Zed A. Shaw, Painter

A lot of the wording talks about secrets, and have this magical quality that, should you purchase this video, the magic will be transmitted to you. They never have any magic or real tricks. Most painters can't explain how they do what they do at all.

The "tricks" and "magic" in the actual videos are almost always downplayed too. 60% of them use photos, but don't talk about it much at all unless the video is about photos. They're also terrible at photography and lack the vocabulary so they rarely explain it well.

In many ways the marketing is similar to the marketing of supplements for weight lifting. This one MAGIC powder will make you look like this crazy jacked dude named Chad! Oh except Chad actually has been taking steroids for 20 years but they don't mention that...shhhhh.

The marketing for Bootcamps is also similar but in a very different way. Bootcampls for programming will tout how their 3 month class will prepare an art major for a 250k salary job at Facebook with their MAGIC curriculum. Of course, that never actually works.

I think the primary difference with the art instruction marketing is the expectations of the people who do this kind of art, and the demographic of the buyers. As I've said before, when I go to art conferences it is 90% women over 50, 80% over 65. I'm not joking at all.

Demographic for some protein powder is men and women ages 18-35 most likely. Demographic for bootcamps is men and women ages 18-35 most likely. This impacts the expectations of the buyer:

65 yo artist probably doesn't need to have a job in art, so just enjoying it as a post-retirement hobby is enough, so the marketing focuses more on better art, and a little on sales. 65 yo artist is also most likely behind the curve and running out of time, so secret tricks work

In the supplement market they're usually using models who just do steroids, and then claim the powder is what makes them that huge. The target market is basically people who don't know these dudes are juicing like mad to look like that, and also, people who are professionals.