From ShoeMoney: This is a guest post by my friend Jon Correll. Jon runs one of the most prestigious conversion firms in the country at Conversion Voodoo. They are purely performanced based (you don’t pay unless they increase your conversion). They are the best that I have ever worked with.
How to keep your marketing campaigns from eternal damnation
Judgment Day May 21 2011 Billboard
If you are like me, you are probably interested in how a simple “the end is near” type campaign on billboards captured the heart and conversations of a nation. I decided to de-construct the campaign and try to figure out exactly what made it tick (and ultimately explode).
On May 21, 2011 at 6:00PM (in your time zone, no less), the world is coming to an end. How do I know that? Good question. Simply because of the dozen or so billboards scattered around town. You can’t miss ‘em! (Unless you’re texting and driving, then you can miss them).
By the beginning of May everyone was talking about it. Didn’t matter your religious background or beliefs, everyone was asking, “So whadaya think about Judgment Day coming on May 21st?”
That wasn’t so much my question I was interested in. Nope, I was interested in “Why in the world is everyone talking about this? What about this message has so many people interested in this marketing campaign?” Even more interesting to me, “How can we learn from their amazingly successful campaign?”
So let’s do a little dissecting and see if we can pick out a couple of gold nuggets that helped this to be different than the typical guy downtown wearing the “End is Near” sign.
There are 3 distinct elements of the message that helped to push their campaign into an amazingly simple yet powerful “mind virus”: Headline, specificity, and authority (trust).
Headline – Grab their attention!
First, the headline grabs your attention: “Judgment Day”. Not the most exciting copy I’ve seen, but man does it resonate deep within the mind.
I remember driving down highway 163 in San Diego, when I first saw one of the billboards. I caught only a glimpse of it, and the only part I saw was “Judgment Day”. I didn’t notice anything else. It stuck in my head, and just had a quick “Hmmm… I wonder what that was about.” The title did its job, it got my ATTENTION.
Assuming you have some sort of marketing campaign, your first job is to get your audience’s attention. If you don’t get their attention in the first 47 milliseconds, you’ve lost them.
I mean, come on, when you hear “Judgment Day” your brain reacts with an internal auditory track from Beethoven’s 5th of “Duh Duh Duh Dummmm”. Of course we’re going to give another 3 seconds of our time to listen. That’s really the only role of the headline – to grab!
What headline are you using right now to attract attention on your website or pay-per-click campaign? Does it resonate with your audience as good as this one? If it’s boring, kill it.
The headline is the star of your landing page. Make it worth reading. Use bone-crushing action verbs: Shocking, dominating, surprising, titillating. Your only job as the headline is to entice them to read more. Need some inspiration to fight boring? Weekly World News – Archives. The world’s only reliable news. 
Specificity – Give specific measurable facts
After they’ve gotten our attention, they bring in the big gun, a specific date: May 21, 2011. (What I believe is the pièce de résistance of this simple message.)
Holy crap! Literally Holy Crap. What brilliance. What genius. The cojones it takes to plaster 2,617 billboards with an exact date of the end of the world is just plain amazing. I mean this guy has got a pair. When I noticed the date on there, I just had to go online and find out what in the world that billboard was about. Who has the audacity to claim they know the exact date and time of the return of Jesus? I’ve gotta check that out when I get home. (Also I wanted to check my calendar to make sure nothing important was happening on that Saturday.)
The marketing rule here is SPECIFICITY. And let me tell you something it works. Really.
Not so successful Judgment Day marketing campaign
NOBODY reacts to the “End is Near”. There is no specificity. No internal spark of desire to listen. Near?!?!? Near to what? Why should I care if something is near. When I hike through the canyons of San Diego, there are always rattlesnakes “near”. So what! But if it happens to be 12 inches just behind my left foot… Then I’ll care. I’ll care a whole lot.
If you are selling a product or service and your marketing message is not specific, but has some milquetoast general statement of “goodness”, you’re going to lose. Big time. Generalities do nothing, and that is exactly the amount of money you’re going to make if you’re not being specific.
Want to survive your own marketing judgment day? Be specific about the benefits that your product or service provides. For example, if you have a widget that allows your customers to complete a task faster than the competition, then measure it, and let people know your specific results. “My widget is 32 seconds faster than the best of the competition”, not “It’s a lot faster than them”.
“Our TC410 cigarettes have a specialized filter that lowers your risk of lung cancer by 117% over our leading competitor, and it tastes great too!” BAM! I’m buying the TC410 menthols. Well, unless your audience is trying to kill themselves faster, in which case this will lower sales. So make sure your specific message is actually seen as a benefit to your audience. 
Authority – Create trust with your prospects
And finally, what I thought was a really nice touch to their marketing campaign, straight from the online bizop world, a bright starburst in the upper left corner of the billboard declaring, “The Bible guarantees it.” Authority. Trust.
Ka-ching! How would you like to be able to replace your boring “standard 60 day money back guarantee”, with a “100% money back guaranteed by God himself for all of eternity”. Sweet.
So imagine the average person is reading the Judgment Day billboard. The dialog goes something like this:
Billboard: “Judgment Day” (Duh Duh Duh Dummmmmmm)
AJ (Average Joe): “What? Hmmm…”
Billboard: “May 21, 2011”
AJ: “Really?!?!? Bull s*$%! What a moron. Who is the idiot who put that…”
Billboard: “The Bible guarantees it.”
AJ: “Oh Crap. You got my attention and my interest, and I now have a desire to do something. Where can I get more information?”
Billboard: “FamilyRadio.com”
AJ: “Heading home right now!”
Billboard: “Another satisfied customer. Ka-ching!”
So they are able to deflect the natural reaction of “bull s*$%!” by simply pointing to their authority starburst. We won’t go into the fact that that same authority specifically states that no one knows the day or the hour “not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Hmmm, maybe they might get this wrong. I suspect that even if that was God’s chosen date, he probably said, “Scrap the plans fellas, some idiot plastered our super-secret-nobody-can-know-end-of-times date everywhere. We’ll get the new date out in the next quarterly memo.”
Sometimes just site the authority and BAM! People fall in line. “Oh crap, they said the Bible said it, so…”
So, how can you reach in and grab some of the same authority for your own landing page optimization tests? Here’s a couple different ways: show testimonials from past happy clients, point to a review by a magazine or a respected blogger, or a third party trusted entity that shows the benefits. These are solid ways of bringing a third party to toot your horn for you. And if all else fails, they know they can get their money back if they aren’t happy (assuming you have the standard money back guarantee).
So now that I’ve ‘splained, let’s sum up. Here’s what we’ve learned from this amazingly simple, yet powerful, campaign:
- Grab their ATTENTION (“Judgment Day”)
- Use specificity (“May 21, 2011 at 6:00PM)
- Show authority (“The Bible guarantees it”)
Use these simple lessons to create new tests to optimize your landing pages and marketing campaigns. And you too will be glad that Judgment Day hasn’t come so you have another day to grow your company and sell your drop-dead-awesome products and services.
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{ 44 comments… read them below or add one }
His switch to October 21, 2011 (due to a “misinterpretation”) is a reminder to not give up. I don’t like his tactics, but I have to admit that being wrong hasn’t stopped him.
Great post Jon. Well thought out – loved seeing the breakdown of those billboards.
It’s crazy how the word spread about the Judgement day..with a few marketing tactic and word of mouth the world know about it…I’m wondering if it would work for my website..lol
and create Urgency.
That makes them act faster.
Absolutely. Great point!
That guy is probably laughing to himself while the rest of the world continues to think he’s stupid. He apparently runs a multi-million dollar non-profit org. The news will die down eventually, people will forget about him and he gets to enjoy all the cash his followers have been throwing at him for years.
Great post btw! Good mix of strange/current event and useful information.
I agree. Good lesson on integrity. If you promise something, you had better deliver. Few people will listen now. Thanks for the comment.
very interesting break down of the elements involved in catching ones attention and then feeding them some information and then backing it up with the authority needed to create a trusting relationship with the reader. this is advertising at its finest and it really worked because it had everyone i know talking about it and wondering and it sparked up some interesting conversations and philosophy exchanges. the whole thing really was amazing and quite very entertaining! i bet the world of advertisers is buzzing and we will see changes and or more of this type of thing.
Crazy to think of the dollar value he received in free media. Their message was bold yet simple. And setting that date really set it a ticking clock, a sense of urgency & anticipation. Great way to wake-up an already embedded mind virus.
This was the most successful ad campaign I’ve seen in years and the worldwide reach was astounding. Thanks for taking the time to point out its strengths. Actually, I wanted to comment because I found this site today on my semi-humorous excursion into the world of “Get Rich Quick” schemes and watched the seminar video. Mr Schoemaker came across as a really genuine person. This site is a real exception to the guff out there!
I was amazed at how many people talked about it. CNN had it on their front page several times over the past month. In regards to Jeremy, he is amazing. There is a reason he seems genuine, it’s because he IS genuine. A great guy, great skills (to pay the bills).
Excellent article and example! The May 21st Judgement Day prediction was certainly an “event” everyone was talking about, including believers and non-believers of Christianity, and it was the language of Family Radio’s campaign that sparked peoples’ interest. The buzz was no doubt because of the powerful resonance of the idea of the Rapture and apocalypse, people’s belief in the Bible and the authority its invocation (despite, as you’d noted in the article, this same source noting that no one could possibly know the hour; the invocation of this source, utilized so assuredly, got people’s attention before they thought to check the facts behind the assertion!), and a specific date and time given out as if in total confidence. This might seem at first glance like an ‘extreme’ example of a campaign, but it’s valuable as a lesson that can be learned from. As you’ve illustrated, the cocktail of attention, specificity, and authority is a heady one indeed, and these are important points to keep in mind for any kind of business campaign hoping to stir up and capture a lot of interest. Of these three main points, it’s hard to say which of them is more important, since they all have to work together – a headline hooks in the potential customer, specificity lets them know what they’re getting into, and authority gives them a reason to trust. Amusing dialog between the “Average Joe” and the billboard too.
Such methodically planned and carried out business campaigns will be able to follow up on their promises and provide better services than a failed Judgement Day prediction, too! Thank you for sharing.
Your welcome. Thanks for the comments.
Well said author, very well said. Marketing is all about grabbing the people’s attention in the first place. No one will ever look at the ad if its not attractive and captivating. It does not matter what (crap) you push under the attractive heading (or behind the face of a cute girl). And also well said about the exactness thing. People always want numbers, dates and figures that they can correlate to.
I think you’re right about those three points – good dissection skills
Kind of funny to think of these crazy people as “selling” the end of the world, but there it is. It’s true though, when I see “It’s better!” I think, “Oh? who says? And what makes them think so?” But when I see “The University of Scientific Stuff said it’s 264% faster!” I think, “Wow, they did research, unbiased, in a lab, with all the trimmings. This must be worth it!” Nice job paring it down to the bare bones 
Jon, great post. I saw the exact same billboard on the 163 and thought the same thing. I wonder how well the campaign did? Sure looks like their site could use a little conversion enhancement. (:
Very well said but not the easiest thing to master. However if you don’t deliver then authority does not stick around long.
And they didn’t deliver, so no one is going to listen again. Although I’m sure they are going do a little “ooops I hit M+ on my calculator which made miscalculate by 3 months.”
As you can see, now it is 25th of May which applies to the fact that all of this was just a stupid lie. I saw this ads in my city (Skopje) and I was thinking: “What kind of a brain can make up a story like this?!”. But than I realized … a rich man with a lot of free time. From the very beginning I knew this is just a stupid joke, but many people did not share my opinion. Many people were terrified and scared, and that’s why I think this man should be taken to jail for a while.
But, today, I’ve heard an explanation from the man responsible for the panic. He says that all of this has been misunderstood, that this weekend was the beginning of the spiritual end of the world. The physical part, the part that we will be able to see will begin on October 21st. I think this is another nonsense from him. We all know that he has made two mistakes while “calculating” when will the world end. Well, I think this will be the third time.
At the end, aren’t there too many theories and stories about the end of the world? Should we believe in all of them? I think we should NOT believe in ANY of them. They are all so wrong, and hide so many secret messages and intentions so we must not let some rich guys wash our brain and fill it with such lies. We should think with our own heads!
The Earth will live forever!
They have lost me as an audience. “We recalculated! The new date is….” Yawn. Rich guys (advertisers) are washing our brains all day, every day. No question it is difficult to think for ourselves without at least a little influence from the noise.
Well, you’ve broken it down quite well. I think it’s true that there are a lot of things we can take away from the different things that catch our eye throughout the day and make us pay attention.
And Ivan is right, a little urgency helps.
I am really want to know what really make people want to believe in such things. Maybe we have inherited this from some where. Really love your article. Keep doing it Jon.
Excelent Post.
Wow, what a great way to get people to pay attention to how to market their website or product!
It wasn’t the billboards that did it. It was the news stories online about a guy emptying out his life savings to spread the word. If a billboard can influence you to do anything, you are just a sheep. Twitter also played a role. It was a trending topic for several days after all.
maybe for a part II to this, you can discuss how a person rebounds from the sort of dissatisfaction that the preacher left. It seems like he is trying. Great post. I have to admit that these billboards did capture my imagination.
They leveraged the trust and authority of an entire religion’s Bible. 97.3% of the people didn’t know who was behind it. They’ve lost their audiences trust. Since their relationship with most of their audience was through a billboard, there is pretty much no one to win that trust back.
An important lesson for businesses. If you have no relationship with your audience and you lose trust, it is nearly impossible to earn that trust back. However, if you have a relationship with your audience, you might have a chance to earn back trust, but it is going to be a very long up hill climb.
Harold Camping’s apocalyptic announcement was a dud, and now their sect is bewildered. That’s another marketing lesson – don’t make promises that won’t follow through, unless you want to damage your brand.
Amen to that!
Nice Post Jon xD Keep it up pls
In Germany it has been extremely fun of it. Align the whole life to an apocalypse is just plain wrong. No work, no money, no insurance and now? In Germany, even these people would bekomen social assistance and in the U.S.?
Thanks, good post!
I like to spam urls
There are many of Camping believers that will still blindly follow him. Now, the end comes Oct 21.
For some reason I see no issues with taking advantage of the foolishness of others…
GREAT post! All of these points are extremely important to any marketer and I really enjoyed the dissection of the campaign.
Yeah, we apparently had the wrong date all along. October 21 is when the world goes down. That’s my birthday month, but at least I’ll get to see it!
((So now that I’ve ‘splained, let’s sum up. Here’s what we’ve learned from this amazingly simple, yet powerful, campaign:
1. Grab their ATTENTION (“Judgment Day”)
2. Use specificity (“May 21, 2011 at 6:00PM)
3. Show authority (“The Bible guarantees it”)
Use these simple lessons to create new tests to optimize your landing pages and marketing campaigns. And you too will be glad that Judgment Day hasn’t come so you have another day to grow your company and sell your drop-dead-awesome products and services. ))
Thanks for this technique… i try to use it on my site… This is totally great post..informatively
That was a great piece you wrote…thinking about it…I don’t know how I can duplicate the date, the authority, the headline of those signs. I saw one here and I had to check out the site as well.
it’s amazing how the marketing of Judgement Day
it’s amazing how he manages to manipulate and move minds. Can not understand it but know it is very fantastic.
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Thanks!!!
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It really is amazing how the human mind and when the marketing is done well it happens …. great article
Getting the attention grabbing headline right is the most important thing. If you get that right that’s half the job done, now you’ve got to try and sell what they might not even want to be buying and that’s the real challenge.