18
Feb
You’re thinking of buying something or some service and an acquintance says, “Don’t do it; I bought that/hired them and it was a total waste of money. I got screwed.”
Do you trust that acquaintance enough to let them sway your decision? Generally speaking, yes.
But if you’re on Amazon, looking at an interesting book, and you see a handful of 5-star reviews, many claiming that this is “The Best” book on the subject, do you trust the positive reviews?
Well, it depends on how well written and substantiated the reviews are, etc. But generally speaking, no, you don’t really trust them. All else being equal, we tend to give far less credence to positive reviews than negative ones.
Why we trust negative reviews more than positive recommendations
Basically, we grant others authority in the matter of their own personal experiences. If they say their favorite color is blue, we believe them. If they say they had a bad experience with such and such a product or service provider, we believe that too, because they are speaking from their own personal experience in that one situation.
You don’t have to be an expert on vacum cleaners to know that the one you bought has failed you miserably. And your experience alone is often enough to sway someone from buying that brand.
But a general recommendation is different. The ability to credibly make a positive recommendation requires more than just personal experience with a given product. For a recommendation to be persuasive, the reader must have faith in the reviewer’s overall judgement and in their field-specific knowledge.
You can tell me you liked a specific type of ergonomic chair, but your experience alone isn’t enough to make me want to buy that chair because there are a lot of good chairs out there and I’m not looking for good – I’m looking for the best my money can buy.
In order to persuade me that the chair you bought is the best chair for my money, you have to have more than just your experience with the chair. You need to have broad knowledge and expertise (or at least experience) with the top ergonomic chairs on the market so that you can compare multiple chairs and competently pick out the best performing chair for the money.
To believe and act on your recommendation, I’d need to know:
- that your use of the chair is similar to mine,
- that you’ve already tried a bunch of chairs, and
- what your criteria were for selecting the chair you did.
All this over and above your personal experience with the chair you eventually bought and recommended.
See the difference?
A Social Media “Friend” isn’t necessarily a friend
A lot has been made recently about studies purporting to show that people trust their friends less and experts more. It’s well worth looking at the study, but be careful about applying this too broadly.
First of all, what the study is really saying is that people trust anonymous reviews less than recommendations stemming from an authoritative source. Well, duh!
Does that mean reviews and testimonials have lost importance? Hell no. Keeping in mind what we just discussed, here’s what I believe it means:
- Negative reviews can still have an outsized impact.
- Positive reviewers need to substantiate their unbiased nature and subject matter expertise.
Sean D’Souza is ahead of the curve, as usual
What this really reminds me of is Sean D’Souza’s advice on Testimonials, advice that clearly understood (and masterfully leveraged) this phenomena several years ago when his product first came out. He used to give the PDF away to members of his newsletter, but the product he’s selling now for $40 is well worth it, in my humble opinion – and I’ve sampled more than my fair share of copywriting books, info-products, and guru advice 
Think of travelling through the web via hyperlinks as a form of teleportation. Now think of teleportation. Specifically, if you really were teleporting what would be your main concerns?
1) You’d want to make darn sure you KNEW where you were going
2) Upon “landing,” you’d want to ensure you arrived in the right place
Those are two of the most important things you can learn about crafting and structuring your hyperlinks, and they translate as:
- Word links so people can figure out where the link will take them, and
- Match your headlines, pictures, and page content with visitor expectations created by the hyperlink they clicked on to get to your page. Let them know they’re in the right place.
And yet these are also the two most frequently violated “rules” of hyperlinking. E-mails frequently have call to action links/buttons that take you to a page that utterly fails to follow-up on the offer presented in the e-mail. Call to action buttons meant to take you to a product page are often mislabeled as if they will place the item in your cart. And so on.
Master these two basic lessons and you’ll have learned more than 90% of most Web users, and even most Web developers and (sad to say) more than a few copywriters.
And yet, those are just the basics. Another, perhaps more sophisticated, way of looking at this is to say that every link represents a promise and every click represents permission.
The Promise
The promise comes from the expectations created by the hyperlink’s wording or label. You’ve essentially promised the visitor that, if they click on the link, they’ll be teleported to the kind of content they expect. Which means that, on an emotional level, visitors will feel a site is “dishonest” if a link “tricks” them by teleporting them someplace unexpected or undesired. Ouch!
More fundamentally, this also means that you, as the copywriter, have to craft links (and content) that offer forth promises compelling enough to motivate visitor clicks. There is no gravity to an online conversion funnel; nothing will “pull” visitors through to the next click or micro-conversion except their own motivation based on promised benefits.
In other words, you can’t take visitors where they don’t want to go. You can’t force the conversation. You have to offer to talk about what the prospective customer wants to talk about – what SHE finds important. Ignoring a topic of conversation by not providing the appropriate link (or by failing to provide the right content on the other side of a link) is like a car salesman refusing to talk about the price of the car when asked. It kills credibility and trust.
The Permission
The permission is what you get when a visitor clicks on your link, and permission is a copywriter’s best friend. Why? Because the right hyperlink construction can give you permission to speak about things that you’d never get away with otherwise. Here’s an example:
You’re crafting an About Us page that focuses primarily on a company’s history while throwing in a few credibility increasing features like a picture of the actual office and the team of employees, etc. But what you might really want to do is openly brag about all the home-runs the company has had – except that you feel a self-promoting tone might be “against brand.”
So you simply use self-deprecating link that talks about “our brag sheet” (or something similar) that links to exactly the kind of self-promoting copy you knew you couldn’t get away with on the About Us page. Why? Because any reader who clicks on a link to your Brag Sheet has mentally given you permission to brag. Following that click, you can brag without looking like an egocentric jerk.
Similarly, you could link to that same kind of content with an “Our track record” link placed most anywhere else on the site. Again, by clicking on “our track record” clients have given you permission to talk, at length, about the company’s successes. Normally you’d want to talk about What’s In It For the Customer and how you can help them, but the link provides permission to ignore WIFFM for a bit while you build credibility.
To give you another analogy, this link permission for something like “Our Track Record” is kind of like a date explicitly asking: “So what about you? What’s your story?”
And if you ponder that analogy, especially in light of context, I’m sure you’ll come up with even more lessons about linking, persuasion, and online conversations
In fact, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that last analogy. Tell me what you came up with…
It happens to the best of us. As copywriters, marketers, and entrepreneurs we get waylaid by our own best intentions, by our efforts at learning more about our craft, keeping up with all the must-read posts, magazine articles, and business books, and so on.
The end result: a reading diet way too rich on mediocre prose and way too low on first-rate fiction and poetry. Think about the last 10 books you’ve read and tell me that’s not the case.
And, in general, as you read, so shall you write. Garbage In, Garbage Out. So here’s my vitamin-enhanced fiction-reading commitment for next year:
- one short story, OR
- one chapter from a novel, OR
- At least one poem, OR
- A chapter from the Bible, OR
- One first-rate play or screenplay
I’ll read at least that much fiction each day, every day.
As far as New Year’s resolutions go, I think this one is probably one of the most pleasant I’ve ever made, and will very likely turn out to be one of the most effectively life-improving as well. I hereby recommend it to you.
Anyone else make a writing-specific resolution this New Year’s?
Never forget: you practice a queer trade, making you an odd duck by default.
If you’ve ever had someone totally miss-read a blog post and walk away thinking the opposite of your intended message, chances are you forgot what an odd duck you are.
As a writer, chances are that you’re more at ease with the idea of creating meaning through interpretation of events, and of critically examining a narrative for multiple meanings, contradictions, open endings, shades of grey, nuances, etc. And you likely bring those same skills to bear on everything you read.
Most People Don’t Read The Same Way You Read
That level of analysis may be second nature for you, but it’s a lot of unpleasant work for most people, who generally don’t think to put that effort into 99% of what they read. When you forget that, you write something that’s bound to be misunderstood.
So here’s what to do about it…
The Straightforward Grammar of Business Stories
In order to tailor your writing to a general audience and to avoid miscommunication, you’ll want to intentionally structure your story the way most readers think about and remember stories. The message can be unexpected, but the narrative structure used to deliver it shouldn’t be.
And when it comes to business stories or parables, most non-writers think in terms of three nodes:
- Hero,
- Villain/Obstacle, and
- Turning Point/Triumph.
Complex, rich, satisfying stories may contain more moving parts, but business parables shouldn’t. If you’re telling an anecdote or fable to make a point, you’ll want to keep the narrative structure simple. Who’s the hero? What’s he want? And who the hell is getting in his way?
If your main point or general story structure doesn’t fit neatly within this structure, people will misremember or warp your story in order to fit the framework, often to the point of changing your intended meaning.
The Unwritten Expectations For Each Storytelling Node
In addition to simplifying your story to those three nodes, make sure you tell the story in such a way as to meet audience expectations for each of the nodes:
- Regardless of what writing instructors and English teachers may have taught you, in a business story the hero should always be the guy you talk about the most in the telling of the story. If you talk too much about someone other than the hero, you’ll likely confuse your audience.
- The villain should be, well, villainous, even if the villain is just an obstacle. Make sure your audience can see the dastardly pain and gnashing of teeth your villain/obstacle causes.
- Dramatize the turning point for the hero. Don’t be subtle about it; novelist can paper over a momentous decision or a-ha moment for literary effect, but a business parable can’t afford that kind of subtlety. And make sure the victory follows immediately after the decision point. Most importantly, whatever point you’re trying to convey had better be made and “proved” during the turning point and victory.
- Remember that everything in the story will either get lumped in with the hero or the villain – they (or it) will inevitably be remembered as either helping the hero achieve victory or working against the hero, with no room for neutral or conflicted parties, characters, or elements.
If you complicate the structure, or bury your point outside of that framework, or confuse people by talking too long about someone other than the hero, the reader will likely walk away thinking something totally different than your intended point.
Here’s a textbook example of what can go wrong:
What Happens When You Violate the Structure
Roy Williams used a Monday Morning Memo as a sort of character sketch, contrasting the difference between faith in, well, providence, in the largest sense of that word, and a blind slavery to “the sure thing.”
Specifically, he wrote about how Joe Weppner’s underdog bout against Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight title inspired Stallone to write the script for Rocky. And, more importantly, he wrote about the incredible faith it took for Stallone to turn down a Studio’s offer of $400,000 for the script alone in favor of $25,000 and the chance to play the part of Rocky.
But Roy spent most of the Memo setting the stage by talking about Weppner and his singular chance at beating the odds. Not until the last few paragraphs does Roy introduce Sylvester Stallone and his gutsy move to turn down the “sure bet” of $400K for the chance to play the part of Rocky.
So when Roy closes his Memo by contrasting Weppner’s short-sighted slavery to “the sure thing” – about how Weppner took a $70,000 flat fee instead of a 1% cut of the movie’s gross that turned out to be worth $8 million – to Stallone’s faith, well, most readers missed the point of the memo.
How do I know? Because Roy’s MMM from two weeks after that opens with:
I recently wrote a Monday Morning Memo… about how Chuck Wepner’s fight against Muhammad Ali provided the inspiration for Sylvester Stallone to peck out the screenplay of Rocky, a low-budget film that, against all odds, won the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture in 1976. As expected, I was flooded with emails from people sharing stories of friends and family who “like Wepner” valiantly did their best in the face of insurmountable odds.
Funny thing is, that wasn’t the point of the memo…
Roy’s Story Structure Violated the Grammar of Business Parables
Weppner was the main character in the story, and yet Weppner was neither the hero nor the villain. Sylvester/Rocky was the hero. Daunting odds and the temptation of the “sure thing” was the obstacle.
So where does that leave Weppner? That leaves Weppner to either be confused with or associated with the Hero, or to be lumped in with the Obstacle/villain. Business parables leave no room for a complicated and conflicted third character.
So even though Weppner was both the inspiration for Rocky AND the guy who gave into the temptation of the sure thing, his image as the real-life inspiration for Rocky was what people took away from the Memo – even though that was the opposite of the intended point.
Fix Your Stories by Sticking to The 3-Node Structure
Do this by ensuring that:
- The Hero is clearly the hero. Make sure he gets the most description and “time in front of the camera.” If Roy had set-up with the image of Stallone refusing to sell-out his dream rather than presenting the image of Weppner as a gutsy and dogged fighter, they’d likely have been a lot less confusion.
- The Villain or Obstacle is presented “onscreen.” If your villain isn’t tangible, the reader will likely substitute a tangible villain for the one you intended. In Roy’s MMM the villain/obstacle was the temptation to sell-out to the sure thing. But selling out isn’t easily visualized and there was no Mephistophelean villain to embody selling out. So most reader’s likely substituted “the system” as the villain, with the system acting as the embodiment of conventional wisdom and “the odds.” The system may not be visual, but everyone’s been beaten down by it at one point or another, and everyone knows what it’s like to long for a magical moment of beating the odds. So readers paired Wepner the boxer and Stallone the actor in their battles to beat the system/odds.
- Turning Point & Victory: While the victory for Stallone immediately followed on his turning down the $400K, there really isn’t as much of an emotional turning point for Weppner. He lost out on $8 Million, but we have no idea how badly he did or didn’t need the money. Or how much he did or did not like being a liquor wholesaler in Bayonne, LA.
I’m not suggesting that you “talk down” to your audience or that you only tell simplistic stories. I am suggesting that you become aware of this framework so that the business or copywriting stories you tell end up making the point you hope them to make.
I hate fixing household plumbing problems.
It’s not that plumbing is hard or even all that unpleasant, really. And that’s the infuriating part: the fact that plumbing would be – should be!?! – downright easy if you just didn’t have to:
- negotiate way-too-tight spaces,
- avoid smacking your hand against hot-enough-to-burn-you stuff,
- overcome rusted bolts,
- make yet another trip to the store to get a needed part, tool, etc.
- deal with the worry of making a costly mistake
Honestly, what kind of shade tree mechanic or home fixer-guy hasn’t bitched about one of these things? It’s the luxury of being a shade-tree mechanic or home-fixer guy.
But real professionals don’t have that luxury.
True pros know conditions are never ideal. And they know their reputations and paychecks rest on results achieved in far-from-ideal conditions.
Real plumbers expect to fix plumbing problems while on their backs, staring up at the underside of a cabinet, and working with rusted bolts. That’s how it is in the real world, and so they train for it. Because no one pays you to be an imaginary plumber in a make believe world where the pipes are all out in plain site.
I half-wanted to draw out the analogy between this and copywriting, advertising, and marketing, but I won’t insult your intelligence. Just let me ask you:
Are you a real professional at your chosen vocation?
Do you train yourself to handle far-from-ideal conditions and situations?
Or are you too busy dreaming of the perfect client/product/competitive market and bitching about the marketing equivalents of rusted bolts and tight spaces?
Want to get every visitor hoping to prove you right?
Want to have those same visitors actively searching for just enough substantiation to hang their hats on before rushing off to your shopping cart/checkout process?
Of course you would. Once your reader wants what you say to be true, once she hopes you’re “for real,” she’ll be routing for you the whole time she’s reading your substantiating copy/proof. And that’s the kind of audience you want.
So even before you think about how to prove your claims, establish credibility, or anything else, you’ll want to focus on establishing your readers’ emotional desire. Here’s how to do that…
A Seductive First Mental Image
“The core of a successful trick is an interesting and beautiful idea that taps into something that you would like to have happen. One of the things we do in our live show is I squeeze handfuls of water and they turn into cascades of money. That’s an interesting and beautiful idea.
The deception is really secondary. The idea is first, because the idea needs to capture your imagination.”
- Teller (of Penn & Teller fame) describing the neuroscience of magic
While all copy shares the challenge of capturing readers attention, the best headlines and openers move past gimmicks and shouting in order to intrigue and seduce readers with a mental image that the reader hopes to be true. Or wishes to make true.
Infomercials mastered this technique decades ago. They always open with a striking image or clip functioning as a seductive “proof of concept”:
- The Ginsu knife that cut through the tin can and could still finely slice the tomato
- The OxyClean that magically evaporate stains out of a white carpet
- The ShamWow leaving not a trace of water on the counter and soaking up 20 times its weight in water, every last drop in the tray
Only after the image captures the viewer’s imagination does the pitchman reveal the “secret” of how the product works.
Similarly, Lifelock.com first captures visitor’s imagination with the CEO brazenly publishing his SSN on the homepage. It’s only on the second or third page that visitors learn HOW LifeLock works to keep your identity safe.
And for many Web 2.0 sites, the opening page has become home to the quick 1-3 minute video showing you how easily you too can kick butt with their software/product. This screenr homepage video is a perfect example of that.
Why it Works
As it turns out, we’re really good at bending logic to suport out desires, because, really, does anyone really read Playboy “for the articles?” Our minds also suffer from anchoring bias and the effects of emotional priming.
Basically, an emotional image affects how we “see” or interpret the rest of the copy. Here’s an example: when test subjects were shown a video of a car accident, half of the test subjects were asked how fast the two cars were going when the “crashed” into each other, and half were asked how fast the cars were going when they “made contact.” On average, the “crashed into” group’s estimated speed was 10 mph faster than the “made contact” group. That simple phrase colored the entire memory of the film clip.
In a similar manner, your readers’ desire for a product can color their perception of your substantiating content. In other words, if you present a striking and seductive enough image, your readers will actually look to convince themselves with whatever logical proof you provide.
And isn’t that the way you want it?
Haven’t we all wondered what took us so long after we made some (really great) purchase that we procrastinated on for months or even years?
And this happens with items we’d likely have said we were “almost” ready to buy!
Isn’t it amazing how long most of us can want something that’s well within our financial reach before we actually pull the trigger and buy it?
Well, your Website visitors are doing the same thing! Especially for items or services that cost over, let’s say, $50.
And that ain’t good. Here are the problems with this situation:
- eventually, the buyer will forget about your product or service in order to focus on a new want
- “almost convinced” visitors don’t increase your conversion rate or put money in your pocket
- those customer just might buy from someone else – someone who could convince them to pull the trigger
If you want to increase your conversion rate, you have to help those buyers overcome their procrastination. And this Dumb Little Man article can help you do that. The article tells you how to beat your own procrastination, but the principles apply to copywriting as well:
1) Eliminate Fear
Buyers don’t procrastinate out of laziness. If they’re procrastinating, they’re usually afraid of parting with their hard earned cash and not receiving full value for their money. Re-check your copy to ensure that you:
- Have material that preemptively answers buyer questions and concerns
- Use risk reversals, or at the very least a guarantee
- Employ user reviews, or at least have authentic sounding testimonials
- Provide adequate substantiation and proof for your claims
- Demonstrate that your product delivers benefits despite normal human frailties
- Reveal your company to be solid, reputable, and trustworthy on your About Us page
2) Cultivate Desire
“…start with the end in mind. How will things look when they’re all done? What will you see and how will you feel?
If you can associate strong emotions with the end result, you can cultivate a burning desire.”
Steve Martile wrote this about personal procrastination, but simply switch the “you” to “your reader,” and you can easily apply this to copywriting.
- Are you acting as the movie director of your readers’ dreams?
- Are you helping them see how much your product or service will allow them to kick butt, both immediately after purchase and long-term?
- Does your copy cultivate desire?
It’s not uncommon to find copy that does one or the other well – either cultivating desire or eliminating fear. But copy that does both is much harder to find, which is why those companies and Websites that do manage to do both enjoy a competitive advantage.
* Hat tip to @copyblogger for tweeting the link to the Dumb Little Man article.
While I love, love, love Melissa Karnaze’s Copyblogger post on how to make Writer’s Block a “Secret Weapon,” there’s like 5% 0f the time when what she describes as writer’s block isn’t quite what I experience.
Her premise: if you’re having trouble saying it, you probably aren’t all that clear on what you want to say.
But what if you know what you want to say, but you’re gooning up the emotion? What if you need a scalpel and your pen feels like a chainsaw?
Well, even though the following may not make any sense, it always works for me:
- Go visit PostSecret.
- Read through the secrets till you find 2-3 really juicy ones. Not juicy as in particularly lurid, but as in wince inducing. Your heart should go out to the person. Or there should be a “pucker factor” in reading their secret.
- Now that you have a few of those, pick one and start imagining the person who wrote it. Create a character, backstory, etc.
- Spend about 10 minutes writing the first several paragraphs or page of a short story that starts with the Post Secret statement and that centers around your character. Make sure to set a timer of some sort.
When the timer goes off you’ll be on the other side of the world from the emotional and mental state you started in. And the borrowed wings of your narrative will fly with you when you go back to writing your copy.
* Special thanks to Holly Buchanan for introducing me to Post Secret
Sometimes an audience’s resistance to buying has nothing to do with intellectual uncertainty. They understand what’s in it for them and they “get” the logical arguments, but they’re still not persuaded to act.
In these cases, audience doubt stems from an emotional confusion. The facts may support your claim, but those facts clash with the reader’s known reality. This is when you need a (predominantly) emotional message, rather than an intellectual one.
- Intellectual ads present the audience with new information
- Emotional ads cause the audience to feel differently about information they already know.
Emotional ads work their magic by reconciling your claims to the audience’s self-image and world-view, evaporating emotional uncertainty in the process and leaving your audience ready to act.
The Wizard of Ads Saves Christmas w/ an Emotion-Driven Ad
A masterful example of how to do this is Roy Williams’ ad for Heisenberg’s Jewelers. Before looking at the ad itself, here’s a little background on the emotional conflict Roy had to overcome:
Heisenberg’s Jewelers had been in the same building on Main Street in Cabbage Valley for 105 years. A facelift 7 years earlier had given the store white carpet, walnut paneling and a huge chandelier in a high, domed ceiling. Heisenberg’s was the Sistine Chapel of jewelry stores. Not a problem, except that Cabbage Valley is the turnip capital of the world, a little farming community of about 45,000 people. Even the wealthiest of Cabbage Valley’s farmers felt they weren’t dressed well enough to enter that store. Heisenberg’s was truly an intimidating place.
Now imagine your goal is to get these farmers to come in and buy jewelry. What you’re facing is NOT a lack of knowledge or insight: everybody in town knows that Heidelberg’s is THE premier jewelry store in town. An intellectual perspective would be suicide.
What you’re up against is a clash of images. The farmer already has an image of who he is, and it’s one that involves coveralls, honest work, and maybe a little dirt. In other words, an image that’s in direct conflict with the idea of walking into the ritziest store in town.
So, Roy re-framed the farmer’s self-image and made it 100% congruent with the act of walking into the Sistine Chapel of jewelry stores. In fact, he made walking into that store an absolute must for the farmer who wished to keep his self-image intact. Here’s the ad:
“Ladies, many of you will be fortunate enough this Christmas to find a small, but beautifully wrapped package under your tree bearing a simple gold seal that says ‘Heisenberg’s.’ Now you and I both know there’s jewelry in the box. But the man who put it there for you is trying desperately to tell you that you are more precious than diamonds, more valuable than gold, and very, very special. You see, he could have gone to a department store and bought department store jewelry, or picked up something at the mall like all the other husbands. But the men who come to Heisenberg’s aren’t trying to get off cheap or easy. Men who come to Heisenberg’s believe their wives deserve the best. And whether they spend 99 dollars or 99 hundred, the message is the same: Men who come to Heisenberg’s are still very much in love… We just thought you should know.”
See what I’m talking about? Rather than thinking, “I’m a farmer,” the ad caused men to think “I’m a devoted husband (who doesn’t want to be sleeping in the dog house come Christmas)”
Don’t Mess with Texas: the power of an emotion-driven campaign
Another fine example of this is the Don’t Mess with Texas campaign, as explained in the Heath brothers must-read book Made to Stick.
Texas had a litter problem — and it wasn’t caused by Austin environmentalists driving around in their Volvos. Nor was it caused by people who “didn’t know any better.” Texas surmised that their litter problem was caused by citizens who felt that a modern sensitivity to litter was a little too mamby-pamby-ish for them. It conflicted with their self-image.
So the Ad agency elected NOT to run a typical PSA presenting new facts about the damage litter causes. Instead, they re-framed concern for litter into a matter of Texas-pride, where manly-man Texan celebrities came out against littering, saying “Don’t mess with Texas.” They reconciled the conflicting images, and the incidence of roadside litter decreased 72% between 1986 and 1990.
A 4-step process for creating emotional messaging:
1. Find the source of your prospects cognitive dissonance. In order to do this, you have to see your customer real, having contextualized their need for your product within the entire scope of their lives and self-image. Fully modeling your audience allows you greater insight into how they see themselves and what their preconceptions and concerns actually are.
2. Find an image that reaffirms that preconception. That’s right, reaffirms. Pointing out the limits within which the reader’s understanding holds true and pointing out the limits beyond which they are false are both exercises in defining limits. But the emotional distance between the two approaches separates success from failure.
If you really want to convince a kid that fluids move faster through a narrowing (a la the bernoulli’s principle), acknowledging that toothpaste doesn’t work that way (and explaining why) makes things a lot easier. Similarly, Roy’s ad reconfirms the idea that Hiesenberg’s is an uncomfortable place to shop, and the Don’t Mess with Texas ads reconfirmed the “cowboy” image of its target audience.
3. Now, either introduce a new mental image that re-frames your message & reconciles the conflict Roy introduces a new self-image for the farmer’s in his audience: that of a faithful and loving husband. The State of Texas introduced a new mental image for the “bubbas” watching the TV campaign: that of a Texan’s Texan taking litter as an assault on Texas-pride. Both images re-framed how the audience felt about the proposed action, whether that action was walking into a scary-expensive jewelry store or refraining from littering.
4. Make sure your new image already fits the audience’s self-image or mental model. If you want full conviction from your readers, you’ll have to leave them feeling as though this new way of looking at things is really a confirmation of what they’ve truly believed all along.
You can’t convince farmers that they aren’t farmers or that they’re really sophisticated suburbanites. You have to pick a self-image that they are already comfortable with, like that of a devoted husband. And you can’t convince bubba the cowboy that he’s really a crunchy granola type. But you can convince him that cowbows have always respected and protected their own land.
[Emotioneering is a trademarked word coined by Hollywood screenwriting and video game guru David Freeman. I've co-taught with David on a few occasions and can't recommend his material highly enough, especially his book, Creating Emotion in Games.]
To move the needle on the “who gives a sh**” dial, you need to know what’s at stake.
The needle measures the emotional stakes raised by your messaging, as perceived by your audience. If you don’t address, reference, or touch upon what’s at stake, little else matters.
Getting in shape or getting stronger may be a product benefit for an exercise program, but that’s not what’s at stake for the prospective customer. In order to understand what’s at stake, you have to contextualize the desire for the product within the life of the prospect.
What A Charles Atlas Ad Can Teach You About Moving the Needle
A perfect example of contextualizing desire is the classic Charles Atlas ads created by Charles P. Roman. Getting publicly humiliated in front of your girlfriend while she watches a bully kick sand in your face puts a completely different spin on “working out” than heart-health and longevity doesn’t it?
Now we know what’s at stake: the prospect’s manhood. Hence the power of the famous headline: “The Insult that Made a Man Out of Mac”
Do you see how much more emotionally galvanizing that headline is compared to a garden-variety pitch about the strength building benefits of “dynamic tension” workouts?
This old comic book ad is a wonderful example not only because of the searing mental imagery, but because it provides the first secret key:
Key #1 – The stakes are always about the customer’s self-identity; will he maintain and grow his self-image/ego or will he suffer in the face of adverse reality?
And the second secret key follows on from the first one, because if what’s at stake is the customer’s self image, then:
Key # 2 – The hero of the ad has to be the customer, not the product
If the customer is the most emotionally invested in the outcome and has the power to determine the outcome, who else could possibly be the hero?
Think about that Charles Atlas Ad again: who ended up kicking butt? Mac – the thinly veiled stand-in for the reader – was the star of the ad; he was the one who transformed himself from a 97-pound weakling into a muscle-laden stud – the product just helped him get there.
Back when Charles P. Roman penned his first Atlas Ad, there were any number of muscle men selling courses by mail order, guys like Joe Bonomo. If that name doesn’t ring any bells for you, and you can’t recall any of the others off the top of you head, it’s largely because the other guys either made themselves or their products the star of their ads. The Atlas Ads made the customer the hero and they’re still selling courses to this day!
Want to move the needle?
- Speak to customer emotions stemming from self-image. Contextualize the desire in terms of common scenarios. Understand what’s really at stake.
- The feature might be an easy, learn-at-your-own-pace musical instrument course
- The benefit might be mastering the piano in one’s spare time
- The growth of self image might be the transformation from a musical embarrassment to an accomplished (and admired) musician
- Provide a searing mental image of the customer kicking butt in the role they already desire to see themselves fulfilling. Make the customer the star, not the product.
Stay tuned for the follow-up post on how Temperament Affects Self-Image