Imagine you and I open competing hamburger stands.
You can pick any advantage you want.
Better meat. Better location. Better buns. A bigger advertising budget. A little brass bell to ring every time somebody orders fries.
I’ll take one thing.
And I’ll happily let you keep the brass bell.
A starving crowd.
Suddenly the bun-to-bell ratio seems a little less important.
That’s the question Gary Halbert was famous for posing to students of copywriting: what matters most when you want to sell hamburgers?
It’s a wonderfully blunt lesson in noticing what people already care about.
But it also points to something gentler.
Good marketing begins with attention. Not attention to your clever little offer. Attention to another human being.
Before you write a headline, before you fiddle with the button color, before you try to make the offer irresistible: pay attention to the person on the other side.
What are they hoping for? What troubles them? What’s already interesting or important in their life?
If you genuinely understand someone, you may be able to offer something useful without having to manufacture a new insecurity first.
And perhaps that is where marketing starts to look less like a wrestling match and more like a form of service.
I love direct-response copywriting. The teasing, the tension, the comedy, the reveal. Great copy can make a mundane idea feel like a thrilling little adventure.
But here’s a personal rule I rather like:
Never make the reader feel smaller just so the product can seem bigger.
Which means that if you find something wonderful here and never buy a thing—well, we’re cool either way.
And if you want a curious example of why a good story can be worth more than a clever pitch, I’ve got one about thirteen bucks.