Despite the cultural vogue of “memes” and “going viral,” the virus metaphor fails us – especially us marketers who would like to make a message go viral.
The virus analogy simply doesn’t hold up. A video or news story or urban legend can’t spread itself; they do not “self replicate.” Only human beings* spread ideas, videos, blog posts, etc – and we spread them for our own purposes.
So designing messaging to be spread by your fellow humans means designing messaging that will serve them. You must craft stories worth spreading, from the point of view of the prospective “spreader.”
I hinted at this in my earlier post on The Dry Erase Girl Hoax, when I said it was a story that we wanted to be true, a desire which short-circuited my (and apparently most other’s) normal fact-checking routines. So I was pleased when Jeff Eisenberg e-mailed me this interview of the hoax’s authors reinforcing this exact same point:
“There’s no reason that somebody’s bullshit detector shouldn’t have gone off when we launched this one. People want to believe it. I think (pulling off a hoax) takes time but it’s not as big a hurdle as you think.” [Emphasis mine]
Then John Resig, The hoax’s co-founder, went on to explain his own “formula” for a successful hoax – a formula he’s proven successful through the launch of 3 block-buster hoaxes in the last 2 years.
“Number one, the story has to be uplifting. This type of thing doesn’t have to be full of malice. Anyone can say something bad about something else. I’m looking for more of an entertainment value out of it.
Number two, I’m looking for a good story. If you look at the ‘Dry Erase’ hoax, it tells a story in three acts, beginning, middle and end. It must be a story well-told.”
So I’d elaborate the first point by saying that the story should be one we want to be true because it makes us feel better, either about our own situation, or about the world in general, or about how our long-held beliefs turned out to be true.
Learning that some girl accidentally texted her dad about losing her virginity on the beach isn’t necessarily uplifting, but it says something about the dangers of colliding social networks and our constantly-on, distracted from distraction by distraction society. Something we all felt in our guts. And it says it through a humorous, and, yes, well-told story.
This makes us feel good by spreading a smile and a chuckle to our friends, but also by confirming our suspicions, which is a point worth emphasizing. Although Resig didn’t include it in his list, it helps if the hoax/story/video communicates an idea or truth or insight that we couldn’t communicate as well on our own. When a story encapsulates an idea people wish to communicate, it stops mattering whether or not the story is true, the need to communicate the idea will ensure the story spreads far and wide.
Lemmings simply don’t follow the herd off the cliff and into the doom of a frost-cold sea. But humans do. And we NEED that mental image of lemmings to describe this all-too-human behavior. So the term, and the false story behind the term, remains part of our culture. People continue to spread the myth.
The flip side of this dynamic occurs when the story or video shatters a misconception that we desperately want shattered, like when The Girl Effect video hits us all in the gut with hope for Africa and other poverty-stricken countries. If you haven’t seen it, yet, watch it below; it says something important, it’ll make you smile, and it’s a story well told 
* Yeah, I’m aware that killer whales and dolphins and maybe even some primates spread “ideas,” but none of them seem to consume much media, or subscribe to blogs, or even to fall prey to hoaxes, so I’ve chosen to exclude them from our discussion, OK?
What makes some urban legends go viral?
Well, for the real answer, you can always read the highly recommended Made to Stick, which was based on the Heath Bros study of this very question. But apart from their SUCCES model, there’s one factor that I think the book doesn’t discuss quite directly enough:
Oftentimes, the urban legend is something we want to be true.
Now, in a world of legends about kidney thefts, that might sound a tad gruesome, and I’d be willing to admit this factor isn’t always at play, but more often than not, I think you’ll find even the scary urban legends contain some element of Schadenfreude – some way of making the world more interesting or poetically just, even if that requires raising the spectre of the bogey man to do so.
Case in point, this wonderful fable about a girl quitting her job via dry erase board pics e-mailed to her entire office.If you haven’t seen it, I practically guarantee it’ll brighten your day.
So while I usually check these things out on Snopes or Google, I didn’t do that for this one. I wanted it to be true. Even after I was e-mailed the news the story was false, it still felt like it ought to be true.
And isn’t that a lesson in copywriting?
- Provide powerful visual imagery of positive outcomes
- Include a sense of poetic justice in your story lines
- Don’t shy away from the subtle call to social status or use of schadenfreude
Start off with an image or story that the reader wants to be true – and really IS true – and you’ll find the rest of the persuasion process easy.
10
Aug
Advertising doesn’t affect you, does it? But it does influence your friends and neighbors, right?
If you agree with those sentiments, as many do, you’re falling prey to what’s become known as the “third-person effect.”
As it turns out, advertising is effective on all of us, even you and me. We’re just notoriously bad at figuring out our own motives, especially when it comes to sensing the subconscious, half-conscious, and unconscious desires and impulses that drive much of our behavior. But we’re much better at the cool observation of others, so we can see that advertising works on “the masses” and even on our friends and neighbors. Hence the third person effect: “advertising doesn’t work on me, but it sure seems to affect others.”
Want to know how to turn this to your advantage?
First, realize that the third-person effect is stronger when the message isn’t directly relevant to the listener/viewer/reader. As PSYBLOG explains it:
In other words people are likely to be influenced more than they think on subjects that are currently of little or no interest to them. An everyday example would be seeing an advert for a car, when you’re not in the market for a new car. We’d probably guess it has little or no influence on us, but this research suggests we’d be wrong.
Now, I’m extrapolating a bit here, but this rather precisely matches what my and my colleagues experience with radio advertising: despite the innate desire to reach people who are already in the market right now, the best time to influence your prospect is BEFORE they need what you’re selling, so that they enter the market with an already established predisposition to favor you and your brand.
When I don’t have a strong opinion and have little vested interest, it doesn’t take much to sway my preference. And frankly, this describes exactly how most people think about a great many markets.
Do you really have a strong opinion on which carpet cleaner to call? Or which Small Engine Repair shop is the best? Or who has the best pressure washing service for your deck or fence, and so on?
Most of us don’t – until we need that service or product – then we’d rather not make a blind decision. And that’s where advertising’s influence makes all the difference.
With the right ad campaign, your audience will think of your company first and feel the best about you. Good enough, at least, to pick you instead of the competition, because you’ll no longer be a “blind choice.”
Pre-internet, this kind of branding campaign meant the prospect would flip open the Yellow Pages and purposefully look for your ad, rather than scanning the page in hopes that one of the ads might catch her eye.
Now, in the age of Google, it means the prospect searches on your companyname or even your Website’s URL rather than typic in more generic search terms for your market. And that pretty much screws your competitions’ fancy schmancy SEO and PPC work, delivering the prospect straight to your Website and then your door.
Just don’t be surprised when your newly thronged store and constantly ringing phone are populated by customers claiming to have heard about you from a friend, rather than your radio ads – ’cause everyone knows they’re not influenced by advertising
Don’t let this video’s inane dialogue fool you, just focus your attention on the fundamental ideas and dynamics presented. If your job involves persuasion, this video is well worth the watch.
Truism #1: If people see it coming, the transformational moment – the moment when a character moves past his primary fears, block, wound, or limitation – will fail to create maximum emotion in the reader because it’ll get dampened or squashed by the audience’s psychological defenses.
Truism #2: If the transformational moment isn’t properly set up, and instead the writer just launches into high drama on the page, the scene won’t be believable and it will fall emotionally flat for the reader.
Here’s an example of this second truism from the movie, Zombieland:
***Warning – Movie Spoilers Ahead*****
There’s emotion on the screen, duly portrayed by Woody Harrelson, but it never really touches the audience. The flashback, in fact, feels a bit off. Who feeds their dog pancakes or lifts them up and bathes them like that? But then again, Woody’s character is a bit “off,” so the viewer (or this viewer at least) let’s the disconnects slide.
And that’s the genius of this scene. Because as the movie goes on and the audience gets tied up in the more exciting aspects of zombie bashing, they forget all about that disconnect until the writer springs this scene on them:
After watching that scene, it dawned on me that the audience wasn’t meant to feel emotion in the first scene: it was just the set-up for this second scene in a way that would keep the audience from “bracing” against the emotion. Hence the “narrative misdirection” of the puppy flashback.
That undetected set-up makes all the difference because we, the audience, were taken in along with the Greg Eisenberg’s character, “Columbus.” So we felt Columbus’s insight and empathy as our own. It transfered right from the screen to our chests.
Better yet, while the audience was caught up in the emotion of that scene, the writer set us up for this bit of dialogue:
Brilliant, huh? We see the nihilistic loner confront his loss and then overcome his isolation. And it feels real. In fact, the emotion and drama works quite well for an otherwise silly comedy.
Copywriting Techniques to Take Away From All This
First of all, the copywriting equivalents of these techniques probably require a “don’t try this at home, kids” style warning, because they are in direct contradiction to standard: “hit ‘em as hard as you can with a WIIFM Appeal and UVP statement right off the bat”-style copywriting advice. Advice which I normally endorse as sound practice, by the way.
But these techniques and examples DO work when done right and are worth studying and thinking about. So with that caveat, here’s what I have seen used:
1) Sometimes the indirect approach works better. As I wrote earlier, most copywriters want to go in with guns a’ blazin’, spewing high-voltage WIIFM and UVP statements along with emotional problem-agitation-focused copy. But sometimes a slower start works to your advantage by allowing you to set-up your dramatic moments and power statements.
So long as your copy is interesting and is subtle in its set-ups, this indirect approach can massively outpull regular “reason-why” style copy. For example, here’s how the famous Wall Street Journal copy starts:
“On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men graduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men.
Both had been better than average students, both were personable and both – as young college graduates are – were filled with ambitious dreams for the future.
Recently, these men returned to their college for their 25th reunion.
They were still very much alike.
Both were happily married. Both had three children. And both, it turned out, had gone to work for the same Midwestern manufacturing company after graduation, and were still there.
But there was a difference. One of the men was manager of a small department of that company. The other was its president.”
With the tale eventually leading up to this power statement:
“The difference lies in what each person knows and how he or she makes use of that knowledge.
And that is why I am writing to you and to people like you about The Wall Street Journal. For that is the whole purpose of The Journal: To give its readers knowledge – knowledge that they can use in business.”
Can you imagine the fall off in response if the copywriter had skipped the set-up and just launched into the power statement? Can you imagine the U.S. School of Music correspondence course deciding a straight offer would work better than the immortal opening of “They laughed when I sat down at the piano but when I started to play!-”
And then there’s this bit of direct mail masterpiece that continues to work so well a recent copy just arrived in my inbox today:
You look out your window, past your gardener, who is busily pruning the lemon, cherry, and fig trees…amidst the splendor of gardenias, hibiscus, and hollyhocks.
The sky is clear blue. The sea is a deeper blue, sparkling with sunlight.
A gentle breeze comes drifting in from the ocean, clean and refreshing, as your maid brings you breakfast in bed.
For a moment, you think you have died and gone to heaven.
But this paradise is real. And affordable. In fact, it costs only half as much to live this dream lifestyle…as it would to stay in your own home!
Dear ETR Reader,
I’d like to send you a FREE copy of a unique–and invaluable–report.
It’s called How to Retire in Paradise on $30 a Day. And it tells you about the best places in the world for retirement living.
You look out your window, past your gardener, who is busily pruning the lemon, cherry, and fig trees…amidst the splendor of gardenias, hibiscus, and hollyhocks.
The sky is clear blue. The sea is a deeper blue, sparkling with sunlight.
A gentle breeze comes drifting in from the ocean, clean and refreshing, as your maid brings you breakfast in bed.
For a moment, you think you have died and gone to heaven.
But this paradise is real. And affordable. In fact, it costs only half as much to live this dream lifestyle…as it would to stay in your own home!
Dear ETR Reader,
I’d like to send you a FREE copy of a unique–and invaluable–report. It’s called How to Retire in Paradise on $30 a Day. And it tells you about the best places in the world for retirement living.
Again, imagine how much less effective the straight offer of “Retire in Paradise on $30 a Day” would have been. No set-up, no emotional punch.
And while I’ll be the first to admit that readers are more suspicious of set-ups and more time sensitive than ever before, the continued use of this e-mail proves it still pulls. Trust me, if the direct mail superstars of Early to Rise had tested something better, they’d be using it.
2) Reference your prospect’s “photo in a wallet” symbolism to leverage otherwise unavailable emotions. Woody Harrelson’s character, Tallahassee, wasn’t planning on helping rescue the two girls. He needed to be convinced. But rather than launch into a rational argument, or a straightforward WIIFM-style appeal, the “Columbus” character clothed his appeal in the talismanic image of Tallahassee’s only keepsake from his lost son. And it worked.
I guarantee you that your prospect’s likely have a “wallet picture” type of mental image, some symbol, keepsake, or event that powerfully embodies and evokes their emotional stakes. If you wish to give your copy greater emotional impact, find out what that talisman-like symbol is, and create mental images that take advantage of that symbolism. Examples of this abound, but perhaps the most famous is Michelin’s tagline:
Before this Michelin ad, no one really cared about small quality differences between tire brands. The “wallet picture” imagery Michelin employed changed all that.
So while these techniques probably aren’t for beginning copywriters, they are worth thinking about. They’re worth practicing. And – if and when you nail it – they’re worth using.
Many have probably already seen this video of Taylor Mali’s slam poetry classic, Totally Like Whatever, You Know? But how could I not reference it after my previous post on passionate copy. So here it is – enjoy:
You’re too f-ing polite, is what it boils down to.
I know because my copy drafts sometimes suffer from the same problem.
As a reaction against the hard-sell, yellow-highlighter copy abhorred by most Web 2.0 types, we sometimes adopt an “it’s either demonstrable in no-big-deal language, or it’s not worth selling” attitude.
And that’s fine if you’ve got a freemium pricing model and are selling people on something obviously super-cool like Screenr. In that case, just demonstrating the product in the video is enough.
But what happens when demonstration isn’t so easy? Does your aversion to hype keep you from writing effective “this is important, darn it” copy?
What happens when the product is life changing or exactly what the prospect needs and you have to motivate the prospect with the image of a future state of happiness? Or through the mental image of where they’re currently heading if they don’t take action? Could the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future have persuaded with a genteel approach, or did confronting Scrooge require more drama than that?
The Difference Between Hype and Genuinely Passionate Copy
So am I advocating hype? No. The difference between the sort of chest-thumping copy that you should avoid and the too-important-to-be-polite copy radiates from the emotions behind it. What passion powers the copy and what’s the emotional stance toward the reader?
- Powered by pride and a we-we focus, chest-thumbing copy presumes to win the girl prospect over through sheer self-confidence and smooth lines.
- Powered by love/concern/anger-at-the-stupidity-of others/raw passion, the too-important-to-be-polite copy is on a mission to burst into the restaurant and say the scary truth no matter what, even if it means losing the girl prospect (or at least the wrong prospect).
In other words, too-important-to-be-polite copy overcomes the author’s fear of making a scene. To quote Charles Baxter in The Art of Subtext:
“If good manners comprise the code of behavior that renders our behavior acceptable and thus almost invisible in polite society, bad manners make us visible, for good or ill. We become a spectacle. Bad manners put us on a stage, and a stage, as every writer knows, is what is required for dramatic force.
…we create a scene when we forcibly illustrate our need to be visible to others, often in the service of a wish or demand we wish to impose. Creating a scene is thus the staging of a desire.”
If the desire you are staging is simple greed, then your bad behavior will not only be impolite, but genuinely unpleasant, in the worst of the yellow-highlighter tradition.
But if the desire you stage is to reach your real audience and to improve their life with your product or service, or to keep them from making a stupid mistake – well, the right audience will respond to your passion by pulling out their credit cards.
A Perfect Example of Making A Scene
This week’s Monday Morning Memo is a perfect example of TITBPC copy. The memo retains the outline of a low-key presentation:
- “here’s the problem the course is addressing,
- here’s who’ll come teach it and you’ll want to listen to them, and
- are you interested in coming”
But the highlighted paragraphs are passionately and forcefully worded. The author clearly believes it’s in your best interest to attend and he’s not afraid to create a scene in order to convey that – even if the “scene” is hypothetical and staged only in your mind’s eye:
If you’re a marketing professional who believes you’re far too savvy to be fooled by data, we beg you NOT to bring a client with you to this class. Our goal is to lift your understanding to a higher level. This will happen. You will learn astounding new things. Valuable new things. Revolutionary new things. We don’t want to create a situation where you feel a need to defend your old ideas. If you bring a client, it’s going to be awkward when some of your old beliefs are disproven.
Roy’s also not afraid to plainly state the scarcity of rooms available, either. Again, it’s in the reader’s best interest to act now rather than later, so he says so, with conviction.
This of course applies to more than just passion. It applies to drawing hard lines as well.
- Are you too genteel to provide customers with a head-to-head comparison of your product – to bluntly highlight the competitor’s deficiencies?
- Are you too inclusive to say who your product isn’t for with the kind of clarity that risks offense?
- Or is staying positive and playing nice more important than ensuring the prospect makes the right choice and you make the sale?
So, here’s the question: when the situation demands it, are you willing to make a scene with your copy? Are you recognizing when the situation demands it?
P.S. If you’re looking for a great, technique-by-technique way to put more passion and urgency into your copy, check out Dave Navarro’s translation of yellow-highlighter copy into respectful-but-urgent messaging.
Maybe he thinks people won’t read between the lines.
Or maybe he really is brazen enough to not care if they do. Whatever the case, the e-mails I’ve been receiving from him have certainly raised my eyebrows.
Long considered the dean of hard-sell direct response copywriting, Dan Kennedy has made a career of slamming brand-based advertising, routinely calling those engaged in it, “advertising victims.”
Dan Kennedy’s “Influential Writing”
But Kennedy’s current info-product is NOT about how to write persuasive copy that sells – a skill he now considers below the skill level of “influential writing,” which is the subject of his current marketing push.
According to Kennedy, influential writing, as opposed to traditional direct response-style persuasive writing, is all about building an reputation (read, “image”) of yourself in the minds of your audience.
You can imagine how reading Kennedy’s endorsement of image-based branding sent out to his own e-mail list is a bit like Ted Haggard admitting he’s gay to his fundamentalist congregation – except Ted wasn’t nearly so brash as to come out before being caught, or to proclaim homosexuality as OK – let alone as being superior.”you gotta be kidding me” moment.
If you think I’m wrong to relate “influential writing” to branding, listen to how Kennedy’s own product copy describes influential writing as:
- Writing to ATTRACT people of the greatest monetary value to you
- Writing to CONNECT (important if you want influence, power, sustained success, secure income)
- Writing to Gain Acceptance of Advocated Positions (it’s about having people “with you” – not just selling to them)
Kennedy’s basically describing a method for creating an image of yourself as heroic, on your audience’s side, a champion against their enemies and for common, shared values. He thinks you should create a tribe and have yourself not just as the tribe’s leader, but as its icon.
Theodore Macmanus, Cadillac, and “Influential Writing”
Yet, if you replace the “you” with a product or brand, it’s pretty clear that Kennedy is talking about branding. In fact, I can think of no clearer example of “influential writing” than Theodore F McManuss’s legendary Cadillac ad, “The Price of Leadership,” a pure branding campaign if ever there was one. Here’s the copy from it:
“In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity.
Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work.
In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction.
When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work be merely mediocre, he will be left severely alone – if he achieve a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a-wagging.
Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you, unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius.
Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious continue to cry out that it cannot be done.
Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest genius.
Multitudes flocked to worship at the shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all.
The little world continued to protest that Fulton could not build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river to see his boat steam by.
The leader is assailed because he is the leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership.
Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant.
There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as the human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass.
And it all avails nothing.
If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader.
Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages.
That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial.
That which deserves to live – lives.”
Remember, this was an ad placed in the Saturday Evening Post. A non-targeted, non-direct response ad. And the copy never even mentions the product.
And yet sales for Cadillac spiked and the ad was voted “The Greatest Ad of All Time” in 1948. People immediately identified with it. Elvis Presley even framed a copy of the ad and hung it in his Graceland office, and it’s been said that both Cadillac and MacManus’s agency received weekly requests for copies of the ad for 30 years following it’s initial and only run in the Saturday Evening Post.
But McManus was not just famous for that copy, he was famous for that style of copy, for being the anti-Claude Hopkins, the man who shunned reason-why advertising in favor of indirect suggestion, positioning, and, well, branding through mass media.
Here’s how MacManus summarizes his approach in his book, The Sword-Arm of Business:
“…[Cadillac's Advertising] nearly always suggested and seldom asserted. And it dealt not so much with the Cadillac motor car as with people’s thoughts about the Cadillac motor car. It did not so much say that things were true, as it assumed them to be true… It figured that there are certain wholesome qualities all normal human beings admire, and it celebrated the presence of those qualities in the motives of the men who designed and manufactured a motor car.”
And now Dan Kennedy seems to have lifted a page or two from the MacManus playbook… But can it really be? Has Dan Kennedy actually come out of the branding closet?
In Defense of Dan
The short answer is maybe not. One of the major differences between what Dan calls influential writing vs. branding seems to be that:
- Influential writing is directed only at already existing customers, people you’ve already sold to, in an effort to increase trust and purchases
- Whereas traditional branding campaigns have used mass media to create a commonly held opinion or image of the product/company, Influential Writing is directed toward establishing the reputation of an individual. [though the previous quote, makes it clear that MacManus also used that technique as well, which he most famously did for the Dodge Brothers and for Walter Chrysler.
Moreover, Dan has, in at least one blog post, explained his distinction between branding, which he definitely recommends, and branding-only campaigns, which he believes are largely unsuitable for most small business owners.
So What’s the Final Conclusion?
Realize that when confronted with polarity, the weak student will cling to one of the poles and demonize the other, while the strong student will ponder each and harness the dynamic electricity that flows between them.
My personal opinion is that Dan Kennedy’s personal branding necessitated an anti-branding stance that he always communicated a little more forcefully than he truly believed. Dan needed an enemy to stand against and he chose branding campaigns and lack of advertising accountability as (some of) his primary enemies – again, as part of considered attempt to brand his public persona.
Now that Dan’s peeling back the techniques he’s used to brand himself all these years, he’s hoping that an alternative name for branding will keep people from seeing any discrepancies or conflicts between his persona and the branding that he’s been engaged in over the last decades or two.
Or maybe he’s just stewing for a fight – someone stupid enough to call him out it : )
What do you think?
P.S. Brian Clark’s Third Tribe is a great example of living in the dynamic flowing between the two extremes of direct response copy and community/tribe building, and a highly recommended resource as well.
Would you trade your wedding ring for an exact replica?
It’s a question I sometimes ask audiences. Not surprisingly, hardly anyone admits to indifference in the matter.
More commonly, the emotional attachment measures in the thousands of dollars, which is what most people say they’d need to be paid before swapping the ring they were married in for a perfect replica.
Dismiss this as mere sentimentality at your own peril.
The man (or woman) who admits to NOT valuing his original wedding ring over a replica gets shunned. The same thing happens to the man who would willingly wear the clothing of a serial killer. Most of us would refuse to don Jeffrey Dahmers cap, even if it had been previously washed and sanitized. No matter how unscientific, arational, and even “silly” our repulsion is – regardless of how much it represents “Magical Thinking” - you’ll still find that:
- The vast majority of people won’t willingly wear a piece of clothing worn by an evil man, and
- Those who WOULD wear Dahmer’s clothing deeply offend our sensibilities and provoke our immediate distrust. They creep us out.
What does all that tell you?
Shared values run deeper than rationality. Way deeper. As Richard Weaver writes, “…logic depends upon the dream, and not the dream upon it… logic processes rest ultimately upon classification, that classification is by identification, and identification is intuitive.”
We identify objects as tainted or sacred at an intuitive, emotional level. At a place were our reasoning is powerless to touch. A place where the principles of magic reign supreme over the laws of science. At the very place where we make our buying decisions.
And for marketers, that means 2 things:
- You can’t expect a rational explanation to communicate a shared value that’s held at that intuitive, emotional level.
- You’d better understand the rule sets behind the “magical thinking” our emotional and lizard brains engage in if you hope to move beyond mere rational explanations in your advertising
Case In Point: Columbia Sportswear’s Tough Mother
First, some background on Columbia Sportswear’s former CEO and now Chairman of the Board, as taken from the inside flap of her book:
“When a heart attack claimed Gert Boyle’s husband in 1970, the forty-six-year-old housewife and mother of three found herself at the helm of Columbia Sportswear, a small outerwear manufacturer in Portland, Oregon, that was struggling financially. With no business experience whatsoever, Boyle was faced with the challenge of running Columbia, which had been founded in 1937 by her father — a Jewish immigrant who had fled Hitler’s Germany. Boyle and her son Tim persevered, turning a company that in 1970 had forty employees and less than $800,000 in annual sales into the leading seller of skiwear in the United States, with more than 2000 employees and over a billion in annual sales…”
One of the turning points on this incredible success story was (surprise!) a change in advertising message.
Prior to the Borders Perrin & Norrander marketing campaign that billed Columbia’s CEO, Gert Boyle, as “one tough mother,” Columbia’s ads emphasized how their sportswear wasn’t just designed, it was “engineered.”
A perfectly rational approach to building value for the product that failed in the marketplace. Customers rationally compare spec sheets and engineering functionality, but they identify quality and an affinity for an object at a much deeper emotional level. These are magical elements.
What Columbia needed was to convey their passion for no-nonsense product design in a way that “worked” with the laws of magical thinking – that took advantage of our notions that blood is thicker than water, that essences really exist, that shared values take place at level far deeper than “good business practices” and engineering labs.
Fortunately for Columbia, their next, legendary ad campaign did exactly that by focusing on Gert Boyle’s Tough Mother approach to product design and the mother-son relationship between Columbia’s CEO and President:
People saw those ads and believed. They believed that Gert really cared, fervently and violently, about the products her company manufactured. They believed her interest in building clothing that protected the wearer went way deeper than just normal, rational business desires to “engineer” a better product.
As Ma Boyle puts it:
“The impact of the ads was almost instantaneous. Sales quickly increased and I was surprised when strangers came up to me on the street and asked if I was the ‘tough mother.’ Better yet, the image created by the advertisements took hold. Instead of seeing us as just another outerwear company, our customers thought of us as the company where the cranky and crotchety old broad made sure that they were getting a good product at a fair price. The bottom line was that what we were really expressing was that we were human… People relate to us because they believe there is a person at Columbia who really cares. And the best thing about our ads is that they are true. I do care.”
After seeing the commercials, customers liked Columbia better. Their affinity for Gert rubbed off (the phrase is telling, is it not?) onto the products. And sales soared, leading to one of the clearest success stories from a national “image-based” campaign since the Marlboro Man.
What about you?
What are you irrationally committed to? What values do you cling to even when it costs you – even when it makes no business sense at all?
Does your advertising even mention them?
And are you communicating those values rationally or magically?
P.S. If you really want to be inspired, check out some of Columbia’s old TV Ads. I’ve always liked the one with the zamboni, myself ; )
Look at the photo to the left. Yeah, it’s Rodin’s The Thinker and you’ve already seen it before – take another good, hard look anyway. In fact, study the thing for a minute. I’ll wait.
OK, having just “experienced” the picture for yourself, read Rodin’s description of his statue:
“What makes my thinker think is that he thinks not only with the brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils, and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs; with his clenched fist and gripping toes.”*
Now go back and take another look at the pic. Did you notice new things? Did you find yourself noticing new details on the statue’s nostrils, lips, back, and toes, while giving silent affirmation to Rodin’s words?
That is the mark of great product description: using words to guide the senses and shape the experience.
And the more you sell premium products and experiences – the more you sell the distillation of passion – the more you had better tap into the power of copy to direct the imagination of the reader.
The Science and Art of Great Product Description
Lest you think the Rodin example was nothing but a parlor trick, I thought I’d cite some hard science and proven psychology behind this technique, while also giving some helpful how-to hints:
1) Vividly imagining the future reduces impulsive choices
And the reader’s imagination will trend towards the future – unless YOU direct the imagination of the buyer! I may be tempted to buy your product, but the more I imagine the future rewards and pleasures of sticking to my diet, sticking to my budget, and so on, the less likely I am to buy.
But if the copy directs my senses to vividly imagine the pleasures and benefits of ownership/consumption, I’ll be moved to buy rather than abstain. Great copy recreates the enthusiast’s experience in the mind of the prospect. Mediocre copy just describes the product.
2) Translating a product into an experience de-comodifies your product
“If it wasn’t hard, everybody would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.” Tom Hank’s character said that about baseball, but it applies just as well to premium products and services. Making a significantly better product requires extra effort and passion. Often in the service of squeezing out an extra 10% refinement in 10-20 different areas. And that’s the problem… at least from a copywriter’s standpoint
See, small refinements in a lot of areas don’t translate well in a spec-sheet head-to-head comparison, where the cheaper alternative ends up looking like a 90% as good for half the price alternative. And that’s why good copywriters lean so heavily on “creation” stories, which project the manufacturers passion onto the reader, and make those relatively fine distinctions seem like all-important differences. Gary Weeks gives a first class example of this in the copy he created for his Weeks Rocker. There’s a reason the man’s able to sell $1600 rocking chairs over the internet.
3) Curiosity and Education are every bit as powerful as a great deal
When you describe an experience that’s foreign to the reader, you create curiosity – a desire in the reader to “see” for herself. To taste the nuances of flavor in a well crafted wine, or to feel the texture and feedback that only the combination of first-class drawing paper and high-quality charcoal can provide. Or even to “see” their PPC campaign with new eyes – eyes capable of sifting out the hidden motivations of prospects/searchers and the flawed messaging in the ads.
For many, learning, discovering new experiences, and expanding one’s scope of competency are as seductive a prospect as any straightforward value proposition. Gary Vaynerchuk rode this wave to fame and fortune. And two Maine Lobsterman have taken this kind of value-added offering to a new level, and made themselves into millionaires in the process! You can too.
4) The Joshua Bell Effect
Asking people to recognize true merit and quality on its own, deprived of any cues or prompts, is simply asking too much from your customers and prospects. Kind of like asking you to have recognized all those details about Rodin’s The Thinker without his quote as a prompt.
Perhaps the most striking modern-day example of this was an experiment done by the Washington Post wherein Musical Prodigy Joshua Bell played his stradivarius in the subway to see how many would recognize his musical excellence, absent the concert hall cues and media fanfare normally surrounding his performances. The result: he was ignored by everyone but children. Even music snobs need cues to recognize talented, virtuoso performance.
As a copywriter you’re job is to set the stage for your virtuoso product/service and to provide prospects with the cues they so desperately need to recognize real quality when they see it. When you tell prospects where to look, how to look, and what to expect, you’re not only enticing their imaginations, but helping those soon-to-be customers to fully recognize the differentiators your client has already baked into the product. Which both sells more product on the front end AND improves customer satisfaction on the back end, too.
Does your product copy merely describe the product?
Or does your copy predict the prospect’s experience of the product, helping them to see with their ears and anticipate all the pleasure and benefits that are sure to come with ownership?