tv Richard Viguerie Go Big CSPAN October 12, 2023 3:14pm-3:43pm EDT
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his book called go big, the marketing secret of richard, what do you do for a living? >> my mother went a few years ago not understanding what i did. people have been raising money for a long time for charities and churches about 20 years, i went out and helped build the movement. when i did my pioneering work, they are doing a better job.
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>> have you always been a conservative growing up in texas? >> i grew up in texas a set of and playing cops and robbers 11, 12 and 13 years old, i'm not shooting robbers, i'm shooting communist. i have no recollection of any conversation in my family but dedicated to fighting and opposing the i am second generation. first generation walmart and etc. one 100% second generation conservatives before we were conservatives of course we were anti-communist, positive movementr and those days in the 60s and 80s. >> what was that moment, burning bush moment when itn came to
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mailing list visiting the national review office? >> i wasna fortunate, but two wk summer camp military base in chicago and the first and only saturday we werees there richard was in the area and saw a small and an inch or two for field directors and it no longer exists but i had a buddy who worked for national review, a writer and i could hear the guns going off new york and washington. the war was starting and i was desperate to get into the battle and fight the political left here in america so i called my friend and said david, i've got to get one of those and is not a war, it's one.
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i said david,, get me that john and i got the job. about a year end a half i moved to new york and i came in contact bill buckley frank meyer, intellectual giants out there. i tried to be like them and i everything, i wasn't making a lot of progress so one time i made the decision to focus on direct mail. we didn't havee enough but we had. they can market to the country and i had a wife and two babies in his head i think about something that will change america, maybe evendo the world that i would be relieved of all household duties, no divers or yardwork for seven or eight i made a deep dive, direct marketing the microphones of the country in those days it went up
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against blockage and we couldn't get our message out and we could go around this right into people's homes and it changed everything. i can make the case ronald reagan would not have gotten the nomination when john conley and george h debbie bush would be in the $1000 contribution getting ten, 15, $25. >> talk about one think you've written. >> direct mail is used to be until recently the second largest form in the country television number one. now it's number three because of internet. i recognized that early on and i recognized when i write a letter that goes to 1 million people, i don't write it to 1 million, one
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person writing the letter. for most, it was my parents, my mother and my dad. they didn't give every time but someone who always gives the tell it. you have aon conversation with t and bill buckley famously said conservative but not greed. my favorite is catholic and as longic as they're not quite sur, i could sit on the front row and i am one with the argument and it makes a huge difference, i am
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a believer many of your letters and those of us involved in media or politics over the years received things and one line paragraph three or four pages they repeat. >> i don't have to guess, does this work or does that work? we take letters and split it in half, 500,000 short paragraphs and 500,000 the wrong progress and it's been tested billions and billions of letters a good long letter will pull in a push letter. scan it through and look at this and look at that the longer, he would never give a salesman giving a refrigerator but you
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can speak 200 or 400 words, you speak until you make the sale so short words. if you read the new testament, jesus words are almost all one and two syllable words, very short words and short paragraphs. follow me and etc. mom runners but short words and sentences and short paragraphs. at my age, i will be 90 in a few months, i literally spent two hours a day studying marketing, advertising and business have done that for over 60 years and to this date i will spend four to five minutes a day marketing and young people interested marketing and advertising career, i told him study, study, read, read.
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competition is not that series of the frankly. most people haven't done a lot of studying so if you study the classic other, the giants who come before us, marketing and in five years you can be in the top 5%. >> e-mail and social media affected your business? >> not really in a major way. when i got involved in 1961, early 60s, the male was not, it had been out for a little bit. it's very mature, every fortune 500 company has direct marketing decision, a department so we know what works in direct marketing, we don't with the internet. we'll figure it out but it might be tomorrow or in five years but
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we haven't figured out how to market on the internet. there's a lot of young people trying it. they know next to nothing about marketing. they know the internet but they don't know how to market so we are still in this stage in terms of learning how to market to big, youck to go talked about the four horsemen marketing, differentiation, benefit and brand. describe those for. >> nothing original with that at all. put it together in a package which is really important and i urge viewers that itt doesn't matter whether you are running for office or want a promotion or a job or a raise, a spouse. i tell people when i dated my wife, there's a lot of competition for this pretty young ladiess and so i had to
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separate myself from the competition out there and position number one is simply a hole in the marketplace whatpy will can you market? that is the decision. what you do to let everybody know your marketplace and i could use msnbc or fox television, they both have a position, a hole in the marketplace and differentiate, it used to be tucker carlson and now bret baier and jesse watters and laura ingraham and etc. and rachel on msnbc, you don't find them anywhere else on television. there is benefit and by the way, you got to market to your audience, get all for right and get one will are going up so
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fast to the audience received for a benefit. they don't get anywhere else of this until recently they've had no competition but previously there was no competition for decades and the same with msnbc. fourth is brand, brand the combination of decision and appreciation and benefit and it's what makes you singular, in the words of the famous communicator a purple cow. i live in the country and past brown cows here, 50 black and white ones over there, can't tell one from the other. if there was a purple one, they would stand out. our goal inez life is to be a purple cow. squeeze if it's one in but if it's one is called the tagline and you want the tagline. the tagline short and summarize what it is you do differentiating you from everybody else and if anybody
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else can use your tagline, throw it away. it's not how much smarter you are or faster or if you are better, it's something that differentiates you from all other products out there. if you run for office, liberal or conservative so you want a tagline is the most effective tagline in the last four years has been make america great again and liberals acknowledge thatat because that separated trump in 2016 compared to everybody else out there. we had a well-known governor of virginia who said you do the crime, he did the time, a tune you can whistle there. are you better off now than four years ago? you want the tomb people can whistle. >> you have to use -- have you found it effective to use strong
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language also known as negative ads everybody says they hate? >> that necessarily strong words about truman, give them hell, harry. i just tell them the truth so it is important to differentiate the general election even a and separate yourself from your competition and you want to explain what it is you are doing it used to be people were exposed to 1000 or 2000 messages a day and now it five to 10000 is your brand.
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across the atlantic the first in the category. >> they haveti superseded conservative movement. >> when i did my pioneering work in the 60s i was regularly attacked on nbc and new york times, times magazine all through the 70s and it stopped within a few hours election night, november 1980 so i told my conservative friends and get
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together for ten years. don't worry, it's taken me 20 years to learng how to do this. within five years and has caught upav this and they have far surpassed this. i wouldn't dream of flying an airplane with the pilot for the average conservative marketer. and they have about 25000 and is started with about 1500 and raised seven 100% more money and seven 100% more donors.
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>> you talk about them as third and fourth organizations. >> i am a big exponent of third and fourth organizations. 20000 organizations other, think about former president obama called a meeting of liberal environmental groups, 350 groups represented there. it's the conservatives in the five, six, seven groups represented to each of the groups author has their own agenda and source of money in their own membership, their own leadership in the pool everybody not just with the democrats but republicans and democrats, people people from their way on their issues so politicians don't really set the agenda so much as the third and fourth
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organizations. we are far behind in one thing, one reason i wrote the book was to encourage younger people. they get to be my age or in your 60s or 70s or even 50s, it is pretty well set the definition of an entrepreneur is a risk taker, be bold and gather and take risk so it will come from younger people, 20s and 30s and 40s so i want particularly conservatives to read the book and get engaged and it is very informed. nobody was on barack obama's door for president, he picked himself. in 2000 -- 2007 at eight, describing himself as an organizer and a year later donaldmp trump is a businessman,
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no prior government experience in 15 months later is president of the united states so i urge young people, pick yourself, don't wait for somebody to come. when i came to washington, i had all of these ideas nobody invited me i said this knowledge is going to waste so out of frustration i called a meeting and they came and i called a meeting and a week later more came and i learned early on think nancy pelosi learned also that she's coming the leadership ladder, he would be surprisingly good people come if you serve good food so all of a sudden they started inviting me but have courage, be a risk taker and be bold. >> liberals pick up and learn? unfortunate, yes. [laughter] nothing i can do about that yes. it's goodn advice not just
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politics. in marketing you want to get a job or a promotion, start a business, get a spouse, differentiate yourself from competition, there's a lot of competition out there. this book will helpp you differentiate yourself from everybody else other. >> i want to talk about people you write about beginning with charles edison, who was? >> one of life's greatest human beings, i was fortunate to know him in the early 60s and the youngest son, thomas edison the inventor and secretary of the navy, governor of new jersey and the last ten, 15 years of his life active the conservative movement was wealthy generous withon his observations and supportive.
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iran this in the early 60s and one day we had a small office on the fourth floor, no elevator new york city so i'm working at the 2:00 in the afternoon and i look up and there's charles edison 75 years old and he walked all the way 15 box to boost morale and encouraged us and a delightful and wonderful man and i called him on the phone when it started for contributionle to call a few otr people like him and world 11 euro and the oil company, they gave money generously. >> talk about that a little bit, cold calling people on the phone. >> it wasn'tme me in the 20s, i
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don't like asking people for money so i started writing letters so i got a secretary and was able to write more letters and then something a mimeograph machine and it seems to work in a something called computers which somebody nobody had heard about in those days. a year end a half at berkeley, national review commission, i began to focus and after a year end a half i thought i knew everything. the world's first direct political advertising agency and
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i knew nothing, nothing less than 1% of what i know now and one thing i knew i didn't have and that was names and addresses those able to get call thousand 500 donors and it changed everything so by the end of that year when i started i had 100,000 republicans donors and well past 10 milli and well past 10 milliecognized eary marketing and acquisition. >> have you gotten rich in your business? >> i have not.r i am very comfortable. to this day my team will testify back into companies and every fiber of my being, the
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definition of a risk to this day available in thei company, the reason is 1965 went to various organizations and a set of got these donors and they all agreed.en there you got 50% coming back and the long time value of the donor and in those days three or four or $5 came back and it's great. now 50000 letters and they usually don'tth come in and they said no, another 5000 and i said no, i can see it, with got to go and they said no so i said okay,
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i want to save western civilization and know what to do so i'll tell you what, i will china and to this day the vast majority of our clients find it so everything i could get from the company i put back for the conservative movement. >> 5000 or 500,000? >> neither. millions.. we will be meeting in the next 18 months, around 300 million. >> somebody else is active in the conservative movement you write a about, who is he? >> a dedicated the book to him, a dear, friend and i've known m double zero two which means b often active at the national level than any living conservative except edwards double zero one. cold water in buckley and
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robertson recently, i've been active at the national level along with everybody except edwards so since 1961 and called me on the phone one day and said let's have lunch with this young conservative, innocent know you if you don't know him so we had lunch likely so well in ten days later at the end of the lunch i spoke magic words and the magic words spoken to come work with you and build the conservative movementnt and is taking a pa cut. ronald reagan the white house and the leadership institute.
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