I'm going to share one of my favorite advertising lessons of all time, and it comes from none other than The Great Gary Bencivenga.

Gary is arguably one of the greatest copywriters and marketers in history. And it's important we never forget the legends who paved the road of direct response long before us.

Another reason I'm sharing this is because there will be someone reading this who won't even know who Gary Bencivenga is, which is absolutely ridiculous to me. 

I mean, how can you not know who one of the greatest direct response marketers in history is? 

The man shattered records, beat control after control, and wrote promotions that ran for decades. He has one of the best track records in direct response history and is often regarded as the “Greatest Living Copywriter.” Plus, he did it with DIRECT MAIL, arguably the hardest and (and “coldest”) traffic there is. And there’s no Meta pixel or fancy tracking software like today.

I originally stumbled on this lesson in an interview Gary did with another direct response legend, Clayton Makepeace.

And in that interview, Gary shared a crucial lesson. And it's a lesson I believe is more relevant than ever in today's competitive (and brain rotting) landscape.

Below is an excerpt from that interview. I'm going to copy and paste Gary's words below.

I also managed to find some of Gary’s headlines they’re talking about in the interview. So if you scroll down, you’ll see them as well.

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Clayton: You had a fantastic article in one of the early issues of Bencivenga Bullets on, if I remember correctly, the two most important words in advertising. You said, it’s not “you,” it’s not “free,” it’s “yeah, sure.”

Gary: I gave a seminar at Rodale once. I had the good fortune to never have lost a split run test at Rodale against some very tough competition selling books for the book division. I competed against Gene Schwartz and most of the top names out there, and I never lost.

So they called me in to ask, “How are you doing this? Tell us the approach that you’re following.” 

So I ran through a whole list of headlines from their advertising, as well as many other examples from our daily lives. 

For example, what politicians promise every November — “I’m never going to raise your taxes and I’m going to give you universal health care” … “I’m going to get rid of crime in our schools.” 

And what does everybody say once that’s out of their mouths? They say, “Yeah, sure.”

That’s the biggest problem that most B-level copywriters face. 

They’re always looking for ways to increase the strength of their headline, and the easiest way, apparently, is to increase the hype or ratchet up the promise. 

But usually that’s going on in the wrong direction because you’re sounding more like the politician who is promising an even more undeliverable promise. 

Since everybody out there is looking for a way to dismiss you as quickly as they can because they’ve got 100 other messages to get through, as soon as they see an over-promising headline, that is the first permission that they have to just blow you off.

You’re usually much better with an under-promising headline. 

A great example that I learned in the days that I was working with Dan Rosenthal was for one of our clients who sold gold and silver coins and bullion. 

In this case it was an ad for silver. The headline was a famous headline that ran for many years, “Why the price of silver may rise steeply.”

Thinking I was such a hot-shot copywriter, I said to Dan Rosenthal, who I believe was the author of that headline and the great, great ad that followed it, I said, “Why are you saying, ‘may rise’? You should test a headline that sounds a little stronger, a little bolder, such as ‘Why the price of silver will rise steeply.’ That way it sounds, Dan, like you believe what you’re predicting.”

So we tested my version and, of course, it bombed. 

It’s counterintuitive, but “Why the price of silver may rise steeply” outperformed “Why the price of silver will rise steeply” maybe by 200%.

And the body copy was exactly the same for both versions. 

It went into why inflation and why a silver shortage is about to exert irresistible pressure under the price of silver to cause silver prices to go higher. It gave every reason why silver was going up. It was full of proof and full of facts and full of figures, plus an opportunity to send for a booklet on how you can profit on the coming rise in silver prices.

As I say, it created land office business on the strength of that ad but I could never understand why “may rise” pulled so much better than the more forceful “will rise.”

But it’s because of that disbelief factor. Most investors are savvy. So as soon as you promise something that really is unknowable such as “will rise,” they know that you can’t predict the future. But when you build in a little bit of understatement, you suck them right in.

So I’ve learned to apply that principle in many, many headlines. 

One of my best headlines for Hume Publishing was “Get Rich Slowly.” 

I created an enemy out of all of the get rich quick investment courses and opportunities out there by saying, “Look, if you’re tired of all the hype, this is the course that you should be buying because if you got $2,000 to $3,000 to put aside each year, this is a course that could easily get you to the $1 million mark. It’s not going to happen in three, four or even five years, but if you want to retire with $1 million and can only put $2,000 aside in an IRA each year, this is how it’s done.”

That ad was virtually unbeatable for several years with a headline that the client didn’t even want to test, “Get Rich Slowly.” 

They said, “Gary, have you lost your mind? Who wants to get rich slowly?” 

So I said, “Look, people are so tired of ‘get rich quick,’ it’s not believable anymore.”

Nobody buys without belief, so if you advertise something that can be believed, then most of the battle is already won.

Clayton: I think that’s fascinating, and I think it kind of ties into the “Lies, Lies, Lies” package you did for Mark Skousen’s Forecasts & Strategies, which you must be tired of talking about.

Gary: No, no, not at all. Most people probably don’t even know that package but yes, you’re right …

Clayton: That is the classic of financial newsletter promotion.

Gary: Oh thank you. That was extremely successful and ran for many years.

Clayton: And it was really wonderful because there’s not even a hint of a benefit in your main headline. It simply seized on a resident emotion — the skepticism and frustration of investors who had heard it all, tried it all and were continually disappointed. And then in the deck copy, you came on with “Why we investors are sick and tired of these things that are happening to us.” And then the real payoff was, “How getting richer is the best revenge.” I’m doing that just from memory — that’s how powerful it was.

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There are so many golden nuggets from this interview.

I'm linking it HERE so you can read it as well. Highly recommended, and I recommend saving the interview for yourself in case it ever goes offline.

If we look at today's advertising and Meta landscape, prospects are more skeptical and jaded than ever. 

They don't believe anything, really. And the attention spans are down the toilet. 

Yet, despite this, today's marketers and DTC guys keep ramping up the claims, no matter how unbelievable it sounds. And they do it even without trying to back up what they're saying.

We can see this with today's "hooks." It's all just promise after promise, as if the prospect is completely oblivious. And sure, some of them are. But selling to people who will believe anything just because it was said (and not backed up) has a cap. And all the big brands that actually are scaling, their entire offer, and how they present that offer to the market, is believable.

So that is one of the first things I look at when analyzing a brand or an ad. How believable is the whole thing? What’s stopping it from making me believe the claims? What would be required to add (or remove) to make the whole thing believable? Once we identify those elements, the ad usually starts working again.