Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was assassinated on January 24th, 41. Not 1941, but 41. You see, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus — also known as Caligula, the third Roman Emperor, was also one of the most hated and despised men to ever walk the face of the earth.

Caligula had a saying — it was “oderint dum metuant”, which means “let them hate, so long as they fear.”

Fear is a dangerous button to push, and there are many ways to direct fear — whether you’re guiding prospects or even family members.

For example, you can make your children somewhat fearful of strangers, because in today’s crazy world, it’s probably better that they are NOT overly friendly with people they don’t know. That’s actually using fear for their own good, and not at anyone’s expense.

Then there’s the kind of fear where you put the fear of God into people by acknowledging a common enemy and creating paranoia. And you see, the natural reaction of this is that the people in fear will rally around the messenger.

After all, if you are the one pointing out the evils of “whoever,” then you must be the one to listen to, right?

Some folks say the Bush administration has used some tactics like this in our positioning with the “evil-doers.” Meaning, if we are afraid of the evil-doers, then we have no choice to rally around our own government, because in reality, who else is left?

I don’t put stuff like this past any government — especially our government. If Caligula and a silly marketer like myself can understand these concepts, then surely W and his crew can figure it out too, no?

Other people say Michael Moore is doing this with his movies, making us all afraid of our own government. Funny how this all works, isn’t it?

Yet others say I’m doing the same thing making you afraid to even think about Michael Moore or George Bush — or even Eva Longoria and Tony Parker’s wedding.

Weird, huh?

How can you use fear in your marketing? Can you rally your prospects and clients around you? And do you want to?

Let me know.

Now listen closely, tomorrow I’m going on a nice little business vacation. I’m going over to the beautiful UK, where it’s been raining for 30 days and 30 nights so I hear, but it’s going to get nice and bright once I get there.

Then from London, I’m going to hop on over to Portugal to see my friend Christian Godefroy — one of THE sharpest men around. In fact, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to persuade Christian to do an interview with me, and next month I’ll release it as my Audio Success CD to my newsletter subscribers in August.

And if I’m not lucky enough to do that, then you will get nothing.

So what I’m saying is that you won’t be hearing from me much next week — time to have some fun. This also means you won’t have many opportunities to test-drive my newsletter and get this month’s Audio Success CD interview with Rod Underhill — the founder of mp3.com and by far THE wisest person I’ve ever spoken to about intellectual property.

If you want to hear what Rod has to say, and if you want to uncover the results of over a dozen different online tests I’ve run online, using a wide variety of marketing variables, then test-drive Seductive Selling Free, right now: http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl

I will also send you TWO free copywriting and marketing critiques along with your newsletter as well.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. If you want to raise your game, and kick it up several notches, then apply for membership in my newest coaching group, right here. : http://www.kingofcopy.com/mavericks