Truth in Advertising
Copywriters and advertising professionals have a reputation as snake-oil salesmen; people who will lie and say anything to get customers to buy something. But if you think about it logically for a moment, this doesn’t make sense.
A persuasive website, sales letter or brochure can get a customer to buy a product they’ve never tried once. But even the most skillful marketing copy cannot get a customer to buy something they’ve tried already and didn’t like. Either the goods are delivered as advertised, or else the marketing pro and their client go out of business the next day because they’ll be seen as unreliable.
That said, marketing content can take utilize a technique described by Robert Bly in “The Copywriter’s Handbook” as false logic. The idea is to be absolutely truthful, yet play upon the customer’s assumptions. One example Bly uses is a fruit company that uses the slogan, “less than one in 1,000 people have tasted this pear” – which gives the pear an air of exclusivity, when the statistic may only mean that it’s not very popular.
Another example could be a company advertising the idea that “customer service is our highest priority” – when all customer service has been out-tasked to a subcontractor. Customers may assume that customer service calls are handled by internal company representatives.
But so long as the customer gets great service, the company is being truthful (while using “false logic) to give themselves a positive selling proposition. That’s not a bad thing for the company or the customer.
Marketing copy must be truthful to succeed. “Logical” is a whole other story.
Contributed by Jonathon Narvey, President of www.writeimage.ca, a Vancouver-based copywriting company