Posted by: Clayton Makepeace
July 13, 2009
Issue #713

How to create desire

Dear Business-Builder,

A couple of quick housekeeping items before we begin today …

First, one of my prized clients needs a script writer to help him create monthly online video events.  You must have a gift for writing sparkling dialogue and also a working knowledge of the economic/financial/investment world.  If you’re interested, click here to send us your resume and samples of scripts you’ve written.

Second, I need a researcher/fact-checker for about 20 hours per month to help me with articles we create for NewsBlarg.com.  Since most of the things I’m writing address current events (mostly political, economic and taxation issues), you’ll be spending a lot of time online searching news and government sites for facts, figures, economic data. Just click here to send us your resume.

It’s already shaping up to be a busy summer …

Last week, we sent our 16-year-old daughter to the UK to study journalism for a month at Oxford.  Two days ago, we sent our son off to Boston to study computer game design for a month. 

The Redhead and I are now at our new lake house north of Atlanta for two weeks of freedom.  Then, after a few days back in North Carolina, we’ll head out for our two-week-long whirlwind tour of the UK.

Here at the lake and also when we’re overseas, I’ll continue rising early and getting a day’s work done before Wendy stirs.  The great thing about being a copywriter is that you can do it anywhere.

Are you jealous?  Did those last two paragraphs give you the desire to kick your copywriting business into high gear?  Yes?

Good.  Then let’s talk about that:  Creating desire …

My little heresy

Seems the legendary Gene Schwartz once wrote that it’s impossible to create desire.  So, each time I’ve used the term “create desire” here, several of you have pointed out my heresy, asking if I’m contradicting one of the all-time copywriting greats.

Here’s my answer …

If you’ve studied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs, you know that nearly all of us came from the factory preprogrammed with certain desires. 

In addition to our basic human desires to survive, to be healthy, to nourish ourselves, to be secure and comfortable and to reproduce, we also have very strong desires to have our intellectual, spiritual and emotional needs fulfilled.

We desire to expand our minds … to feel at one with whichever god we worship … to respect ourselves and to win the respect of others … to love and be loved … and much more.

And on a more practical level, we desire to simplify our lives, to get things done better, faster and easier and to save money.

Now, I say “nearly all of us” have these desires because, believe it or not, there actually are a handful of oddballs among us who do not have one or more of these natural desires. 

There are those who do not care to survive; who take their own lives … or who have no more of an intellectual or spiritual life than the common garden slug.  And when that’s the case, Gene was right:  No amount of persuasion can create these desires within them.

But that’s OK.  Because as copywriters and marketers, creating basic human desire is not our job.  Our mission is to identify a resident desire our prospects already share that is fulfilled by the product we’re promoting — and then to make the connection between the two in our prospects’ minds.

By doing this, we transform the desire to be admired by others, for instance, into the desire to buy a solid gold Rolex wristwatch.  Or better yet, a Bugatti Veyron. 

Or we transform the desire to be secure and comfortable into the desire for a particular investment guru’s trading signals.

Or we transform the desire to survive and be healthy into the desire for a particular nutritional supplement.

In each case, we don’t create the basic desire; but we do channel and transform that desire to “create desire” for our product.

Of course, if our message is being read by folks who do not have these basic desires in the first place, response will be abysmal.  If they simply refuse to buy anything via the Internet or direct mail or through any other media channel, for instance, we’ll go down in flames.  If they have the desire but have never before acted to fulfill it, response will also be lacking.

But when the audience is provided by a media buyer who understands psychographic selection and if our message does a solid job of connecting to our prospects’ resident desires, we can and DO create desire – by transforming a vague, unspecific human desire into the very specific, very actionable desire to buy our product, from us, today.

Got any more questions?

Scroll down and ask ‘em in the comments section below.  I’ll check in daily this week and answer every question I can.

Hope this helps …

Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

Looking for resources related to this article? Try some of these.

Looking for more of Clayton's articles? Check these out.

Looking for past issues of The Total Package? Click here for our archives.

---

10 Comments »

1. Comment by Caleb Osborne — July 13, 2009 @ 12:54 pm

   Great answer Clayton and ya gotta hate those “oddballs”

   Later,
   Caleb

2. Comment by Brett — July 13, 2009 @ 1:24 pm

   Clayton, thanks for answering my inquiry about Desire so quickly!

   It definitely makes it more clear in my mind.

   In terms of nuts and bolts, is there a process you use to take those basic desires and transform them, similar to the process you laid out for us last month with the “How to close the deal” post?

   Or is it just integrated into the copy from start to finish?

   It seems like coming into the close with some “desire momentum” would be extremely effective. I’ll have to work on this in my next salesletter this week

   Thanks alot,
   Brett

3. Comment by Sid Smith — July 13, 2009 @ 1:55 pm

   Who said there isn’t a law of attraction?

   I just finished outlining a report on desire and came to the same conclusion.

   However, I disagree that you’re contradicting the legendary Mr. Schwartz. You said, “Our mission is to identify a resident desire our prospects already share that is fulfilled by the product we’re promoting.”

   From what I remember, that’s essentially what Schwartz said. He said that we can tap into and amplify an already-existing desire that is commonly shared amongst a large group of people.

   You’re not proposing that we create a desire, but that we find and translate a resident (already-existing) desire.

   The extra little tidbit that I came up with was that if you can find the deepest and strongest desire, you can KEEP selling to them simply because that desire will never actually be completely fulfilled.

   That person who deeply longs for a sense of security will never actually achieve his goal, no matter how much money he makes with your investment advice. If he did, you’d lose him as a customer.

   Sid

4. Comment by Neil — July 13, 2009 @ 2:28 pm

   Clayton

   Awesome post as usual and as a solo business owner your words of wisdom have been invaluable.

   My biggest challenge is tapping into the desire and transitioning this into a logical argument and strong call to action.

   Is there a method or sequence of how you would structure this in your writing.

   Thanks in advance
   Neil

5. Comment by Alex K — July 13, 2009 @ 3:34 pm

   This is one interesting concept. Up until this point I thought that copywriter’s main job was to create the desire for a product or a service, or actually the benefits of either one. Thanks for this insight. It really does make sense that if someone doesn’t have even a flicker of desire in their subconscious, all of the energy to create one will be wasted.

6. Comment by Tom Jones — July 13, 2009 @ 3:36 pm

   Hi Clayton,

   is there a checklist you use to check whether your (or anyone else’s) copy meets your standards or equally things that you definitely don’t want see or feel in the copy?

   Is there a good way to pre-screen/test your copy to find out where the wek areas are?

   Best Wishes,

   Tom

   P.S. I hope you enjoy your visit to the UK, if I see you I’ll be sure to say “hello” or rather, “good day Sir!”

7. Comment by Scott — July 13, 2009 @ 8:27 pm

   Lake Lanier? Lake Rabun? Can I come over? Drink your beer? Sip your scotch? Swipe your copy?

8. Comment by Greg Thompson — July 13, 2009 @ 10:24 pm

   Ah, so it’s a tease… you pretend to contradict the Great Schwartz to lure us into clicking over to this post and then - once we’re reading - spring the trap of truth… that you’re really just confirming what Gene said and anyone who bickered over the words “create desire” didn’t realize you were just using shorthand to communicate the same ideas.

9. Comment by Bernie Malonson — July 14, 2009 @ 3:33 pm

   Clayton, as always thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. I agree with tapping into existing desire in order to get the order.

   What happens when our product or service does not quench the desire? We can always sell them something else, or we may lose them entirely.

   I forget who said it, but went something along the lines of, “Rule #1 find a great product to sell.”

   Cheers!

   Bernie Malonson
   http://www.desktop-self-publishing.com

10. Comment by Joe — July 16, 2009 @ 4:13 am

    Clayton - agreed!

    But what is the surest mechanism to transform the vague desires of our prospect into actionable buying desire?

    Regards
    Joe