9
Feb
OK, before you do anything else, watch this all the way through:
Now, regardless of which side of this issue you are on, put that aside for now. If you don’t you’ll never see the persuasive art at work in the film.
So what techniques ARE at work in the film?
Well, the grand strategy is to get you emotionally involved in the story of the featured man’s relationship — presumably with a woman who’s “first person shooter” perspective you’re watching in the video.
In fact, the creators of this video want you to not only be drawn into the narrative arc of their story, but to be “rooting” for the couple. So how do they do that?
1) Use of First Person Shooter Perspective & Narrative Misdirection
Whenever fiction writers need to write a suspense novel or mystery, they usually write from a Third Person Limited perspective, meaning the reader sees the world through the eyes of the main character and is privy to that one character’s thoughts, but every other character is only ever presented externally, as seen through the eyes of the main character.
This perspective allows close identification between the reader and the main character. It also allows the author to lead the reader in one direction, and then yank the carpet out from under their feet for a “big reveal.” We see Harry Potter’s world through the eyes of Harry Potter, and are surprised to find Quirrell, and not Snape, as the bad guy at the end of Sorcerer’s Stone.
Sounds kind of like the video, doesn’t it?
Of course it does. In the video, you see everything from the perspective of the “girl” being flirted with, dated by, and romanced by “Paul.” And you frequently experience you and Paul’s co-participating in activities with other hetero couples. Leading you to believe that Paul is also involved in a hetero couple.
This sets the stage. This technique allows the video to get you to think about the couple absent any other preconceptions you might have. They have to get you to like and root for the couple BEFORE the big reveal.
So step 1 is First Person Shooter Perspective combined with Narrative Misdirection.
2) Use of “Character Rooting Techniques”
Screenwriting gurus will tell you that you can’t assume the audience will like and root for your main character — you have to bake in scenes designed to GET the audience to like and root for your character. The late Blake Snyder called this “saving the cat” and thought it was important enough to name his first screenwriting book, Save the Cat.
And the corollary to saving the cat? Squashing the cat. You either have the hero perform some kind or heroic act, or you have the character suffer some kind of undeserved misfortune. Disney redeems the thieving Aladin in the eyes of the audience by having him give his stolen food to street urchins. He saves the cat. Cinderella loses her mom, and gets abused by her stepmom. She suffers undeserved misfortune.
So what does this film do?
- It starts out with playful, “meet cute” flirting. Every adult has had this experience and most people reflect back on the fear and emotional charge of such a moment, meaning that you almost can’t help but want success (however you define it) for the people involved.
- Lot’s more “Like me” moments. Playing on the beach, meeting parents, arguing over directions, and lots of other similar scenes that most viewers can instantly identify with.
- Playfulness. Most of the scenes show “Paul” acting playful and fun. This is very human and makes the couple instantly likeable.
- Undeserved misfortune. Paul’s mom is introduced earlier in one of those “like me moments” that define the narrative arc of the relationship. So when Paul’s mom dies, we can’t help but ache for him. And to appreciate the relationship that helps him get through that death.
So we get lots of Character Rooting Interest moments packed into this 2 minute video. All setting up maximum emotional punch for the big reveal.
What the Heck Does this Have to Do with Advertising?
If these fiction writing techniques can get you to like and root for a couple in spite of a highly-charged politically divisive issue, do you think they could work to get you to identify with and like a brand?
Sure they could. Similar techniques worked for Tony the Tiger, the Jolly Green Giant, Bartles & Jaymes, and “I’m a Mac.” And they can be put to work for you, too, even if you’re not a huge multinational. Here’s an example created by my partner, Roy Williams, for a local HVAC client:
And here’s another one:
So, do you think that after watching a series of these ads, you might start liking and rooting for Mr. Jenkins and Bobby?
Well, whether you do or not, the ads are increasing sales. So somebody’s rooting for Mr. Jenkins. Actually, a whole lot of somebodies.
What are you doing to get people to root for YOUR business?
25
Jan
I recently came across this fascinating post about Apple Marketing principles, as articulated by Apple circa 1977. Here they are:
Now, as a marketer, the Empathy and Focus parts are second nature — at least in terms of understanding. Putting them into practice every day is harder stuff, but any copywriter that doesn’t understand the importance of empathizing with the prospective customer and focusing in on their primary buying motivations and concerns isn’t a copywriter at all.
It’s the last element most marketers and copywriters screw up or overlook: the importance of Imputed Quality. Not nuts and bolts, specification-driven build quality or value for the dollar quality. But quality cues that tap into buyers’ pre-existing mental imprint of luxury and virtuous manufacture. The telling detail that says everything.
Want to see an example of imputed quality used in copy? Here ya go:
Notice that the actual build quality is detailed by the bullet points of the body copy, while the imputed quality — the telling detail — is given pride of place within the headline of the ad itself.*
Of course, this sort of quality cue or imputed quality factor has to be already existing or freshly baked into the product or service itself before it can be advertised, but recognizing the need for it — and doing the patient research and digging to find it — is one of the major keys to writing copy that works.
Apple of course, is a master at this, which is one reason they are renowned design icons, because inspired design imputes high quality. But it’s also why Apple never skimps on screen quality, keyboard feel, and the overall polish put on their user interfaces: those are the sort of tangible, experiential things that impute quality.
Yes, of course, we expect real quality from an Apple product in the sense of freedom from typical PC-like annoyances, annoyances brilliantly dramatized and mocked by Apple’s “I’m a Mac” campaign. But even if you knew nothing about Apple or PCs and just LOOKED at the competing products laid side by side, you’d intuitively get that one set of products were special and nicer than the rest. Regardless of how their internal components and specs stacked up.
So Here Are My 3 Takeaways from This:
1) Quality is important, but quality without imputed quality will go unrewarded in the marketplace.
2) Business owners should never expect customers to recognize quality and should “bake” imputed quality into their offerings.
3) Copywriters who fail to use imputed quality cues will end up with underperforming ad copy.
P.S. — Want to see an already-existing quality cue in action? Check out these guys thudding the door closed on a Mercedes:
P.P.S. — How do I know that Ogilvy diligently searched for product facts that would help him find and recognize important quality cues? Because he listed research twice when explaining his copywriting methodology! Steps 3 and 5 both emphasize the importance of research and facts.
* For a more detailed analysis of this famous Ogilvy Ad, check out my old GrokDotcom post.
Before the big iPhone unveiling today, if someone told you that they had real pictures of what the next generation of the iPhone looked like, and they just showed you some photos, totally devoid of context, would you believe them?
Of course not. The claim lacks all credibility.
You can’t possibly look at photos like that without wondering:
- How could you possibly have gotten these, given how passionately Apple protects their upcoming projects?
- Even if you DID get legitimate photos, why aren’t Apple’s lawyers sending you a cease and desist letter?
- What evidence do I possibly have that these are real, and weren’t simply photoshopped?
- And so on.
In short, the context is all wrong, so we just know the photos are fakes (or “artists renditions,” at best). But what about this video?
Somehow, this video fooled a lot of people and created quite a stir before it was proven to be faked. But why? Why is this video so convincing when the typical “leaked” photos aren’t?
Context.
The video provides a context which preemptively answers all of these credibility-killing questions and more. According to the non-verbal storytelling in the video, the guy who made the video accidentally discovered an “unreleased” page to Apple’s German Website, and took a screen recording of it. That’s how he got the photos, that’s why Apple can’t stop him, because they’re the ones who put the content on the Web, etc.
More importantly, the very style of the Web pages created by this hoaxster convinces us. When we look at these “accidentally discovered” Web pages, they look so faithful to Apple’s own design aesthetic, and the pictures of the phone look so faithful to the rumors about the new iPhone (curved, metal back, larger screen, thinner, etc.) that we tend to believe that maybe the video is for real.
Making This Dynamic Work for You
The truth is that we ALL rely on context every day for almost every decision we make. Manipulate context and you manipulate people’s perceptions and, ultimately, their decisions, too:
- If you’re an ice cream parlor and you simply put canisters of sample spoons up on the counter, that context will cue people to ask for free tastes, without any other change required.
- An HVAC guy who shows up in a corporate-branded truck and uniform will look like he’s from a big company, even if the company consists entirely of him, his cellphone, and that truck.
- Tell me you have the best food in the city, and I’ll be a lot more likely to believe you if you serve that food on linen table cloths rather than plastic trays.
Good fiction writers know the importance of this instinctively, which is why they go to such lengths to establish the right pretext for their big moments — they “set you up” and then “pay it off” later. Though I am absolutely not advising anyone to hoax their customers or to adopt a conman’s mindset, I am asking you to think about the believability of the claims you make, and how the right context can create customer confidence that you might not create any other way.
So what context cues are you using now, and what cues should you be using going forward?
7
Sep
When writing copy for products and services designed to help someone do X, the best persuasive tactic is to re-sell them on the dream.
In other words, whenever prospects got into X in the first place, they did so because they had bought into a dream. For instance, most people take up blogging because they buy into the dream of blogging: be able to put their “voice” out into the world and finding an appreciative, receptive audience that not only tweats, re-tweats, comments on, and forwards their posts, but also finding financial benefit through that same audience buying their books, come to their conferences, etc. That’s the dream most people are chasing when they start up a blog.
Needless to say, the reality frequently falls short of the dream. And the frustration at the gap is where the incentive to buy comes in.
So if you’re selling a service to help people with their blogging, you not only want to sell the prospect on the service, but also re-sell them on the dream. More specifically, you want to sell them on the ability of your service to help them re-capture the dream.
Why?
Because they already bought into the dream once, and they haven’t yet given up on it (they’re still X–ing, aren’t they?), and nothing is easier than selling someone on the dream they’ve already bought into. Doesn’t matter what the dream was, and it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in; the easiest sale you’ll ever make is selling the prospect on the dream they’ve already dreamt.
Jonathan Morrow’s new product BoostBlogTraffic.com is a perfect example of that. Check out the product announcement over at Copyblogger and see for yourself. What’s Jonathan doing for the first 2/3rds of the copy? Invoking the frustrations and dream-reality gap involved in blogging, and then re-selling the blogging dream, baby!
Because Jonathan Morrow knows what he’s doing.
- So what dream where your prospects chasing whenever they got into your market?
- Are you minding (and mining) the gap between the dream and the prospect’s current reality?
- Does your copy re-kindle the dream?
22
May
Portals and Why They Matter
“Taking it to the next level” is cliché. So is the phrase “he/she/it opened a lot of doors for me.” But people still reach for these phrases regardless. There’s a reason for that.
Both phrases reflect an intuitive understanding of transitions: that there’s always a threshold to cross. Boundaries define an area, environment, or world. Movement past boundaries necessitates movement through openings in those boundaries — or though portals, if you will.
So where there is change, there are portals, or so our subconscious minds expect. But all too often, businesses fail to meet our subconscious expectation for portals.
Businesses usually want to transition shoppers from thinking one way about a product or service (price sensitive) to another way of thinking, typically one that elevates shared values, big-picture performance, and total experience above price. The goal is to move shoppers from an objective, consumer-reports mindset to an enthusiast’s mindset.
And yet people don’t just snap from one state of mind into another; there has to be a transition and a portal to mark that transition. Put plainly: if you’re selling premium products or experiences, you need to understand the power of portals.
Fantasy Writers Understand Portals
When it comes to portals, perhaps the best people to study are fantasy writers, who have always intuitively sensed the need for portals between worlds:
- C.S. Lewis had his Wardrobe.
- J.K. Rowling had her Platform 9 3/4s,
- L. Frank Baum had Dorothy ride her twister, and
- The Wachowski Brothers gave Neo his red pill (among other portals).
Enter The Picture Book Powerhouse of Portals
But some of the most intense and easily observed stacking of portals I’ve come across take place in a children’s picture book: Skippyjon Jones, by Judy Schachner.
And what follows is my breakdown of Portal Stacking in Skippyjon Jones. And to start, let me give you a bit of set-up…
Skippyjon Jones is a young Siamese Cat who likes to pretend that he’s really some other animal. The story starts with him pretending to be a bird, much to his mother’s dismay. So she sends him to his room for a little time out, and that’s when ol’ Skippyjon begins his transformation into the great sword-fighting Chihuahua, El Skippito Friskito. A transformation involving portals galore.
First, Skippyjon starts bouncing on his bed, with the bouncing symbolically equivalent to flight. Then, during that flight, Skippyjon Jones encounters his first portal:
Literature is rife with the notion of mirrors as portals. And Skippyjon’s midflight glimpse into his mirror reveals his hidden chihuahua nature. A nature which is amplified through the donning of a Lone Ranger style mask by the little kitty. Skippyjon literally becomes invested in the identity.
Then we flash down to Skippyjon’s mother and sisters watching TV downstairs, talking about Skippyjon’s time out. But when the book cuts back to Skippyjon Jones, we’re not brought back up into the room, but forced to look into his room through — you guessed it — a portal:
We’re outside seeing Skippyjon objectively as a masked kitty racing around his room like a freak. And the half-conscious expectation is that when we move inside, we’ll transition from outside to inside in more ways than one, moving from an objective to a subjective understanding, so that we will start to see what Skippyjon/El Skippito Friskito sees.
Still, the reader is further prompted to engage in Skippyjon’s whimsy by yet another portal transition, this time from the room to the closet:
So we have a double-portal transition, from outside the room to inside, and from inside the well-lit room to inside the dark closet, wherein the magical realm of imagination rules, and where Skippyjon Jones, the Siamese cat, fully becomes El Skippito Friskito, the great sword-fighting Chihuahua.
But still, if Skippyjon is to fight something truly monstrous, he might have to cross yet another portal within the imaginary story, before he is to face the monster. And so it is, as Skippito and his band of Chihuahua friends take a nap, using sleep as the ultimate portal to dreams…
And that’s when the adventures really begin. Until, at the conclusion of Skippyjon’s imaginative adventure, El Skippito is blown back through the portal/closet door, and back to the everyday reality of his mother and sisters. Portal crossing in; portal crossing out.
So why is this important for the book?
It makes the difference between watching a kitten dream something silly, and being emotionally pulled along with him into his dreams. All those portals really help readers (of all ages) “get into” the story. Yes the story itself is delightful, and yes, the author (Judy Schachner) does a wonderful job making the book a blast to read. But I can’t help but think the brilliant use of portals has more than a little do with the books critical praise and widespread popularity.
And in case you think I’m reading too much into this, take a look at the Official Skippyjon Jones Website’s entrance page:
Anyone want to guess what happens when you click to enter? Go ahead and try it!
So, that’s cool and all, but how can you use it for your business? We’ll get into that next week…
But for now, let me just give Judy Schachner’s book a hardy plug for all those with young kids out there. It won the E.B. White Read Aloud Award because it’s both a blast for the parents to read and a delight for kids to listen to. Highly recommended.
And who knows, you might learn something too…
P.S. My mentor and business partner, Roy H. Williams, teaches an entire course on portals. If you’re interested in this kind of stuff, you probably ought to check out Wizard Academy at some point. And, yes, as adjunct faculty, my opinion on Wizard Academy is heavily biased ; )
23
Mar
So quiet you could hear a…
It’s so loud in here I can’t even hear…
Do those sentence even make sense? If it’s really, really quiet, shouldn’t there be an absence of noise? Why would you point out how quiet it is by raising the spectre of sound in the mind of the reader? And why would you indicate loudness by talking about what you can’t hear?
Surprisingly, this isn’t just my lame attempt at a Steven Wright style joke; there are legitimate answers to these questions, and the answers reveal something shockingly important for copywriters.
The answer? You can’t convey extreme absence or total immersion very well through a direct approach. You have to hint at it through implication or comparison. Or you have to convey the subjective experience of it. Or use both techniques.
Hearing a pin drop implies that there are no sounds louder than that present. In other words, your mind, once seeded with that single, delicate sound, surrounds the rest with a silence more blanketing and complete than any you could have described directly.
And no, this isn’t just because “hear a pin drop” is a colloqualism or cliche, this technique works even when dealing with the actual experience of sound, as described by the great movie sound effects editor Walter Murch:
Murch flips on his computer, clicks the mouse a few times and instantly pulls up a scene from Jarhead. Swofford’s character, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, is in combat for the first time and there’s an artillery barrage. Everyone else ducks for cover, but he stands up. And the camera moves closer to him. Then, in the distance, there’s a muffled explosion followed by dead silence.
This fleeting silence is a golden moment for an editor — a chance to put the audience right there on the battlefield. Jarhead’s director, Sam Mendes, originally wanted that silence to stretch for several seconds. But Murch came up with a better idea.
Pieces of dust and sand from the explosion hit the actor’s face in slow motion. Then you hear the sound of the particles hitting his face. “My combat action has commenced,” the character says.
This fleeting silence is a golden moment for an editor — a chance to put the audience right there on the battlefield. Jarhead’s director, Sam Mendes, originally wanted that silence to stretch for several seconds. But Murch came up with a better idea.Pieces of dust and sand from the explosion hit the actor’s face in slow motion. Then you hear the sound of the particles hitting his face. “My combat action has commenced,” the character saOne of the rules of the road is that if you want to create the sense of silence, it frequently has more pungency if you include the tiniest of sounds.”
Did you catch that? The silence is lengthened and intensified by giving you both a small noise and an inner subjective experience of it. Murch even describes this as a rule of the road:
One of the rules of the road is that if you want to create the sense of silence, it frequently has more pungency if you include the tiniest of sounds
Similarly, describing the cacophony directly doesn’t get to the experience of it as well as describing the subjective mental disordering and disorientation that such ear-piercing noise causes; the internal mental confusion of ‘I can’t hear myself think’ implies an external sonic chaos that your readers’ minds will recreate, thereby putting them “right there on the battlefield.”
So what are the advertising applications of all this?
In my last post I plugged the technique of discovering and using quality cues in your advertising. And that raises the obvious question: how can you find those cues?
One answer: find the pin drops.
What unique turn of phrase implies more than it says. How can you describe an internal state that implies an external event and vice versa?
Do you think that Mike Diamond’s plumbers really smell good? Or do you think that smelling good implies cleanliness, professionalism, and stand-up qualities? Smell is just one sense, perhaps the most primitively emotional, but we’re all the more able to fill in all the rest ourselves based on that, aren’t we?
What about finger licking good? It’s a cliche now, but imagine when it first came out!
OK, now you try — what are your pin drops? What small detail seeds our mind to rain down the greater whole?
P.S. If this seems hard, it should. It’s the kind of thing ad professionals get paid the big bucks to come up with.