What books should every marketing leader and copywriter own? Tread carefully, this one may unnerve your friends.
A pal of mine saw this book at my home and got anxious. “Are you using it on me?” she asked.
“No,” I replied. “You’d never be taken in. You’re far too smart and intuitive.”
The book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
Sure, the sleazy-sounding title is catnip for psychopaths. But don’t feel like a creep when you order this one — it’s great for anyone working in marketing (and a double win if you’re a psychopath.)
If the book sounds familiar, that’s because it’s been around since 1936 and sold millions.
On one level, it’s about using emotional intelligence to make friends quickly, become popular and dodge fights.
But the smarter stuff is around being persuasive, winning people over and getting your message across successfully. Invaluable advice — if you’re a marketer or a copywriter like me.
Sure, the sleazy-sounding title is catnip for psychopaths. But don’t feel like a creep when you order this one — it’s great for anyone working in marketing (and a double win if you’re a psychopath.)
If the book sounds familiar, that’s because it’s been around since 1936 and sold millions.
On one level, it’s about using emotional intelligence to make friends quickly, become popular and dodge fights.
But the smarter stuff is around being persuasive, winning people over and getting your message across successfully. Invaluable advice — if you’re a marketer or a copywriter.
The chapters reel you in with tempting trifles like “Six ways to make people like you” and “Do this and you’ll be welcome anywhere”. Click bait before clicking was invented.
Thanks to Carnegie, you’ll realise the value of using someone’s name, smiling at the right moments and beginning phone conversations a certain way. Each of these can be applied to marketing.
The book is also written in a way you don’t come across today. It’s warm, lively and direct, shooting its mouth off with personal tales from old-time, corporate America.
The advice is gritty and authentic, refreshingly free of that sanitised, calculated and ‘please like me’ whiff of desperation you sometimes get from a Ted Talk.
It’s like the guy doesn’t really care what you think. He just spits it out, like this …
“If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence …
… So if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other people will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments. Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems … Think of that the next time you start a conversation.”
There’s an uncomfortable truth to so much within this book.
Sure, a lot of the advice is about face-to-face interaction. But the principles are so applicable to marketing: Talk about the audience. Be interested in their hopes and fears — rather than yourself. See everything from their perspective when you write your emails, ads, blogs and web pages.
It’s not just about winning friends.
The book arms you for perilous encounters with “A sure way to make enemies and how to avoid it” and “How to criticise and not be hated for it”.
Today’s world is full of information but not much wisdom. You may not like Dale Carnegie’s thoughts or agree with him. But he’s shared his distilled knowledge — and he’s onto something. ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ mines deep into the human psyche. Well worth going down there.