Making Them Believe: The 21 Principles and Lost Secrets of Dr. J. R. Brinnkley-Style Marketing

by Dan S. Kennedy

As I write this page, I am a few weeks into my 35th year breathing, eating, sleeping and earning my living with advertising, marketing and promotion—in many ways, making hay from hype. I am not at all ashamed of that truth. I love my work. So I am a great fan of outrageous, over the top advertising and marketing, all the way to flim-flammery.

The ad is a masterpiece, and I admire it like I imagine a connoisseur of art admires a great painting hung in a museum. Another favorite, contemporary flim-flam is the now ten year old, still daring presentation by the Subway® chain of eating gigantic, foot-long loaves of bread as a path to weight loss. Another is Starbucks’ calling its small coffee a “Grande.”

Anyway, that gives you a bit of insight into my twisted mind. I have studied the lives and, to the greatest extent possible the marketing and promotion strategies of great flim-flam artists like Barnum and Houdini, and this book owes some debt of inspiration to a book about Barnum’s marketing by a friend of mine, Joe Vitale: There’s A Customer Born Every Minute. Modern-day Barnums fascinate too, like Trump. But the most audacious from past centuries fascinate most, as they had to pull off their grandiose schemes and escapades without the array of media and ready access to it that we have today. One can only imagine the havoc this book’s subject, the rascally Dr. Brinkley might have wrought, had he had the Internet, e-mail, Twitter, YouTube and TV infomercials to work with.

Beyond being entertaining and of prurient interest to anyone with twisted mind like mine, anyone who thinks that Jerry Della Femina was right when he said that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on, this book does serve practical, profitable purpose.

It has long been my contention that what successfully sells the incredible can be used even more effectively to sell the credible. In this book, Chip and I have painstakingly dissected—pardon the use of that term—the ideas, strategies, tactics that Brinkley used and converted them to principles you can use to promote yourself and your business much more persuasively than ever before. Dr. Brinkley was also a pioneer of media. One of the first, if not the first, to use radio as a direct-response media, even a unique form of infomercial on radio. Given that we operate in a brave new world of proliferating new media, there’s much to be learned from the thinking of a man who was ten steps ahead of the rest of the world in using all that was available in his time. If nothing else, this book may embolden you and motivate you to push your own envelope a bit farther and be more creative and aggressive, even have more fun, making yourself and your business famous. And please do. We have more than enough “ordinary” in every category.

Our goal here is to present Dr. John Brinkley for what he really was, a master marketer and promoter. We will take a closer examination of the marketing strategies Brinkley employed, many of them revolutionary, for the period of the first half of the 20th century. As you’ll discover, Brinkley was very savvy in the way he marketed his services, positioning himself and his medical techniques as “the answer.”

Dr. Brinkley’s remarkable success was based on a very simple equation: Problem/Agitate Problem/Offer Solution; a formula my coauthor, Dan Kennedy, has been teaching throughout his 35 years in the marketing field.

Dr. John R. Brinkley identified a problem no one spoke about, dared to bring it into the open and talk about it, and played heavily on its emotional aspects in order to sell his solution—a radical one. Many years later, Pfizer followed Dr. Brinkley’s blueprint to a ‘T’ in introducing and ...

Here’s a quick overview of his Marketing Principles we’ll be looking at and illustrating in this book. It’s quite possible some, many or even all of them are already familiar to you, but if so, it’s the bold, brilliant execution of them that is worthy of your study and may inspire you to do more, go farther, push to greater extremes what you know, in promotion of yourself or your business. After all, knowledge is one thing; implementation, another.

List a problem (already brought up but so vitally important as a starting point to effective marketing that it is well worth mentioning again plus one other note of interest here … the more gut-wrenching, earth-shattering, lay-awake-at-night and worry problem you can tap into the better) Present a solution (preferably one that captures the imagination) Offer up yourself as the solution/savior (a worthy goal for anyone that wishes to attract a large and loyal following of customers/clients/patients, etc.) Tap into a well-defined niche (as Dan Kennedy has pointed out in the past “there are riches in niches” and the more targeted your audience the better you’re able to specifically pinpoint your message.)

With the blueprint now on display, let’s take a closer look at John R. Brinkley, the showman, the businessman, and most importantly of all, the master marketer as we reveal The 21 Principles and Lost Secrets of Dr. J.R. Brinkley-style Marketing!

During the years of the great Depression, Dr. John Brinkley collected an estimated, astounding $10-million to $20-million from surgeries and patent medicines. He is widely regarded by critics as perpetrator of one of the most outrageous, biggest, and longest running medical frauds in U.S. history. In furthering the promotion of his cure for male sexual dysfunction, Brinkley invented a number of radio broadcasting business breakthroughs. He was much more an advertising, marketing and public relations man than a medical man. His life story is the subject of the New York Times bestselling book Charlatan by Pope Brock. This book, Making Them Believe, provides in-depth, expert analysis of Brinkley’s extraordinarily effective marketing. “I HAVE A SCHEME up my sleeve and the whole world will soon hear of it.” —Dr. John R. Brinkley

the 21 principles of J.R. Brinkley Marketing PRINCIPLE #1: Presenting Yourself with AUTHORITY Chapters 1 and 2 PRINCIPLE #2: Converting Ideas to ACTION Chapters 3 and 4 PRINCIPLE #3: Courageous PERSONAL Promotion Chapters 5 and 6 PRINCIPLE #4: Unabashed Promise of a CURE Chapters 7 and 8 PRINCIPLE #5: Sell DEEPER MEANINGS Chapters 9 and 10 PRINCIPLE #6: ELEVATE Yourself with Media PRINCIPLE #7: MULTIPLY Yourself with Media Chapters 11 and 12 PRINCIPLE #8: Sell to PROPERLY PREPARED Prospects Chapters 13 and 14 PRINCIPLE #9: Give REASONS To Believe, To People Who WANT To Believe Chapters 15 and 16 PRINCIPLE #10: Spotlight Extremely Dramatic SUCCESS EXAMPLES Chapters 17 and 18 PRINCIPLE #11: AUDACITY and the BIG Idea and BIG Promise Chapters 19 and 20 PRINCIPLE #12: Making PRICE of No Importance Chapter 21 PRINCIPLE #13: Capitalizing on ELITISM Chapters 22 and 23 PRINCIPLE #14: Making NEWS—Being NEWS Chapters 24 and 25 PRINCIPLE #15: Being Of Your TIME, In Your PLACE Chapters 26 and 27 PRINCIPLE #16: Making Whatever You’ve Got, Work Chapter 28 PRINCIPLE #17: Being Admired as a Fighter Chapter 29 and 30 PRINCIPLE #18: Creating Powerful POSITIONING Chapters 31 and 32 PRINCIPLE #19: CREATIVELY RESPONDING to Setbacks Chapters 33 and 34 PRINCIPLE #20: Relentless FOLLOW-UP PRINCIPLE #21: Perfecting a SYSTEM Chapter 35

1 There’s No Substitute for Authority

Given a choice, who among us doesn’t put our trust and confidence in the man or woman who has relevant, authoritative credentials? No matter if it is a job around the house that calls for a repairman to visit, or having to place a child into daycare; we want peace of mind that we’ve made the correct selection from a cluttered field of would-be suitors seeking our business. In following the examples, which of the choices gives you more confidence that this person can re-wire your downstairs family room? Mr. Ernie Jones, Electrician Mr. Ernie Jones, Master Electrician

Finally, you are in need of daycare services for your toddler because both you and your spouse now are working. There are two options to choose from … The Little Tykes Center The Red-Robin Pre-School Which of the above daycares would you call or visit first, based on the name of their respective businesses? Which daycare based upon what you heard and liked would you place your child with and potentially not even visit the competition? In my little, informal survey, most pick The Red-Robin Pre-School - influenced by the word ‘school’ vs. the word ‘center'.

ACCEPTED AUTHORITY CAN TRUMP ALL OTHER FACTORS.

Even though people generally associated doctors and medical care with small, professional offices and clinics, if a man were accepted as “Doctor", he could stand on a wood box at the back of a wagon and persuade people to buy the cure for what ailed them. John also saw that ‘sales’ was path to prosperity, thus, as soon as he was able to go out on his own, John Brinkley would take to the road to perform in such surroundings himself.

John was willing to invest the time and energy to learn more than the basics, and ultimately to elevate his game to a whole new level. He wasn’t just satisfied in being a mere medicine show “Doctor” peddling a “one bottle for whatever ails you cure.” Rather, his mindset was to expand his product line, and with it his base of customers. His strategy was brilliant: not only niche out your target market, but within your target market, sub-niche, and build out your line of products to match each sub-niche.

In other words why sell everyone attending a medicine show the same one-size-fits-all-cure, when you can identify problems A, B, C and D separately, and then offer a cure specific to each individual ailment. Undoubtedly, only the color of the liquid in bottles A, B, C and D changed; the potion itself was the same. But the price at which it was sold could be higher because it was specialized, the desire for something precisely formulated to cure A by a sufferer of A was greater, many people suffered from more than one malady and would therefore buy two medicines rather than one, and—here’s the cleverest part—the very fact of having precisely formulated medicines for different maladies graced Dr. Brinkley with more authority. I have just named four different, important advantages in the radical change John Brinkley made to the traveling medicine show business and the doctor’s pitch. It’s worth taking a minute to go back and identify each of the four, and then stop and think of ways you might apply them to your business, profession or industry.

Even though he literally re-invented the medicine show and made it a much better business, John Brinkley wasn’t satisfied with simply being a medicine show doctor. He yearned for the prestige and credibility of being the “real thing.” He foresaw untold advantage of being able to present himself as a real doctor, with credentials from a recognized medical school. However, becoming a doctor through the usual chan...

After all, he wasn’t actually after the expertise—just the credentials… an early nod to the idea later enunciated and accepted as fundamental premi...

In any case, although he dropped out of the Bennett Electric Medical College, Brinkley did not abandon what he had learned there, nor his plan to take his place among the nation’s most influential names in the field of medical healers. In fact, he sought a fast track. He headed from Chicago to Knoxville, Tennessee and a reunion with his original mentor, Dr. Burke of medicine show fame. Here, John obtained a crash course on the finer points of attracting willing and paying customers, more practical knowledge than his time spent in the legitimate school for would be Electro Medical Physicians.

Ultimately, John Brinkley concluded that formally issued and obtained credentials could be replaced with self-granted credentials and self-promotion. He had come full circle, to perception-is-reality, realizing that most people accept you as you present yourself.

From that point forward, whether his name was John R. Brinkley or not (along there way there was the use of an alias or two) the man hailing from Beta, North Carolina always introduced himself as Doctor. In time incidentally, John Brinkley did get his “medical degree.” For one so shrewd and cunning, it wasn’t too hard to figure out how to add the one final piece in his search for credibility. He simply bought his degree in 1915 courtesy of the Eclectic Medical U...

What might we conclude from his on-again, off-again desire for actual degree and license to practice medicine? Credentials without aggressive, effective promotion languish in frames on the walls of many a starving professional’s office. Aggressive, effective promotion absent legitimate credentials is always a bi...

The professions of medicine and law began with practitioners who did everything, but evolved into a specialist for every isolated need—corporate contract law, family law, elder law, and so on, and clever marketers like one of our Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle™ Members, Bill Hammond, have invented their own subspecialties; in his case, Alzheimer’s family law. Brinkley set aside the way the business he was in was done, in order to give himself greater authority by (product) specialization. There is definitely a lesson there for everybody. If I may, I’ll tell you a funny story about this specialized product tactic that I’m proud of, but many would think I ought to be ashamed of myself for. Of course, I’ve been in the advertising business my entire life, so shame is something of a foreign concept. Anyway, I was working with a fledgling, struggling direct sales company in desperate need of any increase in sales to be had, but lacking capital to add new products. One of its slowest sellers was an excellent, aerosol-foam leather cleaner, treatment and polish in one. I created three different labels for the same can. One, for a cleaner, another for a treatment, and a third for the polish to be buffed to gleaming shine, and packaged the three as a “system". Sales leapt up, and distributors and customers alike raved about the unmatched shine and new softness and pliability of their shoes. I imagine the leather was softer and shinier thanks to getting three consecutive applications...

Another path to authority traveled by Brinkley was placement of self in environments conducive to it. The very act of standing up on a stage in front of an audience and confidently and persuasively delivering a presentation has always given that person a grant of authority from the assembled audience, and always will. People have been conditioned from childhood to see such persons as authority figures. They’ve had twelve or more years of school, sitting and listening to their teachers, compelled to learn, memorize and agree with the teachers’ presentations—quite often of mere opinions as facts.

Ideally, you want to exercise thoughtful control over your ‘place', over your selling environment, so that it strengthens and does not undermine your authority. Most people do not give this enough thought.

Finally, Brinkley gained authority with a credential: Doctor. He first settled for it by self-appointment and proclamation, and later secured it as legitimate title from a recognized institution, albeit one loose in its requirements. Credentials that convey authority come in many shapes, sizes and types. My friend and student, Diana Coutu, has, for her pizza business, numerous ‘best pizza’ awards and ‘chef awards’ secured from national and international competition, and features them in her every ad, brochure, menu, web site, even on the lid of the pizza box. Does her having secured these “honors” guarantee the consumer a better-tasting pizza than may be available from a competitor, and at a significantly lower price? Not necessarily. But do these honors persuade some consumers they are getting a better tasting and higher quality pizza? Yes. Do some consumers value the bragging rights of being her customer and serving her award-winning pizza to their friends? Yes. Does having these honors help her sell at premium prices? Yes.

Grant Yourself Permission To Create Your ...

In my business as a direct-response advertising copywriter, I’ve long made much of proclaiming that I am the highest fee, most expensive copywriter. It’s not a credential bestowed by or secured from any institution or governing body. It’s based on my own research, on copywriters’ published fees in professional directories and at their web sites, and, as far as I know, it is true. It says much. I have, incidentally, only a high school education—no college, and have no other formally issued crede...

I think the most important point of all this is that you can—and should—create your own authority, and create and bestow your own credentials for yourself. If you have or acquire any from others, by all means, make the most use of them that you can. But never hesitate to create your own, and never feel handicapped by the lack of credentials granted by others.

Almost everybody has had the experience of seeing a product appear on a shelf or in a TV commercial, or a new business open, and then say to themselves: well, I thought of that years ago. In truth, there are likely thousands who’ve thought of every product, service, business or moneymaking opportunity before the first person both thought of it and acted on it. You might consider how quick you are to dismiss an idea. How slow you are to act on an idea. How creative you are to apply an idea to your business. Dr. John R. Brinkley was indeed an idea man. However most importantly he was a man of action. An idea without the necessary thrust behind it becomes stillborn in the brain and then leaves our skull. Oh it may linger in our mind for a day. Maybe a week or even a month but soon enough it drifts away.

Focused Action Can Be More Powerful Armed with his experience as a medical pitchman and his newly purchased license to “practice medicine” John R. Brinkley was ready to create his fortune. He would proceed based on a single key idea: narrowing his focus to a very particular type of customer/patient, and presenting a very specific solution to a very specific problem.

In different ways, the majority of entrepreneurs and marketers are engaged in too much unfocused action. As example, it’s very common to find an entrepreneur or company spending sizeable sums, exerting enormous effort, utilizing an ever expanding array of media in pursuit of new customers, with little or no regard for who, specifically, is or should be the specific customer sought—based on relative and comparative value. This is unfocused investment and unfocused action.

Clarity about the target. Brinkley was very clear about who he was targeting (and who he was not), and about why he was targeting them, and why they were his ideal customers. Significantly, he was willing to toss aside huge segments of the population in favor of focus. He obviously discarded the entire female gender, except as conduit to their husbands—despite the fact that, at the time, over 80% of all patent medicines, cures, and medical treatments were purchased by women for their personal use. He believed he had good reason to defy these odds, and he was right. He also set aside the population of young, virile men. His target was gender and age specific, and within that, ailment/condition specific, and within that mind-set specific. Frankly, few business owners are as clear about their target as Brinkley was, and even fewer are willing to stick to that target. Most are easily led astray, led wherever media takes them, led by short-term economics, led by laziness.

It’s best to be visible to your target audience as much as possible, as often as possible, in as many places (media) as possible.

At the small business level, it is my contention that human personality is much more critical, and an even greater percentage of stellar successes feature a promotable and heavily promoted person, not a nameless, faceless, inhuman institution. Admittedly, there is more than one way to approach this and be successful, but I steer most of my clients into putting a person in the spotlight, not a company. FROM THE BRINKLEY BLUEPRINT: Being in the business of You

This ‘Brinkley blueprint’ for personal promotion that I’m referring to has three key elements I should call your attention to. One is the advancement of a clear, focused and usually a shocking or radical or contrarian proposition. A linked second is deliberate controversy. Third, being about something and known for that thing. Fourth is the exploitation of that created personality through every possible media that can get one in front of his target audience. Fifth, not just using media, but when possible, owning it.

FROM THE BRINKLEY BLUEPRINT: Clear, focused, often shocking proposition Deliberate controversy Purpose or mission: being ABOUT something

Of course, the local shop owner can be quick to decry all of this. I own a local cupcake store and none of this applies to me. Brinkley could have had a small, local practice with all his patients in a 20-mile radius, and lived an invisible life too. He just chose not to. And had patients travel from all over the continent to come to him. These days, boundaries have been erased for all kinds of businesses—even cupcake stores—so I’d urge thinking bigger. Global, not local. But even if you resist that, you ought to realize that any business can be boosted by its owner being famous and endlessly fascinating at least to its target market, if not to the entire community.

Offering a Cure By Chip Kessler It’s a formula that has paid dividends time after time as just the word alone will often make a somewhat disinterested party sit up and take notice: cure! Think of the word cure as in “curious". The idea of a cure—especially a simple, easy, quick, permanent cure—arouses great curiosity, because it so concisely summarizes what everybody wants, finds elusive, yet buys hopefully again and again. Unhappy people want to be made happy. Overweight people want to be made thin. Poor people want to be made rich. For whatever ails, frustrates, torments, troubles, mystifies or plagues, there is the hope that there is a cure. As has often been stated by my co-author, Dan Kennedy, people are not looking for prevention; they are looking for the cure!

The salient question for every business owner to contemplate is: what can I find, create, re-position and present as The Cure for what ails my customer? HIGH VALUE QUESTION: how can YOU present THE Cure for what ails your customer?

At the moment, there is a pretty effective advertising campaign for a travel destination, presenting it as The Cure for a dull, boring, and apparently sexless marriage. It’s not carried out as dramatically as I’d imagine John Brinkley doing it, but it’s there. There is a very successful direct-response print and radio advertising campaign running as of this writing, promising parents an easy, instant cure for disrespectful, ill-behaved, impossible to control children. It’s a campaign John Brinkley would love. In every business, there is the potential to convert to selling ‘The Cure'.

Coca-Cola® was once sold as a cure for low energy, fatigue and listlessness. Its original formula contained a bit of cocaine, so it probably fulfilled the advertised promise. Vibrators were originally administered to women by physicians in their offices, as a cure for female moodiness and depression. Marketers in the health, alternative health, diet fields somewhat naturally understand the power of promising cures, although evermore restrained in straightforwardly doing so by laws and regulations. People in most other fields don’t usually think of themselves as being in the business of selling a cure—but they should.

FROM THE BRINKLEY BLUEPRINT: Certainty. John Brinkley was obviously utterly unrestrained and unabashed in promising The Cure, in no uncertain terms. It is, as I often point out, easier to be that strong and straightforward and grandiose if you suspend any requirement to tell the truth and I do not advocate outright fraud. There’s almost no sum of money sufficient to pay for many nights sharing bunk beds in a concrete block cell, with a serial killer named Bruce. However, Brinkley had it right, conceptually. By that I mean, it’s up to you to find a way to be as forceful, bold, dramatic and clear as you possibly, legally can be, in holding out promise of The Cure to what ails your target customers. Subtlety or even reasonableness is not rewarded.

Just as nobody lines up to see the wise man at the bottom of the mountain, no one lines up to consult the uncertain, ambiguous psychic either. We don’t want to hear the word “maybe” when buying psychic predictions. Or medical diagnosis. Or expert advice. We just don’t. As you study the actual copy in John Brinkley’s literature, listen to or read transcripts of his radio broadcasts, and otherwise delve into his presentation of self and cure, you’ll find the golden thread of absolute certainty.

There’s Nothing You Can’t Get If You Help Others Get What They Want By Chip Kessler It’s as simple a success principle as there is.

The legendary Zig Ziglar has had a long and successful career and in no small part has attributed his accomplishments to the phrase: “You can get everything in life you want if you help enough people get what they want.” This thought didn’t begin and end with Zig Ziglar. He took it from the Bible, and gave it only a slight re-write. It didn’t first appear in the thought process of Dr. John Brinkley either but he was one of the leading champions of this philosophy in his day, writing and lecturing about it publicly, and, privately, telling close confidantes that he was selling and giving people what they really wanted—confidence, so he deserved all the acclaim and wealth he created.