advertising / thinkit creative

Heck yes, you need to write better headlines: here’s how and why

By Patrick Gant

Pay more attention to headlines in what you do.

Sure, you might be tempted to say “but I don’t write headlines in my work.”

Oh yes you do.

Ever find yourself needing to send an email but struggle to get readers to respond or to take some kind of action? Do you do analytical work that involves creating in-depth reports? Maybe you’re trying to find a stronger hook for your fundraising letter. Or maybe you’re looking at ways to get better at giving presentations that connect with people.

These are just a few examples where headlines can be valuable. We just don’t often think of them that way.

With email, we call it “coming up with a good subject line.” With reports and presentations, we ask ourselves “how can I cover all these complicated ideas in a way that doesn’t lose the reader?” See my point? Part of a headline’s power is its ability to compress an idea.

Sure, a great headline can attract attention (a practice that was alive and well 2,000 years ago in Rome when the first gazette, Acta Diurna, couched hard news with salacious stories).

But what they really do is give your reader a good reason to keep reading.

David Ogilvy—the true original MadMan of advertising—once said that “on the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

He wasn’t kidding about that last part. Even in my own work, I spend an inordinate amount of time crafting and refining headlines and subheadings, because it’s “the ticket on the meat” (another Ogilvyism).

Why does it matter so much? Because as I like to regularly remind: people are busy.

We live in a world now where the thing that is most scarce is audience attention.

You have to earn it and keep earning it. With that in mind, here’s what I know about how you can write better headlines that will help you keep earning those readers and find more homes for those ideas you want to share.

Make friends with action verbs
Cut out the fluffy features behind your idea until you’re left with a raw verb that describes what it can do for the reader (e.g., “Do…Grow…Make…Get…Take…Expand…”). It might not seem stylish to use them, but action verbs never get dull and they deliver the goods on answering that one question every reader has: “what’s in it for me to keep reading?”

Be more specific
Boring writing happens when you don’t know where you want the reader to look. As fiction writer Nancy Hale tells us: “The more specific you are, the more universal you are.” That applies to more than just fiction. Headline writing is compressed storytelling. And that’s something you can apply to any business. Find the glowing core in your story.

“How to” is your BFF
Veterans of advertising copy will tell you that you can’t write a bad headline that starts with “how to” (see what I did in the subject line of this email?) Granted, this is more relevant to email subject lines and presentation copy, but never say never when it comes to creating a surprising header even in dense analytical reports. I’ve seen it done.

But say no to link bait
You might think it’s tempting to mimic the linkbait strategies of Buzzfeed and others who peddle McContent (e.g., “You’ll never believe what happened next…” or “Seven ways to do X”). But don’t do it. That’s a race to the bottom and one that’s become so common now that readers are wise to the game. No amount of link baited traffic is going to erase the impression that you’ve snookered your audience into reading something that just wasn’t all that good or memorable. Your best ideas and your readers deserve better than that.

Do the unexpected
“State the opposite, not the obvious.” That’s what Sam Horn says in her book “Pop! Stand Out in Any Crowd.” Sometimes the best way to present an idea is to turn it inside out and say something that goes against conventional wisdom. Often that’s where real insight lives. Longtime CreativeBoost readers know that I’m quite fond of that particular strategy.

Yummy, tasty morsels
Break your ideas up into smaller ones. Assign a subheading to each one. Notice how I do that with by blog posts and newsletter? It’s a great way reward your readers for their attention and to honour their time. The trick is make it look like it’s not work to read things all the way though.

Hey, much like what you just did! See how that happened?

What you can learn from Budweiser’s Super Bowl ad

By Patrick Gant

In case you haven’t seen it yet, Budweiser’s Super Bowl ad—slated to run only on the Canadian broadcast of the main event—has gone viral in a big way online.

Here’s the setup.

Two amateur Canadian hockey teams think they’ve been invited to be part of a documentary. Instead they’re treated to a mega flash-mob and get to live out what every kid who plays hockey (or any sport, really) dreams of.

It closes with “Good times are waiting. Why not grab some buds.”

A lot of people have liked it on Facebook, tweeted it and +1’d it on Google+.

You don’t have to enjoy beer or hockey to connect with the message behind the ad. [Read more…]

Important choices you need to make if you want to write a book

By Patrick Gant

Photo: thebbp on flickr

As a business professional, a published book can be one of the most powerful tools in your personal marketing arsenal. Not only does it deliver value to your readers by sharing what you know on a subject, you directly benefit, too.

It can elevate your profile as an authority on the topic you write about. It can reveal your passion. And if your book is really well-written, it also gives people a sense of what you’re like as a person, both on a personal and professional level.

But there are choices to make. Click to continue

Brand and disruption

By Patrick Gant

Your brand establishes expectations that form the reasons why people choose to buy from you versus someone else. Those expectations aren’t just things you promise and deliver on. Nor is it limited to what your brand looks like, or how it’s packaged.

Your brand defines how people feel about you.

A good brand reminds people why they choose you again and again. Emotional connection is a hard thing to measure or to pinpoint why it does what it does. Just as important, a strong brand creates a powerful bond. There’s a risk in there for anyone hoping to engage in disruption tactics involving their brand.

It can easly backfire.

Coke found that out when they switched the colours on their iconic product to silver and white as part of a well-meaning campaign. Consumers got angry and the company abruptly ended their limited run months ahead of schedule.

Much of the blame was that it created confusion between their regular and diet products, but there’s more to it than that. The brand’s colour–Coca-Cola red–is more than just a fundamental part of the product’s design.

It turns out that it’s deeply rooted in how people feel when they buy that product. Take that away from your consumer and they’re missing part of what makes your brand what it is.

What a highway can teach you about how to make the most out of taglines

By Patrick Gant

Photo:underpuppy

Today, I want to talk to you about taglines and highways. It’s an unusual mix, but bear with me.

A tagline can be a valuable tool in marketing. When used properly, it can neatly sum up the value of your product or service with a phrase or idea that is memorable for your audience.

As a copywriter, a marketer and as a consumer, the trouble I find with many taglines is that they’re just not very effective at doing the job they’re supposed to do. They describe rather than sell. They talk about features rather than communicate in benefits. They try to say too much, or they state the obvious rather than zeroing-in on a core problem that the market has. They try too hard to be clever rather than be purposeful.

An ineffective tagline is a waste of your money and your audience’s time. And that takes me to my point about highways.

A few weeks ago, I was travelling on business and I opted to take a toll highway to get home. Like many privately owned enterprises, they took great pains to remind everyone of their tagline. So every few minutes I’d pass yet another road sign reading: “Fast. Safe. Reliable.” They had invested a lot of time and money to remind me of three obvious things that I counted on” with just about any road that I drive on, including the ones that aren’t toll roads!

Keep it simple

Remember one of thinkit creative’s top rules about writing that sells: people are busy. There’s no sense in having a wordy tagline, or one where you tell people something they already know, and that doesn’t communicate a unique benefit or value.

Here’s one of my favourite examples of doing tagline copy properly: when Apple launched the very first iPod back in 2001, their tagline didn’t talk about how the device worked or how revolutionary the design was. Instead the copy read “1,000 songs in your pocket.” So simple and yet so very focused on selling through benefits.

Remember purpose

No matter who you are, most people aren’t going to give you the time you want to explain your product or idea, let alone why they should buy it. Taglines work best when they are memorable. That’s their key purpose. Taglines aren’t the place where you explain things. It’s where you connect your product or service to a larger idea.

It’s not just about words

Don’t create a tagline just for the sake of having one. Taglines aren’t about tacking words up there beside your company logo. Taglines are about ideas. And ideas aren’t always conventional. So be willing to take chances. And stay focused on solving a key problem that your customer is facing.

Be persuasive without being salesy

No one likes to be pitched to in an overt way. In fact, there’s a growing body of research out there to suggest that poorly crafted copy can backfire when consumers sense they are in the presence of shameless sloganeering. As with all things in marketing, exercise good taste and common sense.

Sometimes you have to look harder

When it comes to copywriting, the fewer the words, the tougher the task. So where do you go looking for great taglines, elegantly crafted, that stick? Investing in professional copywriting and copyediting services can help you solve this common marketing problem. But even before you do that, it pays to dig deeper and look at who you are and what you do from your audience’s perspective.

What problem do they have that you help solve? In the case of that toll highway, a much better solution to their own business problem was found on a single sign near the end of the road, in typeface so small that a driver could barely read it. It doesn’t appear on any of the firm’s marketing collateral as far as I can tell. But its message is infinitely more effective, more memorable and more benefit-driven than all the other signage combined.

That sign simply asked the following question:

“How much time did you save taking this highway today?”