HOW TO PUT PSYCHOLOGY TO WORK FOR YOU & YOUR
ADVERTISING
When you’re writing copy to promote your business,
you search for the right words that will encourage
customers to buy from you. You know the power of
words, but you might not know the psychology of
words. The next time you sit down to write, think
about How To Put Psychology To Work For You.
Some of the easiest rules of communication are
rules of psychology (psychology + communication
= salesmanship). We stumble upon these rules by
asking ourselves, “Why did I react that way?” and
then chipping away personal prejudices and other
impurities. What’s left is a shining, valuable rule
that benefits communicators by letting us play virtuoso
cadenzas on the psychological strings of our targets.
While writing a direct-mail offer, I decided
to strengthen the money-back guarantee by changing
the risk-free inspection period from 30 days to
one month. Then, like Archimedes in the bathtub,
I yelled “Eureka!” as the reason for the change
hit me — the Generic Determination Rule: The generic
determines reaction more than the number.
The Generic Determination
Rule
And what, you ask, does that mean? You can feel
relief when you see how what appears to be a pedantic
rule is instead one of the most useful weapons in
your arsenal.
One month is a longer time than 30 days. Oh,
not really; perceived time is the psychological
key that can unlock the door of buyer receptivity.
What the rule means is that something generic (in
this case, month and day) exercises greater control
over human reaction than the number associated with
it (in this case, one and 30).
Does it work? You bet. Half an hour is a “longer”
time than 30 minutes. The generics are hours and
minutes. The numbers are one and 30: One half-hour
. . . 30 minutes. The rule says generics determine
reaction more than numbers. That being true, 60
minutes seems to be less time than one hour. (If
the television show 60 Minutes were named One Hour,
ratings would plummet.)
Similarly, 60 seconds seems to be a shorter span
of time than one minute. Twenty-four hours appears
to be a shorter span of time than one day. We pay
attention to the generic unit — seconds, minutes,
hours or days — not to the number.
This piece of information is not trivial. You
can control the reader’s reaction without changing
the facts.
If you want to suggest that you process claims
in a shorter time, you write “48 hours;” if you
want the time to seem longer, you write “two days.”
A seemingly shorter distance is “5,280 feet;” a
longer distance is “one mile.” A seemingly smaller
quantity is “one pint;” a larger quantity is “half
a quart.” There seems to be less weight in “eight
ounces;” there seems to be more weight in “half
a pound.”
The Chronology Rule
Let’s move up to the second level: Which of these
slogans seems to imply a longer period of time:
“Established 1981” or “More Than 20 Years at This
Location”?
Let’s expand the Generic Determination Rule to
cover this second-level concept, the Chronology
Rule: Does the experiential background of your primary
targets include a date within their adult lives?
Then numbers of years, months or days appear longer.
Using these two allied rules, we can widen our
generic determinations in both directions. If an
event is supposed to be recent, it didn’t happen
three months ago; it happened last April. (“Back
in April” artificially pumps up the time gap). “I
haven’t seen you for 10 years” suggests a considerably
longer gap than “I haven’t seen you since 1990.”
Likewise, “You’ve had it only since 2000,” will
have been less time in 2002 than “You’ve had it
for only two years.”
The Psychology of Tense Selection
What’s the difference between the following two
sentences?
“This
sells elsewhere for $100.” (Present tense)
“This
sold elsewhere for $100.” (Past tense)
There’s plenty of difference between the two.
Present tense has the power because right now, somebody
else is selling this for $100. Past tense loses
strength because it’s history, not current events.
What do you do if you can’t claim a current competitive
marketplace at $100? Simple: You split the difference
by moving into the present perfect tense: “This
has sold elsewhere for $100.”
Present perfect
This tense links the immediacy of the present
with the factual comfort of the past. Don’t worry
about terminology or the forgotten sentence parsing
of Miss Norwalk’s third-grade class. Keep repeating,
as I do: Copywriters are communicators, not grammarians.
What matters isn’t your knowledge of which tense
is which; it’s your knowledge of how to transform
drab fact into the gold of lustrous attraction.
One exception: Use “sold,” not “has sold” or
“have sold,” when suggesting a break with the past,
especially in headline copy: “Thousands Sold at
$100!”
Why is “This has sold . . .” usually better copy
than “These have sold . . .”?
• Exclusivity is one of the Five Great Motivators.
Singularity suggests exclusivity; pluralizing makes
both what you’re selling and those to whom you sell
it anonymous.
• The singular implicitly suggests quantity limitation.
It’s the same impulse-building syndrome that brings
crowds to the door half an hour before a store opens:
“Only 11 at This Price!”
(The reason for the word “usually” in the explanation:
When quantity is small, pluralizing emphasizes fewness.)
When writing accomplishment copy, the present
perfect tense creates an immediacy you can’t achieve
with past tense. As an example, here is a piece
of copy about miniaturized firearms:
Sr. Alberti created a perfect working replica
. . .
This lost the selling hook by turning Sr. Alberti’s
accomplishment into a historical incident. The work
becomes a current event with a single word addition:
Sr. Alberti has created a perfect working replica
. . .
Check your copy for lost timing. You can lose
the reader’s or listener’s interest by wandering
through history, and you can yank that interest
back into the present by a tense change. Instead
of:
The work had a profound effect . . . .
This doesn’t have a profound effect. Because
it seems to have come and gone before your target
individual came onto the scene, you can write:
The work has had a profound effect . . . .
The profundity seems to have continued right
up to the moment your words hit the paper.
“Has had” can be even more dynamic than “is having”
because present tense can have a subtle overtone
of incompleteness or a changeable circumstance.
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