Monday Memo
A Byte of Knowledge
The company that was better at going viral than anyone on earth just admitted they might not survive.
We're talking about BuzzFeed.
And last year alone they lost $57 million.
This is a brand Wall Street once valued at $1.5 billion.
They had billions of views, quizzes your whole office was forwarding around, and at their peak half your Facebook feed was something they published.
Now just five years after going public their stock is down an almost comical 98%.
Going viral was never their problem.
Monetizing any of it was.
Attention without a way to convert it is like packing a stadium where nobody bought a ticket.
The energy is electric...
But the cash register is empty.
Never confuse attention with money in your pocket.
🚀 Whether you're selling a $50 supplements or a $10,000 coaching program – having these 5 'Copy Blocks' on your landing page could be the difference between crickets and an avalanche of cash flow.
Discover All 5 'Copy Blocks' Now
Something to Ponder
We Asked – AI Answered
Our Question:
"The legendary copywriter Eugene Schwartz once wrote:
'Copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take the hopes, dreams, fears, and desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people, and focus those already‑existing desires onto a particular product.'
Has Schwartz's law ever been broken?"
AI's Answer: Did Anyone Ever Break Schwartz's Law? 🔬
Short answer: Three campaigns came closer than anything else in marketing history. But when you dissect them under a microscope...they actually prove his point at a deeper level.
Let's look at the evidence.
🚫 "Exception" #1: De Beers → "A Diamond is Forever" (1947)
Before N.W. Ayer's legendary campaign, diamond engagement rings were not a cultural norm. In the late 1930s, diamond sales were declining. Copywriter Frances Gerety wrote four words that rewired Western courtship rituals for the next 80+ years.
By 1990, roughly 80% of American engagement rings contained diamonds...up from a fraction of that before the campaign.
Looks like created desire, right?
🔍 Not quite.
De Beers didn't invent the desire for permanence in love, or the need to publicly signal commitment. Those are ancient human drives. What they did was redirect those pre-existing desires onto a specific object: a diamond ring.
Schwartz would say: the desire for lasting love was already there. De Beers just gave it a physical address.
🚫 "Exception" #2: Apple → The iPhone (2007)
Steve Jobs famously said: "People don't know what they want until you show it to them." That sounds like a direct contradiction of Schwartz. And the results back it up on the surface...
Within six years of launch, the iPhone generated over $100 billion in annual revenue. Apple didn't just enter an existing market. They obliterated the cellphone category and built a new one. Nobody in 2006 was saying, "I wish I had a touchscreen computer in my pocket."
🔍 But what was already there?
- 📱 The desire to stay connected to people you care about (ancient)
- 🏆 The craving for status objects that signal taste and success (Veblen, again)
- 🎯 The need for control...information, entertainment, and tools instantly accessible
Psychologist Sherry Turkle at MIT documented how digital devices tap directly into our dopamine-driven need for novelty and social validation. Those circuits existed long before Jobs walked onstage at Macworld.
Jobs didn't create new human desires. He built the most elegant container ever designed to hold a dozen pre-existing ones simultaneously. Not new desire...new delivery.
🚫 "Exception" #3: OpenAI → ChatGPT (2022)
This one deserves serious consideration.
100 million users in roughly two months. The fastest consumer adoption in history. No massive ad campaign. No billion-dollar launch spend. People tried it, felt something click, and told everyone they knew.
Looks like manufactured desire from nothing, right?
🔍 Peel it back one layer.
🧠 The desire to feel smarter without doing the hard work...universal, timeless.
⏱️ The craving to compress effort...get the 80% answer in 5 seconds instead of 45 minutes.
🪞 The fascination with something that talks back to you like a person. We've been projecting consciousness onto objects since cavemen named their tools.
MIT researcher Joseph Weizenbaum documented this exact phenomenon in 1966 with ELIZA...a primitive chatbot. His own secretary asked him to leave the room so she could talk to it privately. A program that just mirrored your sentences back at you.
We are wired to anthropomorphize. To seek oracles. To want a wise advisor at 2 AM with no judgment.
ChatGPT didn't create those desires. It removed every barrier between you and the fulfillment of them.
🎯 The Verdict
No one created desire from zero. Every "exception" tapped a deeper, older desire and rerouted it onto a new target.
Think of it like water. You can't create a river from nothing. But you can dig a channel and redirect where an existing river flows.
Schwartz's law isn't a principle. It's thermodynamics. You can convert desire, redirect it, even name desire people didn't know they had. But you cannot manufacture it from thin air.
Thanks for reading the Monday Memo.
Until next time!
The AI Marketers
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