"If it bleeds, it reads"
— Old newspaper adage
But it's not right.
Today, we're going to dissect a brilliant, emotion-provoking ad. Let's dive in.
– Neal
AgileBits Inc.
Open secret: roughly 30% of online purchases are abandoned because customers can't remember their passwords. Ready to fix that? Join Passage by 1Password's webinar on June 25th to discover how passkeys work, and why companies like Amazon and Best Buy turn to them to help reduce shopping cart abandonment and increase revenue.
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Brought to you by Passage by 1Password
Roughly 30% of online purchases are abandoned because customers can't remember their passwords.
Ready to fix that?
Join Passage by 1Password's webinar on June 25th to discover how passkeys work and why companies like Amazon and Best Buy use them to reduce shopping cart abandonment and increase revenue.
AgileBits Inc.
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Copy as ...
Open secret: roughly 30% of online purchases are abandoned because customers can't remember their passwords. Ready to fix that? Join Passage by 1Password's webinar on June 25th to discover how passkeys work, and why companies like Amazon and Best Buy turn to them to help reduce shopping cart abandonment and increase revenue.
Use power words in the right order to trigger the right emotion
Insight from SmartBlogger, Contagious, and Demand Curve.
Read this ad (forwards and backwards):
Source: @dailyadcoffee
Copywriter Jon Morrow defines power words as “persuasive, descriptive words that trigger a positive or negative emotional response. They can make us feel scared, encouraged, aroused, angry, greedy, safe, amused, or curious.”
These emotions drive action.
What’s remarkable about this ad from Patagonia isn’t that it uses power words. All great copywriting does.
But it taps into different emotions depending on the order you read it.
- Reading from the top down, they cause anger and anxiety: screwed, it’s too late, we don’t trust anyone, we don’t have a choice.
- From the bottom up, the emphasis changes entirely to hope and encouragement: choice, livable, imagine, healthy future.
Brilliant. Read it again to notice how this affects you.
(tbh I also love the hook of "we're all screwed.")
The poem is followed by the tagline, “Buy Less, Demand More.” That’s shocking from a retailer and extremely affecting.
The takeaway? Appeal to your readers’ emotions.
We justify with logic, but emotions drive our actions. Emotions are why we:
- Share things that go viral
- Donate to causes
- Buy what we buy (or don’t buy what we don’t need, in the case of Patagonia).
Let's dive into the data of the viral power of emotions:
The viral power of emotion
Jonah Berger's (author of Contagious and Wharton professor) research shows that activating emotions like anger, excitement, amusement, and awe drive action more than happiness, sadness, and contentment.
Here are the stats from analyzing thousands of New York Times articles:
- Awe inspiring = 30% more likely to share
- Anger = 34% more
- Anxiety = 21% more
- Amusement = 29% more
- Sadness = 16% less
And positive emotions are 13% more likely to lead to being shared. So much for the classic adage, "If it bleeds, it reads."
Consider how your copywriting instills awe, fear, amusement, anxiety, arousal, anger, greed, safety, or curiosity. If, instead of triggering a high-arousal emotion, it makes you feel merely content, a little bit sad, or just kind of bored—rewrite.
Thanks for reading.
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