Did You Know Dashiell Hammett was Once a Copywriter?

Tuberculosis compelled Dashiell Hammett to quit his job as a Pinkerton detective in 1921.

Seeking less strenuous work, he enrolled in a journalism course at a business school in San Francisco, and began to write mystery stories for pulp magazines.

But by 1926 Hammett found mystery-writing couldn't earn him enough to live on, so he applied for a job as a copywriter with Samuels Jewelers. It paid a whopping $350 a month—nearly 10 times Hammett's earnings for pulp fiction.

He liked the new work; but he liked booze better. Before six months on the job Hammett was fired, after passing out in the office.

At the encouragement of a pulp magazine editor, Hammett began writing a "hard-boiled" mystery novel, Red Harvest. He mailed it—unsolicited—to the publisher Alfred A. Knopf in 1929.

Knopf realized it had received something unprecedented: a thriller that was "real art."

With weeks of the novel's appearance, reviewers were comparing Hammett to Hemingway. 

Hammett followed Red Harvest the same year with a second novel, The Dain Curse; and in 1930 published his most famous detective novel, The Maltese Falcon.

How Copywriters Leverage the "Endowment Effect"

A study by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman shows we overvalue the things we own—an emotional bias he calls the "endowment effect." Propelling the effect is our a fear of losing those things.

Copywriters put the endowment effect to work all the time, helping prospects vicariously experience owning a product or using a service:

• The writer for e-com platform provider Shopify helps prospects imagine owning an online store: "With instant access to hundreds of the best looking themes and complete control over the look and feel, you finally have a gorgeous store of your own that reflects the personality of your business."
  
  
• The writer for event producer Age Management Medicine Group helps prospects imagine participating in a conference: "After attending this in-depth, four-day conference, you’ll walk away with what you need to add this 21st century medical specialty to your existing practice."
  
  
• The writer for CRM provider Salesforce helps prospects imagine licensing a mobile sales platform: "Welcome to a new world, and a better way to sell. Where field sales sells only on mobile devices. It’s sales managers knowing which deals will close. And when. A world where lead and contact information is always fresh and complete. And everyone performs like an 'A' player."

Thanks to the endowment effect, ownership―even when vicarious―makes it hard for prospects to let go of your offer.

What Happened?

A bombshell not unlike Fire and Fury hit bookstores 40 years ago.

Elvis: What Happened?, based on interviews with three of the rock star's private bodyguards, painted a tabloid-style portrait of the King as a self-indulgent child bent on "slow suicide."

Fans were shocked, and reacted by calling the book a con-job. They cited the author's many factual errors; his failure to reveal his sources; his failure to verify the sources' accounts with third parties; and his frequent use of qualifiers like "as I recall."

Elvis was also enraged by the book and spoke in private about contract-killing the three bodyguards.

But when Elvis OD'd two weeks after its release, Elvis: What Happened? gained instant credibility, and a steady stream of confidants began to speak out, confirming the book's allegations.

With Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Michael Wolff, journalist and former editor of Adweek, has created the portrait of another self-indulgent child.

Trump's fans are reacting in the same way Elvis' did 40 years ago; and Trump's press secretary has dismissed Wolff's book as "trashy tabloid fiction." But unlike Elvis: What Happened?, Fire and Fury is based on interviews with 200 sources.

When the insiders―no matter their number―tell an essentially consistent story, only a fool cries, "Fake!"

Hedging

"Lead-gen leaders" are twice as likely to use a multi-channel approach as "mainstream companies," according to a survey of 1,000 B2B marketers by Digital Doughnut.

You could say lead-gen leaders understand hedging.

They know that "no single class of content asset stands out as particularly effective for driving good-quality leads," as Digital Doughnut reports; and yet, at the same time, that every class―if used well―can drive good-quality leads.

The channels they find most effective? The answers below might surprise you.

Source: The State of B2B Lead Generation, courtesy Digital Doughnut

Authority versus Authenticity

For sheer magnetism, nothing matches authority. B2B brands that show authority attract customers with ease, and always will: they're in a category by themselves. 

But lots of brands lay claim to authority without justification.

The word authority came into English around 1200 and stems from the Latin auctoritas, meaning "mastery." English speakers of the day believed an authority commanded trust, because he or she possessed demonstrable mastery.

Showing authority means showing mastery of certain theories, facts, skill-sets, and tool-sets. If your brand can show mastery, you're set―customers will flock to you; if it can't, it can at least show authenticity―another advantageous category.

Authenticity came into English around 1300 and stems from the Greek authentikos, meaning "original." English speakers of the day believed someone who showed authenticity was an "original," and therefore "real" and "trustworthy."

Showing authenticity means being an original: an original in your approaches to thinking, problem-solving, and adding value. That won't by itself attract customers, but it will make pursuing them a lot more effective.

Showing neither authority nor authenticity puts your brand in a third category―the category of meh―where only continuous hustling and discounting and perhaps sheer ubiquity attract customers.