The Greatest Mind Hacks in Marketing History (Craig Clemens Interview)

0:00All right, you're about to hear a podcast with a guy who does over a billion dollars a year in sales. and yet 99.9 % of you have never heard of them. It's my friend Craig. He is the smartest marketing mind I know, period. And in this podcast, he talks about the three 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 zero to 127 million in sales in year one. Enjoy this episode with Craig Clemens. I feel like I can 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 Craig, what's going on, man?

0:39We were just having a conversation out there and you gave me this teaser that's unbelievable. You were like, well, you know, the three greatest lines 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, 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. It's an e-commerce company. You guys have done over a billion dollars of sales online.

1:10So whenever I - A billion a year. A billion a year. A 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 three greatest lines of marketing. What are they? Okay, so the greatest line in marketing history, if you Google or chat GPT it, is going to say a line different than what I was going to tell you.

1:42Okay, what would they say? I'm going to tell you what they're going to 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.

2:22So 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 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, make your own perfume, right? And so he goes up and he's like, hey, what are these creations of perfume?

2:53Do 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're 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, OK, 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 tea.

3:27Puts it in the bottle. And then he sits on it for like three months. Calls Tova Borgnine and he goes, Tova, I have spent the last three 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 Roteo Drive. Candy is a wife of Aaron Spelling, the big producer.

4:07And 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.

5:05So they put up the ad and, 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 going to 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 with this big reveal. He has two 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.

5:59The next day, the phone rang with unsolicited offers from, you know, Macy's, Robinson's May, all the department stores at the time, Barney Sacks, et cetera, et cetera. 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 it's CVS behind, you know, photo counter or something like that. But it still, I think, exists. Wow. Yeah. So look for the teeth over 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.

6:34Some curiosity. Yeah. Which famous movie star is it? 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? 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 secret marketing embed or some shit like that. You know, it's like the hidden secret message that even the reader doesn't know they're receiving.

7:11But 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, new restaurant owner swears on her 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 great ending to it, too.

7:43And then he 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 going to open a taco stand. She didn't end up doing it. I came up with a name, too. It was going to be in San Diego. It was going to be called Burro Borachos.

8:14So, like, drunken donkeys. Yeah. I think it would kill it, man. If anyone out there, if you're watching this and you want to start a taco stand together, Heather, you got to 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 Barrage. 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 came out, I think, in the 90s or something like that before I was in marketing.

8:42But 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 four hours, call a physician immediately. So we've all heard it. 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 and you're like, Fuck, this could actually be a four hour erection. I'll be happy with four minutes, man, you know? And it's such a great line.

9:25So 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, blah, blah, blah. 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 stem cell treatments last week.

10:01And 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. Right. Changed 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. And 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 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.

10:32Do you know Joe Sugarman? I've heard the name, but yeah. Blue Blocker Sunglasses. So we can 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 his 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 Blue Blocker infomercial, which was one of the biggest infomercials at the 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?

11:03Slick box, right? Slick box in the corner of the room. Yeah. This one 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 into positive Right.

11:39Okay. So are we on number two or that was number two? No, that was number two. Okay. Oh, okay. Okay. So maybe there's going to be five, four. I don't know how many we said there was going to be. Okay. 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 these infomercials. Yes. There was a woman, a man, I wish I could remember her name, but it was a female copywriter that created this. And it changed the entire world of infomercials and I think the entire world of selling.

12:13And 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. No one's buying this fucking thing to call now. You probably get a busy signal. please keep calling. Please keep trying. You know, the, the, the offer is going to stay around for this many minutes. Please keep trying to call. It just gives the, the, uh, image of the phones flying in the room and everyone's trying to place their orders and it's like, hi to man. And, you know, it gets you excited.

12:50And you, 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. Right. It is still available. Right. Right. It's like that feeling of relief. So that was a big line. I'll give a shout out to that. 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 kind of the first 10 minutes or so. And so I'm like trying to think about how to drum up excitement or whatever.

13:25And so part of the team, you know, first instinct is like, do we discount? No, no, we're not going to discount. That's going to have the opposite effect probably. do we um 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 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 as a as a make good you know i give you my word that for the next one, we're going to have more.

14:00But 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, 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. Cause we embedded the, instead of saying like, come get it. Yes. We were like, we're so sorry. It's, 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 three 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 we will read the youtube comments 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 three number three four i can't remember which one which one they're eating the dogs they're They're eating the cats.

14:59They're eating the pets of the people who live there. I have that song in my head now, too. The TikTok reboot, they're eating the dogs. People of Springfield, 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 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.

15:50these 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 and 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.

16:35I 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 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?

17:23There's 8 million people that came in under Biden. There's 20 million people that came in under Biden. And there's this 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 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.

17:59And 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, 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 to 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.

18:27And he goes, I've been a trained basically like, and 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.

18:59But if he never said that, you have to debate the migrant point. And so and he was talking about like when Jeb Bush was the favorite at the time because 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.

19:32And nobody in politics was doing that to each other. Right. Crooked Hillary. He was just coming up with these linguistic kill shots or 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 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.

20:06And 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. It 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. And the garbage truck, he did the same thing when Joe Biden called his supporters garbage.

20:50He 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 poly market. So like the news cycle, whoever had something positive, their odds would go up on poly market. And then Trump did the rally at MSG and he had Tony Hinchcliffe did the diss in the Puerto Ricans and like the poly market 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.

21:25It was wild to see these two things tracking. So let's do another one of the greatest lines. OK, so now we can go to the chat GPT line. What would they say? And it really is. And this is something that 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, 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.

22:08And then the depression happened 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 Joseph Devine, too, the greatest art dealer of all time, because 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 francis gearty who was at an agency that debier's hired and the story goes is like she was frustrated and she was like you know i don't know her last last down her last penny or something on one night she is 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 plane band a gold band you know sometimes it would be like like an offering like a cow or like uh 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 is like an exact contrast to that.

23:24Yes. 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. 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 in order for them to show that.

24:03So then you're watching the movie and that now influences culture. I guess that's how you do it. The big romantic gesture is to literally get down on one knee and hand her a diamond ring that became, used kind of top-down influence also to do it, right? And then scarcity, right? Because they limit the supply. So all the core marketing things, you know, influence, social proof, that frame, diamonds are forever, scarcity, they kind of use all of it. Yes. And now there's this big debate going on between lab-grown diamonds and mine diamonds. Have you heard of this? It's fascinating. Because I think they're 10%, 20 % of the price or something like that.

24:38It's probably price control among the companies. 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. 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, so this is 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.

25:16so they lowered the price intentionally like crappy ones good dime good library 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 something like that it might actually be more competitive they made it so much cheaper that they like took away the uh the value the perceived value the prestige of the diamond doing that i didn't know that they were like involved in that process. Pretty crazy. You put me on to an incredible marketer, Gary Benzavanga, who I had never heard of. And he has this little example, little exercise that I love.