Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
When does your advertising copy climax?
“I hate to admit it, but I think
he’s right about this…”
My mentor, ‘Tobias’, has strange ways. Well, I certainly think they’re strange. For instance, he writes stuff, gets people to critique it and then proceeds to argue with everything they say, and I do mean everything, good and bad.
You can never win with Tobias. If you agree with him, he’ll lambast you for your taste or your intellect. If you disagree with him, he’ll tear you apart real slow for daring to disagree or, if he’s in a certain kind of mood, for being a dork and wasting your time reading his stuff.
He’s no people-pleaser, is our Tobias. Nope, he’s Mr Contrary. Actually, make that Mr Nuke Contrary. You really don’t want to get on his wrong side. But then, like I said, you’d just as likely be chewed up and spat out like venom if you were on his right side. Heck, I’ve got that wrong as well. He’s got no right side!
So, anyway, I was talking to Mr Nuke Contrary the other day over a greasy Pizza Marinara and the blinding smoke from his Cuban (I wish he’d give it up on account of the indigestion I suffer in its presence), asking him what he thought of my latest copy.
“Listen, Andrew” (why he bloody insists on calling me Andrew, I’ll never know and I’ve never dared to ask in case I uncover a misogynist), “you have to understand something about people”. (I don’t believe I’m hearing this – ‘understand people’? What would he know about that???)
“Peeeeople”, he aspirates in his deep, gravelly voice along with a bellow of smoke, “need to be mooooooved. One way or the other, it doesn’t matter which, they’ve got to be mooooved.
But you already know that, don’t you An…(was he finally going to say my name correctly?)..drew”, he finished, piercing my eyes with his steely blue ones.
I stared back, determined I would not react one way or the other. His crumpled lips stretched into a satisfied smile, as he drew on the Cuban.
“You see, An.…drew, you think you’re not reacting, but you are. Your silence tells me everything I need to know. You’ve been mooooved, albeit it towards frustration and ‘hate his guts-dom’, but you’ve been mooooved. You’re not where you were when we first started talking.
Then, you were tolerant, patient. Now, you’re not. So, I’ll get to my point, not to appease you, but to show you how climax is built, reached and surrendered to”.
I waited, stone-faced and impatient, while he drew once more on that wretched cigar and exhaled.
“Climax, An…” he coughed as if to deliberately interrupt himself, “is what’s wrong with your copy”.
Ohhh…kay, I’m listening. This had better be good.
“It’s not where it should be” he continued in his typical, dismissive style.
“Contrary to what you think, its place is not in the revelation of your whizz-bang, slap-me-so-I-know-I’m-not dreaming product. Its place is in the purchase of the product. That’s where your prospect has to reach climax, surrender to it and then, and only then, be left for dead. Not a word sooner”.
He paused. “You’re looking confused”, he observed somewhat impatiently. “Here, let me spell it out for you.
Your prospect has read your story, rode out that emotional roller coaster you launched him on, felt the pain, the frustration, the desperation, the hope, the enlightenment, the motivation, the inspiration, blah blah blah. He’s desperate for the solution you’re offering him. He’s ready to purchase but he’s afraid, unsure. He might be let down. Again.
But you’ve got your money-back guarantee. That should surely get him across the line, right? So why doesn’t it?”
He glares at me, confident I don’t have the answer.
“Joy”.
I’m sitting there, nothing short of stunned.
“Joy” Tobias repeats loudly, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.
“He’s got to feel joy. He’s got to feel the joy, the delight in making that purchase, in taking that action. He’s got to climax while taking that action, not before. Otherwise, he’ll keep shilly-shallying between ‘Will I?’ or ‘Won’t I?’ and when that happens, you know where he’ll end up, don’t you? He’s outta there before you can change his mind. In fact, by this time, he knows you can’t.
But build up his joy in the purchase, not just with your bonuses, which you know only appeal to his greed, but true joy in the fact that he’s taking action that is going to make a difference and you’ve got him. As a matter of fact, you’ve darned well earned him!”
Tobias draws for breath as he gets up, winks at me from under his unkempt eyebrows, bends slightly and whispers in my ear,
“Now go learn to climax properly”.
With that, Mr Tobias Nuke Contrary, picked his stained, cloth purse from off the table, took a final sip of the double strength macchiato he’d ordered and limped unaffectedly away in the late afternoon glow, a stream of smoke trailing him.
I, on the other hand, sat dolefully wondering how in joy’s name I would learn to climax properly.
For Copywriting climaxes that Sell,