Joseph Sugarman had a thing for stories. He figured out how to tell stories to pique people’s curiosity and get them to buy something.
He sold a game based on the Watergate political scandal. With the Cold War on people’s minds in 1983, he marketed a rudimentary computer game he called the Hungarian Conspiracy, using reverse psychology in the sales pitch. In a long tongue-in-cheek entry he published in his mail-order catalog, Mr. Sugarman said the addictive game was part of a Communist plot to take over the U.S. and that people should send in $29 for it, just so they could warn others about its harm. In his book, The AdWeek Copywriting Handbook, he called the effort only moderately successful but one of his favorite creations.
