Hypnotic Copywriting Example...

Perhaps the real improvement to copywriting comes not from the specific mechanics that Joe Vitale espouses (and Veloso, Kilstein, Joyner, D'Souza, et al.), but from knowing WHY things work the way they do.

If a particular author's approach creates understanding of why the techniques work (perhaps along with an understanding of the author's own subtle variations on the techniques), then it's worthwhile reading.

I'd agree with you that these are just more concepts for the working toolbox, and not really a special brand of copywriting. (Copy overly optimized for this approach seems to suffer from the same problems that copy overly optimized for SEO does - it doesn't read well.)

When I think of Hypnotic Copywriting, I interpret it as a style of writing that activates my mind's eye in ways that regular old conversational writing doesn't always achieve.

"Imagine you're sitting on the beautiful white sand beaches of the North Store of Kauai (insert picture)...

You're listening to the waves gently crash, one upon the other, while the sun's rays are caressing your body with ample Vitamin D.

You think to yourself, 'life can't get any better than this.'

But then you realize, it can.

You picture yourself holding a bottle of crisp, cool, refreshing Bud Light in your hands RIGHT NOW!

(insert picture of man holding the beer)

Now that is what life is all about!" - (insert picture of looking over the man's back as if watches the waves.)

Anyway...

I don't know...

...just something that powerful creates more tangible images in the prospect's mind.

Mark

I sure hope there aren't any cats in the house with access to the clock, lol. It's a neat clock, though.

Using words alone actually is a big difference. When people read a sales letter, they are totally in their own head. They are reading it in their own tonality and with their own filters and biases. Hypnosis involves an external focus, unless you are doing self-hypnosis on yourself...but I don't know too many prospects that are going to voluntarily hypnotize themselves while reading a sales letter.

I think a better description is hypnotic-like copy. Hypnotic is describing the experience of the person reading the copy, NOT that the person is actually being hypnotized.

Some say we are all already walking around hypnotized. Meaning we are massively patterned and NOT in the present moment with our awareness.

The trick is to unhypnotize people...shake them out of their boring life...and direct their present moment awareness to our copy.

Imperceptibly ^ I'm sure that image is moving.

I know I took LSD many years ago but lol I didn't think it's effects would last this long!

That gives me an idea for an ebook:

I think the idea of "hypnotic" copywriting is a bit of a misnomer. No matter how well you write you will probably never be able to truly induce a trance like state in your reader for one very important reason:

Reading requires an active mental state. Hypnosis requires a passive mental state.

I think there is also a lot of fluff and, well, garbage, out there when it comes to NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis so I stick to the actual books like NLP and Patterns by Grinder and Bandler.

You can however, use some of the fundamental techniques developed by Erickson when writing copy.

The trick is that the conscious mind is prone to argument. For example, let's take the classic "You are getting sleepy". If you were to say this to someone they would naturally check with themselves and would probably determine that they are not, in fact, getting sleepy at all.

Ericksonian hypnosis works because it bypasses the conscious mind. This is ingeniously simple and can be applied to copywriting. Let's take the previous example and change it so that it will be more effective. If we follow what is laid out in Patterns we should change "You are getting sleepy" to:

"Can you feel yourself becoming more relaxed?"

Without going too deep into an explanation, this works because it is basically an automatic "Yes" statement. The person needs to check with themselve to find out "IF" they are getting "more relaxed". The subject is likely to begin to feel somewhat more relaxed than they were before. There is no definitive statement about how relaxed they are and there isn't a command for the conscious mind to object to.

The basic idea is that asking is more effective than telling.

I could probably write about this topic for a while but I'm busy lol