tv documents america's stories, and on sundays boov brings you the lates in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 c-sm these television companies and more including wow. >> the world has changed. today a fashionable internet connection something no one can live without the wow is there for our customers with speed, reliability, value and choice. now more than ever it all starts with great internet. [laughing] along with the 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 a living? >> guest: my mother went to work with the figures ago not would understand what i did. i was fortunate, back in

1960s, early '60s, the pioneer political direct mail. people have been raising money for a long time and they have been raising money through the mail for charities, churches, et cetera you know what had combined the two, politics and the mail. i did that in the early '60s for about 20 years i had no competitors. i went out there and help build the conservative movement. i can make a case that without direct mail the there wouldo conservative movement worthyy of the name. when i did my pioneering work in the '60s, the left wasn't doing it. now they're doing a better job than the conservatives are trying what have you always been a conservative even when you're growing up in texas? >> guest: i grew up right in pasadena, texas, outside of houston. kids in the neighborhood playing cops and robbers, 11, 12, 13 years old. don't tell anybody, i'm not shootingng robbers, i'm shootin, is. i have no recollection of any

political conversation in my family, my extended family but it just came to grow knowing communist are bad people and i was dedicated to fighting them, opposing them. i'm b second-generation conservative. first generation of buckley, russell kirk, barry, et cetera. 100% of second generation conservatives, though schlafly, jerry falwell, myself, et cetera. before we were conservatives, first we were anti-communist. that was the glue that held the conservative movement together in those days back in the '60s, '70s, '80s. >> host: what was that moment, that burning bush moment for you, when youme came to direct mail and mailing lists what you were visiting "national review" office in new york city. >> guest: i was fortunate and i had two weeks summer camp at national guard, military base outside ofut chicago, and the

first and onlyy saturday we were there for the two weeks everybody goes into chicago. richard states in the barracks and reads "nationald review." and saw a small ad about an inch or two for four field directors for americans for constitutional action, and they no longer exist. but i had a friend, a buddy, work for "national review," a journalist, a writer there. so i could hear theyy can us and guns going off in new york and washington, the war was started and and i was desperate to get into the bowel and fight the political left here in america. i called my friend, david frankie and said david, i've got to get one of those four jobs. he says it's not four. it's one. it wasas a blind ad to run young americans at freedom. i said david, give me that job. i got the job. for about aab year and half i moved to new york, and i came in contact very regulate with bill buckley and frank meyer and brent bozell and intellectual giant applicant james burns and

accountability and a bit of thing. i thought, i was a make a lot of progress so at one point i made a conscious decision to focus on direct mail. we didn't have enough people like buckley who could write an debate and all but we had some. we had come nobody that could market them to the country. so i literally went to my wife. by then i had a wife and two babies and i said honey, i think i've got something that's going to change america, maybe even change the world but i don't know it. had to study. could i be relieved of all household duties? no diapers, no trash, no yardwork or she bought into it after seven, eight years i made a deep dive in marketing, direct mail. if this with the microphones of the country back in those days, conservative message went up against the blockage, "new york times", abc, nbc, et cetera. we couldn't get a message out. we were the tree that fell into force. we could go read this blog and bite into people's homes and that changed everything. i can make a case one of reagan without of gotten the nomination in 1980 1980 without direcl

because when john connolly and george h.w. bush were getting thousand dollars contribution he was getting hundreds of thousands of ten, 15, $25 contributions fund his campaign made all the difference. >> host: what makes an effective direct mail letter? >> guest: yowell, direct mail is, used to be, until recently, the second-largest form of advertising in the country. television never won. now it's number three because the internet iss number one, television is number two, direct mail list of her three. i recognized that early on and a recognized that it's not come when i write a letter they go to 1 million people come i don't write it to million people. ion write it to one person to at one person might i'm writing that letter to. , who is that person? >> guest: well, for most of my political life it was my parents, my mother and my dad. i would have them. they didn't give every time, but they would occasionally give. you don't want to write to

someone who always gives, it's not a challenge, or never gives the you want somebody who occasionally gives and have a conversation with them, and bill buckley famously said he was a conservative but not of the breed, on saturday night he's hanging out with john culbreth, truman capote, et cetera. i am of the breed. my face is catholic, as as long as both catholics have been going to mass they are not quite sure when you stand up, when you don't come whatever. i can sit in the front row. i know when to applaud, i am one with the audience and then makes a huge difference. i am a true believer. >> host: many of your letters and those of us who are been involved in the media or politics over the years have received these, and they are often one line paragraphs. and then three '04 pages, and they repeat. what's the effect?

>> guest: one of the many like direct mail is i don't have to guess does his work or that work? because we take 1 million letters and we split in half to 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 outpolled good seven-page letter. the people said iad do read it. it's two people to leave but they scanned. they can flip through a look at this look at that. so the longer the copy, , you would never give a salesman let's take selling a refrigerator, self is refrigerated but you can only speak 200 words or 400 words. you speak until you've made the sale. so, short letters, short words. if you read the new testament, jesus words are almost one and two syllable words.

very few three and four, use very short words and short paragraphs. follow me, et cetera. he said to matthew. you want long letters but short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. and let me just say that at my age i will be 90 in a few months, i literally spend two hours a day studying marketing, advertising, business and i done that for over 60 60 years. , still today? >> guest: i-40 spent 45 minutes today studying marketing. young people are interested in marketing, advertising career, i tell them study, study, study, read, read, read. competition is not that serious at the quite frankly. most people in marketing albertine had not done a lot of study so if you study the classics out there, the giants who have 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 e-mail and social media benefited your business? >> guest: not really in a major way. when i got involved in 1961, the early '60s, fundraising through the mail was not a mature business. it'd been out there for a little bit. it's premature now. every fortune 500 company has a direct marketing division, department. so we know what works in direct marketing poster we don't with the internet. we will figure it out. it might be tomorrow, , might be five years from now but we haven't figured out how to market on the internet. there's a lot of young people who are trying it. they know next to nothing about marketing. they know the unit but theyre don't know how to market it. so we're still an exploratory stage in terms of learning how

to market, using the internet. >> host: act ii cannot you talk about the four horsemen of marketing, position, differentiation, benefit, and brand. briefly describe what those four are. >> guest: nothing original with that at all. barred from this et cetera. i put it to get in the package is really very important. i urge our viewers that it doesn't really matterre in life whether you're running for office or you want a promotion, you want a job, you want a raise, you want a spouse. i tell people when i did it my wife there was a lot of competition for this pretty young hand, is pretty young ladies hand in marriage. so i had to separate myself from all that competition out there. position number one is simply a hole in the marketplace. what hole can you occupy. that's a private decision. differentiation is what you do publicly to let everybody know

what your hole in the market place is. i like to use either msnbc or fox television. they both have a position i hold in the marketplace. they both differentiate u know, used to be talk takun and now it's, you know, bret baier and jesse watters and laura ingraham, et cetera, on fox, and rachel maddow on msnbc. you don't find those type of people anywhere else on television. third is benefit. by the g way, your audience you got to get all for right. get all or my quiet life is downhill, the wind is to back the you get one wrong you're going uphill and you're likely not to succeed. fox to the audience succeeds for a benefit. the often use information we don't get it or else out there, particularly until recently they had a little competition of it previously there was no competition for decades same with msnbc. fourth is brand, and brand is the ballgame.

one is a combination of position differentiation and benefit, is what makes you singular, , what makes you in the words of a famous communicator seth godin, a purple cow. i live out in the country, regularly passed fields of foley brown concert ticket black and white over here. can't tell them apart. all of our goal in life is to be a purple cow. i have figured out how to squeeze a fist with and there but there's aed fifth one that's called a a tagline. you want a tagline. tagline, when you come to a tagline should be relatively short and summarize what it is that you do that differentiate you from anybody else out there. if anybody else can use your tagline, throw it away. it has nothing to do with how much smarter you are faster or how high you jump or your better anything else. it's something the really differentiates you from all other products outl there, allf the candidates. if you're running for office journey doesn't know if your liberal or conservative so much

of utterance a tagline. the most effective tagline by the wood in the last 40 years has been make america great again. liberals will acknowledge that because that tagline separated trump in 2016 from everybody else out there. you want that tagline. we had a well-known governor of virginia, george allen, who said you do the crime, you do the time period kind of a two you can whistle reagan 1980 are you better off now than you were four years ago? so you want that to people can whistle that in a tagline. >> host: mr. viguerie, have you found it effective to use strong language against your opponents at, aka, negative ads work well on tv even though everybody says they hate? >> guest: is not necessarily strong words. i read something for the umpteenth time recently about truman, people uses a given how

can harry. he said i don't give them hell i just tell the truth and they think it's hell. i think it's just important to differentiate itself from your competition whether it's in a primary or the general election. or even if it's a nonprofit, you want to separate yourself from all your competition out there and you want to explain in a few words what it is you are doing. and usually people were exposed to a thousand can maybe 2000 messages a day. now it's five, 10,000 with the internet. we're just inundated. yet to be able to succinctly in a few words identify your brand to brand by the way is when you own a category. i am a brand. .. 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 >> when i did my pioneering work in the 1960's, i caught a lot of criticism, quite frankly, criticized on abc, nbc, time magazine through the '70s. the criticism stopped within a few hours, election night november 1980. a-ha, that's what viguerie has been up to. so i told my comfort friends, ed at the heritage foundation, paul phillips, many others who used to get together. home for breakfast every wednesday for 10 years. it's taken me 20 years to do this and it's going to take

them 30 to 40 years because i'm smarter, not so. within years, they had caught up with the conservatives and now they have far surpassed in my opinion. i wouldn't dream in flying in a plane with the average skills of a marketer. none of us would go to a doctor who learned by his guts or by the seat of his pants. lib raps have 20,000 organizations and conservatives about 1500. raised 700% more money than we do from 700% more donors. >> yeah, you talk about them as third force organizations. >> correct. >> what with iare-- which are what? >> they have 20,000 single organizations out there.

think if former president obama called environmental groups, 300, 350 groups represented there. if the conservatives did the same, five, six, seven groups. each of the groups has their own ideas, and leadership and pull the money their own way. and the republicans, independents, they pulled people, mostly their way on some of the issues. so the politicians don't really set the agenda so much as the third force organizations and conservatives only with 1500, really, really, are far behind and one of the things, the reasons i wrote the book was to encourage mostly younger people. when you get to be my age or in your 60's, 70's, even your 50's, your dna is pretty well

set. the very definition of an entrepreneur is a risk taker, somebody going to be bold and go out and take risks. so, that's going to come from younger people, 20's, 30's, early 40's. and so i wanted everybody to-- particularly conservatives, to read the book and get engaged. pick themselves to lead and i talk about that and i think it's very important. 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 describing himself as a community organizer. a year later, president of the united states. donald trump was a businessman, no prior government experience, 15 months later, he's president of the united states. i urge young people, pick yourself. don't wait for somebody to knock on your door. when i was in washington, nobody invited me to meetings. all of this knowledge is going to waste and one day out of frustration, i called a

meeting, a dozen people they came, you know. i called a week later, more game. and i learned something early on, that i read that nancy pelosi learned when she was climbing the leadership ladder. you'd be surprised how many people would come to your meetings if you serve good food. and i served good food. and all of a sudden invited me to their meetings. pick yourself. have courage, be a risk taker, be bold. >> mr. viguerie, could liberals pick up "go big", and learn something? >> unfortunately, yes. nothing i can do about that. [laughter] >> it's good advice even if you're not in politics 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 the competition, a lot of competition, billions of people.

so this book will help you to differentiate yourself from everybody else out there. >> i want to talk about some of the people that you write about in "go big", beginning with charles edson, who was he? >> charles was the youngest son of thomas edison, the interventer. he had been secretary of the navy and conservative cause and wealthy and generous with contributions and so, very supportive. i ran young americans for freedom in the early '60s. one day we had a small office on the fourth floor, no elevator, madison avenue, advertising row at new york city and i'm working at my desk there, 2:00 in the afternoon and i look up, there's charles

edison, 75 years old, and walked from the waldorf towers to encourage us and a delightful man. and i called him on the phone and asked him for a contribution and he gave me a contribution on the phone. i called a couple of other people, the captain from eastern airlines, world war i hero, and jay howard pugh. and i decided i didn't like to ask for money and-- ments talk about calling people on the phone voice so voice. >> that wasn't me at 20 or at 90. >> but you would write them a letter. >> i would write a letter and that seemed to work. i got a secretary and able to write more letters and do something, hardly any of the

viewers know, mimeograph machine and that seemed to work and then i got something nobody heard of back in those days, a computer and we started spitting out letters, and then after, i began to focus entirely on direct mail. after a year and a half, i thought i knew everything i needed to know and by then i had a wife and two babies so got a good job and the viguerie the first direct political company and i didn't know nothing, nothing. and i was able to get 12,500, barry goldwater, $50 plus.

and when i started in 1965, i had 100,000 goldwater donors and now we're over 10 million. and i recognized the business i was in, wasn't in fund raising or marketing, and i was in advertising, mark zuckerberg figured that out, too. >> have you gotten rich in your business? >> i have not. i've lived comfortably. but to this day my team will before under oath i put everything back into the company. every fiber of my being, i'm an entrepreneur. the definition of an entrepreneur, if anything, is a risk taker, so to this day, i put everything i've got available back in the company and i learned the reason i do that, is 1965, i started my company in january and i went

to very conservative organizations, just a few of them out there, and i said i've got the goldwater donors and they all agreed. we spent a dollar, instead now you spend a dollar and 50% of the money comes back because you invest in the long time value of the doan. when in those days, 2, 3, 4, $5 would come back and this is great, i'm going to mail 50,000 letters and when those results come in and then we'll mail 500,000. everybody said no, let's mail 5,000. no, i can see them down the street. they said, no, 5,000. at that moment i said i want to save western civilization and i know what to do so i tell you what i do, i'll finance the money, i'll put up the money and to this day the vast majority of our clients we finance their mailing for everything i can get from the company i put back to finance

more growth for the conservative movement. >> by the way, who was right, 5,000, or 500,000? >> neither, millions and millions we'll be mailing in the next 18 months something around 300 million postal letters. >> somebody else who has been active in the conservative movement you write about in "go big", morton blackwell. who is he? >> morton blackwell i dedicated the book to him, a good friend. i'm known in the movement as 002. i'm the longest conservative except for the doctor, 001. and bill buckley, robert falwell, all dead and i'm there on the national level longer than lee edwards. i've known him since 1961. he called me on the phone let's

have a lunch with a young conservative. you don't know him, he didn't know you, so we had a nice lunch and liked him so well invited morton back 10 days later for another lunch he and i. morton said i spoke magic words to him and the magic words, i said morton i want you to come work with me and help me build the conservative movement and at that time taking a pay cut. and i gave him a little pay increase. after some years he left and ended up working for ronald reagan in the white house and then after that, he left and started something called the leadership institute. and it's a -- they're almost no organization i can think of that's more important to the conservative movement than the leadership institute. they've trained well over a quarter of a million young people, many, many governors, senators, congressman, legislators too numerous to mention, over the years, right now as we speak, he's with my

president of my company -- i'm chairman -- kathleen, and he's teaching in europe how to be effective conservatives, so he has maybe 500 more classes all over the country that his leadership institute teaches each year and he's had more impact on the conservative movement than anybody else i can think of who is living. >> the book is called go big. the marketing secrets of richard a viguerie. and as somebody said before rush limbaugh, there was richard viguerie. we appreciate your time. >> my pleasure, good to be here. >> if you're enjoying book tv. sign up for our newsletter to use the qr code on the screen.

for the authors, discussions, book festivals and more every sunday on c-span2 or anytime online at book tv.org, television for serious readers. >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on sunday, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors, funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including comcast. >> do you think this is just a community center? no, it's way more than that. >> comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create wi-fi enabled listeners students from low income families can g the tools they need to be rdy for anything. comcast along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> author and professor douglas