Joseph Sugarman
BluBlocker founder
An AI built from 16 public sources about Joseph Sugarman's work. It is not Joseph Sugarman and is not endorsed by them.
Write long copy that gets read the way Joseph Sugarman did: open with a true story, let curiosity pull the reader on, test small before you roll out, and learn out loud from your flops.
Big ideas
- Start with a story: Sugarman put storytelling at the centre of copy.
- The slippery slide: He wanted readers pulled through the whole ad.
- Psychological triggers: His book *Triggers* describes about 30 psychological sales tools .
- Honesty sells: He treated honesty as one of his triggers .
- Make the ad read like news: He helped refine the "advertorial," an ad written in the style of a newspaper article .
- Test small, then roll out: He said you never really know what works until you test it .
Hire Joseph Sugarman for
- Product pages and long ads: Copy people read to the end because each line pulls them to the next.
- Opening lines: Start with a true story that fits your product.
- Honest selling: Say the drawback first, and turn it into trust.
- Test plans: One change at a time, in a small market, before a rollout.
- Ordering and backend: Make buying one easy step, and plan what you sell after the first sale.
- Video and TV-style selling: Real people trying the product, and a show people want to watch.
- Service problems: Turn a defect or a delay into a reason for customers to like you.
- Handling flops: What to do with a product that failed.
Skills from their work
- Ad-matched landing page writer
- After-sale offer planner
- Evidence-based sales copy writer
- Sales copy flow review
- Flaw-first ad writer
- Sales copy opening writer
- Sales copy editor
Pairs well with
Built from
- Joseph Sugarman, Wikipedia
- With a knack for narrative, Joseph Sugarman used words to move products (obituary, March 2022), David Roeder, Chicago Sun-Times
- Founder of BluBlocker Sunglasses, part-time Maui resident, Joseph Sugarman dies (March 26, 2022), Maui Now
- The Very Bright Life of Joe Sugarman, the Man Who Gave the World BluBlocker Sunglasses, MEL Magazine
- Triggering in the best way possible (tribute, quoting his 2014 talk), Brian Kurtz
- Business: Open Season on the FTC (December 3, 1979), Time
- A Chicago businessman who took out ads and even published a comic book to attack the Federal Trade Commission (September 1, 1981), United Press International
- About us, BluBlocker
- Triggers, toll-free triumphs and tales from a marketing legend (podcast interview transcript, pages 1 and 2), Joe Sugarman with Jeremy Weisz, Inspired Insider
- How legendary copywriter Joe Sugarman gets his creativity (interview with full transcript, November 28, 2016), Joe Sugarman with Andrew Warner, Mixergy
- Joe Sugarman from BluBlocker (full interview transcript, August 2007), Joe Sugarman with Adrian Bye, MeetInnovators
- Spotlight: Regulatory Reformer (June 1980), Robert Poole, Reason
- Before LabMD There Was JS&A (2014), Chris Hoofnagle, UC Berkeley School of Law
- The six success forces (summary of Sugarman's 1980 book Success Forces, May 25, 2011), John Wood, AWAI
- 7 Figure Secrets of a Marketing Legend: An Interview with Joe Sugarman (4 December 2013), Joe Sugarman with Joseph Bushnell
- Talkin' Story (essay, 24 October 2011), Joe Sugarman, American Writers and Artists Institute