What Britney Spears and Star Trek
can teach you about copywriting
Dear Business-Builder,
Ah, Labor Day – the day America sets aside to commemorate the blessed moment in 1994 when The Redhead suddenly went into (premature) labor with our son.
It’s Friday and I’m down at our new weekend digs on Lake Lanier just outside of Atlanta. It’s a great place, just two, short hours from our North Carolina home.
We bought this place a few months ago so we could spend more time with my two older kids and three grandkids who live in Atlanta, less than an hour away.
My plan was that this Labor Day weekend, we’d all be tear-assing around the lake on our Sea-Doos and I’d be trying in vain to dislodge a munchkin from the tube we tow behind the boat at 50 mph.
Maybe we’d do a little early-morning fishing; callously murder a few trout. In the evening, we’d grill them – along with an assortment steaks, burgers and weenies — out on the deck.
You know – typical, normal, Labor-Day-weekend family stuff.
Instead, I’m sitting here more than a little alarmed; coming to the realization that I am the patriarch of the nerdiest family I’ve ever seen.
Don’t get me wrong – they happen to be the finest human beings to ever grace planet Earth. I’d take a bullet for any one of them. But tonight (Friday), The Redhead and both of my daughters are at (my hand to God) a Britney Spears concert.
That’s right; Britney “Oops I did it again” freaking Spears. She of the famously shaved head and vajayjay … the utterly vacuous ranking member of the Bimbo Patrol … the woman whose entire career depends on you accepting the fantasy that she actually has talent.
Wait; it gets worse: My son-in-law and both sons are spending the night in Atlanta in preparation to attend Dragon*Con tomorrow.
Never heard of Dragon*Con? I hadn’t either – until my just-turned 15-year-old son said he wanted tickets for his birthday.
Suddenly, I’m painfully aware that Dragon*Con is the gathering where thousands of nerds of both sexes dress up like characters from fantasy, horror, superhero and sci-fi stories — and then geek out over each other.
Oh – and they also dork out over the actors from their favorite TV shows and movies — like William Shatner and Patrick Stewart from “Star Trek” and Lou Ferrigno who played “The Incredible Hulk.”
And of course, they get all giddy over the fellow geeks who create their favorite comic books – er … “graphic novels.”
If it’s not real, implausible and utterly outrageous, they’re into it – especially the cute, voluptuous nerdettes in Princess Leah costumes.
It’s enough to make me want to throw on my leathers, fire up the Harley, cruise over to the nearest biker bar and drown my sorrows in a gallon or three of Absolut.
I reject your reality
and choose to substitute my own.
Please don’t feel sorry for me. I actually enjoy the solitude. Gives me time to think.
And as you might suspect, I’m thinking a lot about the impact that our fantasies and beliefs have on all of us.
I saw a documentary about deceit the other night. Fascinating stuff. The producers made the point that each one of us is complicit in every lie we’re ever told. Our desire to believe makes deceiving us easy.
Guess that’s why they’ve sold all those billions of pills that supposedly make your thingy bigger. Or grow hair on your bald spot. Or burn off that spare tire without exercise.
It must also be why Bernie Madoff was able to fleece so many otherwise sophisticated investors for so many years.
And for me at least, it also explains why so many actually believe that a government that can’t balance its own budget, regulate the banks or Wall Street or run Social Security or the Post Office efficiently can be trusted with our health care.
We want to believe – and so we fork over our hard-earned money (or liberties) for what, to people who don’t share our fantasies, are obvious swindles.
This simple fact of human nature is so powerful, it is dangerous. As a marketer, simply knowing this fact gives you the power to become a superhero or a supervillain. Because like fire, superpowers can be used either for evil or good.
Please, please, please … use it for good – only to promote products that bring actual value to your customers’ lives.
Know Thy Prospect
Libraries of books have been written on the importance of knowing your prospect. Most of them extol the virtues of understanding demographic and psychographic facts about the people you’re asking to buy your product.
They drone on endlessly about knowing the sex, age, income level, educational level and other demographic facts about the audience you’re addressing.
And they go further; lecturing you on how important it is to also understand your prospect’s hobbies, interests and buying preferences.
However, few suggest that anchoring your sales message to a commonly held belief can have explosive impact on your response, revenue and sales.
Case in point:
In the 1970s, a new industry appeared to provide objective news, analysis and advice to investors. There was a crying need for it. Until then, this information was parsed out by Wall Street brokers who, frankly, had a massive conflict of interest: They had a huge incentive to convince investors to buy what they wanted – or needed — to sell.
In the 1990s, another massive industry emerged to provide news and advice to an entirely different set of prospects: This time, to health-conscious people who were interested in alternatives to mainstream treatments like toxic drugs and life-threatening surgery.
Again, there was a crying need: Until then, health information was largely dispensed by drug companies and mainstream medical experts and institutions that were paid fortunes in kickbacks by drug companies. Every one of them had a vested interest convincing consumers to blindly follow their doctors’ orders.
The prospects for both of these huge new industries had one, clear belief in common: You can NOT trust the establishment. Not with your money and certainly not with your life.
I was there – both times — and I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that nine times out of ten, any copywriter who began by looking at mere demographic or psychographic facts about his prospects produced lukewarm results at best.
But every copywriter who used his headline and opening copy to connect to the common anti-establishment belief his prospects shared hit it out of the park.
Like me, for instance. The “Forbidden Cures” promo I wrote to harness and channel my prospects’ distrust of and disgust with the medical establishment mailed in the tens of millions and paid me a king’s ransom in royalties.
Time to put on the old thinking cap …
Think: What fantasies are your prospects engaged in right now? What commonly held beliefs do they swear by?
How can you connect with those beliefs in a way that will produce maximum attention-getting power, readership and response in your next marketing effort?
Food for thought …
Guess I’ll go watch that old “Star Trek” rerun now…
Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,
Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE
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12 Comments »
Join the Discussion!
Let us know what you think. Or ask us anything. Or offer your own sage advice.
The only rule: RESPECT THIS HOUSE! Postings that contain abusive language and/or personal attacks will be cheerfully VAPORIZED. One cross word and – POOF! – your well-thought-out post will be gone in a puff of smoke.
– Clayton
Comment by caleb osborne — September 7, 2009 @ 10:58 am
Two things Big Guy:
1. Darn you for making me sit down and read something valuable on my labor day!
2. I LOVE the fact my copywriting hero just said “Vajayjay”! haha!
Still the best
– Caleb
Comment by Clarke Echols (Resident scientist and rabble-rouser) — September 7, 2009 @ 11:07 am
Clayton,
Gotta interrupt the tranquility of your Labor Day…
You stepped on one of my hot buttons when you said, “You can NOT trust the establishment.”
Mirriam-Webster sez that “cannot” and “can not” are equivalent. I disagree.
S’pose I want to go to Denver (50 miles away). If my car is in running condition, insured, full of gas, and I have a license to drive, I can go to Denver, or I can *not* go to Denver. It’s purely a matter of choice.
On the other hand, if the car is inoperable or illegal to drive for some reason, and I lack other means of transportation, I *cannot* (i.e., “can’t”) go to Denver until I remedy the situation.
Thus correct usage would dictate that “You CANNOT (or canNOT) trust the extablishment”. (Placing the period after the closing quote is intentional.)
Care to comment?
BTW, this town is crawling with Harleys this weekend. It’s “Thunder in the Mountains” weekend — an annual ritual headquartered about 8 miles across town to the northeast.
A few years ago, some outfit across the state sued for copyright infringement on the name of the event, but apparently the effort collapsed or something, and it’s been called that ever since.
Clarke
Comment by David Phillips — September 7, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
Clayton,
Your post today was a valuable learning experience in my quest to learn and master the art of copywriting. I didn’t expect you to write an article today so I almost passed over it. I am extremely glad that I didn’t.
As to dragoncon, be glad you don’t have a teenager who is into anime and all things japanese. She is so enamored of it she has taken two years of japanese in high school so she can watch the shows in the original language. As she starts college working on her engineering degree ( she says her middle name is nerd) she is minoring in asian studies. What is a father to do other than love them?
Again thanks for the lesson on labor day as it means my labor will be easier by heeding the lesson.
David
Comment by John Anderson — September 7, 2009 @ 2:51 pm
So true Clayton.
I bumped up sales through the roof for a clients mentoring program website with a ‘What they don’t want you know’ slant.
I took Gary B’s and your advice about in an over saturated market where everything has been said, create an enemy, and appeal to dominant emotion.
I haven’t done such ‘non benefit’ based copy before so I was nervous about trying it. But I was surprised by how well it worked.
But we got new members galore. Loving it…
John
Comment by Emre Yuce — September 7, 2009 @ 5:00 pm
Brilliant!!
Simply Brilliant!!
That strategy must be the Mother of All Selling Strategies!!!
I’m thinking of all those “out-of-the-ballpark” marketing stunts that come to my mind… Every single one of them (intentionally or unintentionally) rests on this foundation…
You just can’t go wrong with this one… Except for manipulating people’s beliefs and being a supervillain (e.g. Adolf Hitler) instead of a being a superhero (e.g. Martin Luther King)
Thanks Clayton!
Best,
Emre
Comment by Steve Gill — September 7, 2009 @ 9:52 pm
I have no idea what “Vajayjay” is as I live on the opposite side of the world, but I’m guessing it’s an American colloquial name for something relating to an incident that involved a lack of undergarments.
Thank you Clayton for a very interesting article. It’s given me some an approach to marketing that I hadn’t considered.
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Comment by Brennan Kingsland — September 8, 2009 @ 5:40 am
Dear Clayton,
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
I’ve been so discouraged at the lack of response to my efforts, I was at my wit’s end.
My market has a MAJOR enemy in the establishment and I now have the guts to take them on - as I offer a common sense solution to education problems.
Maybe best of all, in addition to a new direction, I now have new motivation to shake-up the world.
Thank you so much!
Your friend,
Brennan
Comment by Clayton Makepeace — September 9, 2009 @ 9:12 am
Clarke, you might want to try using the language to emphasize the point you’re making by adding emphasis (caps, bold, underline, ital; whatever) to the word where the emphasis would be if the sentence was spoken.
That way the prospect hears the sentence in his head in the same way he would if you were speaking to him directly.
As Lenin said, “Laws are like piecrusts; made to be broken.”
– CLAYTON
Comment by Bob Heiney — September 9, 2009 @ 1:22 pm
Another great piece of writing. You could tangentially riff off this with a meditation on how you spend your time. What do you do when you’re doing nothing - is it nothing? Is it harmless but useless activity?
Or are you spending your quiet moments thinking creative thoughts to grow your business, write better copy, or just make America better.
How we spend our free time says a lot about who we are and what motivates us.
Comment by Ma'el — September 10, 2009 @ 12:47 am
I reject your reality and choose to substitute my own. Oh really !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rather…..
“I reject your reality and substitute my own.”
“Adam Savage — Mythbusters….”
After reading that lead in I was expecting that you would be
busting some marketing myths!!!!
And especially giving some credit to the man and the show who said it — a billion times - and hoping you would show some honour and respect on your part!?!?!
Well!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wheres my C4
I wanna blow something up !!!!
Comment by John B — September 11, 2009 @ 2:50 pm
Clayton,
What you hit on with this post is the “Holy Grail” of marketing. It’s a topic that someone (maybe me) has just got to write a book about. These fantasies and beliefs we humans all harbor.
As copywriters, we must hit those characteristics in our prospects. I remember the release of “Ultimate Desktop Copy Coach” and how I would find myself fantasizing about learning to write copy that sold products like crazy. And those fantasies were quite strong. It was so much damn fun at the time! But I later borrowed a copy to sooth my strong desire for that product.
I’ll also say that if you read Gene Schwartz ads, he works on hitting inner human desires and fantasies. He tried to explain this in Breakthrough Advertising but its terribly difficult to explain. But its something to explore in copy. Plus he leaves out proof elements–those were the days of less skeptical prospects.
The overall thing for Total Package readers to consider is can you make your copy good enough to cause your prospects to suspend their un-belief and make a purchase. And they know they are suspending unbelief and buy anyway. But later they just have to back it up with logic.
POW! $$$$
John Babin