Charles Bukowski

The dread of writing, when writing must be done. He talks about it extensively. Apparently this guy made fuck all during his youth, only getting the good money once an old fart.

I wonder what he thought of advertisers and marketers of the day, while they wrote witty copy to attract targets. Really, this a way of perceiving marketing. Imagine you have to hit the bullseye with your copy, but instead of you shooting the arrow, the target enchantedly flies towards you and impales itself. That’s pure marketing at least, imo.

Techniques to attract customers are, surprisingly, sales techniques. They are deliberate and upfront, close, and personal. In your face even. Planned, let’s say. Meticulously so. So what if you think “salesmen are trecherous individuals who try to shove down things you don’t need down your gut”? And what about the fact that sales intrinsically builds a resistance to rejection? How is that similar to marketing?

Simple. If you play games like League of Legends, you will know there is a type of damage called DoT. Damage over time. Marketing doesn’t shove things down your throat (unless it’s Temu or Shein ads). It applies DoT to the audience. Slowly but surely, it whittles you down, with the power of AIDS. Good thing is, that just like you can slam the door on the seller’s face, you can walk away from an ad without feeling guilty via rejection. Even better thing is, just like the chad salesman who charms you with his smile, there is a giant billboard with Monica Bellucci in lingerie. It is what it is.

Oh, and about facing rejection as a marketer. If a random ignores your ad on the street, you don’t sense it really. You don’t receive emotional feedback every time someone walks past your billboard and doesn’t even glance at it. You receive feedback in the form of money. For an advertisement to work, it needs to generate substantial amount of dinero, at least if you’re trying to sell stuff. Once you look at the graphs and you see a slide, it doesn’t hurt ’cause you’re losing money dressing the product to impress. It hurts because that loss is directly caused by ignorance.

In the ocean full of copy, blogs, articles, etc. it’s actually essential that you interact with this post. It’s like an appeal for your attention, if you’re truly attentive. If you’re the disagreeable type, you’re going to read this and say “f*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me.” But I’m telling you, you’ve got to like, comment, subscribe.