Mantas | DR in weird markets

$50k/mo selling RuneScape XP at 5x market price to people proud of grinding.
I break down the angles that made that work.
Muay Thai.

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

I built a RuneScape service business by being wrong.

For 5 years I have been running ads that insult my clients.

$50k/month in revenue, built on a premise I had backwards.

I run a powerleveling service. People give me money. I level their account.

On the surface level it seemed they pay to skip the boring grind, so I poured all my creative energy into dissing the grind.

…Grind is for NOOBS!!!
…only sweat-boy living in mom’s basement grind
…buy my service and leave noobs in the dust

Then, one day, I was browsing RuneScape memes and a realisation hits me like a bag of wet bricks.

An RS player wears grind as a badge of honour!

He is proud of having spent 100s of hours to achieve his first 99 …he is proud of skipping school to finish off a fishing level.

He jokes about the wasted life. He jokes about NO XP WASTE.

He's still proud of both.

FML.

I AM INSULTING MY CLIENTS.

I am dismissing what they hold valuable.

So I am rewriting the whole Pimp My Build campaign.

From leave noobs in the dust.

To no xp waste.

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@linafahizul thanks, added to my read list!

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@Alexpresh2 @maciekl_ I can say read Breakthrough Advertising, the greatest book on how to commercialise creativity, but if you are Exploiter, rather than Explorer, you are better off reading Peter Drucker. Accept your limitations. Focus on process rather than outcome. Do the work.

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

We finish muay thai classes with one person from the group showing an exercise and counting down the reps. Plank. 59 …58 …57. Easy to endure the exercise when I control the room and angers me when someone else does the counting. Copy lesson: make your prospect believe he is the one with agency.

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@MercureCopy noticed this driving a scooter in Thailand. A guy in front of you is going at say 50 km/h. You overtake him and gradually slow down to 40ish. 8 outta 10 times he adapts to his new role of being behind you and slows down as a result

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@maciekl_ Be careful with classical copy books. Fundamentals are worth gold, but if you are not careful, you also download the cultural idiom of a previous century, which inevitably seeps into your copy and results in ads written for dead customers.

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@MercureCopy Eugene at it's finest. A small claim, if fully believed, always beats the half-believed one, no matter how strong.

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@AndrewWriteCopy I'd add the study of culture and society. Equally important. Writing a weight loss headline in an idiom of "lose ugly fat fast" is a suicide.

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@linafahizul genuinely curious, how this applies specifically to woman, rather than being equally powerful movers in man?

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@MercureCopy zeigarnik effect!!!

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@IMJustinBrooke in what context do you see "Drop 30lbs Fast & Get Your Dream "Hot Girl" Body This Summer" working on younger woman? My belief is that millennials & gen-zs have seen so many claims like this - they are blind to them.

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@EddChalk reminder to myself to update this comment with results once I roll out my own founder ads

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@mannybarbas_ This is Gene in Breakthrough Advertising: "if your copy is better than your product, then send it to your client instead of your prospect, and tell him to make it a reality."

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

$60k RuneScape ad …saved by blind luck.

Why does smoking a cigarette look badass?

Why does driving a sports car makes you look prettier?

Can buying RuneScape XP and GP serve as a symbol of success?

That’s the ad I tried to write.

But the ad I ended up writing was an aesthetic piece that accidentally positioned RuneScape as a parallel universe to our contemporary world.

The world in which pure and raw desire for money, power, and sex has to be laundered, masked, and explained away. Somehow it is not OK to simply want anymore.

The world in which you are required to signal virtue, perform morals, and appear politically correct, lest you be ostracised, cancelled, or fired.

The Wolf of RuneScape lives in direct contrast.

Unapologetic.

Performs no moral laundering and needs no explanation for why he plays RuneScape or why he buys XP and GP.

He does. Period.

Wolf gives permission to want. You can play like this. You owe no explanation.

And that's tenfold more powerful than the promise that buying a RuneScape service turns you into the man.

I rolled good RNG on this campaign.

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

The Day I Stopped Competing

I spent years in the RuneScape service market. Ambitious. Hungry. Going nowhere.

So I started reading advertising books. Ogilvy. Schwartz. Halbert.

And then one day I put two things side by side.

On one side:

“At 60 miles per hour, the loudest noise in the new Rolls Royce comes from the electric clock.”

“Avis. We're number two. We try harder.”

A lone Marlboro cowboy. No headline. Just a man and the identity he projected.

And on the other side: every RuneScape service provider in the market. Forum posts and Discord servers with the same three claims.

Cheapest.

Most trusted.

Most reliable.

Strip the logo off any of them. You cannot tell who is who.

And when everyone is identical, the only move left is to cut the price. Then the next guy cuts his. Then the next.

A race where crossing the finish line first means losing.
Those legendary ads showed me a different game entirely.

One where I wasn't racing anyone.

Everyone else was selling XP and GP.

I started selling Status and Time.

You're not buying 99 Agility. You're buying time you can spend with your kids.

You're not buying an Infernal Cape. You're buying the pride you feel every time you log into your account.

That's where it started.

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@Outscaler @AbyssusErigo Study how words, rhymes, and cadence build mood and evoke bodily emotions, which people justify with logic later on. Study how to assemble words into structures that open mental loops (which reader feels he HAS to close). Just a few ideas.

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@AbyssusErigo You hook the benefit of a story onto your product. "and the best part is, you don't need to spend 93 days in the company of Loch Ness Monster to enjoy better sleep, our [sleep product/mechanism] [intensification/benefit] at the comfort of your own home".? Am I missing something?

[Mantas | DR in weird markets @MantasGaming]

@jackccarney Uncle Dan is ruthless af, remember him advising salesman's of fire alarms to compile a catalog of burn victims, show it to the prospects, and don't close the catalog the first time prospect flinch, keep turning the page until he goes white! BTW, you have a link of full podcast?