Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
⠀
Hello rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
⠀
🙋♀️ Nora’s sales page that hides the weak parts
Nora is a UX designer who teaches design to non-designers on YouTube.
This week, she’s writing the sales page for her course, and she knows exactly where it is weak.
The videos are a little long, and there is no community yet.
🧩 Her struggle:
She hides the weak parts, so the page reads like every other sales page, and nobody believes it.
While a video exports, she watches the true story of a pizza company
that also knew where its product was weak,
and whose sales jumped 14.3 percent in three months.
Its boss did the opposite of what you’d expect.
⠀
🍕 The pizza company that put its worst reviews on television
Patrick Doyle sat watching video of customers describing his company’s pizza.
He was president of Domino’s Pizza, and became its chief executive a few months later.
They said the crust tasted like cardboard.
They said the sauce tasted like ketchup.
One customer said it was the worst pizza they had ever eaten.
Domino’s had been selling roughly the same pizza for close to fifty years.
Now fewer people were buying it.
Sales at existing American stores fell 4.9 percent in 2008.
Profit dropped from $108 million in 2006 to $54 million in 2008.
The normal thing to do with video like that is to bury it, and buy advertising that says the pizza is delicious.
In December 2009 Domino’s put the video on television instead.
The commercials showed that video of customers complaining.
They also read out complaints from Twitter word for word, with the company’s own name on them.
“Even worse than microwave pizza.”
“Totally void of flavor.”
Then the same commercials showed the chefs at head office rebuilding the recipe, starting with the crust and the sauce.
Patrick said why they ran it.
“The old days of trying to spin things simply doesn’t work anymore.”
Spin means telling people the good part and staying quiet about the bad part.
His point was that customers had already eaten the pizza, so there was no bad part left to hide.
Get this — in the first three months of 2010, sales at existing American stores rose 14.3 percent.
Turns out the complaints were the one part of the ad nobody could say was made up.
No company invents insults about its own product.
So when Domino’s said the new pizza was better, the customer had just watched them admit the old one was bad.
That made the claim easy to believe.
⠀
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Honest Flaw
Domino’s put its worst reviews on television, then showed the crust and the sauce being rebuilt.
Sales rose 14.3 percent the next quarter.
This tactic is called The Honest Flaw.
David Ogilvy founded the agency Ogilvy & Mather, which WPP bought in 1989 for $864 million.
In his book Ogilvy on Advertising he wrote the instruction down in three words: disarm with candor.
Candor just means being open and honest.
Domino’s didn’t put its worst reviews on television because it was the decent thing to do.
The company did it because its ordinary advertising had stopped working.
Its sales were falling.
Domino’s said the worst true thing about its own pizza, in its own commercials.
Then it gave customers something they could check for themselves, by ordering the new pizza.
The admission is what makes a stranger listen.
The checkable fact is what makes them believe the rest.
So you stop leaving the weak part off your sales page, hoping nobody asks about it.
Write the weak part at the top of the page, in your own words.
Then give the reader one thing they can go and check for themselves.
After that, they believe the rest of the page.
⠀
🛠️ Nora’s turn
Now, back to Nora, who keeps the weak parts of her design course off its sales page.
That evening, she runs the prompt at the bottom of this email, and tells it the two things she’s been hiding.
Her AI sidekick doesn’t waste words:
Say at the top of your page that your videos are a little long and there’s no community yet,
then link one full lesson for free, so a viewer can check the rest for themselves.
She moves both weak parts to the top of the page that night.
Under them, she links her best lesson, free to watch.
The next morning, the page goes live.
⠀
🌅 Six weeks later
Nora’s sales page still opens with the two weak parts.
Two viewers have left comments under her latest video, saying it was the first sales page they believed.
Your own sales page probably has a weak part you’re hoping nobody asks about.
Say the worst true thing about what you sell, then show people something they can check.
That’s it, my fellow outliers!
Yours ‘helping you build profitable businesses 25x faster’ Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️
⠀
⠀
⠀
⠀
⠀
🏄♀️ The prompt
The prompt below finds the flaw you are hiding and writes the line that says it first.
🧰 What you’ll need
What you sell, and the thing you hope nobody asks about
- Type it, or say it out loud with a voice tool.
- e.g. a course that teaches design to non-designers, and that the videos are a little long, about twenty minutes each, and there is no community yetWhat you say instead, and who it really is not for
- e.g. “a complete, beginner-friendly design course”, and it is not for working designers who want advanced tricksSomething true and good that people don’t believe when you say it
- e.g. that by the end of week one, a non-designer can make a slide that looks professional
🚀 How to run it
Open your AI sidekick, ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever one you use.
Swap the three examples, the text inside the curly brackets, for your own, then run it. If your AI sidekick can already see your notes, you can run it as is.
🧪 Want to test it first? Run it without changing anything, and it will use the examples.
CONTEXT:
- Use my own material first. If you can see my course outline, my lesson drafts, or my sales page, pull the real details from there instead of the examples below.
- If you know how I write, use my voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If you know who my readers are, write for them. Otherwise assume people who are not designers but want their slides, flyers, and websites to look good.
- If I have replaced the examples, use only mine. If an example is still there, fill it in from what you already know about me, and mark it as your assumption. If you don't know anything about me yet, use the example exactly as written.
- The admission must be a real weakness with a cost, and it must be followed by something checkable. A humblebrag with nothing verifiable behind it is disqualified, as are "it takes hard work" and "we care too much".
=============== INPUTS — edit these, or just run as is ===============
What I sell, and the thing I hope nobody asks about:
{e.g. a course that teaches design to non-designers, and that the videos are a little long, about twenty minutes each, and there is no community yet}
What I currently say instead, and who it genuinely is not for:
{e.g. "a complete, beginner-friendly design course", and it is not for working designers who want advanced tricks}
What is true and good that people do not believe when I say it:
{e.g. that by the end of week one, a non-designer can make a slide that looks professional}
======================== END OF INPUTS ========================
Outputs:
1. The real flaw — the weakness worth naming, and why this one rather than the others.
2. The admission — one plain sentence that says it, without apology and without softening.
3. The specifics that follow — the concrete evidence that earns the claim, the way Domino's showed its chefs rebuilding the crust and the sauce.
4. Who I am sending away — the line that names who this is not for, and what it buys me.
5. The rewritten opening — my page's first three lines, flaw first.
Then tell me which claim on my current page nobody has any reason to believe.