Secret #8: A Little Known Marketing Secret I Learned From Seinfeld... (Has Nothing To Do With Email)
Russell Brunson (host of Marketing Secrets) explains a marketing lesson drawn from the J. Peterman catalog (made famous in Seinfeld). He shows physical J. Peterman catalogs he bought (noting originals from 1994), reads examples of the evocative, story-driven product copy, and argues e-commerce sellers should study that copywriting style to improve product pages and funnels. Guests Steven and Dave react and read passages; Brunson emphasizes learning marketing roots and using narrative-driven descriptions instead of bland product labels.
Questions this video answers
1994
Chapters
So the big question is this. How are entrepreneurs like us who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, were spending money from our own pockets? How do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing Secrets. What's up, everybody? Hey, this is Russell. I just want to jump on real quick, kind of spur the moment, because I want to share something with all of you guys that is important, and it has to do with the show Seinfeld. I knew since I said Seinfeld, some of you guys, like, I read your book, Russell. It's the Seinfeld email sequences. And it's not Talk about something completely different that a lot of you guys probably didn't even know about yet. This is one of, like, I don't know about a lot of you guys. A lot of you guys are into marketing now, and you're loving it because, like, we're talking about making exciting and making it sexy. But I want you to understand, marketing has been like the old timers. Most of them are dead now. They're no longer alive. Like the legends. This is where the coolest stuff comes from. And so people ask me what I do for fun. Okay, look what I spent $4,000 buying these right here. These are a whole bunch of swipe files of ads from dead people because they're so amazing, right? And so anyway, where do I get weird stuff like this? Someone's already asking. So I get stuff like this on ebay. And I just recently got a purchase that showed up today that I want to show you guys. It's marketing something like me. It's like the greatest marketing thing on planet Earth. Here's a snapshot. What is really quick? I saw you get. Okay, based on that, who can tell me what this is? It has to do with Seinfeld. This is a pop quiz. I want to know your answer down below. Anyone who gets the answer to this quiz, I will have so much respect for you as a marketing person. So there's something that has to do with this and Seinfeld. Anyone knows what it is, post it down below. I want to see if any of you guys know. Okay, there's a hint. It's an old catalog from 1994. What does it have to do with Jerry Seinfeld and Elaine and the crew? Any of you guys know? Okay, I'll give You guys, another hint. I'll give you the title of it at the top. It's gonna be backwards on Facebook Live. But this is one of the original J. Peterman catalogs from 1994. And we getting closer. Knowing what I'm talking about. Okay. All right. Kramer's roommate. All right, for those who don't know, I'm gonna explain what's happening. So many of you guys, hopefully everybody has watched the show Seinfeld. You guys remember that Elaine got a job at the J. Peterman catalog, right? And do you remember Jay Peterman was like this eccentric person, and he'd go on vacations and he'd go buy hats, and then he'd write all this amazing copy in these catalogs. And Elaine became one of the copywriters. They had all these people. It was like this huge spoof for multiple different seasons. What many of you guys probably don't know is the J. Peterman catalog is a real thing. It was a real thing. And any of the old school direct response copywriters know, and you study stuff like this. And so the other day I was doing an interview, a podcast interview with some e comm sellers, and they're asking me like, well, how does this funnel stuff work for E commerce people? I was like, you guys, do you not know who Jay Peterman is? And they're like, that guy on Seinfeld. I'm like, no.
Are you serious?
Like, you need to understand your roots. Where did you come from? You were marketing and selling. You need to understand your roots. You guys understand your roots. There's so much gold that's laying there waiting for you to take it.
So.
So anyone selling E commerce or anyone selling anything, you need to understand who Jay Peterman was. So Jay Peterman was a visionary, a genius, an amazing copywriter who built a huge company based on these catalogs. Now, I went to ebay and I searched for Jay Peterman catalogs after that interview because I wanted to get some of them to show all of you guys the foundation, the history where this whole thing is coming from. And if you have an e commerce site, this is a hint. So here's four J. Peterman catalogs I got. Dave and Steven here are geeking out.
On geeking out big time. Awesome stories.
Awesome stories. So he doesn't just say, give us an example of one real quick. Hold on. Here's a blue shirt to sell. Or here's. This is the best.
Okay.
Do you want to read it in your. In your marketing voice?
So this is.
What is this? The Slinky cord. So a lot of you guys would have this on your E comm store, your E comm funnel. You'd be like, it's ugly green pants and a white shirt. Right? So excuse me, listen to the copy on every single page in the Peterman catalog to see why this company grew so big and what you guys should be doing in the copy on your E comm. Amazon listings, all sorts of stuff. So you ready to be our order?
Absolutely. A Bedouin horsemen chase you halfway across the desert. A beautiful woman on a camel in the desert alone is too ripe a target to dismiss. Your heart leaps in your throat again and again. An exquisite torment the Arabs call katukalab or heart cutting. Delirious, half dead, you reach the Emir's palace. A Gallus slave rears his horse in your path. You notice he is speaking in Peter o' Toole's voice. Just then you awaken in the royal suite of the Lanesboro in London. Lawrence of Arabia blaring from the television set. You rush back to sleep. Slinky silk cord tank top and slinky silk cord pants. Not harem pants, but clothes 100% flowing loose silk, more romantic, more interesting than you remembered.
Ooh.
Now that is how you sell something that's called good copy. You don't put like brown, orange or yellow add to cart. You sell your stuff. So every page in this catalog they're selling and they don't even have pictures. It's like paintings of the pictures because this is pre pictures apparently. But every single one has amazing copy to sell it and so it would behoove most of you to go to ebay. I don't know how many are still available or even Google. I'm sure you can find online as well. But search for the J. Peterman catalogs. The original ones. These ones I bought here on eBay from 1994. The older the better because you know, stuff like this gets better with time.
This whole thing is stories. There's one line of description.
Okay, so this is. You want to read this one? This is. Steam's gonna order this one. This is the.
This is the famous Ms. Blue.
The famous Ms. Blue Hat. So like if this was on Shopify site, how be like one button like add to cart get.
Yeah, basically in a picture of it.
Alright, so what would Jay Peterman do?
So what he would do is he'd say something like this. He said, you know who I mean? It could have been you. One day you arrived by train, but from where nobody knew. You carved a plantation out of a thousand acres of dry land which the money called worthless. You diverted a stream and proved them wrong. You wore big pajama pants, or you wear a big panama hat, like a man's hat or like a man, but you didn't look like a man. Sometimes you wore it and held it in the chin strap. Sometimes you wore it down on your back. You became rich, I guess. Anyway, you had a piano. I heard it, I saw you.
And those.
Anyway, it's really cool. And at the end he goes, I remember all that. And it actually kind of rhymes as you go through. And there's literally just one line made in ecuador leather chinstrap, four inches, like 40 bucks. Like what? I want this hat now. It's for a woman.
Alright, so what the lesson and the moral today that I want you to understand is that copy is the king. It's the key to everything. I told this on the Marketing Secrets podcast. A lot of you may not have heard this, but copyright is not sexy. It's not exciting. And so when I want to teach copy, if I call it copywriting, guess what all of us do? We all like fall asleep, our eyes glaze over. But if you read the Expert Secrets book, guess what that book is. That's my contribution to copywriting. Teaching. How to tell stories, how to do it the right way, how to tell epiphany, bridges, how to tell, kind of like bridges, how to position the offer, all those kind of things. Like, it's copy, it's copywriting. So that is the study that you guys gotta understand and understand, like wherever you're coming at. Somebody has been doing this business for years, six months, five years, 10 years. But like, there is like people that have gone before us that have mastered this stuff. And so like, the reason why I do good today is because I study the old timers. The old timers are the key, you guys, to so much of this stuff. If you have an e commerce site and you want to do well, like Master J. Peterman, buy his catalogs, read the copy, understand that. If you want to understand how to do newsletters, go read Gary Halbert letter, go read. You know, like go back to the foundation where this stuff all began. Because that's, that's the key. So anyway, there you go, guys. There's our sneak attack episode of the J. Peterman catalog. If you like this, please share it as much as you can. I love people to hear more about it. But now you guys are all in on the secret. So understand that, you guys, copy is the key. It's the secret. And next time you watch Seinfeld and you see Lane working for Jay Peterman catalog, now you'll know kind of the joke behind the joke, what she's talking about, why it's so cool, all sorts of stuff like that. So that's all I got you guys. And if for some reason you're living in a rock and you don't have the Expert Secrets book yet, just go to expertsecrets.com because it is my contribution to copywriting. You know, I always said I would never write a copywriting course or product because it's not sexy or exciting, it's just not that cool. So I called it something different. But it's copywriting. That's what that message, that book is all about. Helping you understand how to write good copy, tell good stories. All those things tie together. So that's what I got you guys. And anyway, have an amazing day. Hope you guys had a good job and we will talk soon. Bye. Everybody want more marketing secrets? If so, then go get your copies of my two best selling books. Book number one is called Expert Secrets and you can get a free copy@expertsecrets.com and book number two is called Dotcom Secrets and you can get your free copy@dotcomsecrets.com Inside these two books you'll find my top 35 secrets that we've used to become the fastest growing non VC backed SaaS startup company in the world.
