The Power Of Copy

To begin with, languages have always been my passion, and I was enchanted by the way words can transform and perplex the meaning. There is no way I want to discriminate the visuals here, but the way the message is designed determines how it will be processed. Bang! Universal truth. But still unarguable.

As Jeff Gothelf, an interaction designer points out in his blog, Robert Cialdini in his book Influence argues that the secret weapon of a copywriter is a message structure and it is made up of two things - sequence and word choice. And that slightly mediating one of these two components can affect the power of persuasion significantly.

And here is the case study that exemplifies this simple idea. TheLadders.com is a website for jobsearch. Jeff Gothelf who is one of the employes there has hold an experiment where he only changed the wording of literally several words on the website, but that helped increase membership dramatically!

So here is the story:

Our current labeling for these membership levels simply reads "Basic (free) membership" and "Premium Membership." There are price points listed to illustrate that the premium membership costs money but that's about it.

To put the power of consistency to work here, the only thing I changed on the page were the membership type labels. They were changed to "I'm just looking around" for the free membership and "I'm serious about my job search" for the premium membership. That's it. No other changes to any part of the page. The thinking was that if someone had declared themselves "job hunting" then asking them whether they were truly serious about that declaration would lead to more sign-ups.

The results were interesting and very encouraging. Just by changing the words we saw a DROP in free membership sign-ups of nearly 16% but we saw an increase of paid sign-ups of nearly 30%. All we did was change the words!

And that makes me think of the idea of universal truths again. Jeff used the concept of consistency to appeal to the customers, which suggests that if you declared something important, you are more likely to follow your path. But that concept simply didn't work when the message was different. Psychological trick, you'll say. The power of words, I'll argue. Language has long been embodying our norms, values, traditions, hopes and fears, which makes it an extremely influensive tool.

Copywriters are magicians.

To find out what other ways if spelling a cast on the consumers I asked Liyun Huang, a Copywriter from DDB Shanghai, China (with previous experience as a Junior Copywriter in McCann Erickson Shanghai, China) to answer several questions about persuasive power of copy.

Do you agree that cultural predispositions (language, traditions, myths) affect copywriting?

Strongly agree -  for example, the use of humor in copywriting is widely accepted in US for lots of product categories, however, in China, sometimes it's considered inappropriate - or at least not so common - for some products. Chinese consumers are much more sensitive to using humor, and sometimes could easily be offended.

Do you rely on human psychology when working on a copy? Can you think of any techniques you use to make the audience more susceptible to the ad?

Yes. I will consider the target audience's motives, personality types etc, and carefully choose the wording and tone. Can't think of any specific techniques for now...

What in your opinion can be more effective in terms of persuasion: type; message length; the sequence of words; the word choice itself; using metaphors, oxymorons etc; or the actual layout?

The word choice and metaphors. The same message can be communicated in many ways, and I will always experiment with different words and rhetoric. The key point is to find a new way of saying something common, whether using new combination of words or a metaphor that is so relevant but no one has used before.

What are your three things to avoid when writing a succesful copy?

Big but pointless words.

Beautifully written copy that forgets its purpose is to get the key message across to consumers.

Client tone.

If you were to give one piece of advice to a young copywriter who is just starting his way, what would you say?

The first advice is to always keep in mind a question when you have an creative idea or finish writing a copy, "If I was the consumer/audience, would I like this idea/copy?"

REFERENCES
Jeff Gothelf (April 09, 2010) The secret weapon of UX: Copywriting, In Perception is the experience. Retrieved from  http://www.jeffgothelf.com/blog/the-secret-weapon-of-ux-copywriting/ 
Cialdini, R.B. (1998) Influence: The psychology of persuasion. New York: Collins.