I once took a media com­mu­ni­ca­tions course in which I dis­cov­ered an inter­est­ing exam­ple of the way the mind works. I soon real­ized how this applies to copy­writ­ing as well.

As part of a given les­son, they showed a video­tape of a tele­vised news­cast dur­ing which a jour­nal­ist was about to give a live report on a for­est fire dev­as­tat­ing the mid-​​west.

The news anchor said: “We now take you to Sally Smith, report­ing live from above the scene of the fire…”

He then turned around to face the back­ground screen, which gave a live bird’s-eye view of the rag­ing fire, and asked: “Sally, tell us, how big is the fire?” In a voice par­tially drowned by the whizzing sound of heli­copter blades, Sally reported:

“John, it’s so big, it’s cov­er­ing well over 140 acres of land… that’s about 200 foot­ball fields back-​​to-​​back for you and me.”

What is this telling you? A lot more than you think…

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“Try not to become a man of suc­cess, but to become a man of value.“
– Albert Ein­stein (1879–1955)

“When your val­ues are clear to you, mak­ing deci­sions becomes eas­ier.“
– Roy Disney

Peo­ple say “change your atti­tudes” or “have a pos­i­tive atti­tude,” but I don’t agree since atti­tudes can not be changed. They are results and not causes. They are byprod­ucts of your inner­most con­vic­tions. They are reflec­tions of your deep­est val­ues. You can’t just change them on a whim because your out­side is but a mir­ror reflec­tion of your inside.

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Since the new year is right around the cor­ner, blog­gers and mar­keters alike are post­ing their pre­dic­tions as if a psy­chics con­ven­tion has come to town.

So in keep­ing with that tra­di­tion, I’d like to post a few of my own. But unlike those who post their pre­dic­tions in point form, I won’t make a spe­cific list but rather share with you some of my thoughts.

(Near the end, how­ever, this post will cul­mi­nate in what I believe will be three major trends to watch out for and dive into, if you want to make some seri­ous money in 2008 and beyond.)

First off, let me state that you may or may not agree with me on these. But some­thing is def­i­nitely going on right now that points to these three trends. All the clues are pretty evi­dent, and you’ve prob­a­bly seen some of these yourself.

What I’m talk­ing about is…

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The fol­low­ing is prob­a­bly the great­est com­mand­ment in “Power Positioning.”

Now that we’ve talked about lead gen­er­a­tion adver­tis­ing, the next step is where to adver­tise. And the trick to hav­ing as many pre-​​qualified prospects come for­ward is to have your ad noticed and read by such a spe­cific group of peo­ple as much, as often, and as effec­tively as pos­si­ble. Gen­eral pub­li­ca­tions won’t do that and they cost a lot of money… That’s cost-​​per-​​lead money.

Spe­cial­ized pub­li­ca­tions, on the other hand, have the dis­tinc­tion of appeal­ing to a spe­cific audi­ence and thus increase the chances of it being noticed as well as read. Why? If one news­pa­per has a read­er­ship of 100,000 but only 25,000 fits into your demo­graph­ics, where another has only 40,000 read­ers but all of which fits into your demo­graph­ics (because the pub­li­ca­tion is spe­cial­ized), which one do you think will give you the great­est response?

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I’ve had the plea­sure of meet­ing Rus­sell Brun­son at var­i­ous sem­i­nars. Rus­sell is not only an Inter­net mar­keter, he’s also a bright guy.

And recently, he’s proven my assess­ment to be true.

When he told me I was nom­i­nated as part of his Mar­keter of The Year 2006 Awards, in the copy­writ­ing cat­e­gory, at first I was some­what ret­i­cent. But when I saw the list of those I’m up against, need­less to say, I was stunned.

Nom­i­nees include the likes of Dan Kennedy, Yanik Sil­ver, Armand Morin, Mike Fil­saime, Mark Joyner, Rich Schefren, Perry Mar­shall, Shawn Casey, Joel Comm, Ryan Deiss, and a ton of others!

But here’s Russell’s brilliance.

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