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.
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.
People don’t change their minds – they simply make new decisions based on new information.
If you don’t provide them with new information, they won’t make any new decisions.
That’s Roy Williams’ take on the subject of changing minds, and I tend to agree, depending on how broadly one interprets “information.” It’s possible to give people no new information in the narrow sense of the word, but to cause them to feel differently about what they already knew.
In other words, you can spark a new decision by providing a new perspective rather than new information.
Case in point: This print ad for BMW…
(The Good)
While I’m not out to make any claims about the ultimate effectiveness of the ad, I am going to say that this represents a far cry from a shameful or gratuitous use of sex. It’s actually a very deliberate and pointed use of sex-appeal aimed at getting you to feel differently about the desirability of pre-owned cars.
An intellectual approach would be to talk about the inspection and refurbishment that these pre-owned cars go through and the warranty you’ll receive when you buy one. But that’s been done so many times it’s probably already assumed by the reader.
Readers already know that pre-owned cars are a better deal financially, yet they still feel an irrational desire for “new.” And irrational obstacles call for emotional advertising. They call for creating new perspectives rather than providing new information.
Bottom Line:
When you’re contemplating the use of shock-appeal or sex-appeal in an ad, you need to ask yourself if the ad is merely shocking, titillating, and entertaining readers, or if it’s changing how they feel about what you sell.
Otherwise you’ll end up with the Ugly end of Sex in Advertising, such as this ad for… can you even tell?
(The Ugly)
Believe it or not, this is an ad for a vacuum cleaner!
30
Apr
Who would have thunk it?
At a time when most SEO Conferences have been running for more than a decade, we’re just now having our very first Conversion Conference next week.
Which isn’t to say I’m not excited to be speaking at Conversion Conference West – I’m thrilled! - but that the inaugural nature of the conference indicates both what had been the prevailing industry inattention to conversion rate optimization and how dramatically things have changed in the last two years:
- Competition has increased for attention, business dollars, and everything else,
- The economic climate has changed dramatically,
- Paid traffic has become increasingly more expensive,
- Social Media has dramatically altered how people spend their time online
- Online testing platforms have become ubiquitous and their use de rigueur for any serious Website / web marketer
In response we’re witnessing:
- Newfound popular interest in Conversion Rate Optimization
- Greater attempts to engage early stage buyers, and along with that…
- The emergence of Content Marketing / Content Strategy as a buzzword-worthy marketing topic
- Increased interest in persona-based marketing techniques
- Increased employment of intelligent customer retention strategies as a way to deal with higher customer acquisition costs and to boost overall conversion rates
If I wanted to be smug, I’d say that these were all things that Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg were stressing as far back as 1999 and early, post-dot bomb 2000’s. But that’s beside the point. The point is that if YOU’RE not doing these things – or at least busily getting smart on these topics – doing so is now a matter of survival.
Why not jump-start your efforts by attending Conversion West in San Jose, May 4th and 5th?
You can even get a late-bird discount by using Promo Code CCW565
I hope to see you there.
Either you sell $5 haircuts, or you fix $5 haircuts. If you’re selling services, you know what I’m talking about.
Whether you’re selling car washes, copywriting, carpet cleaning, or kitchen remodels, you’ve likely noticed the once-burned aspect of your best customers. The clients who pay your premium price most willingly and are most appreciative of the differences between you and the price-based competition are usually the clients who already tried the cheapo-charlies and got burned.
And you also probably still pull your hair out when never-burned prospects pass you up for the cheaper option. Or for no-option and procrastination.
This is where fortune-telling can fill your pockets with gold.
Because you’ve seen this movie before, you know how it ends. You can predict the precipitant event that’ll jar your prospects from procrastination, or the exact moment of clarity and regret that’ll send them screaming back from the “cheaper” alternative. And you can describe it with eerily vivid detail and precision – all long before the prospect ever makes his wrong turn.
That way, when your words prove prescient, your dearest prospect will want someone who understands the jam he’s in and who can help him fix it. So with just a little intelligent planning on your part, you can weave into your storytelling the exact “script” for his return to you, including:
- The best points in the process for your prospect to switch service providers
- Justifications for his change in mind
- Exactly how to contact you
- What information he’ll need to have on hand
- What to expect for a solution, etc.
Yes, you can do this in person. But you can also do it with your Web copy, which will give you 3 major advantages:
1) You reach early stage buyers who are just doing research and potentially re-frame their buying criterion to your advantage. A few vividly told horror stories sometimes swings decisions around and increases immediate sales.
2) You forewarn even the prospects who still chose the cheaper alternative. After reading your story, prospects who do chose the cheapo charlies are a lot more wary of what can go wrong and head the warning signals earlier in the process, when stuff first starts to slide.
3) You gain instant credibility when newly-burned clients find you from a pain-driven Google search. You may not pop up for google searches on “inexpensive fashion haircut,” while easily placing 1st for “fixing horrific hair cuts.” And when that happens, everything you wrote about the daners of the $5 haircut will ring true for the visitors coming to you from that kind of search. You’ll have just created all kinds of credibility for yourself.
Just do yourself a favor and be as specific and vivid as possible. Because when you’re describing a future event, specifics make the event feel closer.
And make sure to emphasize your ability to pick-up the pieces when prospects experience a cheapo-charlie disaster. Direct the movie in your prospect’s head. Give them a new ending to the film. Give them a happy ending and watch them flock to your theatre to see it – higher ticket price and all.
There are a lot of bad Web designers out there.
Of course, that’s nothing against Web designers – there’s also a lot of atrocious Web copy out there, too. The difference is that everyone thinks they can write well, while most everyone believes they can’t draw. Moreover, the popular perception of good writing centers on clarity, whereas the popular perception of designcenters on creativity. All of which means bad design gets unleashed on the world, and goes un-optimized, more often than bad web copy.
Having dropped that turd in the punchbowl, let me admit that I’m no designer myself, with any knowledge I do have coming from self education.
Yet precisely because I am not a designer, I’ve always aimed my self-education at developing a knowledge of design fundamentals rather than of design tools. And this has left me continually scratching my head when I consistently see those fundamental design principles violated by Web designers.
Sometimes I wondered if it was just me and my own deeply-ingrained Conversion-centric view of Web design, pounded into me by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg. But as it turns out, it ain’t just me…
- This Smashing Magazine post shows at least a few designers who feel similarly
- And Tim Ash’s recent ClickZ article re-confirms my long-held bias towards clear over “snazzy” design
Why does this matter to a copywriter?
Because your Web copy’s effectiveness will be dramatically affected by page design.
So what do I recommend if you’re a copywriter who is forced to work with a mediocre designer? Educate yourself, learn to speak design, and force designers/clients to test disputed design decisions.
Here are 14 Starter Resources to Begin Your Design Education:
- This Andy Rutledge article on Contrast and Meaning
- Jakob Nielsen’s Website
- Mark Kennedy’s Temple of the Seven Golden Camels blog – tons of great stuff here
- This Free Design and Layout Tutorial by the Poynter Institute
- Bryan Eisenberg’s post on Revenge of the Pixels: The Battle for Screen Real Estate
- Anne Holland’s A/B Testing Site, WhichTestWon.com – getting a feel for what design elemts out-pull others is crucial!
- ABTests.com – more A/B split tests
- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
- Save the Pixel by Ben Hunt
- Type & Layout by Colin Whieldon
- Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, et al.
- Picture This: How Pictures Work, by Molly Bang
- Before & After Magazine
- Always Be Testing by Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto VonTivadar
When you can articulate your objections to bad design more eloquently and professionally than the designer can advocate for his design, you’ll have a huge leg up. And when that fails, you can always demand a split test between the simpler, cleaner design and whatever creative layout your designer has come up with.
So what about you? What design resources have you found invaluable? What do you recommend when working with a less-than-stellar Web designer? Let me know in the comments!
P.S. The “Bad Design Kills” icon was created by Von Glitschka and used with permission.
P.P.S. Sorry for the lapse in posts. Had some health issues and am just now feeling on the mend.
If you’ve ever been frustrated and beaten down by this or that issue at work, was your outlook on that issue one of dispassionate, organizational-focused analysis?
Or was your search for a solution to the problem just as emotionally driven as any consumer purchase?
The ugly truth about B2B Copy: most of it assumes that organizations buy things.
But I’ve never heard of an organization getting on its computer, checking out a Website, filling out lead forms, or meeting with sales reps. The only people who do those things are, well, people.
And like all people, B2B customers generally trying to do one of two things:
- Trying to get what they want
- Trying to get away from (or avoid) a problem/pain in the butt that they don’t want
In either situation, emotions rule the day. And so does the context of the situation. This is where even decent B2B copy goes wrong by assuming only positive motivation from the buyer. The copy acts as if only proactive customers exist in the marketplace.
Apparently, whoever wrote the copy never lifted their head above the cubicle or observed much of the outside world. Yes, some people are aggressively proactive. But the majority? They’re usually moving away from pain, typically in the face of crisis. They get serious about fitness after a health scare or humiliating event. They avidly back-up computers after a hard drive failure. And so on.
And if you don’t think the same thing happens with organizations, you’re nuts; again, it’s people that are doing the buying, and as importantly, institutions generally have MORE neurosis than individuals, not less.
Here’s a few business examples of this same behavior:
- Sales results slide a bit, but aren’t really bad enough to push management into real action. They look around at some of their sales training and sales recruiting options, but sit on that information as long as times are moderately good. Then, when a competitor starts stealing away key accounts or the market starts shrinking it suddenly becomes time to buy sales training.
- A company’s e-mail hosting requirements grows increasingly more complex. The in-house hosting becomes shaky at best and the IT manager knows it should be outsourced. He takes a look at his outsourcing options, but he’s got about 10 other higher-priority items on his to-do list. He might putter along like this for a year before suffering, say, a 2-day e-mail outage. Now the IT manager/company is really in the market for outsourced exchange hosting.
What I’m talking about are precipitating events – the kind of things that move a someday/maybe aspiration into a firm resolve to buy.
Now here’s the deal: most companies involved with B2B and complex sales know (or at least the sales people know) exactly what their top 5 or so precipitating events are. Yet most B2B websites fail to address the negative buying emotions stemming from those precipitative events.
Last week I was invited to take part in a landing page critique by Bryan Eisenberg. My first question was, “what was the precipitating event?” And based on the answers to that one question, the copy was totally transformed.
In the space of a short half-hour call, the clients themselves were able to take copy that read like something a Perl script might spit to messaging that compelling addressed the real buying motivations of the visitor. Like magic.
You can do it too. Just ask yourself, what are your clients’ precipitating events? Ask your sales team if you need help.
Now go look at your Web copy while keeping those precipitating events clearly in mind.
Does anyone really think that this year’s Superbowl managed to be the number 1 most watched event of all time because the actual athleticism on display was superior to year’s past?
Does anyone think that the main draw was really about the football itself?
Or do you suspect, as I do, that it was story behind the teams and behind the game that drew people in? That the emotional connection we all shared for the struggles faced by a post-Katrina New Orleans brought in far more viewers than the actual football itself?
Bottom Line: Emotional Connection and Story sell more tickets than sheer athleticism.
Living in the South, I can say that College Sports (and especially college football) are a much bigger deal down here than most pro sports. Alumni have a much greater emotional connection to their College teams than any pro team. And frankly, there’s also a sh*t-load more rivalries amongst college teams. Emotions run high when Alabama plays Auburn, or Florida plays Florida State or Texas plays the Aggies, and so on.
If the NFL were smart, they’d figure out how to create more of that. More rivalries, more emotional connection, better write-ups of the story behind the games.
And what they’d avoid at all costs is a strike or “lockout” that could sever emotional connections amongst the majority of their audience. They’d also want to squelch the kind of player free-agency that breaks the spell of team-loyalty. If the players don’t care who they play for, why should I care who I root for?
Obviously, this stuff extends well beyond football…
What kind of emotional connections are you creating with your customers? What kind of story are you telling?
P.S. Here’s another 5 Lessons in Success from Super Bowl XLIV Champion Saints