Posted by: Daniel Levis
February 13, 2008
Issue #353

Copywriting Witchcraft And
The Black Arts Of Persuasion
Part – 2

In this issue:

• How to create a blinding rapport with your prospects that makes them want to believe your promises, and do what you tell them to do …
• How to fan the flames of desire through “nested” narrative …
• How to install an automatic interest-retainer in your prospects’ minds that keeps them hooked on reading your copy …
• And much more!

Dear Web Business Builder,

Last week, we took a magical mystery tour into the fantastic world of forbidden rhetorical devices … studying metaphor and analogy … anchored words … and future pacing. Today, I’m going to indoctrinate you still further, with a few more of my favorite heretical machinations.

Adam Gordon didn’t ask about this one, but it’s perhaps the most important pre-requisite to persuasion.

Mirror and match: It’s human nature to comply with requests from people we like. If you’re a parent, you know how difficult it is to say “No” to your kid. And why do you love your kid? Because he or she reminds you of YOU!

Unconsciously – automatically – we take a shine to people who remind us of ourselves.

I’ll never forget an initial sales call I made many years ago on a prospect who spoke very slowly, almost as though he were groping around in the dark for the right words to speak. Gradually, half deliberately, half sympathetically, I started speaking in this very slow, feeling-out-loud sort of way as well. The effect was almost magical …

For several hours, I just sat there listening, every once in a while feeding his thoughts back to him slowly, reflectively. The rest of my physiology naturally harmonizing with his, and we got along famously. And then finally, when I closed on the next step in the sales cycle, he came right along with me, effortlessly.

Each time I spoke to him on the phone, or called on him at his place of business, I zoned in to his way of processing the world, used the same kinds of words and phrases he used, and for several years he basically just did what I told him to do.

His company spent several million dollars with my company, and I believe it was largely based on the rapport that we shared. This is a striking example, because of this man’s unusual mannerisms, but I believe the same thing happens unconsciously in every successful sales encounter. Even an asynchronous encounter …

When you write in the way your prospect speaks … when you begin by saying things he agrees with … when you reveal things about yourself that demonstrate you are like him … that you have walked in his shoes … he is magnetically pulled in to the rest of your sales message.

Matching and mirroring in sales copy can be situational, reflecting on the prospect’s circumstances, and attitudinal, echoing his existing feelings and beliefs. At best, it is both …

Here’s a particularly instructive example of matching and mirroring taken from the first few paragraphs of a well-known and highly successful ad written by the late Joe Karbo:

You think you’ve got problems? Well, I remember when I got turned down for a $200 loan. Now I lend money to the bank – Certificates of Deposit at $100,000 a crack.

I remember the day a car dealer got a little nervous because I was a couple of months behind in my car payments – and repossessed my car. Now I own a Rolls Royce. I paid $43,000 for it – cash.

I remember the day my wife phoned me, crying, because the landlord had shown up at the house, demanding his rent – and we didn’t have the money to pay him.

You can see how the target prospect (broke dude) sees himself in Joe, can’t you?

The really clever thing about Karbo’s opening is how each paragraph compares and contrasts pain with pleasure. This is very smart because there is a real danger when empathizing with your reader’s pain. Denial!

Too much negativity all at once and your prospect can easily hang up on your copy. It’s just too painful to deal with. Since matching and mirroring often involves harmonizing with negative states, this ad is a great example for you to model. Observe how it dips the prospect in a bucket of acid, pulls him out, dips him in, pulls him out.

How to fan the flames of desire
through “nested” narrative …

Wrap your argument in story – Of all rhetorical devices, storytelling is perhaps the most powerful. Since the dawn of civilization, dramatic stories have been the primary means with which those in power have imprinted and perpetuated belief systems on the mass of humanity.

Myth – Bible stories, fairy tales, and moral fables – consumed just beyond the cradle program our thinking until the grave. They install an unconscious belief system that influences our actions and reactions for the rest of our lives.

Realize our beliefs are NOT things we think about. They are things we think with. And as a persuader whose job it is to mold and extend those beliefs in ways that make purchase decisions inevitable, doesn’t it make sense to use the same subtle techniques that created them in the first place?

By their very structure, well-told stories use the reader’s active imagination to induce a kind of sensory disassociation from the world around him. A little off balance – like a stranger in a strange land – he searches for his bearings in your words. After all, the story is about him. And if it is a good one, he soon projects himself into the action.

Naturally, this induces a kind of childlike over-reliance on the imaginative and emotional right brain. Your reader slips into reverie and begins experiencing the protagonist’s emotions as if they were his own. If they are negative emotions, he becomes dependent on the storyteller for a way out. If positive, again the storyteller holds power over him, because he wants that happiness to continue.

In this suggestible state, your spokesperson’s authority is greatly enhanced. And it becomes very easy for your prospect to accept virtually any reasonable mechanism that promises to relieve the pain or prolong the pleasure.

Perhaps the most talented sales storyteller of them all was John Caples. Most of us are familiar with his perennially swiped headline, They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano – But When I Started To Play! But I suspect few of us grasp how hypnotically powerful the storytelling that comprised the rest of that ad really is.

Watch how skillfully Caples leverages the reader’s active imagination to stimulate his emotions, and fan the flames of desire for the product …

Arthur had just played, The Rosary. The room rang with applause. I decided this would be a dramatic moment for me to make my debut. To the amazement of all my friends I strode confidently over to the piano and sat down.

“Jack is up to his old tricks” somebody chuckled. The crowd laughed. They were all certain I couldn’t play a single note. “Can he really play” a girl whispered to Arthur? “Heavens no!” Arthur exclaimed. “He never played a note in all his life … but just you watch him. This is going to be good.”

I decided to make the most of the situation. With mock dignity I drew out a silk handkerchief and lightly dusted off the keys. Then I rose and gave the revolving piano stool a quarter turn, just as I had seen an imitator of Paderewski do in a Vaudeville sketch.

“What do you think of his execution!” called a voice from the rear.

“We are in favor of it!” came back the answer, and the whole room rocked with laughter.

Then I Started To Play

Instantly a tense silence fell on the guests. The laughter died on their lips as if by magic. I played through the first few bars of Beethoven’s immortal Moonlight Sonata. I heard gasps of amazement. My friends were breathless – spellbound!

I played on and as I played I forgot the people around me. I forgot the hour, the place, the breathless listeners. The little world I lived in seemed to fade – seemed to grow dim – unreal. Only the music was real. Only the music and the visions it brought on – visions as beautiful and enchanting as the wind blown clouds and shimmering moonlight that had inspired this great composer.

It seemed as if the master musician himself were speaking to me – speaking through the medium of music – not in words but chords. Not in sentences, but in exquisite melodies.

A Complete Triumph!

Caples’ brilliant sales storytelling is pure emotion. It over-stimulates the reader’s right brain, squeezing out any room or desire for rationality.

It also uses “nested” narrative (a story within a story), which has a powerfully disassociating effect on the reader. He is no longer sitting there trying to relieve his boredom in the pages of Harper’s Monthly. Caples has given him a double fantasy with which to make his escape!

Judging from the sales this ad generated, let’s just say plenty of people took the bait.

How to install an automatic interest-retainer
in your prospects’ minds that keeps them hooked
on reading your copy …

Create Open Loops – The human mind hates unfinished business. It has a compulsion to see things to their logical conclusion.

Psychologists have proven this in memory tests involving wait staff in restaurants. Almost without fail, the waiters and waitresses could remember what patrons who were still in the restaurant had ordered. But almost always, they substantially forgot what patrons who had already paid their bill had ordered, even when those patrons had left the restaurant just minutes before.

Master novelists and screenwriters use this phenomenon to keep their audiences spellbound. Their stories often begin at the height of tension – with Pauline perilously bound to the railway tracks as a locomotive barrels toward her.

Just as the beautiful heroine is about to be sheared in three, the scene freezes … and you’re transported back in time to the real beginning of the story. The image of Pauline lying there in abject terror forms an open loop in your mind that keeps you hooked until the cliffhanger is resolved much later in the story.

The nested narrative in John Caples’ famous ad has this effect as well. Naturally the reader wants to know what happens after Jack finishes playing the Moonlight Sonata. They’re hooked until that tension resolves. And Caples uses that open loop to veer off in another direction, deepening the reader’s reverie, and introducing still more promise of emotional satisfaction.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little series. The tools I’ve uncovered for you here are incredibly powerful. Please use them with discretion.

If you’d like to comment on these articles, or suggest subject matter for future Web Marketing Advisor issues, please drop me a line in the comments box below. I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
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6 Comments »

1. Comment by Brandon — February 13, 2008 @ 12:05 pm

   Great stuff, Daniel.

   Our audience\’s psychological need for conflict-resolution and how copywriters can use that unspoken need is very powerful. I\’ll try using it more.

   Have a great day.

   Brandon

2. Comment by Stephen Nickse — February 13, 2008 @ 1:33 pm

   You are so right about the loop and the unresolved tension! This article makes me want to read a good book. I forgot how enrapturing a good writer can be. I read a lot of business articles to improve my business skills. They just can\’t offer me the escape from reality that is so much fun and readily found in the nearest library.Thanks

3. Comment by Norbert — February 13, 2008 @ 3:11 pm

   Thanks for these great tools. I was wondering whether these tools would work universally in all cultures i.e. they are addressing general human traits, or are connected to culturally influenced behavior? Would \\\”mirror and match\\\” or \\\”anchored words\\\” from last week work in Japan, China or in Africa and the Middle-East?

4. Comment by Allen — February 13, 2008 @ 5:55 pm

   Great article!
   This is brilliant.

   Are there any sources you can recommend to learn more about
   metaphor and analogy… creating them and typical meanings associated with them?

   How many nested story\\\’s are too many in a piece?

   Regarding the Caples headline
   They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano — But When I Started To Play!

   I wish the people who keep stealing it would also learn to read the rest of his ad and emulate that as well.
   So many think it\\\’s just the headline that causes the sale.

   Regardless, this article and the one prior are brilliant!

5. Comment by Carolyn Warren — February 13, 2008 @ 6:44 pm

   Daniel, I always read your articles and find them fascinating.

   When I sold diet programs for Nutri System, we were taught to mirror and match our clients. If we listened well, our clients told us exactly how to sell them. It worked like magic. My closing rate was 83.4%.
   - - -

   As much as I enjoy your articles, I have to take exception to lumping the Bible stories in with the myths. Jesus was born, was crucified, and after His resurrection, more than 500 people saw Him alive again. I believe this is historic fact, not myth.

   That said, I respect your right to believe as you wish. I just had to make mention of this, because we are talking about mirroring our prospects; and that sentence threw my concentration off track for awhile.

   But great topic, and I too would like to know how many nested stories are enough.

   Also, are readers tired of hearing \”more about that in a moment,\” or does that phrase still work?

6. Comment by Daniel — February 13, 2008 @ 7:03 pm

   Hi guys, thanks for your input.

   I would have to say all of these tools and techniques are entirely universal and work across all cultures.

   The best thing you can do is become aware of them, and begin watching for them in the work of master copywriters and storytellers. See how they are applied, and begin experimenting with them in your own copy.

   Next week\’s article will have some real secrets for putting these methods to work fast.