Tag: Words matter

Robert California jumps the shark on “The Office”

I was irrationally exuberant about the Robert California character on the revamped The Office, replacing Steve Carell as the office manager (OK, technically he’s now the CEO of the company, Linda Hunt apparently having bailed on that role). Played by the great James Spader, California first showed up as an interviewee for the job last spring. He seemed like a cube-dweller’s existential nightmare, somebody who had no idea who he was or why he was there but was designed to unsettle the person he was talking to in a very laid back, California way.

The first couple of shows this season were some of my all time favorites on The Office… including a Halloween episode in which he prowled the office gathering each employee’s worst fears, then told a horror story that incorporated all those fears. But that was also the show where he brought his kid to work, and now he’s taken to attending employee off-duty parties and making self aware statements like “you don’t know me at all, do you?” Robert California has jumped the shark.

There’s a lesson in this for marketers. The producers didn’t just decide out of the blue to emasculate the character. They must have done lots of audience testing that told them viewers were confused by “the boss” (and everybody knows that stereotype) behaving in such an unpredictable way. It made them nervous so it had to be changed. Similarly, sometimes our best copy and creative ideas are just too weird for our prospects and we have to bite our tongues and pull back to the tried and true.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Maybe James Spader can be persuaded to do a one man show based on the “real” Robert California.

Why you shouldn’t apologize to your reader

Here are two very different direct mail efforts that make the same mistake: apologizing to the reader. They don’t come right out and say “I’m sorry”, but the self-effacing entry points have the same effect. And by choosing this approach for their entry they’ve given up the opportunity to have another, much stronger intro.

Waste Management self-mailer

Waste Management says “We know this is the last thing on your mind… but it’s the first thing on ours.” With the reveal of the opening trash can lid. Well, no. If it’s the last thing on my mind then why are you talking about it? If I don’t care about it then I am not going to read your promo about it.

The Fresh Air Fund sent me an address sticker package to solicit money to send inner city kids to camp. There’s actually some good copy here but not the first sentence of the letter: “With winter fast approaching, it may seem like an odd time to talk about giving inner-city kids a bus ticket to Fresh Air camp.” Well, yes it does. Maybe you should come back and talk to me in the spring.

Fresh Air Fund sticker sheet
Fresh Air Fund sticker sheet

Or maybe you should lead with the stronger second sentence: “With your help, inner-city children will have the opportunity to leave behind the crowded apartments and dangerous streets they call home and join us next summer.” Or, maybe turn the timing of the appeal into a motivator: “We have to work all year long to make sure that inner city kids have the chance to spend a few summer weeks at camp. That’s why we’re writing you today.”

What’s happening in both these efforts is that the copywriter is implicitly apologizing for the intrusion. But the reader doesn’t care because advertising mail is a lower life form than a cockroach. All the reader wants to do is throw it away. And all you can do to save yourself is to deliver a powerful offer or a truly intriguing proposition that will interrupt that trajectory toward the recycling bin. The Uriah Heep act just doesn’t cut it.

Mahatma Gandhi on customer service

I saw this on a poster at my local purveyor of Indian goods and had to check out its veracity:

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

The quote is attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. Ludicrous. Or is it? A search turns up both corroboration and skepticism. My money is with the denier who reports the quote actually came from Zig Ziglar, who says Gandhi said it.

Gotta love the internets.

UPDATE: the reference to Zig Zigler is oddly gone from the skeptic link above, replaced by one attributing the quote to L.L. Bean. Also, several people have mentioned that the quote universally ascribed to a speech Gandhi made in South Africa in 1890, but he didn’t actually arrive in South Africa in 1893.

Using “magnet words” to make your copy work harder

One  way to make a message scannable is through the careful placement of “magnet words”. These are words so laden with implied interest and benefit that they draw the reader’s eye. Here are some examples:

  • You. (Or, better yet, the reader’s name used sparingly)
  • New
  • Free
  • Save
  • Guarantee/guaranteed
  • Easy/simple/foolproof
  • Proven
  • Safe (especially for health/personal care products)
  • Best/better
  • Solution (this one is overused in b2b selling so I’m not including it in my numbering)

A few years ago “announcing” and “introducing” would have made the list, but today they seem a bit hucksterish.  Same with “improved” which in our litigious times, invites a lawsuit from the disgruntled owners of the previous non-improved version.

That’s a starter list; every copywriter has their own and probably calls them “magic words”. (Do a web search and see what you find.) Because you are a persuasive communicator you are using many of these words already. My point is that through the placement of these words you can add attention to surrounding copy that might not be interesting on its own.

Which is more likely to catch the reader’s eye: “Acme Instruments makes measurement devices for cell network technicians” or “Acme Instruments offers a proven solution for cell network technicians”? Of course it’s a solution because otherwise nobody would want it; and it better be proven or it’s worthless. But the magnet words make the copy more appealing. Add on the fact that it’s “guaranteed” and offer a “free” info kit and you’re in business.

The corollary lesson is that sometimes you DON’T want the reader to read your copy and in this case you should scrupulously avoid magnet words. A utility company served up a great example in a privacy notice about sharing their mailing list: “If this policy is acceptable, no action needs to be taken.” That’s a bit convoluted; would have been much clearer to say “If you agree with this policy, you do not need to take any action.” But wow, two magnet words are going to make sure the sentence is read and that’s exactly what this writer did not want to happen.

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

How to keep readers on the hook

Nobody’s going to read your sales letter. Well, maybe that’s a bit harsh. Nobody’s going to read your sales letter exactly the way you crafted it. They’ll bounce around, clinging on words that attract them like pretty bangles and ignoring your strongest selling points, they’ll go straight to the P.S. and double back in the letter…. And if you’re luck at the end of all this they will pay some attention to your call to action.

Don’t feel bad. You are getting paid to sell, not to write creative prose. And you will be amply rewarded if you apply a few tricks from the copywriter’s quiver of reader retention arrows.

Set the hook right after the opening of the letter. I shared the opening of the Geneva letter inviting business owners to a two-day seminar. The first paragraph flattered them as the owner of a valuable business. The second paragraph suggested they may well receive an offer in a red-hot market.

Now comes the third paragraph, which frets: But what if the offer is too low, even though it may seem astronomically high to you? What must you know to negotiate the sales process? And what is the downside, should you decide not to sell in today’s sizzling market?

So now we’ve introduced a problem which might not have been relevant had we not flattered the egoistic business owner at the beginning of the letter. And we can proceed to introduce the Geneva Business Valuation Seminar as the solution with a call to action.

This is a four-page letter, which is why we can afford to wait so long for the CTA. In a shorter letter it might come in the third or second paragraph.  At this point, the DNA of our message is on the page and they have enough information to act immediately, if they wish, or to continue reading.

Guide the reader through the letter with connective words and phrases. “And” lets them know you’re about to add a selling point. Same with “Plus”. “What’s more” supersizes this, telling the reader you’ve headed to a whole new level of benefits. “That’s why” tells the reader you are about to deliver a sum-up selling argument. “But” is a qualifier—you may agree with what I just said, here’s a consideration you need to keep in mind. And yes, I realize the Queen does not begin her English sentences with prepositions. You need to make a choice between getting an A in English, or selling as hard as you possibly can.

Keep your paragraphs and sentences short to make the letter an easy read. When I started as a new copywriter, I was told to keep paragraphs under six lines. Today this seems impossibly long to me. Five lines maximum, please. Sentences should fit on one line if possible, or should be broken with a comma (often used when grammar rules say it is superfulous), em dash or ellipse to give the reader easily digestible chunks of information. And pepper that olio with the occasional one-line paragraph and one-word sentence.

Help out your art director by making layout suggestions in your draft. Indented paragraphs, centered subheads, important words and phrases should be bold-faced or underlined in the body copy. Tell your designer that you’re not doing art direction; rather, you’re making suggestions as to where emphasis should be placed. Then, cross-check the first round of comps to see that you haven’t been completely ignored; Quark and InDesign ignore underlining when a Word doc is imported and your designer may not bother to go back and add it back. (Or at least I’m told this is what happens; the designer may be trying to sabotage my copy by taking out the formatting, but that seems less likely.)

What you are doing with all these efforts is to make the letter scannable. A reader who does not have the patience (or the ability) to read beginning to end can hop from emphasis point to emphasis point like a pebble skipping across a pond, and still understand what you have to sell and what you want them to do about it.

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

Should you offer a money-back guarantee?

A money-back guarantee is essential to any web or direct marketing offer. It takes care of an enormous concern on the part of the buyer: I can’t see this product before I order… so, what if I get it and I don’t like it?

That’s the simple and unequivocal answer to a question you may be asked by your clients: “Do I need a guarantee?” Yes, of course you do. The next question is how generous is your guarantee, and how scrupulous will you be in honoring it?

One of my early bosses was a master of deception… I don’t think he would mind me referring to him as such because it was a point of pride to him that he could persuade people to buy products at much more than their true value. He tried to show me how to insert wiggle room in the guarantee so it would never need to be honored. But even as a naïve young marketer I knew this was not a good idea.

The people who intend to take advantage of you will find a way to do so. They’ll claim the product was damaged or simply never arrived. They’ll protest their credit card bill.  Defending yourself against them is futile and by trying to do so with a miserly or weasel-worded guarantee you’ll cause yourself far more damage among the majority of honest customers who will now be less confident about ordering from you.

At one point in my career, I wrote a lot of promos for investment newsletters. The standard guarantee was “a prompt prorata refund of your subscription cost for all unmailed issues”. What hokum.  The cost of the physical issues was negligible and the real product was intellectual property; if the reader no longer values that product why force them to pay for it?

We were able to change the standard wording to something like, “100% refund of your entire subscription price even if you cancel on the very last issue” and guess what? Refunds did not go through the roof because most subscribers do not make a mental note that okay, I can game the publisher a year from now and get my money back. Rather they make a decision about whether or not the product is for them based on their first experiences with it. A generous guarantee simply removes the roadblocks in this decision process.

My favorite guarantee is still Lands Ends’ “Guaranteed. Period.” It’s gutsy that the uncompromising language has been maintained since Lands End was acquired by Sears, but when you think about it this guarantee simply puts in writing what most retailers would offer their customers. If you don’t like it and you take the trouble to bring it back to the store, we are going to give your money back regardless of whether we think it’s justified because we don’t want an angry customer roaming the corridors.

So, copywriters, always include a guarantee—and tell the art director to put it on a fancy safety-paper background to make it look valuable. Maybe your client will protest that “we don’t actually have a return policy” to which your answer is “you should, and you do now.”

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

Copywriting 101: Saratoga Chips

A local company is marketing a boutique potato chip in Saratoga Springs, NY, where that salty snack was invented in 1853. The chips are made with high quality potatoes and taste delicious. They are charmingly packaged in a replica of the “takeaway” box from the 1870s. The company is well regarded and family owned. And as a bonus, they are one of the largest clients of Saratoga Bridges, a not-for-profit that finds meaningful work for mentally disabled adults.

Okay, copywriters. Think you can create some kind of a marketing campaign from that?

Oh, there’s one thing I haven’t mentioned. For whatever reason, Saratoga Chips has chosen to sell at a per-ounce price about the same as Lays. I’m not in love with that decision because price competition is the mark of a commoditized product and this is anything but. In fact, there’s a huge potential audience of tourists who come for the track, the spa and the waters who would love to take something back to friends and family in Jersey or Florida.

Saratoga Chips Advertising
Saratoga Chips Advertising

Unfortunately, the marketing department of Saratoga Chips is not you nor I. Avoiding history, warmth and local color, their copywriter came up with the Walmart-style headline: “Buy local… why pay more for the national brands?” Doing the copywriter one better, the art director mistrusted the visual appeal of the product and the antique box and subjugated them to a fake newspaper page (“Crum Cruncher” refers to George Crum, the inventor of the chip, but of course the reader doesn’t know this) superimposed on a fake wood background as if, I guess, the fake newspaper has been plopped down on a fake table.

Purely on the basis of missed opportunity, Saratoga Chips is hereby fast-tracked into the Badvertising Hall of Shame.

Goodbye, Groupon?

You, a freelance creative, buy a plane ticket to go and see a client. You rebill the ticket at cost and your client pays you back. So, if you need to state a number when you’re applying for a credit line or some such, should you include the value of that ticket in your revenues?

Of course not. That pass through expense has nothing to do with your business; it’s just money that appears on your balance sheet on its way from one place to another. Or to quote the wonderful though wonky Grumpy Old Accountants website, “SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin 101 on Revenue Recognition, Question 10 specifically, is congruent with EITF 99-19.  The SEC stated that firms should report revenues on a net basis if they did not take title to the products, did not have the risk and rewards of ownership, and acted as an agent or broker.”

Groupon did not get the memo. They have been booking the full value of their coupon sales as revenue, not accounting for the fact that a large percentage of what they are collecting is going to go into the pockets of retailers and they are just a conduit. As a result, yesterday Groupon had to restate its revenues and reduce them by 50%, while incidentally announcing their recently hired CEO is on her way back to Google.

So much for that IPO. And perhaps much of that money that Groupon collected on the premise that its copywriters are worth $6 billion will have to be returned, since it was based on the misstated revenues. As I mentioned in that earlier post, retailers like the results that they get with Groupon but resent the charges which are higher than with other social couponing sites. It would be a lot of fun to be a LivingSocial or BlackBoardEats rep calling on your prospects next week, would it not?

I hope Groupon does not go down in flames because I think the quality of its creative expression (along with excellent, rock-solid marketing) has been the decider. You may have noticed that the Groupon “Voice” now extends no further than the opening sentence or two of most offers; after that it is straightforward, though good, marketing copy. But this is offset by the wonderful temporary insanity of the “Groupon Says” feature at the bottom of the offer page.

Google copywriters: if you guys get laid off, give otisregrets a call and let’s talk about some mutual opportunities.

P.S. I love you

There is plenty of research to suggest that, after the opening, the P.S. is the most-read element of a direct mail letter. Similarly, MarketingSherpa did an analysis of links within emails and that found that the number of clicks goes down with each successive link after the first one in the message—until the link at the very end, which is the second most-clicked link of them all.

We marketers have only ourselves to thank for this phenomenon: we’ve trained our readers to know that the end of the letter will have a recap of the offer and a direct call to action. If they don’t feel like reading, they can cut to the chase by going to the P.S. That’s why you should use the P.S. appropriately to give people what they are looking for.

The classic use of the P.S. is to recap the entire marketing proposition in a paragraph. St. Jude Hospital did that by adding this P.S. which, according to Herschell Gordon Lewis, produced a 19% increase in response with absolutely no other changes in the letter:

P.S. I hope that your own family never suffers the tragedy of losing a child to an incurable disease. At St. Jude, we’re fighting to conquer these killers, and one day someone in your own family may live because we succeeded.

You can also use the P.S. to:

  • Tease the reader back into the letter, with a phrase that harkens back to something you said previously that of course they didn’t read: “Remember that limited time offer I told you about earlier? Well, here’s one more reason you shouldn’t let this opportunity get away…” Works well if you have a very rich, multi-part offer that you want to reveal in stages.
  • Bring in one fresh benefit which is so powerful that it deserves its own showcase. Richard Potter did this in a way I love for a letter for AAA. It says something like: “I almost forgot! Respond now and you’ll get a FREE United States Map Book in addition to the member savings I mentioned earlier.”
  • Fire your twin guns of “act now before it’s too late” and “with our no-risk guarantee there’s no reason not to say yes”.  Putting these strong closing statements in the P.S. serves a double purpose: they seal the deal with somebody who has stayed with you throughout the letter, and they make a compelling argument to someone who has just started reading.

Are there letters that shouldn’t have a P.S.? Perhaps. “Real” business letters don’t have them, of course, and if verisimilitude is important then maybe you want to close with the signature. Also, a very short letter has less reason for a P.S. But the P.S. is powerful. Don’t give it up without serious consideration.

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

“But all I need is a brochure.”

There’s been a nice thread on LinkedIn recently called “The (surprisingly) best time to quote your price.” Apart from that copywriter-ish tease, the discussion has been about whether you should immediately provide an estimate when you speak with a client, or wait till you’ve discussed the project and put forth a few ideas to demonstrate your expertise.

Copywriter Michael Gorga mentioned a red flag to watch for: the prospective client who says “but I just need a brochure [or site map, response form, landing page, fill in the blanks].” As if all your research and prep can be dispensed with because the client just needs this one specific element.

When people ask me to quote price, I always tell them I am going to do 10-15 hours of prep before I can even begin to give them a deliverable. And that’s the truth. Someone who would generate copy without a fundamental understanding of the product, the market and the competitive environment is not a copywriter, but a typist.

Michael Gorga had another red flag: the client who has never worked with a copywriter before, and would write it themselves except they’re ” too busy”. If they don’t understand the value you provide, they’re unlikely to pay your rate.

The complete thread is available here. It’s within the “Claude C. Hopkins Copywriter” group, so you may need to join the group to see it.