Deep down, a lot of marketing thinking is like this – mechanistic, mathematical, systems-based. I do this, so you’ll do that. Action and reaction.

Even social-media marketing, which supposedly caters to people’s own personalities and preferences, is ultimately transactional and reductive in terms of the value advertisers offer and the behaviours they hope for in return.

Marketing doublethink

However, such models are hard to reconcile with our own experience. In real life, communication doesn’t always work the way we hope. If I assert that I’m modest, or funny, you actually infer the opposite. If I bluntly tell you to do something, you’re more than likely to refuse – even if it would benefit you to obey. (This phenomenon, known as ‘reactance’, will be familiar to parents of young children.)

Although marketers all know this, it’s easy to slip into a kind of doublethink once we get to the office. So we put together ‘push’ messages aimed at people ‘out there’ while maintaining that we ourselves are far too sophisticated to be influenced by the tactics we use. Using words like ‘consumer’ and ‘prospect’ helps to blot out the inconvenient truth that our readers are real people with minds rather than Pavlov dogs.

Meaning includes response

What I put into my marketing may not be the same as what you take out of it. I may have a ‘meaning’ in mind, but you may infer something completely different. In literary criticism, this principle is known as the intentional fallacy. Whatever the author ‘meant to say’ is both unknowable and irrelevant; readers create meaning for themselves.

A complete model of communication includes the response of the audience as well as the intentions of the speaker or writer. If I want to communicate, you have to hear my words and reach the conclusion I want. If you don’t, my communication has not been effective. NLP practitioners express this as ‘the meaning of a communication is the response that you get’.

So, if I want you to think I’m funny, I need to tell a joke. If I want you to believe that I’m modest, I need to refrain from trumpeting my virtues – perhaps for quite a long time. And if I actually want you to do something, I need to demonstrate or illustrate some reasons why you should do it – ideally, appealing to your self-interest in the process.

In other words, I need to show rather than tell.

Join the dots

Very often, we see the discipline of copywriting (perhaps the whole of marketing) as a quest for clarity. We want to say things explicitly and unambiguously, making sure people get the message. This urge to control the reader’s thoughts naturally leads to direct, concrete modes of expression.

However, a lot can be left out of a message before its power is diminished. If start missing out some, you can still out what mean. A lot of dubstep draws its power from the implied double-time rhythm that listeners hear inside their heads.

Often, the best way to connect is not by stating things directly and exhaustively, but by involving the audience in generating the meaning. As Arthur Koestler said, ‘The artist rules his subjects by turning them into accomplices’. This is one area where there’s a very clear parallel between copywriters and poets.

It’s all about leaving gaps between the dots, or stepping stones instead of a bridge. And it leads to work that makes people ‘lean in’, in Luke Sullivan’s words – inviting them to do a little of the work in return for a bigger payoff.

‘Showing’ rather than ‘telling’ means taking the reader part of the way towards your intended conclusion, but allowing them to complete the journey by themselves. For example, they might be required to work something out or recognise something they already know (from culture, their everyday lives etc). Ideally, their contribution will play a part in illustrating a key benefit, or emphasising a call to action, or both.

My own home page is a modest attempt to do this, inviting the visitor to consider why the examples of ‘copywriting’ work better than the examples of ‘writing’, without explicitly talking about benefits, calls to action, customer focus and so on.

Unconscious magic

A better example is the advertising for Silk Cut cigarettes. After 1986, UK advertisers were no longer allowed to show people smoking. Gallaher Group, the makers of Silk Cut, responded with a set of deliberately arch, cryptic ads, created by Charles Saatchi, that ended up alluding to the brand and the product without words, pack shots or even any branding in the conventional sense.

Have a look at the image. The train of thought evoked by this ad goes something like this:

• There’s a picture of something. It’s a piece of purple material with a rip in it.
• It might be silk. Is it for Silk Cut? Yes, it is, because that’s their colour.
• I’m clever for working that out.
• They’re clever and cool for doing that ad.
• Their product is clever and cool, and I’m clever and cool for choosing it.
• I’m going to buy 20 Silk Cut right now [or] I’m going to carry on smoking Silk Cut.

Only some (if any) of the steps are conscious, but that’s part of the magic. (If you want to explore the latent themes of luxury, femininity, weakness and mutilation in the Silk Cut ads, check out this thesis.)

Do it yourself

Like a poem, this creative works on many levels – the most powerful of which is the mental tick from the reader’s inner teacher for working out the puzzle.  In effect, the reader creates their own message ­– and it’s far more powerful for being spontaneous, internal, unique and possibly non-verbal.

Barred from describing or showing the actual ‘benefits’ of its product, Gallaher offered other types of benefit that were still very real and powerful: enjoyment, amusement, intrigue and feeling clever. And the campaign was far more effective for showing instead of telling.

• The concept of ‘message and response’ used in this post is taken from Behind the scenes in advertising by Jeremy Bullmore. The book is out of print but highly recommended.

So my dubstep playlist is gathering digital dust. But the idea of dubstep stayed with me. It’s the music of darkness, uncertainty and plurality – the sound of (sub)urban anxiety played out in inner, subjective space, evoking memories and blurred perceptions. Overwhelmingly internal, it draws the listener away from the real world and into themselves. As Blake puts it, ‘when I first heard a dubstep track, it took me so far into my own head that I couldn’t work out how it was happening.’

And I got to thinking. Why doesn’t copywriting ever do that?

The visual styles used in marketing can be abstract, surreal or magical. But the words that accompany them usually make everything clear. They explain and clarify rather than evoke and question. They’re punchlines, not poems. Why don’t commercial writers deploy ambiguity, obscurity or haziness in their language?

Milton mastery

Consider this text, which is from the early stages of a Paul McKenna audio hypnosis (no copyright infringement intended):

…easing every one of the muscles in your body, bit by bit; and comfortably, aware of your shoulders; comfortably, aware of your hands; and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, one hand is probably slightly heavier than the other; and one hand is slightly lighter; and I don’t know if you know which is the right hand, and which hand is the lighter; which hand is the one, and which one is left.

As you think and relax more deeply; as the pleasant sensations of drifting away, into a quiet calm place, are beginning, and, doubling that sensation is very pleasant; as you relax, just as you are, for a little while longer, you might just find yourself, in a comfortable state of being, calm and happy, deep inside, because you can find your own inner stillness; as you do so, that inner stillness expands and relaxes you into a state of, deep silent joy…

(It’s hard to know quite how to punctuate this. I’ve used commas and semicolons to denote pauses, which have an important impact on the meaning. It seems like the text should not have full stops – rather like Satie omitting a time-signature and bar lines from his Gnossiennes.)

Concave and Convex, by M.C. Escher (1955)

This passage is written using what in NLP is called the Milton Model, or ‘artfully vague’ language. Without getting too technical, it uses techniques such as syntactic ambiguity (‘which hand is the one, and which one is left’) and embedded commands (‘relax more deeply’) to distract the conscious mind and speak directly to the subconscious. However, the thinking behind it is anything but vague – the Milton Model is a sophisticated, subtle tool that requires masterful word skills in order to get results. Just observe what happens in your head when you reach the bit about the lighter hand – it’s like the verbal equivalent of an Escher picture, where you suddenly don’t know which way is up.

Blurred vision

Could it work in writing? Not quite as well as in audio, since reading always involves conscious effort. Also, once the words are written down, the reader is free to backtrack and reread, rather than being carried along by the narrator. But written text can certainly create indeterminate or ambiguous meaning – just ask any poet. And, as I’ve argued, readers of online media are, to an extent, motivated to explore. It’s the nature of the medium.

Hang on, says the marketer. Why would I want to blur my message? Well, for the same reason the poet does – to make it more memorable and arresting. To make it sing instead of talk. To add emotional equity to your brand, instead of trying to instruct or influence the reader. And, like the NLP practitioner, you would presumably also be interested in any method of influencing the reader to act in a particular way.

Hypnoticopy

How might artfully vague language be deployed by the copywriter? I think it could work whenever the reader needs to ‘get inside the head’ of a third party. For example, I can imagine a charity site presenting a stream-of-consciousness narrative from a fictitious victim of the hardship they work to alleviate. Hypnotic copywriting might also be used to draw the reader into their own internal world. This could be used to sell anything with benefits linked directly to the ego or self-image – clothes, beauty treatments, cars.

Would it work? A lot would depend on execution – but that’s the same with any concept. A lot of writing that we think of as ‘working’ is really just orthodox – it isn’t actually getting through to readers on any level at all. If nothing else, vague language would offer a truly unprecedented means of differentiation. And if it didn’t convert? Well, you could always call Paul…

Life’s but a shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.

Here, the core of the metaphor is the equation ‘life=theatre’, with the secondary meaning ‘people=actors’. In these lines, Shakespeare is explicitly saying that our lives are as brief and futile as a play – a meaningless shadow rather than anything real. Implicitly, he’s also saying that we have little control over our destinies, like actors whose lines are written down for them. Once the parallel is drawn, a metaphor opens up a range of ways to think about something in a new way.

Metaphors in NLP

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) takes language seriously, acknowledging that it shapes the way we think. NLP practitioners pay close attention to the words people choose. By really listening to what people say, we can learn about the way they see themselves or the world.

To an NLP practitioner, metaphors are interesting because of their limits. They illuminate some truths while obscuring others; in NLP terminology, there are things they ‘allow’ and things they ‘disallow’.

For example, we might say that a trusted friend is ‘a rock’. Obviously, there are lots of unintended literal meanings: our friend probably isn’t thousands of years old, rough to the touch or permanently rooted to the spot. When we liken them to a rock, we’re saying that they’re solid and reliable.

However, they are human, so their moods and opinions change. Since rocks don’t change, our metaphor obscures this aspect of their personality, locking them into an idea of stolidity that may be limiting (for us, or for them). This highlights the importance of ‘stepping out’ of metaphors when they are no longer useful.

Liquid engineering

Over 35? This might take you back a bit (click to watch the advert)

A good example of a strong metaphor in copywriting is the slogan used for Castrol GTX in the 1980s: ‘liquid engineering’. In just two words, it transformed an everyday, almost commodity product into something essential and sophisticated.

Copywriting metaphors like this derive their power from two sources: imagery and emotion. In general, people find it easy to grasp concrete images, and harder to understand abstract concepts. Moreover, they respond more strongly when their hearts are appealed to, rather than just their minds. ‘Liquid engineering’ equates Castrol’s oil (an inanimate object) with attentive, skilful human engineers, suggesting that it provides a similar level of care, while appealing to the customer’s desire to care for their engine and safeguard their investment.

Leaky umbrella

Castrol’s metaphor was apposite, elegant and memorable – a brilliant piece of copywriting. But it’s very easy to get drawn into using a metaphor for its own sake, or pressing one into service that isn’t quite suited to the job at hand. The following is the text of a magazine advert currently being used by a leading UK insurer:

Would you buy an umbrella, if it didn’t keep you dry?
Neither would we. So why should you pay for an insurance policy that won’t keep you properly covered? Unlike 8 out of 10 standard home insurance policies we include cover for your belongings if they are accidentally damaged or lost – as standard.

The text is accompanied by a picture of an umbrella, highlighting one of the key benefits of metaphors in marketing – they give you a handy hook to hang your imagery on when none is otherwise available. (Services are often hard to depict – it’s even worse in B2B marketing.)

Although ‘insurance=umbrella’ seems promising as a metaphor (if unoriginal), here it actually muddies the meaning rather than clarifying it. Have you ever had, or bought, an umbrella that didn’t keep you dry? How would you know that an umbrella wouldn’t keep you dry, before you bought it?

The umbrella is an everyday item, but the situation described is artificial and not one that readers will immediately recognise from their lives. As a result, the metaphor won’t have the sensual, concrete force that drives emotional impact.

Stop clevering off

Instead of providing a useful stepping-stone between something familiar and a new concept, the headline metaphor in this example is adding a cognitive barrier between reader and benefit – and therefore putting obstacles in the way of a sale. The headline is literally a riddle, and if you ask your reader to solve riddles you run the risk of them simply walking away.

Since the core benefit is easy enough to understand for anyone who’s ever bought home insurance (which is almost everybody), a better headline might be:

With [Insurer], cover for damage and loss come as standard.

Or, for a bit more spice:

What’s extra for others is standard for us: damage and loss cover included with every home insurance policy.

Of course, you wouldn’t be able to include a nice picture of an umbrella, but you would have a headline that would actually generate interest.

It’s well known that headlines with benefits outpull those without. So if you’ve got a benefit that’s easy to communicate, it should always lead your copy. If you want to connect with readers, resist the tendency for what my granny used to call ‘clevering off’.

Making metaphors work

Here are a few pointers for making metaphors work in copywriting.

• Use sparingly. Only use metaphors when they’re needed: to clarify points that would otherwise be difficult to explain or understand, to communicate a benefit or to add emotional or persuasive impact. Don’t use them for their own sake. 
• Choose carefully. The right comparison can illuminate a key point like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds. But the wrong one can quickly lead you into deep water. Be sure your metaphor is appropriate.
• Dig deeper. Sometimes, metaphors have layers of meaning that you might not want. Consider what your metaphor really says about the product, service or company you’re promoting.
• Less is more. Metaphors are like tissues. At the moment you need them, they’re indispensable. But if you try to get too much use out of them, as I’m doing here, you’ll end up in a mess. In other words, most metaphors support just one or two strong points; after that, they should be dropped.
• Don’t mix it up. ‘Let’s run that idea up the flagpole and see if it holds water.’ ‘We weren’t on the same page because they were dancing to a different beat.’ Adding metaphors together doesn’t concentrate meaning; it dilutes it. Give your metaphors room to breathe, so your reader can absorb each one fully before you hit them with the next. If they’re too close, or if they overlap, the result is ludicrous. 

A call to action is a short piece of text (usually one or two sentences) in an advertisement or marketing communication that encourages the reader to take a particular course of action – buy, donate, make contact and so on.

Calls to action guide the audience towards a real-world action, so they don’t turn the page, click through to another site or just carry on browsing your material aimlessly. They set a boundary on readers’ ‘information gathering’ experience, encouraging them to move into the ‘doing’ phase.

The call to action is one of the most important ‘take-aways’ for the audience. If there’s one thing the copywriter wants the audience to read and internalise (after the headline), it’s the call to action.

Where are calls to action used?

Calls to action should be included in almost every piece of marketing, whether focused at businesses or consumers. Examples of where they might appear are:

• In brochures: on the back page, or interspersed within the text
• On websites: on every ‘selling’ page, and perhaps also on a ‘contact us’ page (possibly not on ‘more information’ pages)
• In direct mail sales letters or marketing emails: towards the end, before the sign-off, and perhaps repeated in a P.S.

Often, a call to action will be highlighted by being boxed out, emboldened or otherwise ‘biggened up’.

Calls to action are not used in pure ‘brand-building’ marketing, where the only aim is to make the audience remember the brand.

Define your desired customer response

Before you can create a call to action, you must know your desired customer response (DCR). What do you want the reader to do once they’ve read your message? Whatever your DCR is, it should be all of the following:

• Clear. A ten-year-old should be able to understand what you’re asking them to do.
• Simple. A DCR should consist of a single step. You may want people to go to a website and buy, but the first step is just to get them there – it’s the website’s job to convert traffic to sales.
• Specific. A DCR should make it clear exactly what the audience should do, in concrete terms: fill out a form, visit a shop, make a phone call, go to a website and so on.

Create a basic call to action

At its simplest, a call to action is a single sentence that tells the reader to do something, using the imperative tense:

Call us now to claim your FREE sample copy of Lawnmower World.

Note the key characteristics of the basic call to action:

• It communicates the DCR, preserving its three key attributes (clear, simple and specific).
• It links the DCR with a benefit for the reader (in this case, a free magazine). This is essential. A call to action offers a quid pro quo. ‘If you do this,’ we’re saying to the reader, ‘you’ll get that.’ The benefit need not be concrete, but there must be something in it for the customer, even if it’s only useful information on a product.
• It commands the reader directly, with no equivocation. The impact can be softened with ‘please’, but this is rarely necessary. People generally avoid the imperative in conversation, but commands aren’t always confrontational and may often be welcomed or reassuring. (For example: ‘Sit down, have a coffee and let me take care of it.’)
• It tells the reader when to act (‘now’) instead of leaving the timeframe open-ended.

The simple ‘sanity check’ for calls to action is to read them through and ask yourself whether you’d be happy if the reader did exactly what you’re asking, no more and no less.

It’s OK to vary the content of your call to action (for example, to add variety if it appears on more than one page in your site), but the message (i.e. the underlying DCR) should always be the same.

Add the power of persuasion

Sometimes, it’s not enough just to tell people what to do. They need to know why they should do it. To address this need, you can use principles of persuasion to add more power to your call to action.

There are a number of proven ways to persuade readers to act, which I’ve covered elsewhere, so here are some examples with links through to posts that will explain the persuasive principle that drives them. 

Thousands of businesses have already unlocked huge productivity gains by switching to BookKeeper. Call us to discover how you could join them. (Social proof: do as others are doing.)

Are you tired of scrubbing off limescale? Pick up a FREE trial pack of ScaleAway at your local store and say goodbye to it for ever. (Consistency: taking the desired action is consistent with the response to the question being asked.)

We all know how hard it is to find presents that friends and family will really love. So make Christmas easier this year at greatgifts.com. (Liking: alluding to a rapport or shared interest with the reader.)

Doctors recommend eating at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Call today to order your regular organic box from Willow Farm and make sure you have delicious fresh produce ready to eat, every day. (Authority: the opinion of a reputable source supports the DCR.)

Embedded commands

In NLP, embedded commands are sentences embedded within longer sentences that act as cues on the unconscious level. In theory, they direct the reader towards the DCR by subliminally planting an idea in their mind.

The great thing about embedded commands is that they can be scattered throughout the text without interrupting the flow or irritating the reader (if you have a good enough copywriter, that is).

Here are a few examples, with the embedded command in bold:

When you choose our service, you’re tapping into decades of expertise.

How good would it feel to book a short break right now?

You can call our order hotline 7 days a week.

Think about the benefits that will be realised for your business when you work with a professional accountant.

Most customers who buy in bulk from us make big savings.

You don’t even need to visit your nearest branch – we’re also available online and by phone.

It won’t always be possible to include the DCR explicitly in an embedded command. Instead, the embedded commands can ‘soften up’ the reader by gently introducing the general theme of the DCR, before you hit them with the direct call to action at the end.

It’s not that they’re asking me to tell outright lies. It’s more a desire to be over-optimistic or economical with the truth in areas such as the scope or depth of their services, the size of the business or the nature of their approach. The urge to ‘big up’ the offering is powerful.

Many small marketing firms fall prey to this temptation, anxious to position themselves as ‘full-service’ agencies instead of playing to their unique (albeit narrow) strengths. I have also worked with many sole traders who wanted to position themselves as companies (in fact, I do it myself).

Paradoxical Pinocchio

Since words can carry so many shades of meaning, it’s easy enough for the copywriter to bend or stretch the truth without overstepping the mark. Trusty stalwarts like ‘leading’, ‘extensive’, ‘premium’, ‘consultative’ and so on can make any firm sound fantastic without really making any concrete claim at all. But should we always do this, just because we can?

NLP teaches us that in order to communicate effectively on a personal level, we have to be congruent: our words, looks and gestures should all tell the same story. A job candidate who claims to be confident but can’t make eye contact is not congruent; nor is a consultant who can’t stop talking about himself.

It’s easy to see how this principle can be extended to businesses as well as individuals. In terms of marketing, your design, branding and copywriting all need to be ‘on brand’ – expressing a consistent message. But promises are easy to make and words are cheap; problems arise when the message doesn’t match reality.

Customers aren’t stupid, and they know when they’re being lied to. Will the marketing claim be justified by their experience? And if it isn’t, what will be the long-term effects on the relationship, or the firm’s reputation?

In the case of the small marketing firms and sole traders mentioned above, the illusion is often shattered in the very first phone call. So was it even worth creating it in the first place? Does putting up a front bring us closer to our customers, or just build a wall between us?

I once saw a memorable talk by brand guru BJ Cunningham, creator of Death cigarettes (‘the honest smoke’). He spoke of his consulting work for an insurance firm called Pinnacle (now part of BNP Paribas). In common with many service companies these days, they wanted their branding to carry a softer, friendlier message. Yet internally, their employees called the company ‘cynical Pinnacle’ – a reference to its reluctance to pay out on claims. As BJ pointed out, this was a strength, not a weakness – who wants to buy insurance from a soft ‘n’ cuddly firm that pays out on weak claims and charges big premiums as a result?

BJ’s marketing advice to Pinnacle – based on commercial sense as much as ethics ­– was to emphasise their actual strengths, not cover them up with fake ones. The honest truth expressed a benefit that customers really wanted to hear. And it would be congruent with the way staff actually dealt with customers, without any need for patronising education about ‘brand values’.

Admittedly, there’s a case for being ‘aspirational’ in your marketing. Articulate a future and believe in it and you can make it real. But it’s important to guard against marketing completely to your own people – or to yourself. Address yourself to your customers, and talk to their priorities with honesty and integrity. There simply is no stronger basis for marketing.

On one side, the (largely conservative) nay-sayers argue that ‘paki’ is simply short for ‘Pakistani’, and hence a purely descriptive term, like ‘Brit’. How could anyone be offended by an affectionate term for their own nationality or origin? It’s political correctness gone mad!

Liberals point out that the term ‘paki’ is much more than that – a divisive, culturally loaded term with profoundly offensive connotations and clear overtones of contempt. Applied indiscriminately by whites to people of colour from the playground to the workplace, it has caused decades of hurt and offence, often accompanied by violence and intimidation. 

Much debate has focused on whether Du Beke is ‘really racist’, or whether he ‘really meant’ what he said. We can never know another’s state of mind except through language (spoken or otherwise), and speculation is fruitless. Most likely, this was a thoughtless comment, rather than malice.

But intention is a complete red herring. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so meaning is the ear of the listener. The meaning of a word, or a text, is defined by its context: the culture, values and linguistic conventions around it. As NLP teaches us, ‘the meaning of a communication is the response that you get’. The same word can have very different meanings depending on how, when, where and by whom it is used.

So the real point is whether people were offended. I don’t know any Pakistanis, so I can’t ask them. But the much-decried white liberal hand-wringing over this issue is real too, if arguably less important. If you call my mother a ‘fat cow’, I will be offended on her behalf. Who can say what types of offence are legitimate, and which are not?

Conservatives would no doubt argue that their views are legitimate too, and they’re not offended by ‘paki’, so what’s the problem? In the end, it comes down to motives and values. Why would you want to use language with the clear potential to offend and inflame hatred? ‘On principle’, perhaps, but the real reason can only be to voice racist sentiments in a disingenuous way.

But in the end, throwing around abstract terms like ‘racist’ is less important than people’s feelings in the here-and-now. We all have to get along. What critics scornfully term ‘political correctness’ is simply what used to be called ‘being polite’.

Of course, this is largely what distinguishes copywriting from other writing – it must fulfil a practical function, not just provide entertainment for the reader or an outlet for the writer. But copywriting is still writing, and what makes it good can’t always be reduced to a formula. So I’d like to talk about some of the things you might look for in a copywriter that can’t necessarily be quantified or analysed, but still might make a big difference to your bottom line.

• Stories. Stories enchant us with a power rooted in childhood, or perhaps even the collective unconscious. They’re utterly compelling to listen to (or read), and they help us understand complex events and relationships with simple words and concepts. Good storytellers will always be able to command attention and make sure a message sticks. In marketing, stories can lead listeners from their situation to the course of action you want them to take (for example, by describing the typical experience of a satisfied customer of yours).


Guinness’ white horses: poetic, ineffable, brilliant

• Mystery. A good copywriter should be able to give reasons for every decision they make. Yet there are some choices that just can’t be justified rationally, even though they’re right. Slogans like ‘Who knows the secret of the Black Magic box?’ or scripts like that of the Guinness surfer ad resist being interpreted or decoded; they just are. This may be because they resonate with both the conscious and the unconscious simultaneously.
• Poetry. How do you choose between ‘light’, ‘glow’ and ‘radiance’? If you’re like me, you know which one is right in a given situation, but perhaps can’t explain why. Copywriters sometimes have to fall back on a sense of le mot juste to get them through – but they’re always aware that there’s a choice to be made, and that there’s always a right answer.
• Music. A good piece of writing needs to have a consistent pace and a recognisable structure, yet within that it needs to be dynamic, flowing and vivid. A good copywriter knows how to vary the length of paragraphs, sentences, phrases and words to preserve forward movement while retaining the element of surprise – just like a gifted melodist.
• Sensuality. Which tastes better – (a) cheese on toast, or (b) rich, creamy Double Gloucester melted over warm, crusty granary bread? The copywriter knows how to use the language of the senses to fire the reader’s imagination. This helps to make the course of action you want them to take (e.g. buying a product) more compelling and appealing than their current reality. Experienced copywriters know how to bring this type of appeal even when selling intangibles like B2B services.
• Tone. This does get some attention, but not nearly enough. Looking at marketing projects in isolation, it’s easy to forget that your audience usually gets a sense of your brand gradually, not at a stroke. Their experience stretches across multiple ‘touchpoints’(your website, your adverts, social media) and may involve several interactions before they buy. A copywriter can make sure the experience is consistent, congruent and confidence-building, no matter how disparate it is.

I studied literature and worked in publishing, so some of this is perhaps personal bias. But I think copywriters shouldn’t be afraid to come out and say that what they propose is right aesthetically as well as rationally. Good clients would respect it, and the world of marketing would be more interesting for it too.

Obama and Bush both know how to exploit our instinct to balance things out

This instinct is a double-edged sword for marketers. On the downside, it can lead to losing business if your customer decides they want a change. During my stints at a contract publisher and a design agency, we often found that long-standing, apparently satisfied clients would suddenly switch to another supplier ‘for no reason’. Of course, there was a reason: they fancied something new and different, and there was nothing we could do about it.

For B2B service providers, this is a very real hazard. First you identify what works (or what the client likes). Then you repeat it, refining your approach and maybe delivering economies of scale. But then, after a while, you come to be seen as staid, uncreative or inflexible. You’re their best friend, but they’re looking for a bit of romance. So you’re left weeping softly while they ride off into the sunset with a dashing new supplier.

But the same thing works for you if you’re drumming up business. The marketing copywriter can provoke, cultivate and exploit the customer’s restlessness simply by positioning a product or service as an alternative to something: the customer’s current choice, the default option or the market leader.

In NLP this is called ‘contrast reframing’: asking the question ‘what if things were different?’ or ‘how could they be different?’Your product (you say) is great; theirs (you imply) is dull, outmoded or inferior. Simply by offering an alternative to what has become familiar, you can generate interest in the reader’s mind.

For example:

Ordinary kitchen roll is great for little spills. But Soakitup is completely different. It effortlessly mops away just about anything, from juice and wine through to sticky stuff like oils, sauces and even ink – without leaving a stain!

The alternative you offer needn’t even be better, just different. Many people will still respond sympathetically, as George W. Bush knew when he suggested that US students should ‘hear both sides’of the science v intelligent design debate. The urge for balance can be stronger than reason.