A screenwriter and film professor put together some guidelines about about communication/messaging and I think it applies to copywriting and every other type of writing too.

Some salient bits from her post:

What follows here is an outline for a communications strategy based on a few oft-repeated Hollywood principles.

I. The “Big Idea” of Entertainment/Messaging

There is a fail-proof ancient Greek formula for getting and holding an audience’s attention. Every communication should have what Aristotle called: Logos, pathos, and ethos. That is, there needs to be something for the mind, something for the emotions, and finally, something for the imagination.

a) Something for the mind – some facts to learn; half of holding people’s attention is in feeding their instinctive desire to know; Every message needs to teach something that the audience can take away and integrate into their framework and conversations. A message is meant to be carried on the winds. Hence, the speaker needs to be focused on helping the hearers become teachers. Give them examples, power ideals and metaphors to share.

b) Something for the heart/emotions – a reason to care; Aristotle says that every effective drama either leads the audience to weep or to feel fear of evil. A message needs to be clear in its emotional tone – either sadness, or wonder, or fear or joy or terror. Then, the emotion can be heightened until the audience responds physically – with tears, or frowns or goose-bumps or laughter. The audience that is feeling these things will be attentive and fully engaged.

c) Something for the imagination – something to dream about; A good message ends by causing a beginning in the hearer. A good message is a launch in the hearer. The speaker does their work and then sends the hearer off to do theirs – to brood over the full implications of the message – to apply it to their own world – to begin to foment a plan as a response.

A few other helpful principles of communication are:

1) Production value matters. Things like working microphones, a well-lit and attractive set, good hair and make-up, costuming, etc. all matter. Attention must be given to these so that they complement the message as opposed from distracting from it.

2) Rehearse. No matter how well a speaker or writer knows a topic, every message opportunity should be thoroughly strategized, structured and rehearsed so that it looks effortless. This is a service to the audience, but also will allow the same basic message to be reframed according to the needs and situation of the hearers.

3) There is a definite hierarchy of elements in any piece of entertainment. Aristotle lists the hierarchy as: Plot first, then characters, then theme, then dialogue, then music and lastly, spectacle. When applying this to messaging, we can say that the story is the main thing. What is the story that this message needs to tell? Then, immediately move to characters – who will be affected by this? How? Then, give attention to theme – what is the overall ideological principle underlying this communication? Then, give attention to specific wording. Then, ask yourself, what is the icing on the cake of this message? What is the entertainment value for the hearers?

I especially like this:

II. The Two Key Rules of Hollywood/Messaging

The two biggest rules of Hollywood meetings, and also movies, are:

A) Don’t bore me.

B) Don’t waste my time

It is possible to construct the foundation of a whole communication strategy from these two rules.

I couldn’t agree more.

You can read the whole thing here.

As you may know, I live in Wisconsin and there has been significant political turmoil here the past few weeks.

I’m not going to go into the politics of it in this email, but I want to point out a couple of principles that are also pertinent to marketing and copywriting (from Neighbor Against Neighbor in Wisconsin in Books & Culture):

In 21st-century America, 70,000 people do not hit the streets in sub-freezing temperatures for political strategy. Policy does not motivate like that anymore. What does motivate is emotion: anger, joy, fear, loathing, celebration, and so on.

I’ve been a copywriter for almost four years and find I have to regularly remind myself and my clients that what matters most is how you make your clients and prospects feel.  It might seem shallow, but providing how-to content and information, although important, isn’t fully motivating unless the emotions are also engaged.

From the article again:

…this conflict remains at heart a local story. It is about the culture of public spaces and public works in a quirky state. It is about who we are, and who we are becoming.

Most of us in Wisconsin feel part of this larger narrative and have felt compelled to spend some time at the capitol building or other venues to participate in the expression of this story. We sense this is history in the making and being part of it in some tangible way like that is important.

Your business has a story, too, and the more your clients and prospects can be a tangible part of it, even in small ways, such as through Facebook fan pages and writing a customer review of your product, the more they will trust you and become a repeat customer.

Emotions. Story. No good protest or marketing campaign can do without them.

As an email copywriter, I’ve always been keenly aware of the possibilty that someday the email platform will change radically or be replaced by something else. After reading this post on the Social Media Examiner blog today, it seems likely that Facebook’s new messaging system will do just that.

A new feature in Facebook’s message system is “groups.” You’ll be able to create private groups among your Facebook friends to help facilitate private conversations:

Instead of sending traditional email blasts, you can send creative messages via Facebook that are more likely to resonate with recipients. It’ll serve as a new and unique platform for receiving marketing messages.

Although it’s too soon to tell if Facebook messages will be the new email, it’s not too soon to suggest that you should already be sending creative messages that resonate with recipients. Start doing that today and no matter what new messaging system emerges in the future, you’ll be ready.

Many years ago I decided to stop watching Packers games and only watch any NFC Championship playoff games and Super Bowl games they play in.

Watching regularly was too stressful (all those Favre interceptions) and I just gradually lost interest in watching men play a boy’s game and get paid millions for it.

Besides, living in Wisconsin, I’m usually all too aware of what the Packers are up to, even when I don’t watch.

But a recent New Yorker article listed some cool things about the Packers and why they are the only team worth paying attention to (if you read carefully you’ll see how it applies to your business too):

* The Packers are the only football team owned by their fans (112,000 of them, to be precise).

* They are located in Green Bay, which has a population of only 101,000, and not in the larger, hipper, shinier city of Milwaukee.

* The Packers GM gets to make decisions without a millionaire owner breathing down his neck and has had the freedom to do things like ditch Brett Favre in favor of Aaron Rodgers.

* Volunteers work the concession stands at home games and 60% of the proceeds go to charity.

* Volunteers remove the snow from the field before home games (imagine the response Jerry Jones would get if he asked for volunteers).

* The beer is cheaper than at other stadiums.

* Every home game has been sold out for two decades.

* Unlike other NFL teams, which tax their local communities and then keep the profits for themselves, the Packers actually aid their local community by not draining it of resources.

So what’s the business lesson here for you?

The way Packers view and treat their fans is a good example of how to treat your customers and make them part of your story.

The other NFL team owners are like the marketing “goo-roos” out there (greedy, not loyal, fans/customers are the least of their concern).

By being in the small pond of Green Bay and having deep connections with a small number of people (school kids even get part of the day off the day after the Super Bowl), it’s easier for the Packers to have connections even beyond Green Bay (i.e. focus on a small customer/fan base and the rest will take care of itself).

Now that I know these cool deets about the Packers, and now that I’ve seen how Aaron Rodgers doesn’t throw interceptions like Favre did, maybe, just maybe I’ll let myself watch a few more Packers games now.

A one sentence solution to procrastination from the late Japanese psychotherapist Shoma Morita:

Give up on yourself. Begin taking action now, while being neurotic or imperfect, or a procrastinator, or unhealthy, or lazy, or any other label by which you inaccurately describe yourself. Go ahead and be the best imperfect person you can be and get started on those things you want to accomplish before you die.

This applies to business, too, of course. Look at Google. They are masters of the search engine universe but can’t seem to get a foothold in the social media market (Buzz and Wave were duds). Yet they keep trying.

How are you going to give up on yourself this year?

I taught a blogging mini-course at the University of Wisconsin this month and one of the things I told the students was, “the more you bleed, the more they’ll read.”

An email list or blog becomes one-dimensional so quickly when there are no stories.

Here’s an example of someone who gets it right, in a niche you might not expect:

Cellist Zoe Keating has prospered online selling 35,000 of her self-produced albums through her website and iTunes.

She says telling stories and divulging personal information is a key to her success. ““They want to buy my records five times just to support me because of that.”

“It’s important for me to always be authentic. It’s me on those websites. If I were to use my Twitter account just to publicize things, it wouldn’t be authentic.”

By the way, she has 1.3 million followers on Twitter.  She didn’t build those followers by giving cello tips (unlike the many marketers who think they have to tweet endless marketing tips – ZZZZZ) but simply by being real. The world doesn’t need another tip, but it can always use another story.

So when you write an email or blog post, ask yourself if there’s a detail you could add to make it more real, more personal…more bloody, if you will.

As sportswriter Red Smith once said, “Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out drop by drop.”

“A good ad should be like a good sermon. It must not only comfort the afflicted, it must also afflict the comfortable.”

If you rely on an autoresponder to send thank you emails to customers after a purchase, why not liven it up and make it fun and interesting?

Check out the email CD Baby sends customers:

Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, October 11, 2010.

We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Sigh…

We miss you already. We’ll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return.
–
CD Baby
The little store with the best new independent music.
http://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com (503)595-3000

Perhaps no email as mundane as the standard thank you email to customers, yet nothing is more important than thanking them. So why not show that you enjoy saying thanks?

My new copywriting hero is Bernice Fitz-Gibbon (1894-1982), who was a famous retail copywriter and ad manager from the 1920s – 1960s. Her ads routinely appeared in the New York Times during that time period and she’s on Ad Age’s list of Top 100 people of the century.

Another reason I’m fond of her is because she grew up on a farm just 10 miles from me near Madison, WI and attended my alma mater, UW-Madison.

I recently read her delightful book Macy’s, Gimbels, and me; how to earn $90,000 a year in retail advertising, which she wrote in 1967 (and I suspect many copywriters today, 43 years later, would be happy with a $90K income).

In this book she includes a copy of a test of mythology, grammar and literature she gave to prospective copywriters when she ran their advertising department in the 1940s.

Before you read this test, keep in mind there wasn’t the slightest thing boring or stuffy about her copy (as you’ll see in my upcoming posts about her copy).

Rather, she believed knowledge like this was important because “it’s much easier to write with that what-the-hell abandon when you know and observe all the ground rules.” She also said “nothing else will give you the same surge of self-confidence that knowing the English language will give you.”

Here goes:

Who was sulking in his tent and why?

What was the Buddhists’ law of karma?

What is the Plimsoll mark?

Who was Lucullus?

What was the name of Don Quixote’s horse?

Why did Alfred let the cakes burn?

What was Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption?

Who was Caligula?

Why did Diogenes carry a lamp?

Explain Scylla and Charybdis.

What is a Judas goat?

Locate the Flea Market, Rotten Row, Epsom Downs.

Why did Thales fall into the well?

What is a Pythagorean theorem?

She also gave synonym tests. If the person couldn’t rattle off a sufficient number of synonyms, she didn’t hire them. If they told her that there’s no such thing as a synonym because each word has a different meaning, no two words are alike, she hired them.

In my next post I’ll feature some of her headlines and copywriting tips.

In the meantime, check out the book The 100 Greatest Advertisements 1852-1958 on Google Books. It’s only a preview, but you can see some cool vintage ads there. Enjoy!

The other day I went to the library and picked out three magazines I would normally never read, even if I was trapped in a waiting room for several hours with nothing else to read.

I did this to stretch myself and as practice for those times I have to research topics I’m not enthralled about (I highly recommend this exercise).

One of the magazines was Deer and Deer Hunting.

I know. Snooze city.

But I resolved to read it until I found something interesting.

I ended up reading the first article all the way through because the writer talked about how he used to think all expert Western bow hunters were crack shots at long distances.

He used to dutifully practice the long shots because he assumed it was a necessary skill.

It was only after several years of observing these expert hunters that he finally noticed that what made them great hunters is that they knew how to get close to deer. The average bow-kill distance is just 14 yards. Huh.

Of course I started thinking about how all this applies to email copywriting and business. There are several lessons but I’ll focus on this one:

Keeping your distance from your customers doesn’t work, ultimately.

You can run PPC campaigns, crank out articles, etc., but eventually you have to move in closer. One of the best ways to do that is through email.

Prospect emails, consumption emails sent after the sale, broadcast emails sent on a regular basis, emails for your affiliates to use… you should use all of these.

That’s a lot of email and it’s hard to keep it fresh.

So if you would like to outsource some of your email copy, here’s the deal: if you order a series of at least 5 emails from me, I’ll write one email for free. This applies to past customers too, not just new ones. Just mention this post.