You love drama, even if you won't admit to it...

Don't misinterpret Drama with Gossip. Drama in my vocabulary is the usage of storytelling to create a mental interpretation in the heads of the audience.

There is a gatekeeper in our human brains.
The Wizard of Ads calls this gatekeeper, Broca.
Broca doesn't like to be bored.
He will not let messages through to the brain unless you excite him.
There are four ways to get past the gatekeeper.

1. Subliminally
2. Using of anapestic metre
3. Humour
4. Drama

Today's blog is about Drama.

If you're trying to sell something, the usage of story has the power to pull a buyer into your world.  J. Peterman did it for years in his catalogues and you can too.

Here's an example of J. Peterman story for selling a pair of pants.

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1889.

A hurricane with gusts of eighty miles per hour tears through New York.

A crowd gathers to watch New York’s first skyscraper collapse.

The architect climbs up the scaffolding of the building.

Despite the hurricane, he reaches the top, jumps to his feet, waving his hat in triumph.

A gust knocks him over, skidding him to the edge of the scaffold.

At the very last moment, he grabs a rope and saves himself.

After climbing down he calmly stated, “The building stood as steady as a rock in the sea.”

Men’s Pure Wool Pants (No. 4898). Finely woven. A slightly bolder pattern than typical wool pants. Requires no exceptional acts of courage to wear. Looks particularly dashing with a black turtleneck. Classic fit, two front pleats. Lined to knee. Made in Portugal.

Please allow an additional 2-3 business days for alterations.

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Tell a story, no different than when you were 10 years old.
You told anyone who would listen.
You rambled.
You embellished, slightly.
Your eyes widened and your words sped up with excitement.

And people listened. You captured an audience. Not because of the wild story but because of the way you told it.

I wrote an ad to sell a used blender on kijiji.
The story is true.
Aline and I used to make rum daiquiris to stay cool in the summer.
No where in the ad copy did I explain the age, features, benefits of the blender.
In the words of the Wizard of Ads Roy Williams, I left the unimportant "under water".

The original ad, "Blender, with ice crush function" $15 was up for a week, with 11 views.
And no sale.  
Not even a tweet of interest.

I changed the ad to play around with ad copy.
I was "farting around".

The best part of this ad is that I sold the blender the first day the new copy was used. And I received FULL asking price from the first courter.

Here's my "farting around" ad:

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This blender was built for those lazy summer days. 
It's hard to imagine those dog daysi n the middle of March, when the temperature hovers around -4 degrees. 

You know it's coming. Those days when it's so hot outside, the sweat beads down your back the minute you go outside. 

You don't have a/c in the house so you depend on the floor fan to keep the air moving so you don't die of heat exhaustion. 

You don't feel like doing anything because the humidity is thicker than your mother in law's turkey gravy. Funny enough, you don't like moving after her gravy either. 

There are only two things you can do on those heat wrenched days. 

1. Get out of the house and go somewhere cooler (the mall, a friends house, the beach). 

2. Get some liquor, crush up some ice and serve rum daiquiris. 

We didn't have any friends with a/c. I hate the mall. And my body wasn't built for the beach. 

So we opted for number 2. This blender makes a mean strawberry daiquiri. It kept the wife and I cool for all those humid summers with its ice crush option. 

There are other options on it, but I only remember using the crush ice option. I probably used other options, but after a few of my daiquiries, the memory blurrs. 

One batch makes enough daiquiri to ward off all the sweat demons and helps you sleep through the heat infested evening. 

I don't know how I would have survived those summers without this blender. 

We moved and the new house had a/c. 

We don't use the blender anymore. 

So if you don't have a/c, hate the mall, don't have friends with a/c and don't have a beach body, I have the best option for you. 

Get a blender that crushes ice and have a few cold daiquiris.

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The usage of drama and storytelling pulls a reader into your world. Some won't care. 
In this case, I didn't need SOME. 
I needed ONE.

One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is they think they need to appeal to EVERYONE.
That's not true.
They need a SMALL percentage of the market to have a more business than they can handle.

I found my ONE customer and now I have $15 where a blender once stood. 

Can you be honest and tell me you don't like drama? 

Think of all those stories from your childhood,
Or the stories you pay to see at the local theatre, 
Or the stories of an ad from J. Peterman.


If you want to use the power of DRAMA and storytelling to market your products, you can contact me at ricknicholson@wizardofads.com.