Learning from the 10 BILLION dollar Friday about motivation.

What would a headline like that look like?

That's a really good post gjabiz

In economics there's a concept known as "elasticity" Some goods are elastic and some are unelastic. Elastic goods are things you can do without when money is tight (holidays, new car, new rug for the lounge etc). On the other hand unelastic goods are things you can't do without such as food, heat, clothes, electricity etc.

Drug dealers don't need copywriters because their demographic need their drugs no matter what. Like you say; It's down to where someone resides on Maslow's pyramid.

A really good piece of copy will leave the reader "needing" your product instead of just "wanting". Persuasion engineers call this "Hierarchical threading". Basically they use different emotions through their copy in a linear fashion in a way to turn an elastic product into an unealastic one.

First come the social emotions like guilt, remorse, shame, embarrassment which trigger the stability of the "love/belonging" strata of the pyramid.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Then we drop down to the next strata "safety" where the emotions of insecurity, isolation, rejection and alienation are introduced. Once this strata becomes unstable then the primary emotions like rage, anger fear are introduced. These emotions are the bodyguards of our physiological needs and also the most potent. They can usurp the other emotions quite easily if need be and are the base of the pyramid.

Here's a schematic

Contrasting and categorization of emotions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The reason this works is because: Once an emotion has been triggered in the mind and the "emotional highway" is open, then it's a lot easier to route more emotions onto it.

Once this is achieved you're activating a broad spectrum "seeking" response in the mind, and this "seeking" response is the one which makes you take decisions. Eventually the conscious mind hasn't enough energy to attenuate the "seeking" emotions which have reached critical mass and the "desire" overrules the conscious mind and critical factor. The conversion takes place.

Seeking is the Granddaddy of Emotional Systems : Sources of Insight

Like hitting on a new-found void with a void-filling mallet, I guess.

A whole bunch of schmucks could get addicted to that stuff if it got dealt right.

You say these are the three reasons for the money spent...

I'd disagree a little, and apparently I'm right based on the mind set of those that advertise...

the biggest reason most of the money is spent is because of SEX.

The need to feel sexy, the search for sexy, the want to be around sexy people, and on and on all about sex.

Enjoyed your post, just thought you overlooked the biggest reason money is spent on Fridays.

The chemical behind wanting, well... anything is dopamine.

Whether it's escapism, lifestyle, sex, women, drugs, being the best... doesn't matter...

What DOES matter is...

Are you triggering a dopamine response in the reader's/watcher's brain with your copy?

Mark

Gordon,

Perhaps your "actualized self" is so bright you couldn't see the dark forces of my post.

The devil isn't dressed like some Isis jihadist

Nope

The devil dresses in white clothes She's good looking and quotes the bible

She smells good too.

Her voice sounds like an angel. She sings and everybody stops.

See, the devil pretends to be saint

She convinces you she is a Saint

She lowers your resistance. She lowers skepticism. She makes you feel comfortable.

Then she attacks. Then she leaves without a trace.

See Gordon, the dark forces in this case are tools that get you to trust. They get you to believe. They get you to stop questioning.

Think of bin laden think of madoff. Think of bush/Cheney.

All calm on the outside with their self righteous for all to see. Bush lied about WMDs. Yet, we believed them. He even got Powell to believe his lies.

Another example is the speed seduction niche. The trick is getting them to let their guard down, get them to trust you, and then you know what happens.

That to me is the height of manipulation. Sometimes it's used for good. Most of the time it isn't.

Adam

P.s. I find subconscious messages to be very powerful and effective. Learning how to use these tools is using the dark forces. Not evil per se. Dark because you can't see them. Dark because they operate hidden in plain sight.

P.p.s. if u think I disappointed you, you should talk with my wife. You'd both get along

Too many copywriters try to create motivation in their copy.

You can't.

You simply have to channel existing motivation to the product or service you're selling.

Trying to motivate a niche will cause you to go broke.

So much easier to stand in front of a crowd that's already motivated and just show them why your product/service meets their needs better than any other.

A good copywriter will dig into the market's main motivation. They won't try to create it.

A great book for those in sales is called "The Secret to Selling Anything" but Harry Browne.

Harry was able to dramatically increase his income and reduce his hours as a sales person by simply asking questions to find out what the prospect wanted and what he/she was motivated by.

Then, he'd present his product/service as the solution to that main motivation.

I could be wrong, because I just ordered it and I'm waiting for my copy to arrive... but Ryan Levesque, a well known marketer/sales funnel pro, has a book out called "Ask".

I've heard raving reviews about it... and just ordered my copy.

Now, I could be wrong, but I have a good feeling that Ryan talks a lot about ASKING
your market what they want... and then giving it to them.

From the title of his book, and knowing a little about Ryan's survey method... I'm assuming (and maybe I shouldn't) that a lot of his formula includes asking the market what they're motivated by having/doing/getting... and then GIVING it to them.

I'm not proud to admit it, but after a recent bout with skin cancer, and having been given some prescription pain pills for the pain, I could see SO EASILY how people can quickly get addicted to pain killers, alcohol, or any kind of chemical that helps them FEEL better and escape the pain RIGHT now.

Even at the slightest bit of pain, I found myself reaching for the pain pills... and realized that how fast and easy it is for people to get addicted... because it's a fast and easy way to feel better almost immediately.

That's why sex, drugs, alcohol, etc...it's such an easy sell because they're instant relieve and escape from reality, even for a short time.

But of course, we know the problems still exist, after they come down... so it's obviously not a healthy way to deal with things.

But the entire subject of happiness, motivation, carrots and sticks... it fascinates me, and is one of the things that led me to sales and copy.

The power to move another human, or a large group of them, with your words, is powerful.

But again, it makes life so much easier when you just harness and channel pre-existing motivation towards your product or service.

Don't spend half your copy trying to motivate your prospect into wanting what you want. They KNOW they have knee pain, or joint pain, or are overweight.

You just have to show why you can help them better than the rest.

This is what I call selling cocaine to an addict, and what's so hard about
that?

Selling to human weaknesses is about the easiest sale to be made. You don't
need a lot of persuasion for that. Like taking candy from a baby. If your aim is
to make "easy money" then there are always questionable markets to write
for but the real persuasion comes from writing for 'legitimate' products.

Why am I saying this? Often I'll hear about his great copywriter who made
millions in a certain market and I think, "How hard is it to sell a porn membership
to testosterone-dripping young man?" (Not necessarily that market, but this
illustrates my point.) If you can sell him an exercise program, then I'll be more
impressed.

-Ray Edwards

Huh? Didn't know that... "Very"?

Was Halbert the guy who put off paying his light bill to buy ad space (or a list or whatever) for one of his dm ventures?

That sounds a lot like a gambling addict, but I didn't know about the drugs.

Hmm, some confusion here.

I am as a cat among pigeons.

In a world of TMI we want OUR I noticed.

That's why we fight for space in the info maelstrom, filling the void with our message rather than the other guy's crapola.

It's why biros are called biros and all the other names made with the GFY.

This principle is the E=MC2 of what we're doing here.

It isn't wingnut.

It isn't even Friday, guys.

You around here for some action then?

They sure do — and thanks to a particularly effective call to action I ended up here.

Shame Mindwarp Portals LLC doesn't exist on this side of the flip, but if I take the LOLs seriously maybe I should set it up and claim ownership of a parallel market.

After all, you've got to speculate to duplicate.

Also, agree with your take on persuasion vs motivation, Alex (and others chiming).

If we just played to motivation, all we'd sell is bazookas.

Hey — it's getting there, this old speculation thing.

Guess what we're saying here is that all narrative is a battle for the future, whether it's Batman whupping the Joker's butt or Biro GFY-ing on the other guys.

No matter how hard we predict, the future remains a void to be filled with the outcome of the kind of hopes and dreams and aspirations and wooty everyone is moving around on the chequered board of the pre-future.

And you're right, it's no darn good wapping anyone with a mallet. The mallet has to assume the form of the void people wanna fill up.

If you're bleeding, the void gets filled with the mallet of the bandages you want and need, thanks to some cunning warrior tapping into your preferred solution, and charging an extra few dollars for a fancy name.

You don't get whumped, you get what you wanted — you don't even see the weilder of the mallet TAKING VERY DELIBERATE AND CAREFULLY CONSIDERED AIM.

Problem is, with all this stuff competing to fill the void, how do you figure on hanging in there with the copy that does the biz? Or even gets seen?

TMI demands we all think GFY to 99.9% of the I presented to us, otherwise our brains would swell to the size of whales and level whole continents when they exploded.

On a sunny day, we don't wander round till dusk going HEY IT'S SUNNY! WOW, ISN'T IT SUNNY! JUST LOOK AT THAT SUN! HEY WOW!

Our brains filter out all that stuff to prevent a pan-planet tsunami of cerebral fluids drowning all the baby seals.

Dan Dennett (he of philosophy and beard and 'probably just died now loudmouth Balestra done gone quoted the guy') had it right about another form of narrative in the days before we fixed up the internet.

Here he is from the mid-90s on dodging the doggerel — and the need for someone to present our flailing synapses with just the stuff they GOTTA HAVE to generate the sensations they crave.

"John McCarthy, one of the founders of Artificial Intelligence...once suggested to a humanist audience that electronic-mail networks could revolutionize the ecology of the poet. Only a handful of poets can make their living by selling their poems, McCarthy noted, because poetry books are slender, expensive volumes purchased by very few individuals and libraries. But imagine what would happen if poets could put their poems on an international network, where anybody could read them or copy them for a penny, electronically transferred to the poet's royalty account. This could provide a steady source of income for many poets, he surmised. Quite independently of any aesthetic objections poets and poetry-lovers might have to poems embodied in electronic media, the obvious counterhypothesis arises from population memetics. If such a network were established, no poetry-lover would be willing to wade through thousands of electronic files filled with doggerel, looking for the good poems; there would be a niche created for various memes for poetry filters. One could subscribe, for a few pennies, to an editorial service that scanned the infosphere for good poems. Different services, with different critical standards, would flourish, as would services for reviewing all the different services— and services that screened, collected, formatted, and presented the works of the best poets in slender electronic volumes which only a few would purchase. In other words, the memes for editing and criticism will find niches in any environment in the infosphere; they flourish because of the short supply and limited capacity of minds, whatever the transmission media between minds."

The critical point in any stimulation/action argument is ATTENTION, which is where we started out way back in 1495 with gjabiz's original query.

In the TMI maelstrom, it pays to bag the attention over the other guy, whether you're dishing with the cure narrative ("Our cocaine-saturated wheat beer will get you so far out of your anxiety crapbox you'll be mainlining the stuff by Friday") or the prevention narrative ("A vote for the Democrats is a vote for Satan and the winged hordes of child-eating monsters! Stop those crazy guys!").

But, yeah, monkeying with that 8 ball was real dumb.

Shoulda just gone with a straight list in numerical order and refrained from spawning no subsequent comments penned with the quills of raised eyebrow follicles.

Who needs THAT kind of attention?

What good is WTF when there's sunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsu nsunsunsunsunsunsunsun...?