to make an offer, I could bring it to someone, but it's not for sale. So he'd bring this thing and then he sold it for like $225,000, which was record-shattering at the moment. You know, it's in every newspaper in the world that this painting sold for this much money to this person. And through a couple of these things, he creates the American art market and he has all of these Industrial Revolution titans, right? You know, all the names, right? Literally, you know, Rockefeller, Mellon, Morgan, Vanderbilt. So all these people become his clients and his sales methods are just like next level, man. Like, so there's a story of, I think it was a guy who made a fortune in California in the oil business, and he comes to Duveen's in New York and he wants to buy art. And this guy's like a new money guy and he's not really in the New York clique. He brings him to the shop and he has the guy show up at, uh, at the time he says, and de Wijn takes 90 minutes to show up. He's been waiting there for 90 minutes. Finally gets the guy and he's like, okay, come on upstairs with me. And he walks him into this corridor and there's the 5 paintings there that are stunning. And he walks them past and he's like, I'm going to show you some of the things in the, in the back. And the guy's like, wait, wait, wait, what about these paintings? He's like, sir, those paintings are reserved for Mr. Mellon. Come this way. We need to get you something that will be more suitable for your collection. Tell me again what's in your collection. Oh, I have not heard of any of those artists. That's cute. Let me show you a nice starter work. He's like, well, what about the— what about the pieces, you know, in the pod? Like, how much is Mr. Mellon paying you?
Making him feel small.
Yeah. How much is he paying you? And you'd think that he would do this as a roof, but he really didn't sell the guy the paintings for Mr. Mellon. He made him buy this starter piece and was like, I can work on one of those. And then he'd call him a few months later and be like, look, you know, I think I might be able to wrangle one of those paintings loose from, from Mr. Mellon, but the price is going to be outrageous. And Duveen's saying was, when you overpay for the priceless, you're getting it cheap. That was his quote that he propagated, which is kind of like a diamonds are forever.
Yeah, exactly.
And so he's got all these embeds that he does in just his everyday behavior, you know, like putting people in tears and things like that and propagating the that overpaying for the priceless is like the best financial move you can make, you know. And the things he does is just next level. I mean, on the sell side, it's fucking crazy. He's so relentless. He would go on, uh, cruise liners, and back then the, the boat from London to New York was the big thing, and it was different levels or whatever, and your deck chair is like your baller spot, right? And so he'd go in there, and he— the way he met Andrew Mellon is he greased the, the staffer to seat him next to Mr. Mellon. And then he gets there and he finds out that Mr. Mellon is a recluse and doesn't like going outside and only stays in his room. And he's so mad that he greased so much to get the deck chair. But what he does is he starts kind of stalking the elevator and he times it to get in the elevator at the same time Andrew Mellon gets in the elevator. He's like, how do you do, sir?
Literally elevator pitch.
What's the intent of your travels to London? And, and Mr. Mellon's like, oh, I'm here on this business, you know, how about yourself? And he's like, oh, you know, Having a brunch in the Duke of Carnegie's home. Not sure what else, you know, but just drop something like that. And then, you know, where else are you going to be on your travels and things like that? And he's like, oh, you're the, you're the person who founded this. I forget what Mellon did, steel or something, you know. Would you like to join me for brunch at the Duke's house? He's like, oh, sure, I would love to meet. Because royalty was the thing, you know, and Duveen really did have these connections. So he brings Mellon to brunch at the Duke's house. When you go to a Duke's house, the Dukes have the art on all the walls, and it's from all these Old Masters. And you're like, oh, if I want to become a dynasty like these royal families that are dynastic families, I need to do what they do. And that means having these Old Master paintings on my wall. So he sells Mellon so well that becomes a top client of his. And when you became a top client of Duveen's, you're no longer allowed to use your own architect. As a rule for him getting you the great pictures, you have to use his architect to design your house, to have optimal viewing, to give these pictures justice. Otherwise, I'm sorry, Mr. Mellon, but this picture cannot be in your collection because it does not to be showcased in a side room or something like that. And he would have his architects design their apartments with like very little windows and huge wall space, but way more wall space than they would ever need. And then he ran into an issue. Um, the people just didn't buy enough real estate to hold all the paintings. And this wasn't like crypto art where you can store it on a wall. You know, you gotta have walls to put it on. And so he started convincing them to open museums. The National Gallery in Washington is founded by Andrew Mellon at the urging of Joseph Duveen. And he said, the key to your immortality is building this gallery and having your work live on beyond you in it. And we're going to build it 30,000 square feet. And so he does this. Mellon builds the National Gallery, and then Duveen's able to sell him way more art, you know, stock up all those walls, plus all of his houses and shit like that, right? Uh, Mellon passes on, and then I think it was Henry Frick, uh, he's his next big client. He's like, you know, Mr. Frick, if you really want to achieve immortality, you could add on to the National Gallery. A bigger wing than Mr. Mellon made and stack it with your art. And he did. He fucking did, you know, and bought all this art from Duveen. I mean, the guy was so ruthless. Another of my favorite Duveen tricks he would do is when he'd be at Andrew Mellon's house, there was a couple other competing dealers, you know, you'd ride the horse and carriage over there, right? It's not like a car. He'd grease the staff to tell him if they find out that another art dealer is going to their house. So he'd find out when the, the competitor is going to Mr. Mellon's house, and he would show up the same day and he'd be like, just passing through the Hamptons, you know, happened to— oh, uh, you know, hello, Mr. Peary, fancy seeing you here. I was just visiting my client. And he would go and just sit there all day. And you can't like reschedule the meeting because that person probably traveled several days to get there, you know, who's just just relentless, man. And that's actually— I know you have a lot of young kids in your audience, and I did an experiment recently. I was at a mastermind where everyone paid $250 grand to attend. Wow. And I asked them, I said, you know, I'm just curious about this room. You guys are all established people. How many of you in your youth had some sort of sales job that required you to be relentless, like 200 phone calls a day or knocking on doors? And almost all the room raised their hand. I think it's something that really shapes something. Did you ever have a job like that?
I don't think I had that kind of— I've noticed the same thing, but like, you know, so we, we've talked to people who are a lot of Mormons who go on missions. Oh, that's the best, dude. You have to— you spent 2 years in complete solitude, isolation, not talking to your family, selling Jesus to, you know, whoever, right? You're selling religion to people who didn't ask for it necessarily. You're knocking on doors, you're facing tons of rejection. And day after day you carried on like that is such a formative experience. My, my uncle had told me one thing about he used to sell textbooks door to door, like textbooks, textbooks companies. I guess there's a couple of them in America that were really big that way. And we recently just had another person on the pod— like we've had several people on the podcast with this one same job, which is like door-to-door sales, whether it's textbooks or knives or whatever it was. And yeah, the hit rate on those is really high. Bryan Johnson, who was going to be here at the event, I was just watching his documentary. Same thing. His first job was door-to-door credit card processing sales.
I was telemarketer of credit card processing.
You were amazing. And so, you know, he, he rejection, rejection, figured out, figured out how to sell, figured out how to carry on in the face of rejection, got numb to rejection, just started, started to see it. Like my uncle told me, he goes, you know how I, I go, how many did you actually sell? You're selling textbooks in a day, knock on 100 doors. How many do you actually sell? You're walking through the hot Atlanta, like, neighborhoods sweating. And he's like, oh, you know, like 1 or 2 or 3 would be like an amazing day. Yeah.
And that's what I was in telemarketing too. It's about 200 calls. Shitty day is 1. 5 sales is an amazing day, right?
Which is just like, even if you hear those numbers, go, go actually do something hard where 97 times out of 100 you just get slammed in the face. And he goes, the way I did it was very simple. He goes, I just did the math and I realized actually I know I have to knock on 100 doors to get the 2 sales. So actually, I don't just count the revenue from the 2 yeses. I just assigned a price to every no. So he's like, a no is worth $50 for me every time I collect a no. All right, that was, that was a $50. I wasn't just coming up with the zero. I wasn't coming up empty every time. It was a psychological trick that allowed me to like see the nos still as like progression because I'm just getting closer to that yes, that, you know, the 1 out of 100, 2 out of 100 that are going to happen. And so I've actually used that in fundraising, for example, where it's like, all right, I'm raising raising funds for a company, it's when investors reject your company, it's a very personal thing. And what ends up happening is people don't raise money and then you ask them, well, how many calls did you make? How many meetings have you had? And they just have a funnel problem. It's like you guys haven't had enough conversations because you're afraid of rejection or you're avoiding rejection or you tasted some rejection and it scared you off. Yeah, but it's a numbers game and like the way to do it is put a dollar value even on nos.
Yes.
I like that method. I was going to ask you one last thing, which is what's the best way to get great at writing ads? If I wanted to go from, you know, okay to good or good to great, What do I, what do I do? I do a lot of it. I'm assuming practice is a big part of it, but is there a better way to practice?
This is funny, man. You have to be studying ads. So right now we're at a, we're at an event. Yeah, an event.
We call it Hoop Group now.
Hoop Group, HighLevel group. And I meet this guy who's got a 13 million YouTube channel and I'm like, what's your channel? And I go to type it in. There's like 5 people behind me and they type it in and they see the ad pop up and they're like, come on, Craig, you don't subscribe to YouTube, right? You can't afford the $50 or whatever, you know? And like, are you fucking kidding me? An advertising guy is going to turn off the ads, right?
I fight with one arm behind my back.
YouTube topics to get the ads on purpose. Like, I would watch the ads all day long if I could because I need to know what the lay of the land looks like.
One of my best friends who's a great marketer and has made probably personally made, I don't know, $200 million and his businesses all are just Facebook ads.
Ads.
But like, that's like his take home that he's probably made. And he switched his gender and age on Facebook. So he's a 45-year-old woman. And I was like, why does it say—
I have a 40—
why does it say you're a 45-year-old woman? And he was like, so I could see the ads, dummy. Why would I want to see the ads of a 28-year-old dude or whatever? You know, like that was— that would be terrible. Yeah, I know who I need to sell to. This is the golden customer. And like, I need to— I need to have my— I need Facebook to be showing me what they're— what they're seeing.
Absolutely.
I was like, wow, that's genius.
Yeah. And then I also hang out in a lot of biohacker circles. So I find the things that people are doing at Burning Man and on Venice Beach, and when they catch fire in these little circles, right, you can tell they're like ready to go mainstream. I like it, you know. And sometimes I get on the trend and sometimes I don't. Like, uh, mushrooms was one of them, and you know, that's a massive category now. I, I think, um, you know, our mushroom supplement with Gundry MD sells okay, but it's not like a category creator.
Like the mushroom coffee did really well, really well, right? Like the Mudwater type.
There's a few that have done it. Four Sigmatic is owned by a friend of mine. It's a great brand. I take those products myself. Yeah, there's a few mushroom brands that are, that are amazing. Yeah, sometimes you catch it and you can, as I say, like create the wave. Sometimes you're riding the existing wave. And I think too many people start businesses trying to like ride the whitewater, you know. There's a supplement company, I won't say that— say the name, but, you know, they launched with an epic celebrity and then the product looks like every other product out there and it's out of business now because they had this great celebrity who was certainly a scroll stopper, as I like to say. But they're offering a product that everyone else has too, that they could just, you know, learn about from the celebrity and then they go on Amazon and buy a cheaper one. You know, you gotta get things that are unique. And that's why the probiotics was so great in 2014. I don't have a probiotic now that's, you know, doing big numbers like that because probiotics have become commoditized.
Craig, amazing as always.
Thank you for doing it. Thank you, man.
The impromptu. Follow Craig on Twitter, Craig Klamath. Yeah, this was the impromptu. This is our conversation. We just moved it over here with the microphone. So thanks for doing it, man.
Yeah, I always love chatting with you.
All right, let's get back to it. All right, see ya.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.