Todd Brown’s Titans of Direct Response: Notes and Takeaways

Key Lessons from Todd Brown’s Titans of Direct Response Talk

Updated: April 28, 2026. If you’ve been around direct response marketing for a while, the names below probably ring a bell. Back in September 2014, a group of industry heavyweights came together to pool their knowledge — which is precisely how the event earned its name. If any of these names are unfamiliar, pick one and begin studying and applying what they teach right away.

Jay Abraham, for example, puts out a huge library of free material that arguably beats most paid courses, webinars, and “free plus shipping” book funnels put together. His work has helped clients generate more than $9 billion collectively. Instead of taking business advice from random YouTube videos or social posts, look for people with a proven track record — or at least those willing to show you proof privately, since many successful marketers keep proof out of public view to avoid lawsuit-happy critics.

Who Spoke at the Event

• Dan Kennedy
• Gary Bencivenga
• Jay Abraham
• Greg Renker
• Ken McCarthy
• Perry Marshall
• Joe Sugarman
• Fred Catona
• Eric Betuel
• David L. Deutsch
• Arthur Johnson
• Parris Lampropoulos

Todd Brown is another marketer with a proven track record. The notes below come from one of his videos. You can also dig deeper with Perry Marshall’s notes, Todd Brown’s ASIST process (E5 method), and Eugene Schwartz’s biggest copywriting secret.

How Boardroom Became a Multi-Million Dollar Company

Marty Edelston’s brother laid out the two factors he credited for Boardroom’s millions in revenue.

#1: An Insatiable Curiosity About Everything

Todd pointed out that the best marketers and copywriters share one trait: endless curiosity about the people they meet — how someone does their job, why they do it, how they do it, why they do it that way, and why they think the way they think. Cultivate and develop that insatiable curiosity. It helps you spot trends and market gaps — “skate to where the puck is going to be.”

#2: Always Aim for Superior Idea Quality

Come up with a “big idea” and let it do the heavy lifting. Idea quality drives most of your results. Great copy can’t rescue a weak offer, and great copy will never make up for a weak idea. A great idea communicated clearly can work even without formal copywriting training. A great offer makes competitors wonder “How are they staying in business doing this?” or makes customers think “How are they even able to offer this?” “Be a bloodhound” means sniffing out ideas that are shocking, fresh, exciting, different, and instantly captivating to your audience.

Why Research Matters

When you build marketing campaigns or funnels, “you do research with a hand-truck” — sifting through a massive amount of data instead of looking at just one or two things. As you compile and organize your research (or dig through your product to find its various features and benefits), ask yourself:

• What is their #1 problem?
• What keeps them up at night?
• What would the perfect solution look like?
• How do they feel right now?
• What is their dominant pressing emotion about this problem?
• What stories are they telling themselves?
• What stories are they afraid of regarding the future (future-pacing)?
• What are competitors selling?
• What are their benefits and features?
• How are they positioning those products?
• How are they pricing those products?

Every one of these questions counts as research. Searching for the big hook to use is research too. Do this and you’ll be able to write control-killers. If you’re an affiliate marketer, your competition is too busy “ripping” and you’ll run circles around them. This is how you find the killer angle that builds a moat around your campaign — then you try to negotiate an exclusive offer or go direct to the offer owner.

How Copywriting Greats (Especially Schwartz) Approach the Craft

“If you’ve got an hour to chop down a tree, spend 40 minutes sharpening the axe.” If you have one month to write a promotion: two weeks of research, one week to write the draft, one week to edit. The research phase equaled all the writing. Research was partly why Eugene Schwartz could write bangers that made a great deal of money. One of Todd Brown’s favorite quotes: “Never underestimate the task at hand when it comes to getting someone to whip out their credit card to pay for a product or service.”

Lessons from Dan Kennedy’s Presentation

“It takes EXTREME, EXTRAORDINARY measures to compel people to act.” — Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy argued that every marketing funnel, piece of copy, and marketing message falls into one of two categories:

• Product-oriented information (product advantages, features, benefits, etc.)
• Emotional agitation / problem agitating

He said the more your marketing leans toward “emotional manipulation,” the more likely you are to have a winner. But “You gotta know what emotion you are trying to generate,” as Todd Brown put it — “What is the main emotion you want your prospect to feel?”

Pros know winning campaigns come from emotional manipulation: identify the problem, present it to them, agitate it (show the outcome of taking the right action versus the wrong action), and offer a solution. When you sell anything, you’re selling the prospect on the emotion they want to feel — the emotion tied to their desired end result.

DK says he always pushes prospects to mentally “choose a side” when he writes a sales letter. He doesn’t say it outright but lets them know their decision places them on a certain “side.” Show how your product or service puts your prospect in the group they want to belong to — the “cool group.”

What makes all your copy (VSL, sales letter, emails, etc.) succeed isn’t copy structure or elements but knowing what will captivate and hold your reader’s attention — and the why, when, where, and how you’ll focus on eliciting their different emotions. Dan Kennedy tries to use these in all his sales letters: lust, escape, esteem/self-esteem/inadequacy, guilt or assuaging guilt, and greed.

Pro tip: Victor Schwab’s How to Write a Good Advertisement will help you inject more emotion into your copy. Sell them on the emotions first, then sell them on what they need to know — that’s when you can bring in the product, its benefits, and advantages.

A Copywriting Exercise Worth Trying

The best way to use a swipe file is to review your swipes and, as you read each ad, ask: “Why was this said?” “Why was this said here?” “What was this particular sentence or paragraph trying to do?” “Why did they say it without X, Y, and Z?” (for example, because XYZ were the three biggest objections their prospects had). You can do this exercise daily. Gary Bencivenga recommends reading one good ad per day. Pair that with these questions and you’ll start to build quicker pattern recognition of the selling triggers and sequences that make people buy.

A Grab Bag of Tips

• Joe Sugarman said it’s unwise to rip off a campaign, funnel, or sales letter because there’s a time and place for everything (marketplace sophistication is why you can’t just take a winning campaign from five years ago and assume it still works today).
• Marginal Utility (MU): drinking water is an example of declining MU. At some point, if you keep drinking water within a certain period, the benefit you get (hydration) decreases. Diminishing returns hit zero, then you move into “negative MU,” aka damage.
• Push yourself to think differently (outside the box) about situations. Look for connections others haven’t made, or link two things that seem unrelated.
• When you present your solution, it should spark an “Ah! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for” feeling in your prospect.
• Always sell a specialty and something unique — never a commodity.
• Strive to make prospects feel understood by you — their emotions, problems, situation, and obstacles — throughout your copy.

A Small Ask

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