Let's Play The 6 Copywriting Elements Game

Andrew is right on here.

It really depends...and testing is critical.

And, I learned that lesson the hard way 6 years ago. []

Andrew, I respect you and all...

but sometimes it's just fun to stretch the brain cells, see how others stretch theirs (how they think) -- come up with some interesting and unique viewpoints, add to one's knowledge of how one's fellow copywriters (and humans) think.

I mean...that's one of the GREAT joys in copywriting...is getting inside other people's heads (at least it is for me.)

And threads like this get started and it gets interesting ... and then someone comes along and says "there are no absolutes" -- only testing.

And it KILLS the conversation.

Every single reason that we come up with about cause-effect relationships is THEORY. Some theories have more predictive power than others. But I'm sure you operate on some theories that come about from both your training and your experience...not just testing results.

I remember sitting in a seminar taught by the late Ken Giddens (his last, as it turns out) and I went to quote Michel Fortin on something. Ken interrupted me and said he didn't care what someone said, only what testing results show. However, I was planning on quoting Michel about results he'd gotten from testing. Sigh.

Bencivena, in his Bencivenga 100 retirement seminar, showed a number of different ads and had the attendees guess which one was the winner. Everyone had a theory that informed their guess -- even though people tended to get only about 1/2 of them right (I think I got 9 or 10 out of 12). And, I suspect, most people revised their "theories" after discovering that they picked the loser. Helped, incidentally, with some of the suggestions of the following discussions.

It's nice to come up with "testing tells all" mantra -- but, in fact, how to do testing well and properly has its own sets of theories (and pitfalls.) If copywriters really were accurate about conversion rates, they'd report them with their statistical confidence levels.

The guys who are the closest to having a bead on this thing -- on the reasons why people buy -- are those neuro-economists, I think they are called -- who hook people up to functional MRIs. They're the folks who discovered there's actually a place in the brain that lights up when someone has decided to buy.

But hearing people's reasonings is like having some additional arrows in the quiver to come up with an initial take on what will make a particular market buy. Ya have to start somewhere, and not everything makes ideal or even suitable testing situations. So those additional arrows can come in handy.

If you ever get a chance, check out Gregory Bateson's "Toward an Ecology of Mind". I think it's the first essay, which is written as a conversation with his daughter -- the topic being "why do Frenchmen talk with their hands."

If anyone thinks there is a completely "right" answer in copywriting (among other places) then they've lost the battle already. There's only profitable and unprofitable (and even that could be disputed). But addiing in a little mental flexibility about what we think might be the right answer is always fun.

Live JoyFully!

Judy