Us versus them, works every time.

This is a bit of an advanced topic, but… if you can remember to always make your weakness, or your perceived weakness, your strength — your result will usually cripple your competition.

For instance, no matter what you’re doing, there is nothing that gives your actions more energy than finding a bunch of other people doing the same thing and then joining them all under one united front.

This works whether what you’re doing is popular or unpopular, healthy or unhealthy, commonplace or unconventional — even if what you’re doing is smoking cigarettes.

As an example, here’s a very clever “strength in numbers” marketing strategy, one of the largest tobacco companies in the world has come up with — and it’s one you can easily copy.

As you probably know, in many countries around the world, smoking is being banned in public places, including restaurants. So to rally their troops against this, and to make sure this doesn’t result in more people quitting smoking, Altadis (a European tobacco conglomerate) has set up a website that glamorizes smoking.

It’s called Le Lab, and inside this lab there are many things. There are tons of photos of celebrities smoking, for starters. As you know, our society is absolutely manic when it comes to pop culture, and it is brain-dead simple to validate what you’re doing, by showing you how this same behavior fits into the lifestyles of so many of the rich and famous.

There is also a series of cutting-edge artsy videos, which show the pleasures of smoking — portraying smoking as sensual even. They even wax nostalgic, as in “Remember the first time you took a drag?”

(Side note: In the Seductive Selling System, “nostlalgia” is one of the 47 different emotional buy-buttons I show you how to push, along with examples of sales copy and different themes to use. You can see this at http://www.kingofcopy.com/seductive )

Altadis is planning on using Le Lab as a platform for social networking for all it’s consumers. What I’m incredibly puzzled about, is that right now, only Altadis employees can access this site, which makes absolutely no sense at all.

How can you use this formula in your business?

Very simple: create an offline newsletter for your list… create a forum for your list… create some sort of social networking for your buyers… let your customers or clients attend a public speaking engagement you will host (have them bring friends, of course)… create a big huge cause that all your buyers feel passionate about, and then create a mechanism where they can all contribute to it in some way, or get behind it in some way… the list is virtually endless.

What you want to keep in mind is the “us versus them” psychology behind this. And I don’t care whether you’re working with cancer survivors, Harley riders, or Maverick Marketers (kingofcopy.com/mavericks) — everyone wants to feel united with someone and everyone wants to believe they are unique in their thinking.

Understanding this, and leveraging it, is worth a small fortune for those ambitious enough to take action.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. “Yes, Virginia… There Is A Santa Claus!” That’s the headline of this month’s Seductive Selling Newsletter and you can find out who this Santa is, as well as profit from the bounty of his basket of gifts — BUT… you only have THREE days left to do this! Check it out here at http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl — claim your FIFTEEN free gifts and then laugh like a fat man in a red suit, all the way to the bank.

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