Why it pays to be the ugly one in town

Here's a controversial story I heard about Gene Schwartz:

This scene was going down when Gene was giving a talk and revealing why he "specializes in ugly." Not women... But rather layouts and color in advertising. At the time colorful(4 color) advertising was the new meta and so newspapers looked like an anti-gun protest from the aerial view(khm... like a rainbow).

All of the ads looked the same... Beautiful.

Gene knew this and all he had to do was look different and he would grant himself immediate and undivided attention from the readers. So...

He ran 2 color(black and white) ads with ugly layouts.

These "ugly" ads weren't just ugly... They also pulled like crazy(outpulling colorful ads by a fat margin of 30%...)

To me, this looks much like what's going on with email nowadays.

Everybody is trying to look all nice, and shiny in the inbox with all their full-image emails. Slowly but surely it's turning into a fashion night for who has the most stunning email....

Although this situation isn't the best for them...

It can turn out quite well for you. Why? And how?

Well, if you are willing to do what Gene did back in his time and "specialize in ugly"... You will stand out in the inbox 10 stories higher than everybody else reaching and squeaking for attention but never getting it because their emails all look the same.

I'm not saying image emails are useless(although I think that).

But there's no doubt in my mind you will bag in more money with plain text emails because you will practically be glowing in the inbox.

Also...

If you want a no BS, 3-step headline "blueprint" developed by the founding father of internet marketing - that can also greatly help you write subject lines for your "ugly" emails... go here:

https://kristofnemeth.vercel.app/

Kristof Nemeth.