Monday Memo

A Byte of Knowledge

Your Chatbot has a favorite crutch.

You’ve seen it a thousand times by now: “It’s not just about X… it’s about Y.”

In the fitness world?

• “It’s not just about losing 20 pounds… it’s about reclaiming the energy and confidence you had in your 20s.”

How about for all the investors out there?

• “It’s not just about making more money… it’s about achieving true financial freedom.”

This turn of phrase is like a neon sign telling your audience 'AI wrote this.'

It's the digital equivalent of a tell in poker.

Once you know what to look for, you can't unsee it.

So why do chatbots revert to “It’s not just about X… it’s about Y”?

Because they're sophisticated pattern-matching machines that scanned billions of pages of TED talks, news articles, op-eds, copywriting swipe files, and sales copy… and saw this phrase used everywhere...

Because it genuinely works to sound profound.

And during Chatbot training from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, human reviewers actually rewarded the AI for using these punchy clichés.

They gave a thumbs-up to answers that sounded persuasive.

But here's where it gets interesting: once the model outputs "It's not just," the conditional probability of "it's about" spikes through the roof.

Those tokens co-occur so frequently in training data that the model essentially gets trapped in its own statistical momentum.

And the result?

The AI can still write about a million different things…

But the style all sounds the same.

It falls back on a few proven, crowd-pleasing lines over and over again.

The fix?

Tell it directly: Avoid common rhetorical tropes like“It’s not just about X… it’s about Y.”

The even better power move is to also give it a better example to copy.

Feed it fresh, original writing that demonstrates the tone and style you actually want.

Force it off the crutch by showing it what 'good' looks like.

🚀 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: 

"Do a deep dive on the ‘free money’ tactics fantasy spots companies like FanDuel and DraftKings use to get new players hooked."

AI's Answer:

So what’s the strategy behind “free money”?

Let’s walk through the layers of manipulation, from outer bait to inner compulsion:

🐴 The Trojan Horse Offer: “Bet $5, Get $200”

• Framing: You’re not spending $5—you’re “unlocking” a $200 reward.
• Reality: That $200 isn’t cash. It’s site credit, often in the form of non-withdrawable bonus bets that require multiple rollovers.
• This is illusory liquidity: you feel rich, but can’t access the money.
• It’s modeled after casino comp psychology—like giving a whale free chips with strings attached.

Case Study: In 2022, DraftKings offered $1,000 in free bets—but only if users met a 20x playthrough requirement in 90 days.

🧠 Loss Aversion Camouflage

According to Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory, losses hurt 2x more than gains feel good.

So FanDuel re-frames the loss: “Your first bet’s on us.”

If your first $100 bet loses, they refund it in non-cashable site credit. You didn’t lose. You “get another shot.”

This reduces perceived risk, amplifying initial sign-ups.

🕹️ Skin in the Game + Illusion of Control

Once a user is playing with their “free” $200 credit, they're no longer watching the game passively.
They’re now an invested participant.

This activates what psychologists call the “illusion of control”—the belief that your choices influence chance-based outcomes (Langer, 1975).

Fantasy sports enhance this illusion by rewarding knowledge. You picked the lineup. You studied the matchups. It's a skill instead of gambling.

This pseudo-control loop fuels repeat play, especially when early small wins occur (another casino tactic: near-miss reinforcement).

🪜 The Escalation Funnel

• After initial credit use, users are pushed toward higher-stakes contests with better odds or bigger prizes.
• This mimics the “freemium to whale” pipeline used by mobile gaming giants like Zynga.
• They use CRM systems to track deposit behavior, reward higher LTV users with VIP perks, and send FOMO-triggering push notifications tied to real-time sports action.

⏳ Bonus Expiration = Urgency Trigger

Most “free bets” expire within 7 days.

This creates artificial urgency—forcing the user into fast decisions, bypassing rational analysis.

As Cialdini showed, scarcity amplifies desirability.

Even if it's fake.

Bottom Line: They’ve merged behavioral psychology, dopamine economics, and financial gamification to create an addictive funnel disguised as fun.

To the casual player, it looks like free money.

To the platform, it’s cheap CAC + high LTV.

They don’t need you to win.

They need you to believe you can.

And that’s enough to keep you coming back.

Thanks for reading the Monday Memo.

Until next time!

The AI Marketers

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