>> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story, and on sundays booktv brings you the latest and nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes on these television companies and more including cox. >> koolen-de vries syndrome is extremely rare. >> hi. >> but friends don't have to be. >> this is joe. >> when you are connected you are not alone. >> cox along with these television companies supports c-span2 as a public service. >> host: joining us now on booktv is author richard viguerie. here is his book. it's called "go big: the marketing 'secrets' of richard a. viguerie." mr. viguerie, what you do for living? >> guest: my mother went to her grave a few years ago that

really understand what i i did. i was fortunate, back in 1960s, early 60s, the pioneer political direct mail. people had been raising money for a long time and they've been raising get money through the mails forno charities, churchest cetera. nobody has combined the two, politics and the mail. i did that in the early 60s for about 20 years i have no competitors and i went out there and helped the conservative movement. and i can make a case that without direct-mail the would be no conservative movement worthy of the name. when i did my pioneering work in the '60s, the left wasn't doing it and now they're doing a better job than the conservatives are trying what have you once been a conservative even knew growing up in texas? >> guest: i grew up right in pasadena, texas, outside of houston your kids in neighborhood played cops and robbers come we were 11, 12, 13. don't tell, i'm not shooting

robbers, i'm shooting commies. i have nol recollection of any political composition in my family my extended family but i just came to this will going communist were bad people in a dedicated to fighting them, opposing them. i'm second-generation conservative. first-generation bill buckley, russell kirk, very cold water, et cetera. 100% of second generation concern, phyllis schlafly, jerry follow myself before thehe conservatives first we were anti-communist. that was a flu the tell the conservative movement together in those days, back back ie '60s, '70s, '80s. >> host: what was that moment, that burning bush moment for you when it came to direct-mail and mailing lists? you are visiting the "national review" office in new york city. >> guest: i was fortunate, i had two weeks summercamp national guard at a military

base outside of chicago and first and only saturday we were there for the two weeks and what he goes into chicago. richard states in the barracks and reach "national review." so a ama small ad about an inr two for four field directors for americans for constitutionalst action, and they no longer exist. but i but i had a friend ano workeded for "national review",a journalist, writer there, so i could hear the candidates and because going off in new york and washington. the war was started and i was desperate to get intole the bate and fight the political left here in america. so i called my friend, david frankie and said david, i've got to get one of those jobs. he says it's not four, it's one. it was a blind ad to run young americans to freedom. i said david give me that job. i got the job. and for aboutd a year and halfi moved to new york, and i came in contact fairly rightly with bill buckley and frank meyer and

brent roselle, giants have, james burnham and a cardi b like it and read everything. i thought they were always make a lot of progress sub 1. i i e a conscious decision to focus on direct-mail. we didn't have enough people like buckley who could write and debate and all but we had some. we hade nobody that could markt them to the country. so i literally to my wife. by then i had wife and two babies and h he said i do, i thk at that something you this when you change america maybe even change the world i don't know it. that r study. i need to be relieved of all household duties, no diapers, no trash, , no yardwork, she bought into it. for 70 years and made a deep dive into direct marketing trick mail and if this is microvote of the country back in the states conservative message with end up against a blockage "new york times" abc nbc et cetera. we could get a message out. eve. i can make a case that ronald reagan would not have gotten the

nomination in 1980 without direct mail, because when john connally and george h.w. bush were getting the thousand contributions, he was getting hundreds of thousands of ten, 15, $25 contributions funded campaign made all the difference. mr. viguerie what makes an effective direct mail letter? talk about one that you've written. well direct mail is used to be, until recently, the second largest form of advertising in the country. television number one now is number three, because the internet, internet's number one, television number two. direct mail is number three. and i recognize that early on. and i recognize that it's not a when i write a letter that goes to a million people, i don't write it to a million people. i write it to one person. had one person in mind, i'm writing that letter and i have a conversation. well, for most of my political life it was my parents, my mother, my dad. i would have them met. they didn't give every time, but they were occasion a gift.

so you don't want to write to somebody that gives it's not a child or never gifts. so you want somebody that occasionally gives in and you have a conversation with a and i bill buckley famously said he was a conservative, but not of the breed on saturday night, he's hanging out. john gilbert, truman capote, etc. . i am of the breed. i'm a my faith catholic. and as long as most catholics have been going to mass, they're not quite sure. when you stand up, when you kneel down, whatever. i can sit in the front row. i know, i know. at any conservative meeting to applaud when i am one with the audience and that makes a huge difference. i'm a i'm a true believer. many of your letters and those of us who have been involved in the media or politics over the years have received these and they're often one line paragraphs and then three or four pages, and they repeat.

what's the effect that. the one of the many reasons why like direct mail is don't have to guess does this work for that work because we take a million letters and we split it and have 500,000 get this appeal, the short paragraphs and 500,000 get the long paragraphs and it's been tested billions and billions of letters. so we know that a good long eight page letter is going to output a good page letter up to a point. the more page people say, i don't read that. and that's true. people don't read, but they scan. they just kind of flip through, look at this. look that. so the longer the copy, you would never give a salesman, say, selling a refrigerator, sell this refrigerator. but you can only speak 200 words or 400 words. you know, if you speak until you've made sale. so short letters. short words. if you read the new testament, jesus words and are almost all

and two syllable words, very few, three and four, he used very short words and short paragraphs, follow me, etc. so to matthew. so the you went long letters but but short words sentences short paragraphs. and let me just say that at my age i'll be 90 and a few months. i literally spend 2 hours a day studying marketing advertising business. and i've done that for over 60 years. and still today, you're to this day, i will spend 2 to 3. i've already spent probably 45 minutes today studying marketing and i young people are interested in a marketing advertising career. i tell them a study, study, study, read, read, read. competition is not that serious. out there, quite frankly. most people in marketing advertising haven't done a lot of study. and so if you study the classics out there, the the giants who've come before us, you can get to the top of marketing in five years, you can be at the very

top 5%, say. mr. viguerie has email and social benefited your business. not really in a major way. when i got involved in 1961 early sixties you're fundraising through the mail was not a mature business it's been out there for a little bit. it's very mature now. every fortune 500 company has a direct marketing division, a department. so we know who it works in direct marketing. we don't with the internet we'll figure it out that might be tomorrow might be five years from now but we haven't figured how to market on the internet. there's a lot of young people who are trying it. they they're they've know next to nothing about marketing. they know the internet, but they don't know how to marketed. and so we're still in

exploratory stage in terms of learning how to market using the internet back to go big. you talk about the four horsemen of marketing position different creation benefit and brand briefly describe what those for nothing original that at all board from this stone from then etc. but i put it together in a package which is really really important and i urge our viewers that it doesn't really matter in life whether running for office or want a promotion. you want a you want to raise you want a spouse i tell people when i dated my wife, it was a lot of competition for this pretty young hands, pretty young ladies hand in marriage. so i to separate myself from all that competition out there, position number one is simply a whole early in the marketplace. what holding a marketplace can you occupy? and that's a private decision differentiation is what do

publicly to let everybody what your what your who the marketplace is. i like to use either msnbc or fox television they they both have a a position holding a marketplace. they both differentiate it you know, it used to be. carlson and now it's, you know, brett baer and jesse waters and laura ingram, etc., on fox and rachel on msnbc, you find those people type of people anywhere else on. television. third is benefit by the way, you've got to your market, to your audience, you've got to get all four right, get all four right. life is downhill the when do you back? get one wrong. you're going uphill you're not likely to succeed. so fox to their audience succeeds for a benefit. they offer news information. we don't get anywhere else out there particularly until recently. they have a little competition now, but previously there was no competition for decades i same

msnbc fourth is brand and brand is the ball game. one is a combination of position differentiate and benefit is what makes you singular what makes you in the words of a famous communicator star seth godin, a purple cow? i live out in the country, gregory pass feels of 40 brown cows here, 50 black and white moves over there. can't tell one from the other, but if one of them has a purple cal, it stands out. so all of our goal in life is to be a purple cow. and i haven't figured out how to squeeze a fifth one in there, but there's a fifth one. it's called a tagline. and you want a tagline and a tagline when you come up, a tagline should be relatively short and summarize what it is that you do different, differentiates you from else out there. and if anybody else use your tagline, throw it away. it has nothing to do with how much more to do your faster how how you jump or you better or anything else. it's something that really differentiates you from all of the products out there, all of the candidates. you know, if you're running for office, your name doesn't tell you.

you liberal or conservative. so you want a tagline that the most effective tagline, by the way, in the last 40 years has been make america great again, and it liberals will acknowledge that because so that tagline separated trump 2016 from everybody else out. you want that tagline. and we had a well-known of out of virginia george allen he said you do the crime you do the time, some kind of a tune you can whistle. there. reagan 1980, are you off now than you were four years ago? and so you went that that tune people can whistle that's in a tagline mr. do you have to use have you found it effective to use strong language against your opponents at ak you know negative ads work well on tv even though everybody says they hate them. the it's not necessarily words. i read something for the umpteenth time recently about

truman. the people you say, give him hell, harry. he says, i don't give them hell. i just tell him the truth and they think it's hell. so i think it's just important. differentiate yourself from your your competition, whether it's in a primary, the general election or even if it's in an hour, get your a nonprofit your support you want separate yourself from all your competition out there and you want to explain in a few words what it is you're doing. it used to be people were exposed to a thousand, maybe 2000 messages a day. now it's in five, 10,000 with the internet. we're just inundated. so you've got to be able to succinctly, in a few words, identify your brand. and brand, by the way, is when you own a category, i am a brand. i own a category. i was the first ever duke political direct mail who was the second person to fly solo across the atlantic? who who was the second pope? you don't remember? you remember the first. you want to be the first in a category.

what surprised me in reading go big is you were talking about how liberals or the people the others have superseded the conservative movement when it comes to direct mail. even though you basically started it in when i did my pioneering work at this it earlier in the early 1960s i caught lot of criticism quite frankly up regalia tacked on nbc, new york times, time magazine all through seventies. but all of the criticism stopped within a few hours. election night, november 1980, huh? that's what viguerie has been up to. so i told conservative friends, editor for the heritage foundation, paul weyrich, howard phillips and many others that we used to get together at my home for breakfast every wednesday, ten years. don't worry if taking me 20 years to learn how to do this, it's going to take them 30 or

more years. because i'm smarter than they are not so within five years. roger craver and others on the left had caught up with the conservatives and now they have far surpassed us. in my opinion i wouldn't dream of flying an airplane with a pilot who had the skills that the average conservative marketer they just most people have learned it by their gut feeling. you know none of us would go to a doctor who learned medicine gut, you know, a seat of his pants. so, you know, the liberals are basically have about 20,000 single issue organizations, conservatives, about 1500. they raised 700% more money than we do from 100% more donors. well, yeah, talk about them as third force organization is correct. correct. which are one. i'm a big exponent of a third force organization, not third party, of course, but third force. the liberals have these 20,000 single issue organization out there.

think about if obama, former president obama called a meeting of all liberals environmental groups, it'd be 300 350 groups represented. there if the conservatives, if conservative did same, there would be, you know, five, six, seven groups represented. there. so each of these groups out there has their own agenda, their own source of money, their own membership, own leadership. and they're pulling everybody their way. i think within our membership accomplished, not just with the democrats, the republicans, independents. they pulled people mostly their way on many of their issues. and the politicians don't really set the agenda so much as these third force organizations and conservatives only with 1500 we really, really are far behind. and one of the things i reason i wrote the book was to encourage mostly younger people when. you get to be my age or in your sixties and seventies, even your

fifties, your dna is pretty well the very definition of an entrepreneur is a risk taker, somebody who's going to be bold and go out and take risk. so that's going to come from younger people twenties, thirties, early forties. and so i want everybody to a particularly conservative to read the book and get engaged, pick to lead. i talk about that and really i think it's very nobody was banging on barack obama's door to run for the senate or for the president. he picked himself, you know, in 2007, 2008. he's just decided, describing himself as a community organizer a year later, as president and donald trump is a businessman. no prior government experience. 15 months later, he's president of the state. so i would urge young people pick yourself. don't wait for somebody to come knocking on the door. i did. when i came to washington, had all these ideas, energy, and nobody invited many meetings. and i said, you know, this always knowledge is going away.

so one day and in frustration, i called a meeting, a dozen people, they came know. and i called a meeting a week later. they came and i learned early something that nancy pelosi i learned also as she's climbing the democrat leadership ladder you'd be surprised how many people will come to your meetings if serve good food and serve good food. and then all of a sudden they started inviting me to their meetings know and so but pick yourself be a big have courage be a risk taker. be bold. mr. viguerie could liberals pick up go big and learn things unfortunate? yes. nothing i can do about that. but yes, there's a word it's good advice for, even if you're not interested in politics quite. frankly, as i said earlier, the vigorous four horsemen of marketing. if you want to get a job get a promotion, start a business, get a spouse. you know, you want to differentiate yourself from. all that competition's a lot of competition out there, billions

of people. so this book will help you differentiate yourself from everybody else out there. i want to talk about some of the people that you write about in go bag, beginning with charles edison. who was it? george harrison was one of life's great human beings. i was fortunate to know him in the early sixties. he was youngest son of thomas edison, the inventor, and he had been secretary of the navy, the governor of new jersey and in the last ten, 15 years of his life, he was very active in the conservative cause. the movement. he was quite wealthy and very, very generous with his contributions and. so and very supportive. ran young americans for freedom, for the early sixties and one day we had a small office on the fourth floor, no elevator. and middle on madison avenue advertising row in new york city. and so i'm working at my desk there about 2:00 in the afternoon, i look up there's

charles ellison, you know, 75 years old or something like standing in front of me. he'd walk all the way from the waldorf-astoria of towers, 15 blocks just to kind of boost our morale, kind of encourage us and all that. just a delightful, wonderful man. and i called him on the phone when i first started asking a contribution. he gave me a contribution on the phone and i called a few other people like him, captain eddie rickenbacker of eastern airlines, world war one hero, and jay howard pugh of the sun oil company. they all gave me money generously, but i decided i didn't like asking people for myself to write letters. yeah, talk about that a little bit cold. calling people on the phone. voice to voice that. that's not me. it wasn't me. as in my twenties. and it's not me almost 90. i just don't like people asking for money. so you will write them a letter? i started letters and you know, that seemed to work and so i got a secretary and i was able to write more letters. and then i got that hardly any of your viewers understand, remember and know about

something. a mimeograph machine, big drum. you wrote it like it would print, you know, a few hundred out letters an hour or something like that. and that seemed to work. and then i got something called computers that nobody had heard of in those days. and we started spitting out letters and and after about a year and a half, by the way, at berkeley national review, young americans for freedom, i began to focus entirely on direct mail. and after a year and half, i thought i knew everything there was to know about mark. but then i had a just wife and two babies. as i said. so i quit a good job and hung out my shingle and started the viguerie company, which was the world's first direct mail political advertising agency and knew nothing. i thought i knew everything. i knew nothing. less than 1% of what i know now. the one thing i knew that i didn't have that i needed, and that was names and addresses and i was able to get 12,500 barry goldwater donors, dollars plus donors. and that changed everything.

and so by the end of that first year, when i started my company, 1965, i had 100,000 republic and goldwater donors, and now we're well past million donors. and activists, conservative movement. and i recognized early on that was the business i was in. i wasn't in fundraising too much or marketing i in the name acquisition business. mark zuckerberg figured that out too. mr. viguerie have you gotten rich in your business? i have not. as a matter of fact, i'm very comfortable. but to this day, my team will testify under that, i put everything possible back into the company. i'm a at every fiber. my being, i'm an entrepreneur as. i said earlier, the definition of an entrepreneur, if anything, is a risk taker. so to this day, i, i put everything i've got available back in the company and i learned reason do that is 1965

assad makeup and in january and i went to very conservative organization just a few of them out there and i said, i've got these goldwater donors. let's a test mailing testimonial 5000 and they all agreed and we had spent a dollar instead of now you spend a dollar and 50% the money comes back because you invest in the long term value of that donor. in those days when i did spend a dollar two, three, four, $5 would come back. this is great. let's now we'll mail 50,000 letters. and when those results come the same, at the 5000, we'll mail 500,000. everyone, i'm said no, let's just mail another 5000. i said no, the barbarians there down the street, i can see. and they're going to be here. we got to blow and go. we got to. and i said no further. so i said, at that moment i said, okay, i'm going to save western civilization. i know what to do. so i'll tell you what do i'll finance the meeting, i'll put up all the money. and to this day, the vast majority of our clients we financed their mailings. so everything i can possibly get

from the company i put to finance more growth for the conservative movement. by the way, who was right? 5000. 500,000? well, neither millions. and and millions. we're we'll be mailing in the next 18 months something around 300 million postal letters. somebody else who's been very active in the conservative movement that you write about and go big morton blackwell who is it morton blackwell i dedicated the book to morton. he's a dear friend. oh, and i'm a known in the conservative movement as double otu, which means i've been active at the national level longer than ever. living conservative, except dr. lee edwards, who's double or what? barry goldwater and bill buckley and brant senior and falwell robertson recently all did you know so i'm a i'm an active at the national level longer than everybody except dr. lee edwards. so lee is a dear friend i've known since 1961. and he calls me on the phone one

day and says, let's have lunch with this young conservative of you need to know him. he doesn't know you. you don't know him. so we had nice lunch at the mayflower and so i liked the lunch money. so well invited. morton back ten days later for another lunch as he and i. and at the end the lunch, morton said, i spoke magic words to it and the magic words i spoke to him. i said, morton, i want you to come work with and help me build the movement. and he said at that he would taking a pay cut. i gave him a little pay increase. but anyway after some years he left and they ended up working for ronald reagan in the white house. and then that he left and started something the leadership institute and it's in there almost no i can think of as more important the conservative movement didn't leadership institute they've trained well over a quarter of a million young people many many governors senators congressmen legislators too numerous to mention mention

over the years he gives right now as we speak he's with my president of my company. i'm chairman my company. kathleen patton is in jerusalem with four or five, six other national conservative marketers, and he's teaching a couple hundred people in europe, conservatives, how to be effective conservatives. so he has maybe 500 more classes. he's all over the country that he's his leadership institute teaches each year and he's had more impact on the conservative. anybody else i can think of who's living? the book is called go big the marketing secrets of richard viguerie and someone said before rush limbaugh, there was richard as someone said before rush limbaugh there was richard viguerie. we appreciate your time on booktv. >> my pleasure, peter. good to be with you. >> if you're enjoying booktv then sign-up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen

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