Tag: infomercial

The hit AMC television show, Mad Men, has been riveting and repulsing me since I first started watching it years ago. You’d think I’d turn it off. But there are moments in the show when brilliance comes through and I sit in awe. Then again, there are way too many moments where I’m just disgusted.

In case you didn’t know, Mad Men is a soap opera-ish adult drama about an up-start advertising agency in New York City in the 1960s. The characters are alive and easy to love or hate; the sets are so real it feels like you time traveled right to the sixties; the conflicts, personal and public, are engaging; the dialogue is human, real, and sometimes profound. All in all, it’s no wonder the show is a hit. It’s prime time drama with unique elements. And it’s won 15 Golden Globe awards and 4 Emmys — so far.

So why does it repulse me?

Virtually everyone on Mad Men has at least one psychological problem. The leader of the pack is of course Don Draper, brilliantly played by actor Jon Hamm. Draper has so many demons inside his skull, he’s a walking version of an internal hell. He’s self-destructive with women and booze, but he’s also often a genius at ad campaigns. He’s got so many secrets he might as well call himself Freud’s best candidate for therapy. In fact, he’s not even Don Draper. That’s the identity the character stole long before he became an ad man. Ah, the twists into mental hell.

Of course, I didn’t like it at all when Lane Pryce, a charming character in the show (played by Jared Harris), embezzled money from the company, was caught by Don Draper, and committed suicide. That episode is still stuck in my craw. I wasn’t even going to write a blog post about the show until after that unforgettably sad airing. I liked Lane. But he, too, was deeply flawed. More than that, people unconsciously model what they see. Seeing a strong character choose suicide is not showing wisdom. Again, we unconsciously attract what we believe and expect.

But the psychological issues don’t bother me so much as the business practices the agency demonstrates.

Lying, betrayal, manipulation, head games — it’s the way of life on the TV show. The series reveals the struggling agency is a prostitute that will sell anything for money. Their chief secretary, Joan Holloway (played by Christina Hendricks), even sells her body for a one night (actually, it was a one evening) stand to get a partnership in the agency and sway a voting client to give the agency a new account. And the agency itself takes on a car company they openly believe manufactures unreliable cars. Anything for a buck.

I know something about ad agencies. I’ve studied and written about some of the real life “Mad Men” in history. Most of the names are legends in the business (and sometimes dropped on the TV show for authenticity), but many you may never have heard of unless you go Google them: John Caples, Bruce Barton, David Ogilvy, Helen Woodward, Claude Hopkins, Rosser Reeves, and more.

These people were geniuses at writing copy and creating ads that pulled in sales. Some, like Maxwell Sackheim, created ads that were so powerful in making sales, they ran unchanged for forty years.

What I admire about the real Mad Men (and Mad Women) I studied were their creativity and sincerity. Bruce Barton, the cofounder of BBDO, and the subject of my book, The Seven Lost Secrets of Success, believed sincerity was the key to success. He turned down clients he didn’t believe in, walking away from thousands to millions of dollars.

John Caples, one of the most famous copywriters in history (he wrote the legendary 1926 ad, “They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano, But When I Started to Play…!”), said Barton’s secret was one word: sincerity.

I don’t see that secret practiced in the TV show.

Obviously, there is much truth to the stories and characters in the AMC series. You can read plenty of books about that era and discover many businesses practiced that sort of insincere, manipulative advertising, marketing, and selling. Some still do today. I’m not overlooking that reality. I’ve seen it first hand.

Decades ago in Houston I was in the offices of a corporation, there to write a sales letter for the company, when the president took a call and started yelling, “If you want a $#!&**!!! war, then you got it!” He then slammed down the phone. He turned to me, smiled, and continued our conversation as if nothing had happened. It was unnerving. I was seeing “Mad Men” the TV show in action.

I didn’t like it.

That’s the dark side of business; the side that repulses me.

But there’s also the bright side.

What I am pointing out is the fact that many people and businesses practice compassionate capitalism. They practice sincerity. They did then. They do now. They work hard to offer a product or service they believe in, and they market it in ethical ways. I think they should get equal time on the air.

The Internet helped me discover a more loving way of doing business decades ago. That’s when people who should be competitors of mine became affiliates, coauthors, and supporters of mine. It was refreshing to see online businesses openly share in the income, openly share credit, and openly work on deals together. I saw love in online marketing. I practice it, and teach it. I’ve written about it, too, numerous times, and in numerous books. This love based approach to business is alive and well. Not just online, of course, but everywhere — if you look.

But I rarely see that portrayed in the Mad Men series. Sometimes Don Draper will do a noble thing. Often he exhibits genius in creating or analyzing ads and concepts. Sometimes a young executive will reveal strong ethics (usually the character named Ken Cosgrove, played by Aaron Staton) in the show.

Unfortunately, more often than not, the show reveals the shadow side of business and life. If you don’t educate and enlighten yourself, the negative elements broadcast in the show may distort your view of reality; you’ll see the negative even in the positive.

That’s where I want to see a remedy.

Here’s what I suggest:

Quit watching the show. Yea, I know, I’m not going to stop either. Not with one episode left in the current season. So at least give your brain some balance and read some of the more loving business books and read about the more wholesome business characters.

Here are a few suggestions (in no particular order):

Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie

The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz

The Seven Lost Secrets of Success by Joe Vitale

The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising by Kenneth Roman

My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

Faith and Fortune: How Compassionate Capitalism Is Transforming American Business by Marc Gunther

Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World by M. Bishop

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis

Screw Business As Usual by Richard Branson

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

The Real Mad Men: The Renegades of Madison Avenue and the Golden Age of Advertising by Andrew Cracknell

Mad Women: The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the 60’s and Beyond by Jane Maas

And remember: You can be the positive example you long to see.

You may not see it on Mad Men, but you can live it.

Rather than look for inspiration, be the inspiration.

Be the hero.

Sincerely.

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS – What books have you read showing a more positive side of doing business? I’d love to know and I’m sure others would, too. Please post a comment and tell us. Thank you.

Member BBB 2003 - 2012

For the last seven years I have been privately interviewing some of the greatest minds in the world — thinkers, speakers, authors, visionaries, healers, scientists, marketers, and more.

The secrets, tips, methods and leading-edge information these people share with me every month is inspiring, practical, eye-opening and often unforgettable.

But only subscribers to my Hypnotic Gold membership program get to hear these incredible interviews, and we closed admission to it years ago.

Well, I have good news for you.

Not only can you now subscribe to these private monthly interviews, but when you do, you can also have access to *all* of the past ones.

Click image to subscribe now

This is a breakthrough of historic proportions.

The seven years of interviews are a storehouse of wisdom not unlike the legendary library of Alexander the Great.

Am I overstating this?

I don’t think so.

This is such a miraculous collection of mind-expanding and inspiring interviews, that the best way to get a grasp of the gold in them is to go here —

http://hypnoticgold.com/

And I’ll be interviewing more great minds this year. You’d be wise to sign up now, start listening to the past interviews, and gear up for the new ones coming in 2012.

Please go review the site. This is well worth your time, as the wisdom there is beyond life transformative.

Go see.

Ao Akua,

joe

PS – As before, we will only let the doors stay open for membership for a short time. If you want to be one of the privileged few, please go here now — http://hypnoticgold.com/

Member BBB 2003 - 2012

I was interviewed about my new audio program (The Abundance Paradigm) while in Chicago recording it. The host asked, “Joe, with the economy in the tank and sinking, what are we to do?”

“How do you know it’s sinking?” I asked. “Where did you hear about it?”

He seemed surprised by my questions. But I didn’t give him a chance to reply. I went on saying —

“The only reason you think it’s terrible out there is because you are being programmed to think so by the mainstream media.”

The host stared at me as I went on my soapbox and continued —

“The media is trained to find bad news and broadcast it to you. The more they do it and you believe it, the worst the world looks. It then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You live from the new paradigm of scarcity and the media, doing its job, broadcasts it. You don’t even see it happening. It feels real. You take it as reality.”

At that point I could have told the true story of how ABC News came to my home – twice – and interviewed me for hours. They even filmed an entire evening with me and celebrity fitness model Jennifer Nicole Lee during one of my Rolls-Royce Phantom Masterminds.

Six months later all that footage was edited down to barely three minutes of highly distorted “news.” The same news station that broadcast a slimy angle about my work also broadcast commercials for drugs with known side effects, such as death.

That’s mainstream news.

You might call it the Scarcity Network.

The Scarcity Network typically airs facts in negative terms and slants. For example, a reader sent me the following —

“Joe, just a further example for you of negative news.  The US originally thought that we lost 131,000 jobs in July, it is actually 77K jobs better and it is still packaged as bad news.  Then, some people feel that their job prospects are better so they decide to enter the labor force and we show an uptick in unemployment. Wouldn’t a headline of:  “US retains 77,000 more jobs than originally thought while more workers choose to enter the labor force” be a better headline?”

Yes, it would be a better headline. But the Scarcity Network won’t broadcast that. It’s not the programming they want you to have in your head. They need you to live in fear. They need you controlled. They’re not doing this out of any intentional conspiracy, but because they were programmed, too. This is their paradigm.

But I didn’t relate either of the above to my interviewer. Instead, I turned direction and said —

“But what if there was a different channel to watch or listen to? What if there was an Abundance Network and all it broadcast were inspiring stories of people succeeding, accomplishing, attracting and achieving? What if they spun everything in a good way?”

I continued with —

“We all know that there are people doing well in the world right now. If this alternative media broadcast their positive news, and that’s all you watched, you would soon be programmed to see the world as an abundant place. You would then create a self-fulfilling prophecy of abundance. You would then see abundance. You would then see opportunities. You would live in a world of miracles. That would then feel real.”

At that point I could have related the true story of the man who gave out credit cards to a handful of homeless people as a test to see what they would do with them. In every case, the homeless person used the card as they said they would, didn’t misuse it to buy drugs or alcohol, and even returned the card when done.

The Abundance Network would report this story to show the hope and responsibility in the destitute; the Scarcity Network would run a similar test but air what didn’t work, even if they had to make it up, or they would complain that the cards had low limits, etc.  They would find a weakness in an otherwise inspiring story. But they would focus on the weakness not to correct it but to communicate the unspoken programming, “See, told you homeless people were unreliable and its hopeless to try to help them!”

Back to my interview.

My host barely had time to stutter before I kept going with —

“Look. Both types of world exist right now — the lousy economy one as well as the abundant economy one. I’m not denying that. But it’s like an optical illusion. Depending on how you look, the image is either an old woman, or a young woman. Reality itself is neutral. The question is, which view are you going to let program you? Which do you want to live in?”

I’m not aware of an Abundance Network yet. But until something like it exists — or until my new audio program comes out in late October or The Dr. Joe Vitale Show starts airing on CBS radio — what are you to do?

Here’s my suggestion —

Reprogram your mind.

Take charge of it.

Feed it the positive and you’ll see and then attract the positive.

You’ll “tune in” to the Abundance Network in your own mind. You’ll have a paradigm shift (a shift of your view of the world) and you’ll see abundance where you didn’t before. It’s basic Law of Attraction at work: you attract what you expect and believe. Just change the channel in your mind.

And then you can thumb your nose at the doomsayers out there.

You can become immune to them.

You can see reality as the grand optical illusion and choose which view of it best suits you.

How can you do this?

Go see — http://milagromanifestationmethod.com

It’s the single best thing you can do for yourself — short of Miracles Coaching — at this time in history.

It’ll tell you the true story of a broke man who found the secret to fulfilling virtually any desire you may have.

And it’ll tell you how to easily program your mind with the positive while you do something even easier than watching TV.

Go to — http://milagromanifestationmethod.com

And check out Miracles Coaching right here.

What station will you choose — the Scarcity Network or the Abundance Network?

It’s your move.

And your mind.

Choose wisely.

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS — You’ll get about $1,150 in mind shifting goods when you go to that site. So why not go there right now, while it’s on your mind and you know you’re curious? Go here — http://milagromanifestationmethod.com

Note: My new audio program will be out late October. It’s called The Abundance Paradigm: Moving from the Law of Attraction to the Law of Creation. Stay tuned for details. For now, visit Nightingale-Conant. It’s pretty close to an Abundance Network all by itself. Go see. You’ll love it.

You can use the Law of Attraction for anything. Even to attract top models. But be sure you’re clear about what you’re looking for first. Here’s a marketing lesson from Poland on “Trick Marketing” vs “Love Marketing.” I’ve written about ethical marketing in such books as Hypnotic Writing and Buying Trances, but this short video brings it all to life. It’s entertaining as well as educational. Enjoy!

In Poland we speculated about the mindset of Law of Attraction followers. Why do they love smoothies? Enjoy!