[COPYWRITER REVIEW] George Ten sells ice to broke and lonely Eskimos.
Even bad copywriters can catch a break.
A story of Grift told in pictures at the end.
Read the storytime: A narcissist, some screenshots and an embarrassing made-up word walk into a bar.
Occasionally the internet spits out a total fraud who’s methodology is brilliant.
Generally narcissistic, their strategy and technique is worth studying, if only to bare witness to manipulation while watching the hoodwinked blindly behave like lemmings.
Today I’m reviewing Copythinkers!, an abstract concept invented by George Ten (I’m guessing it’s an alias).
Right away, George is clearly adept in the style and mechanics of copywriting techniques. Although admittedly he uses templates found easily online.
The second notable characteristic of George is he does display intermediate understanding of psychology, albeit of the Pop variety.
Copythinkers! appears to be how George is rebranding copywriting to sell it unaltered to his target audience.
He describes the Copythinkers ideantity as individuals cut differently from the rest,
a select group of humans,
uniquely equipped through mere existence to take on the new frontier of an unknown future.
They are writers who will be in unbelievable demand at some point.
In contrast, he says sad old constipated copywriters will die out, unevolved and no longer useful.
His target audience are chronically online and lower income with no concrete marketing industry experience or education.
They are in the “get rich with affiliate marketing so my life will stop being a hellscape” demographic.
They lean Alt. Right politically and due to their victim complex, maintain thinly disguised bigoted beliefs.
Ideas such as “Men are primed to hunt”, “pronouns are an attack on my fundamental right to humanity” and “business women just need intimacy with a man to drop this feminist communism” occasionally find their way to the surface.
They have no understanding of copywriting, and cannot identify it in text.
They are desperately seeking identity, connection, a hero and an identifiable enemy to both unite against and ridicule for self esteem.
(This may not refer to you. I don’t know)
George sells Copythinkers primarily on Twitter, through direct response, long form sales letters delivered via Twitter threads.
Sales letters of this type are now only used in the affiliate marketing world. You find examples of the style selling supplements, astrology products, affiliate marketing courses and cold email marketing programs.
Robert Allen’s membership subscription landing page is an especially painful example.
George is very clever in his use of the style as He’s not obviously selling anything you can detect. His CTAs are, 9 times out of 10, for engagement generated via presenting readers with a challenge.
Let’s audit an example: the entire thread is posted at the bottom of the page.
His headline questions pique curiosity across a wide audience.
“Accentuate the negative” is a very common hook technique.
“The reason is” is a style favored by the famous David Olgivy known as “reason why” advertising.
George seems to be answering his posed question, but he creates more questions for the reader, forcing them to continue reading.
Power words are sprinkled evenly across the headline/hook section- ugly, the biggest, the best.
His story sets a scene desired by the target audience- writing sales copy for social media. They want this because they have no conception of what the job is like, and can fantasize about a position more glamorous than their own because it’s not rooted in reality.
George makes big claims- $6000 in one day!- a figure unheard of in everyday life. At once George is the authority and the reader is impressed and desires to be like him.
He revisits an older Tweet, which is a common practice. This creates the “lightbulb” effect. Often used in media, like a film with a twist at the end where we think “so THATS what it is, wow”. This is a common marketing method taught at university, not a George specific invention.
Here I want to digress- this practice of laying a “seed” tweet then following up 12 to 24 hours later with a longer thread requires planning.
This is an engagement strategy engineered to produce very targeted results. It is evidence of George’s manipulation practices.
George has claimed many times he is unaware how his account grew quickly, he thinks it’s because one day, he simply chose to “put the work in”.
He implies his
customerscommunity of friends can do what he did (some of these actions he says are commit to showing up each day, post content and engage in your community)He chooses not to disclose following a carefully choreographed plan of strategies, which are specifically chosen then enacted in a precise order. These strategies are explicitly selected because they generate account engagement, leading to account growth.
I wonder why he left it out?
George explains his answer using generalizations, because the entire exercise is invented by George. Status is as much the reason for ugly cars as market research, engineering or industry standards. George needs to explain his answer so it can be easily consumed and he minimizes questions or push back.
He challenges his readers to win a game, answering “How do you make prospects buy a product for its social status?”
He reminds everyone he is a copythinker like them, together they need to use their copythinking skills to answer his challenge.
This example is a fair representation of George’s MO.
George uses Twitter to gather prospects onto his nurturing platforms- presumably Instagram and email. He is also launching a private “community” to send them to.
The reason why George isn’t obviously selling anything is because he is building his persona as a free giving genius leader of the Copythinkers. This is why his CTA’s are engagement focused only, to attract and engage leads.
His Audience is more inclined to trust Him because he’s just a cool guy on Twitter freely giving us the secrets of copythinking to thrive and dominate in a future built by AI.
Using Copythinking as a rebranding of Copywriting is genius, I’ll give it to him.
However, the free copywriting information he’s giving away is basic and simplistic-
“how do you make prospects buy a product for its social status?” Is as “challenging” as remembering to drink at the feeling of thirst.
In addition, His “challenge” questions have no concrete answer, so everyone is a winner.
I could say “put diamonds on it” or “with visual and linguistic dog whistles and a scarcity model” and both answers are right.
This fact proves his audience’s inexperience.
They are wowed by the way George teaches the Copythinking concepts, and are genuinely convinced of his invented distinction between copywriting and Copythinking.
As you can see, Copywriting is when you use templates, copy other writers and use a comma.
Copythinking is everything else.
They have no comprehension of the contents of George’s tweet:
Its a template for direct response long from sales copywriting ,
Contains a direct quote from a well known copywriter,
He invents ”facts”
George’s writing is let down by what I assume is arrogant refusal of outside editing.
He says “because the target audience I was targeting was business women”.
Unless clunky sentence structure is a strategic choice for relatability, the correct phrasing is “because the audience i was targeting were business women”.
He also describes status as an emotion, which is strange. The desire for status is an emotion.
Considering the content of the story, George comes across as an inept marketer.
“Business woman” isn’t a niche, like how “men wearing pants” isn’t one.
He doubles down into “men want this but women want this” rhetoric, which is an immediate red flag for everyone in marketing.
Reductionism is prized by incompetents.
This sentence “Social status = Alpha male = Tribe leader = Get the beautiful females” is best friends with the Reddit Incel forum and needs to go home to its mum.
George uses “status” to mean “status symbol”. The two aren’t interchangeable unless you are uneducated.
This leads me to why George is here in the first place, rebranding copywriting and manipulating the general public:
Despite the clever “Copythinker!” rebrand, George just isn’t a very good writer.
His long form sales letters, while they follow the template exactly:
Lack depth,
are uninteresting
ill informed
express outdated pop psychology sentiments which are off putting to the wider consumer public.
I commend the hustle and I believe George himself has the street smarts to laser in on his marks and stay there.
He will make great money, but his skills are basic at best, and he’s unable to impart anything of genuine use to his followers if they want to find a foothold in this competitive industry.
I’m reluctant to say it, but there’s an animus in George’s philosophy which goes beyond clever marketing. I feel like George wasn’t allowed to sit with the Copywriters at lunch, and now he’s going to destroy copywriting from within with its own sword.
For anyone partial to Copythinking, identify your own cognitive gap and ask yourself-
George publicly promotes Copythinking daily.
If it beats copywriting on every metric, why isn’t it industry standard?
Where are the big agencies stealing the concept to accelerate their sales success?
It’s not a secret if it’s public on Twitter.
(I’ll fill the gap for you- it’s already industry standard, it’s called copywriting. George just Re wrapped last years gift. Nothing he says isn’t a Google away already)
With George writing $6000 a day sales pages, he must be Mother Theresa incarnate, doing the lords work on Twitter, teaching the repressed masses how to Copythink their way to freedom.
To read the tweet which stopped a nation, click here.
What does grifting look like exactly?
Great question!
Grifter’s tell you when they grift. Me, a naturally suss person, leans towards thinking a nerd in a fedora is a huge liar, and fine tuned in their direction.
Here goes:
To clarify- George has been making a big dog and pony show of this “community” for ages.
As an example:
The community was supposed to “launch” a few days ago. But nothing.
George blames Stripe. I’d love a copy of his email explaining to everyone his Dream community of copythinkers rewriting Instagram ads over Zoom on Friday night was in fact, pay to play.
His blatant money grab is just..
It’s gross.
George sets up for himself- take money directly from his “community” or go on Instagram and sucker more fools. Win win huh George?
If you thought the community wasn’t a cash grab, this is the sign up
The bottom right corner is who is hosting this community-
#CopyCustomers? Or more like #CopySuckers, amiright?